Yesterday and Today

The SIG presentation went well on Tuesday, and Nick's project continues to be worked on, now through Unity. Efforts to migrate to Adobe After Effects have been impeded by various issues. Yesterday my troubleshooting of the front monitors has so far proved effective; VLC is not consuming as much processing power or as much memory as it was earlier this week. The front monitors' computer has run stably, looping for several hours.

However, the interesting problem of multiple instances of VLC running has not happened again; these multiple instances seemed to be the chief cause of increased consumption by VLC (and perhaps the cause of the repeated crashes). The methods I employed to fix the computer's repeated crashing did not focus on preventing multiple instances from running, so I will continue to monitor the front computer to see if its looping starts up multiple instances.

Nick's Kinect Game, changing video editing software

Today Nick's game was successfully built and run through Unity. The control scheme is still unwieldy and will be worked on.

I plan to switch away from Camtasia to Adobe After Effects.

Shorter Version

The smaller version has reached a level of quality similar to the longer version. At this point it will be sent out for review. Attempts will be made to fix a possible memory leak error that is causing the infinitely looping video playlist to eventually crash.

DMD and CCGT Selected Technical Work

The official name of the DreamWorks demo reel, which is now completely finalized, is ready for distribution. It is a good thing it is done now, because the trial version of Camtasia is ending soon. Future projects will use  different video software.

Update 1: I will create polish the short version and bring it up to the same standards as the longer 4 minute version.

DreamWorks Demo Final

At this time, 100% of those who have gotten back to me with critique for the latest version of the Demo have had nothing but good things to say.

Camtasia Difficulties

After several hours of troubleshooting, the cause of rendering run-time errors for Camtasia was identified: Camtasia's trial version will not directly render things into the mp4 format any longer (it used to, similar to how it used to accept more video formats). With only a few more days left on the trial version I am going to advocate purchase of Camtasia second, and purchase of a more proven software first. If the trial version is this unusable, what can assure me the purchased version will be different?

Update 1: Attempts to find a workaround have been successful; the most recent project version was successfully rendered into the avi format and then converted into an mp4. Tomorrow I will check to see that all the recommended changes have been properly implemented.

DreamWorks Reel Finalization

Today I begin the final accompanying audio track for the DreamWorks demo reel. This track will be in sync with the visuals.

Today's reading group discussed the Georgia Tech's swimming simulation paper.

Nick's Game

Today I continue to look at Nick's code in an effort to better understand it. The main objective of this familiarization is to find how to activate the in-game GUI for recording new gestures and mapping them to actions. Another objective is finding possible causes of error when attempting to run the game on adjacent computers (which show a lack of received input from the Kinect motion sensor).

In addition, I have created a 2-minute version of the DreamWorks demo reel.

DreamWorks Demo

The DreamWorks demo is wrapping up, and will soon be approved in its current state. At that point I will add an accompanying audio track, in sync with the visuals.

Camtasia continues to be troublesome, and efforts to replace it with Adobe's equivalent are underway. As far as this project is concerned, migration to the other production software might not be sensible given the approaching deadline.

DreamWorks Demo Reel, Troubleshooting Camtasia

Editing continues, with the new clips of Dan Knowlton's work being added in. Addition of a soundtrack is still on hold pending finalization of the visuals. At this point the new clips do not have titles, but research will be made towards titling them appropriately.

Overall it seems that Camtasia (or at least its trial version) fails to import media properly unless it is in a select few (.wmv, .mov) formats. Further troubleshooting is necessary; I doubt this limited usability is by design. Camtasia continues to seem unstable as a program, where the slowly degenerating functionality can be restored by restarting the program.

My optimistic assumption is that this is due to my using of a trial version, or due to the limitations of this PC running a large project through 32-bit emulation with other programs running in the background; however, there is no indication that the PC is limiting Camtasia's capabilities. In any case, having these unstable trial-version experiences is unimpressive.

Demo reel milestone #1

The third rough-draft has been sent out and critiqued: a list of suggested edits will be implemented. These include:

Shortening some clips for improved pacing 
Reducing the amount of Karl
Improving text placement
Addition of title slides
Overall improvement of pacing
Addition of some clips

Updates will keep track of editing progress.

Dreamworks Demo

Today I have been working on the Dreamworks Demo, rearranging its clip order as well as working on syncing the accompanying music to the visual action. Additionally I am troubleshooting a neighboring computer which is not properly reading Kinect input, despite having the Kinect SDK, drivers, and runtime installed. I will look at Nick's input script to see if I can find anything there; updates will keep track of editing and troubleshooting progress.

Extreme Editing, BBQ Lunch

Today, a three-minute version of the ninety-minute demo reel was requested. A rough copy has been produced and will be reviewed and improved based on the pending critique. At 12pm I attended an indoor barbecue lunch.

Update 1: The reel will be further streamlined, and text-boxes will be added in place of title-slides to give credit to contributors.