The Pezman

Man, everything's so south of me. Hell, I should host a meetup... doubt my parents would be okay with it though.

Fuck yes. Those in jamspace last year heard my awesomeness that was the intro to Chrono Cross's Main theme. Let's go for the whole thing this time guys

<--- Didn't get a PM OA doesn't love me... ;(

<--- Didn't get a PM OA doesn't love me...

Reason might actually be a better way to start out than FL. I know half the people here swear by it, but Reason's self-contained model means you can look at anyone's project file without a problem. Furthermore, there's much more of a community around Reason (sites with refills, forums, etc) than FL, probably for that reason.

Okay, so I was trying to help my mom get a video file from a DVD tonight. I googled "DVD to MPEG" but all I found were truly piece-of-crap programs. The one I tried had a horrible interface and hung for a while. What are the QUALITY programs that can do this? Which ones exist for Mac, as well?

The things I mentioned (things the judges look for) would be a good start. If you're not sure how to do that, take a look at your oldest stuff. You can listen to it for five seconds and know you've improved immensely. But exactly what improved, and how? What did you learn to do, and how did you know when your final product was sounding the way you meant it to?

To everyone running Windows or capable of virtualizing into it, check this out. Has codecs to handle any type or quality of video. This was good stuff, Zirc. I'm hoping the next time around you can go more technical and actually teach us how to put the thing together and make it sound good.

This is why Guilty Gear kicks ass. No characters could possibly be mistaken for one another, in terms of either apperance or fighting style. The problem with it is most likely the opposite: that they don't change enough.

I'm game for sharing a room with anyone... will need to figure out when I'm showing up, though.

It's true... I was his roommate last time around and can vouch for this.

From what I recall of both M5 & M6, the hotel staff said almost all of us were nothing but polite, courteous, and willing to work with them.

Depends on whether I have any other friends to spend NYE with. I still think scheduling it on the first was a stupid move. To keep the same hotel? It's been in a diffeent hotel every year thus far.

Saw it again with the family tonight. Still awesome. Didn't he say he was going after Rachel? Yet he showed up to pull out Harvey.

Andy, this is a truly excellent idea. This is actually something I've mentioned before. How about a combination? Can you break down tracks you submitted? To be more specific, I would also like to see tutorials on the issues most frequently cited in judges decisions: How to shape sound quality (the specific parameters of sounds and how to adjust them) How to layer music (judging whether there's too much or too little going on at a particular point in time) How to "humanize" notes (and not make them mechanical sounding) Effective mixing/balancing (where should each voice live in the mix?) How to keep things interesting (i.e. not using the same drum loops over and over) Some of these are a bit more subjective than others... but I think these would serve to not only demonstrate techniques, but give a clear indication of what OCR is looking for (modeled out of something it's not). Oh yeah, what screen capture program are you using?

It seems a rarity for film directors and writers in this day and age to come up with a quality, ORIGINAL story that is not blatantly based on something else. Wall-E is the only recent exception I can think of.

I'm in that database, and I am interested... is this for the FFIV project? And what kind of mic would I need?

That's interesting to hear, because as I understand it Mac is pretty much the champion of Firewire and by far its biggest user. My current PC laptop (a good one in 2005), which I will be ditching for the Macbook Pro, doesn't have a Firewire port. And sure, a desktop PC could have a firewire card, but that defeats the purpose of portability. So yeah, bus power is important because I might want to record somewhere without an outlet. Do you know if the problems you mentioned were exclusive to your versions of the devices? Perhaps they've been improved slightly? I just wish I could try them out... But the Yamaha looks good. As good as any of the others, at any rate. I hope to be able to make it to the NYC Guitar Centers soon with all this info.

And now it's your birthday too. Sheez, man, don't blow all the celebrations at once.

Thanks guys. This is helpful. BGC, the Profire does not look at all like something I'd want. I need something I can carry around, not something to rack mount. As for the MOTU, it looks like overkill for me... I can't imagine ever using half those inputs. Can you record multiple tracks on the duet simultaneously? As I mentioned, that's important. I'm also waiting to hear about your Mac experiences. Vagrance, can you point me to a couple of small mixers out there? Even the smallest ones I've seen don't look like they're made for portability. All the interfaces you've mentioned look good as well (except for the MOTU, as I explained above). Is there any way to break them down further? You said you have both an Alesis and a Satellite... why do you have more than one device? I want to make sure that a single device will handle all my needs.

I know Xerox quite well. He's made me many-a-copy.

Unless you're planning to do this for a living (which would be unlikely given your situation) this is a stupid question. This will sound cliche, but it's true: the moment you start wondering how good you can ever become, you've already defeated yourself. If you want to learn to play an instrument, learn to play. Who cares how good you may or may not be? Push yourself, and if you're commmitted more often than not you'll be surprised at what you can accomplish no matter your age or background. I would also advise looking into music lessons at college. They can count for credits and such.

I personally will probably only need one at a time, since I sing/speak but don't play guitar or bass. However, one reason I'm getting this is to be able to provide quick recording for any guitarist or bassist friends. I don't know whether any of these devices can support more than two tracks recording simultaneously, but I would hate to be in a situation where it can't happen because I don't have the right number or type of ports. That's essentially my only worry.

Can it record multiple tracks simultaneously? As far as price, I'm willing to spend $500 if I can see a good reason to. Tell me about the pre's.

God knows why you left, but we're getting ready to send it in. So hopefully soon enough we'll know either way.