A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

LBloomSaffron · 2021-05-24 22:55:21

Alright, techie time! Let's gather 'round the campfire and regale each other with song!

When I first got into BA, I was into all sorts of crap: progressive rock, sound collages, "YouTube Poops", etc. BA convinced me to up my photo/video skills in an awesome coexistence will all the other stuff. I sense natural rhythms in everything around me, but studying music and film over the years sharpened my more technical side.

I like to play agonies with VLC Media Player's effects suite. One day, I love them as intended; the next, I turn the pitch down a whole octave. It's so much fun watching these beautiful people enjoying themselves while sounding like Brutes from the Halo games.

What are some wacky things you've done with watching/editing agonies?

oooooooo · 2021-05-25 00:22:42

I've been playing with the free trial of Video Enhance AI by Topaz Labs. It's a piece of software that uses AI to enhance video quality. I've started playing around with upscaling older SD agonies to HD. It does a pretty remarkable job. I haven't dialed in the settings perfectly yet, but it seems promising.

https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai

richard · 2021-05-25 03:03:00

I had a look at that, but I didn't think it was going to offer much improvement - how long did it take to enhance a video?

LBloomSaffron · 2021-05-25 04:44:34

It's interesting; I was thinking of using Video Enhance AI the same way, but the price/free trial was a bit of a turn-off. I also looked into using AviSynth after reading up on a homebrew remaster of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes. https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/314 … space-nine

BTW, Richard, thanks again to you and Lauren for such a great thing!

oooooooo · 2021-05-26 00:33:13

@richard: As an example, A0030H took about 30 minutes to upscale from 480p to 720p on my 2018 15" MacBook Pro. It's not fast, but not painfully slow either. I typically see about 0.5 - 1 seconds per frame.

Upscaling HD videos (e.g. 720p to 1080p, or 1080p to 4k) takes significantly longer (3-5 seconds per frame). I'm sure a dedicated video editing rig would be faster.

I think it might be worth experimenting with, but since there's so much focus on the face, any unnatural artifacts really detract from the experience. Teeth can look especially strange. It's possible that dialing in the right settings could mitigate much of the "weirdness." I would recommend keeping the originals available if you decide to offer "enhanced" versions.

There's a pretty generous 1 month full-featured trial.

@LBloomSaffron I actually got the idea a while back from a very similar post. This was before Topaz introduced a video product, so IIRC he was using ffmpeg to split the video into individual frames, batch processing them, and then assembling them back into a video. I tried it, but it wasn't worth the effort for me.

LBloomSaffron · 2021-05-26 01:21:03

@oooooooo: That's cool that Topaz gives you a free month. I'd personally love to see Ms. 0041/Dandy's beautiful blue eyes shine like Peter O'Toole's in Lawrence of Arabia. I'll post here if I decide to take the plunge. I have a desktop from 2012; not the best, but I usually edit band videos using Blender. It gives me a great product at 1080p.

richard · 2021-05-26 11:59:38

oooooooo wrote:

@richard: As an example, A0030H took about 30 minutes to upscale from 480p to 720p on my 2018 15" MacBook Pro. It's not fast, but not painfully slow either. I typically see about 0.5 - 1 seconds per frame.
Upscaling HD videos (e.g. 720p to 1080p, or 1080p to 4k) takes significantly longer (3-5 seconds per frame). I'm sure a dedicated video editing rig would be faster.
I think it might be worth experimenting with, but since there's so much focus on the face, any unnatural artifacts really detract from the experience. Teeth can look especially strange. It's possible that dialing in the right settings could mitigate much of the "weirdness." I would recommend keeping the originals available if you decide to offer "enhanced" versions.
There's a pretty generous 1 month full-featured trial.

Interesting, but I think our time would be better spent re-releasing some of the earlier stuff in native resolution. Lauren was doing a lot of that before she left and there's more could be done. If we ever get some slack editor's time.

oooooooo · 2021-05-26 16:30:35

richard wrote:

re-releasing some of the earlier stuff in native resolution.

I didn't know that was possible. That's awesome! Do you have a list (or a few examples) of earlier content that's been re-released?

2705Fan · 2021-05-27 04:41:46

Awesome! Glad to hear you guys are doing that.

LBloomSaffron · 2021-05-28 04:14:07

@2705Fan: Thanks! I'll let people know if I've made any breakthroughs. In the meantime, I've been wiring agonies on my comp through a Zoom recorder (via USB). Its internal speaker is a great monitor that I keep close to a guitar pickup plugged into an amp. Ramshackle sampling, but great fun!

oooooooo · 2021-05-28 14:54:02

@LBloomSaffron: You started this thread with "Alright, techie time!" so here goes...

You can use ffmpeg to extract audio:

This will just yank out the audio using the existing codec. I think most use aac. It's super fast, but aac might not be as usable in things like Audacity:
ffmpeg -i original-video.mp4 -vn -acodec copy out.aac

This will output a variable bitrate mp3. It takes a bit more time because it's transcoding the audio track:
ffmpeg -i original-video.mp4 -vn -q:a 0 out-vbr.mp3

There are also options to grab clips of a certain length or start point (look up the -ss and -t flags)

LBloomSaffron · 2021-05-28 19:05:42

@oooooooo: I’ve never used ffmpeg to extract/convert audio. I’ve usually used VLC to convert videos into WAV format. A touch excessive, but I think it provides more headroom to work with. I just think it’s so cool how I can play some hot blues through a Fender Twin amp ala Roy Buchanan and have a great portable speaker next to the pickups playing all sorts of samples with that same Texas twang.

#1 2021-05-24 22:55:21

A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

#2 2021-05-25 00:22:42

Re: A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

#3 2021-05-25 03:03:00

Re: A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

#4 2021-05-25 04:44:34

Re: A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

#5 2021-05-26 00:33:13

Re: A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

#6 2021-05-26 01:21:03

Re: A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

#7 2021-05-26 11:59:38

Re: A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

#8 2021-05-26 16:30:35

Re: A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

#9 2021-05-27 04:41:46

Re: A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

#10 2021-05-28 04:14:07

Re: A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

#11 2021-05-28 14:54:02

Re: A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

#12 2021-05-28 19:05:42

Re: A/V-Related: Anyone like to muck around with Agonies?

Board footer