zircon

I'm really impressed with Nekofrog's stuff - considering he's relatively new to remixing, I think he has a solid handle on what makes a good remix. Before I go into some of my critiques, I think that overall the interpretation here is very good. CT battle remixes are uncommon so it's nice to hear that done, and done well. Nice mix of source material, variation and original stuff. Getting into some critiques, the abrupt ending is my only arrangement complaint. At the very least, some kind of cymbal swell or a few more snare hits + chugs would give it closure! I'm not the biggest fan of the rhythm guitar tone here.. it gets the job done, but it's just a little too noisy (treble freqs) for my taste... I think slightly reduced input gain would help, or maybe a different kinda amp. I do agree that the overall mix volume could definitely be higher. If you want METUL you want to slam your mix hard. TLs Maximizer will do the trick nicely, along with TLs Pocket Limiter, plus some judicious EQ to squeeze out new frequencies. I thought the lead guitars sounded too small, too - some reverb/delay might help them come out more along with a volume boost. Otherwise, I thought the production was good. Nothing amazing about the samples, and the sequencing on the drums was kinda vanilla, but they get the job done and lay the stage for the excellent guitarwork and arrangement. Passing this conditional on a volume bump and any other minor mixing changes as per our recommendations, but mainly the volume. YES (conditional)

Definitely no overclocking going on... I don't see any problems with the capacitors, visually speaking, and no other electronic devices in the apartment (including Jill's laptop, though it has batteries) seem to have suffered any problems. If I had any friends in the area willing to move their desktops, I would try your suggestion, but unfortunately I do not phil: The BIOS is definitely up-to-date as the old version that WAS installed did not post at all with the Q9450. We had to get the latest to make it work. I reset all the BIOS settings (but did not flash it) myself later just to make sure everything was OK.

TF2 World War II http://youtube.com/watch?v=CTGrjcgSeAA&feature=related

Ok, so do you guys want me to take another look at Monstrous Turtles and maybe break down the specific sounds I used? I could do a couple shorter videos on the topic. Alternatively, I could use another one of my mixes (though it would have to be somewhat recent for me to have the project file.) I'm all ears.

I'm glad you guys are liking it. Again sorry about some of the video problems, I'll try encoding it differently for the next one. I honestly could talk for hours about technical stuff, and the first time I was recording I spent about 10 minutes just talking about the synths/samples in the first 60 seconds of the track. If there are specific things people want me to talk about, I'd be happy to go into 'em.

CamStudio is being used to capture the video and do the first encode. I used Virtualdub to fix the capture after CamStudio messed it up (I think the video was too long for it, or something) and then encode again, using the x.264 compressor. I recorded my mic into FL, and the mic channel plus the master out were both sent through Voxengo Recorders (free VST effect) which sent the audio output to a Virtual Audio Cable. The Virtual Audio Cable device was then recorded by CamStudio in sync with everything else.

I wouldn't get an Axiom actually.. if you're just starting out, it has too many unnecessary features. Look at something by M-Audio instead, for example http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/KeyRig49/ or http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Keystation61es/ I'll post more thoughts later, gotta go for a jog now.

It's something like 1360x880 resolution and 21 minutes long. I couldn't compress it much more without making text unreadable.

http://zirconstudios.com/video/zircon%20-%20Monstrous%20Turtles%20Walkthrough.avi Here it is! 220mb, fairly high resolution (though fairly low quality, due to length and trying to keep the size down.) I'm new to this, so cut me a bit of slack... any tips for capturing/encoding appreciated. Just to reiterate what I said in my last post, this plays back best for me in VLC Media Player, but you may also want to try Windows Media Player and Quicktime. I don't recommend seeking around too much. Also, I used the x264 codec to encode it, so you might need to download that (or h.264, I think that's the same thing) if it won't play.

In the event that it does NOT turn out to be a power problem, anyone have any other suggestions as to what this could be?

Thanks for the advice. I got it working with VirtualDub, ultimately.

No, that's not it at all. .. . ... ... Anyway, finished the first video, a walkthrough of Monstrous Turtles. It took me basically the entire day to figure out how to capture and encode it properly, and I'm still not really sure I did it right, but the content is all there, I think. Works best in VLC Media Player, in my experience - WMP will play it too, but for some reason, you can't really skip around if you play it there. Quicktime just crashes when I try playing it back on my computer. I'll post a link as soon as it's done uploading.

Haha, my techniques for increasing loudness are so basic that you'd gag after seeing them.

