It's only a hobby...

Videos, videos, videos … what a pain…

Okay, so I’ve done it again. I’ve got this bad habit of getting really involved in any “hobby” I decide to occupy my free time with. The hobby changes (collecting MST3K episodes, ripping my CD collection to my computer, organizing my digital photographs, poker, prostitutes, blogging, etc…) however I always go at it full force. One might think that the result of this would be my catalogue of skills continually growing although it most definitely doesn’t seem that way to me. To me, all it ends up being is more frustration. Whenever I set my mind to doing something, however, I set my mind to doing it right.

My latest pastime has been digital videos – high definition videos to be more precise – and this little hobby is proving to be a bit complicated… The plethora of usable codecs and programs available for this work is almost mind-boggling. Of course I am attempting to do this hobby on the cheap (well, cheap is subjective) and that, of course, adds to the frustration.

I began things by trying to do as much as I could with freely available software. It’s not that I’m unwilling to pay for quality software, however these days you’re basically gambling when you decide to shell out money for pretty much any commercially available piece of software. Sure, you can believe the sales pitches that are eloquently created by these corporations; however the question of whether or not the software will perform the way you are expecting is basically an unknown until you’ve purchased it. You can rest assured that, if the software has any weak points, the companies will do their best NOT to mention these in the sales pitches.

Add to that the fact that I don’t know what is actually “required” when initiating a new hobby and purchasing software that may or may not fulfill my unknown requirements makes spending the money even more difficult. I guess it all comes down to pre-purchase research. In the case of digital video processing, there is a lot of information available – a bit too much, actually… It ended up that I was basically trying to make sense out of what are usually very subjective personal opinions posted by people that seem to be members of various camps that agree with that person’s opinion. For example there is most definitely an Xvid camp as well as a DivX camp and, since Xvid is an open-source codec as opposed to DivX’s codec for purchase (at least the DivX Pro version which is needed for encoding), information obtained from members of either of these camps often turns into nothing more than a political argument justifying the person’s decision to join whichever camp he decided to go with. I guess this justification makes people feel better but it sure does muddy the water a bit for new hobbyists…

As far as what I am doing, I think I’ve figured out a usable solution with the software titles that I have purchased. I’m still playing around with various tweaks on the multitude of settings available in these tools in an effort to get as close to perfection as I can; however I am now able to create what I believe are valid 1080p videos. Whether these will be usable for anything but viewing on a computer screen is still an unknown (I haven’t purchased a high definition TV yet); however I’ve decided that I really don’t care. I’m sure that I’ll be able to convert them in the future if the need presents itself…

Of course the videos that I have been creating are apparently extremely illegal and that brings up yet another issue that’s been bugging me – I’m not supposed to use music without paying royalties to the large corporations that seem to think they have the right to charge me to use the music that I, in my opinion, have already paid for. Don’t get me wrong here – I completely understand that artists deserve to be paid for their work (as far as production corporations, not so much…); however I don’t quite get why they need to be paid multiple times. I purchased the damn CD but I guess that’s not enough…

And yes, I realize that somebody could extract the music from one of my videos and obtain a copy of the music without paying the artist(s) who created it but that’s just the way it is with today’s technology. If you want to get technical about it though, somebody extracting the music from one of my videos wouldn’t actually be getting the same song that they would by purchasing the CD – they’d be getting an mp3 (a lossy compression algorithm) version. Granted the difference in quality is pretty much inaudible to human beings however it is not (bit for bit) identical to the CD version that I purchased.

And why is it only the audio energy spectrum that we need to pay for? A visual artist (painter, sculptor, architect) also spends a lot of effort in making his creations; however anybody can easily take a picture of said creation without any worries. Oh wait, never mind, I guess it would be insane to think that somebody would actually own the rights to a visual image (and I’m not speaking of the actual painting – or whatever … I’m speaking of the light energy that is created by the art’s existence); however we seem to think that somebody can own the rights to audio energy. It’s the same thing – just different wavelengths…

You see I’m of the opinion that once art becomes energy it becomes just another part of reality. The fact that this energy can be captured and stored in a way that it can be recreated at a later date does not change the fact that what we are actually talking about here is energy. Restrictions are often set to make clear storage of this energy difficult (you’re not allowed to videotape movies or bring recording devices to concerts) in an effort to keep the commercial media that is available to clearly reproduce this energy valuable; however technology is winning that battle. In today’s digital world, where pretty much anything can be represented by nothing more than a long string of 1’s and 0’s, it’s becoming easier and easier to store this “art energy” in a way that is clearly reproducible – and easily exchangeable.

Hell … the artists should be happy that I chose their work – it clearly demonstrates that I appreciate the work they did in creating it. I’m basically saying that I like their art so much that I am willing to include it in my creations. Or is the only acceptable way of showing appreciation paying them? That’s not art – that’s business…

bis später,

Coriolis