CommunityReel 2003

B@rt · Post by **B@rt** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 8:45 pm

Hi,

as a contribution for the "blender movie/art festival" at the Blender Conference I would like to create a 'community showreel' with the coolest art (animations, stills, videos of interactive productions) made by the Blender community. This showreel would come in the form of a 1- 1.5 hour (?) DVD that can be shown during the art festival and that can (hopefully) be sold in the e-shop after the conference to make an extra buck for the Blender Foundation.

Anyone, but especially the artists who will not be able to attend the conference, can submit their work.

I'll not be able to pull this off alone, so I'm gonna need a lot of volunteers to help me create this. Before jumping in, let's 'test the water' a bit first

Some of the things that will need to be done are:

Communicating with artists.
Organising and selecting submissions.
Re-rendering animations at DVD/PAL quality.
Creating titles and a leader.
Creating a soundtrack.
Editing the final product.
Designing a case.
...

I'm already fleshing out the idea, but I'm very curious what the reactions are. Do you like it? Hate it? How would you like to help out? Please let me know here – I'll keep a close eye on the posts and based on the reactions, try to get the project moving this week.

Have fun,

B@rt

Shay · Post by **Shay** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 8:50 pm

Could an NTSC version be compiled?

I know its alot of extra work but all of us non PAL users would love it.

_florian_ · Post by **_florian_** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 8:53 pm

i really like the idea! but there is a lot of work to do.
can you say what style of soundtrack you think would be useful? just a general background "noise" or soundtrack depending on the kind of movies?

florian

B@rt · Post by **B@rt** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 8:54 pm

Hi Shay,

Thanks for the suggestion! I have no idea if there's a difference between PAL and NTSC DVD's, but I'll find out.. Anyway, everyone should be able to play it so if we need to make another version, so be it. Still, given the schedule of making such a DVD in under two months, let's first focus on a PAL version and then convert/re-render it to NTSC.

Have fun,

B@rt

B@rt · Post by **B@rt** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 8:55 pm

_florian_ wrote:i really like the idea! but there is a lot of work to do.
can you say what style of soundtrack you think would be useful? just a general background "noise" or soundtrack depending on the kind of movies?

florian

I think just a 'general background soundtrack' would be ok. Some movies will of course have their own sound effects and music, and adding sound effects ourselves would be a massive amount of work, don't you think?

Have fun,

B@rt

engalicorn · Post by **engalicorn** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 9:15 pm

Shay wrote:Could an NTSC version be compiled?

I know its alot of extra work but all of us non PAL users would love it.

Unless im completly mistaken, PAL and NTSC signals are put out by the dvd player themselves, not the encoded into the disc. DVD is mpeg2 which has been on computers for a long time. However VHS on the other hand is really the finished product, nothing has to be decoded, a VCR is only an amplifier.

There is a region protection system that im sure that youve seen in on dvd cases (on the bottom back of any case there is a little world with a number in it ie 1 for the americas) This protection was to stop movies sold in say japan being played in american or canadain players. However this is a long defunct system since i was just in china town (in edmonton) and i found some region free dvd players made by panavox or some rip off name like that.

So as long as the dvds are region free they should be able to be played all over the world. and i dont believe that is too much work. One may just have to by and region free dvd burner if there is region protection on their burner... but what am i saying your will probally do it professionally.

B@rt · Post by **B@rt** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 11:08 pm

engalicorn wrote: Unless im completly mistaken, PAL and NTSC signals are put out by the dvd player themselves, not the encoded into the disc. DVD is mpeg2 which has been on computers for a long time. However VHS on the other hand is really the finished product, nothing has to be decoded, a VCR is only an amplifier.

Hmm, I'm not sure how that works (after all, PAL and NTSC have different framerates), but I'll ask around..

engalicorn wrote:here is a region protection system that im sure that youve seen in on dvd cases (on the bottom back of any case there is a little world with a number in it ie 1 for the americas)

Yep. This DVD would be region-free, obviously!

Have fun,

B@rt

Pablosbrain · Post by **Pablosbrain** » Mon Sep 01, 2003 1:22 am

From what I've read and learned from others... on DVD its just MPEG2 as has been stated above already. The DVD player/decoder does the conversion/ouput to PAL or NTSC. Audio is 48khz at either 16 or 24bit.

You would still want your NTSC version to be rendered and compiled together at one standard resolution so the video is not stretched in wierd ways from video to video. The same would go for PAL.

levon · Post by **levon** » Mon Sep 01, 2003 5:34 am

thats a great idea, i just wish i had something worthy of putting on it

but i could help with the music, what style were you thinking of?

and im quite sure that dvds arnt ntsc or pal speciffic

matt_e · Post by **matt_e** » Mon Sep 01, 2003 8:00 am

Re. DVDs:
http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#1.19

TheFallenWeeble · Post by **TheFallenWeeble** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 9:01 am

Totally rockin' idea. I dunno if I'll have much of anything worthy enough to contribute be be put on the DVD, but I'll definitely help where ever I'm needed. I wouldn't be opposed to help design the case and assist (only a little!) in editing the final product or creating an open for it.

Also, I'd like to add to the list of "things that need done" (but not necessarily volunteer myself for it) is someone to create a menu system for the DVD.

Timothy · Post by **Timothy** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 5:06 pm

B@rt wrote: Yep. This DVD would be region-free, obviously!

It could be that some dvd-players don't play region-free dvd's btw,.. I think I read something about that once when unlocking my own dvd-player. But I am not sure if it is actually the case, and if it is how many players don't do that.

SirDude · Post by **SirDude** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 5:14 pm

Very cool idea.

Let me know if you need any help with anything.

B@rt · Post by **B@rt** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 6:08 pm

Hi all,

I've worked all day to improve my kitchen, so I'm a bit too tired for long rants today. Anyway, here are all my notes so far including a preliminary planning:

http://vrotvrot.com/CommunityReel/Notes.pdf

Please, feel free to shoot! More news tomorrow.

Have fun,

B@rt

kid_tripod · Post by **kid_tripod** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 9:34 pm

Timothy wrote:
B@rt wrote: Yep. This DVD would be region-free, obviously!
It could be that some dvd-players don't play region-free dvd's btw,.. I think I read something about that once when unlocking my own dvd-player. But I am not sure if it is actually the case, and if it is how many players don't do that.

Annoyingly enough my DVD player adapts its output according to the encoding of the disc, hence a Region 0 (non-regioned) NTSC disc causes the player to jump to NTSC, which my tv only displays as B&W. It's most annoying since my consoles all run PAL 60Hz, so I have to use a computer to watch my imports.

As regarding rendering, the way I've done it before is working at 1024x576 at 25fps (non-field rendered), and leaving the rest to Premiere. This has the advantage of being 16:9 and square pixels, which makes post processing more predictable. It also happens to be a size that DivX handles very well, so its good enough for actually working pre-final output (with a half decent bitrate), without having billions of targas all over the computer.

I think the framerate will be the sticky issue.

Blender.org

CommunityReel 2003

CommunityReel 2003

Re: CommunityReel 2003

Re: CommunityReel 2003

Notes so far