I've been running into a problem with CamStudio where if I record a large file, it simply refuses to save it ("Error Creating AVI File") and deletes the temp files. This is especially frustrating after I have recorded over 20 minutes of video. Today, I managed to salvage the temp files created right before they were deleted, including an AVI file of 2.5gb. However, no player will open it. I've tried AVI Dcotor and DivFix++, as well as converting it to other formats, but nothing seems to recognize it as a valid movie file. I'm SURE my data is in there, however. When I tried repairing in DivFix I got an error immediately saying "could not find position", but DivFix then created a 400kb file that was the first frame of my video! How can I repair this file? I've tried everything I can think of.

Thanks for your votes so far everyone! There are still a few days left in the Quarterfinals (they end on Monday night) and OCReMixers are doing pretty well. However, things could still shift a lot, so every vote counts. We need to be in the Top 10 to progress.

Happy birthday, Jimmy! May you earn many more dollars from music this year, and all the ones that follow.

Hmm.. it would be difficult to document the entire creation of a remix, since my creativity is such that I typically work for weeks or months on any given track. I usually write a bunch, then hit a wall, wait awhile and eventually find a way around. Really, it's not very interesting to watch. I could however break down EXISTING tracks and explain my thought process after the fact. How does that sound?

So, after an incredible amount of work, I've finally managed to get a working, no-latency screen capture setup. This means I can do video tutorials! I've always wanted to do this as I think it's often easier to explain things and immediately play an audio example rather than type out all my thoughts and simply have links. However, now I don't know exactly what I want to do! For example, what topic(s) should I cover? Synthesis? Cool effects tricks? Phat beats? Also, how long should the videos be - bite size, 4-5 minutes, or extended, 10-15? Since these will primarily be made for the benefit of the OCR community, I want to hear your thoughts. Thanks in advance! -- Vid 1 - Walkthrough of "Monstrous Turtles!" http://zirconstudios.com/video/zircon%20-%20Monstrous%20Turtles%20Walkthrough.avi Vid 2 - A glance at a work-in-progress DNB original, w/ some production tips NOTE: ADD &fmt=18 TO THE YOUTUBE URL IN ORDER TO PLAY IN HIGH-QUALITY! http://www.zirconstudios.com/video/zircon%20-%20DNB%20Track%20WIP.avi (HQ download) Vid 3 - Phat Beats 101 http://www.vimeo.com/2864302 - AVI download link available on this page, better quality than the embed

It does hang under stress, but it also hangs when it's NOT under stress.. and most of the day it's getting taxed pretty hard (in FL.) I downloaded Speedfan and gave it a run... what should I be looking for? Jago, I live in an apartment so I'll have to see if my landlord would go for getting an electrician here. I know there is renovation being done on some other apartments in the building but it shouldn't be affecting me.

I periodically run Spybot S&D, plus I have Symantec Antivirus corporate edition, courtesy of Drexel.

The slowdown is DEFINITELY present on a Slim. That's what I'm using. There's like a 2-3 second lag in the Throw Stone animation, of all things. I can't imagine how bad it is for everything else.

I have a program that does that, but actually I was hoping there might be a premade FFT dump that I could use. Even if it doesn't have the ISO itself, I could just use the cool stuff like the artwork on the memory stick load screen. Plus, I haven't actually seen my FFT disc in a few years.

Yes, my PSP is hacked. I'm using the latest Darkware or whatever it's called.

I recently picked up FFT: War of the Lions, having heard such great things about it. However, I've already noticed a few problems. One, which many reviewers pointed out, is the slowdown. There's immense slowdown even on simple actions like "Throw Stone". I actually don't like the retranslation all that much, as it's confusing when it comes to skill categories/skill names. Additionally - and this may be a minor quibble for most people, but it isn't for me - the audio seems to have changed significantly. In the original FFT there was reverb on nearly everything, from music to sound effects. Now, all the audio sounds dry and lifeless, plus overly compressed. There's a constant high end buzzing that hurts my ears on headphones. What I'm wondering is this: would it actually make more sense to dump my original PlayStation FFT disc into ISO form and load THAT on to my PSP? Would I still have the same issues? I miss the fluidity of the original FFT's gameplay and the drenched audio

I dual-boot XP64 but I haven't used it in months, since I always need my internet connection for something and I generally keep my XP64 partition offline so it doesn't get bogged down with crap I don't need. I don't think it's a power supply issue, the PS is a year and a half old, 600w, providing more than enough for all my components. Is there any way to somehow test this, though? I suspect it IS some kind of driver issue but I have absolutely no idea what driver that would be since I'm not getting BSODs. The frequency at which the hangs happen is also bizzarre. For example, I had one on Sunday, but then didn't have one at all until today, though my computer was running 24 hours a day. Today I got no less than THREE hangs so far. But I'm doing the same stuff every day.