a funny thread from the real-time video list...

Just thought I'd share this humorous thread that's been running on the
0xff real-time video list.

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If I've been rendering a quicktime movie, how long do I have to wait for the
pixels to dry before I can play it? If I play it to early, do I risk
destroying the qt movie by pixels being smeared out, creating an unintended
motionblur effect?

;-)

Trond
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it depends on the codec. i've found that in some cases sorenson3 takes
a longer time to set.

and i've noticed a distinct difference in times between DV/NTSC and
DV/PAL. does using the DVCPRO codecs make a difference in this case?

joshua
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Don't worry so much about the qt movie itself. You can always render
another. The main thing to worry about is the color smearing on to other
files on your harddrive. It could contaminate them making them unreadable
but it could also cause permanent damage to the drive too.

I'd say about three days minimum if it's a high quality render.

pall
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i rendered a piece with some really thick video almost
a year ago and it's still not dry….
b
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quicktime movies dry a lot faster than avis i've noticed? but that's
kinda offset by the length of time it takes quicktime player to open though!

still image sequences dry really fast but its tricky keeping them all in
order on a windy day.

tim
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it's a well known issue that after about a 100 uses (less if you have
very color intensive images), the quicktime player gets full of residues
that will leave traces on the freshly rendered movie. there should be a
cleaning.mov file somewhere in your quicktime folder, play it from time
to time for 1-2 minutes and you should be fine.
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Yes, I agree. I've been experimenting with combining analogue effects with
digital material. Very good results were obtained by dipping a hard drive
full of video files into a bath of dye. I used packets of dye used for
tie-dyeing T-shirts. You can get these at most art supply stores.

kurt
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Well, I would suggest you wait at least three weeks. If you wanted to
speed up the process you could put your computer in a hot room, I've
even taken off the cover and surrounded it with space heaters, and the
pixels dried in one week. If you're really in a crunch you can take out
the hard drive and stick in the oven on it's lowest setting for about
fifteen minutes at a time, with the oven door open, and it could be dry
in a couple hours, depending on the resolution and bit depth. You have
to be very strict about the timing though, because you can end up losing
a lot of color saturation if it's been baked too long. Offcourse, if you
play your quicktime for short amounts of
time during the drying period you can get a sort of nice time
displacement effect. I must say, this is a great thread, I'd never heard
or even come across some the techniques mentioned here.

-louai

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Pall Thayer
artist/teacher
http://www.this.is/pallit
http://pallit.lhi.is/panse

Lorna
http://www.this.is/lorna
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