Spent yesterday filing the Salome album, and working on a video for Stefano Santachiara. Stefano has a habit of asking (or more like bombarding) me, Deb, and I'm assuming, everyone else he knows, with rather blunt requests to do work of various sorts for free, whether requests for music, artwork, video editing, book proofing, or any other manner of jobs.
I insisted on being paid, and he agreed, for a fairly routine video which is a slideshow with some video clips. His instructions were clear, each edit of the audio and video specified, and images and credit text supplied. It also interested me to create a slideshow using Argus, which is easier to use than other methods, although the three different slideshow sections meant different and varying segments and a need for exact frame counts. This added more complexity than I'd prefer because adding some time to one area throws out the frame numbers for the rest. Perhaps it would have been easier to create these as three separate videos. At 10,174 frames, this is the longest video I've yet made in Argus, so my motivations were as much curiosity and a learning/testing process as anything else.
The look of the slideshow is excellent, the sub-pixel 3D processing of images really makes things clear, even when the images themselves were often poor resolution. The fades are 'additive', rather than linear as in most digital software, so the result has a glow like an exposure-fade made by a film camera. It's also easy to make images move, sway, zoom, in pretty ways.
The video is complete, today Stefano requested a delay to payment of several weeks(!) He is quite a, shall we say, character. I insisted on payment today and have provided a proof-quality version of the video.
The Salome album is just about complete now, and I've divided up the tracks. My 16-bit dithering seems to work. Prometheus will load 16-bit samples, convert to float, and re-save 16-bit dithered OR undithered identically. In other words, only 24-bit or higher source material is re-dithered, which is ideal and as designed; anything larger than 99.99% half-rectangular dithering could disrupt this and lead to entropic loss.
I've typed up the final work list, and the 8-page artwork is complete too. Here is page 8:
I've also heard that NASA has, in the end, published my Hello Earth painting as part of their #NASAMoonSnap project, a promotional arm of the Artemis project.
It was also a piano lesson day yesterday, and today Deb and I are off to see Elaine.
I feel I'm treading creating water, with these two days of filing and small appointments which seem to focus the whole day. These tiny things can be disruptive, like a lone tree of appointment in a wide cornfield to be harvested. I want time to work on new music, new art, a clean slate, but the slate always has something on it, the field never empty enough. Perhaps I can start again tomorrow, though the Ty Pawb exihibiton priate view will take place at 6pm. I'm looking forward to it. I feel a nice creative energy from Ty Pawb place and people there whenever I visit. Saturday, however, is free.
