hard1k wrote:

Oh my. If you need any other support, please tell us.

Will certainly do! See below.

640K!enough wrote:

If you need an extra set of eyes to look over the subtitles, whether in progress or completed, feel free to drop me a line.

Definitely. Subtitles are super fun to do, and having a second opinion will help.

chinny22 wrote:

-Awesome idea

Thanks!

chinny22 wrote:

This is gonna be cool once done 😀

I hope so.

My last check-in from August still stands, and I'm still busy with most of the points mentioned previously.

My most current research is mostly on serial numbers, card revisions, and number of units sold. I'm looking for pictures of your AdLib cards (not from Google); if you could upload them somewhere (just a quick picture of the front/back would help tremendously) and fill THE ADLIB CENSUS OF 2019 with the links, that would be nice. Thanks!

Ah, some things I forgot :
I've found an existing instrumental soundtrack, paid the usage rights, and contacted the composer for new, additional music for the project.

Check him out, I think his music is pretty cool!
https://alexmckechnie.bandcamp.com/album/degrees-of-latitude

I've also received lots of video archive footage from the National Assembly, where they discuss AdLib's fate in 1992. AdLib really was in the middle of something much, much bigger.

Also, looking for opinions on this small dilemma :

The doc's aspect ratio (horizontal to vertical) is most likely going to be 2:1 for different reasons.
The cinematic 2.35 is WAY too wide for interviews, and the standard 1.77 (aka 16:9) looks like a TV program or youtube video.
2:1 is a new and relatively unused ratio, which appeals mathematically to me, and I appreciate the simple/tidy ratio on a metaphorical level, for a subject about computers.

This said, most of my archive footage will be in standard 1.33 : 1 (aka 4:3).
There are different ways to approach the inclusion of such footage.

1. Center 1.33 (efficient, but footage looks small in the middle)

2. Center, but with background

3. Center, with video background (many youtubes do this)

4. Crop to fit (more consistent with the rest)

What feels more appropriate in your opinion? Thanks!

Black bars is more professional, but what about cropping the 4:3 footage to 14:9?

Particularly when dealing with official archival footage, my preference would be for the least processing possible. In this case, that would be option 1. Personally, I don't like options 2 or 3 much at all, so if 1 is ruled out, then I suppose I could begrudgingly tolerate 4, but I feel you still risk losing some of the context, or "flavour", of the original video.

#1 hands down for me, with #3 being my least favourite.

Option 1. if you ask my kids: option 4. Few days ago they complained about black bars on a cartoon show from the mid 2000s…

Cropping if possible, black bars if not. The other options are distracting and unprofessional (despite widespread use).

Option 1.

MobyGamer wrote:

Cropping if possible, black bars if not. The other options are distracting and unprofessional (despite widespread use).

Cropping is horrible as it removes a good chunk of the picture.

Thanks for everyone's input. It seems option 1 and 4 are the most popular, but divisive.

MrEWhite wrote:

MobyGamer wrote:

Cropping if possible, black bars if not. The other options are distracting and unprofessional (despite widespread use).

Cropping is horrible as it removes a good chunk of the picture.

It's going to be a question of context. My favourites are option 4 and option 1 respectively, but threw in option 2 and 3 because they are common and I wanted all your impressions.

For example, if I have a big segment of a few minutes of only archive footage. I'll probably use option 1 (uncropped) for that.

However if I'm alternating between my footage and archive footage, multiple times in a short period, then option 4 (cropped) would potentially be less jarring (of the black bars appearing/disappearing constantly).

dan86 wrote:

Black bars is more professional, but what about cropping the 4:3 footage to 14:9?

I never noticed that 14:9 was a thing before you mentioned it. Very interesting. Thanks for the suggestion. It's a middle-ground and still has black bars, but less of them.

Beegle wrote:

dan86 wrote:

Black bars is more professional, but what about cropping the 4:3 footage to 14:9?

I never noticed that 14:9 was a thing before you mentioned it. Very interesting. Thanks for the suggestion. It's a middle-ground and still has black bars, but less of them.

It is somewhat of a thing here in the USA yet mostly goes unnoticed. Some older shows that predate widescreen TVs have been cropped to 14:9 to better fit the 16:9 TVs most everyone here has.

Beegle wrote:

The doc's aspect ratio (horizontal to vertical) is most likely going to be 2:1 for different reasons.
The cinematic 2.35 is WAY too wide for interviews, and the standard 1.77 (aka 16:9) looks like a TV program or youtube video.

This said, most of my archive footage will be in standard 1.33 : 1 (aka 4:3).

There is the other standard cinematic aspect ratio of 1.85 also, which is less wide but very filmic. 2:1 is pretty odd. Strongly in favor of pillarboxing 4:3 archival material, it preserves the whole picture and is just fine in a retrospective stylistically.

Only #1 should be acceptable, IMO. Whatever your reason for choosing 2:1, the upshot is that most of your viewers will get black bars on the top and bottom anyway; so cropping (option #4) would be a "worst of both worlds" situation.

Yeah, I amend my previous reply to #1 only. Showing it with bars means showing every part of the original video, and while some people don't like bars, it proves you're showing the entire video and NOT cropping it.

REALLY looking forward to this now. Came across the project a while back, but it just came up again while researching an article on sound cards. I hope it's going well!

I like preserving archival footage in its least modified form, but footage used in context and in situ amongst other wide footage, it doesn’t make sense to preserve the ratio for the sake of ideologic purity. This isn’t an archive of the footage, it’s a use of otherwise archived footage. If you want to see the real thing (especially since it would probably be edited here), see the source material itself.

So, any news on this? Stuck in editing limbo?

sf78 wrote on 2020-11-05, 10:24:

So, any news on this? Stuck in editing limbo?

Hmm another Covid problem