Dave
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Post by Dave on Oct 31, 2005 13:21:44 GMT
Thanks Gerrit and Dave, great videos! Anna's voice is amazing!! For the Moon video, I like the scenes in the sea but the scenes with the man rather out of place. With a voice like hers, why do they have to rely on sex to sell? Allen Hi Allen! But sex (well desire) is what the song is about! She wants the Prince that she's only ever seen, and will give up everything to get him! But in the end (of the Opera), he gives up even more than she...  It could certainly have been done more tastefully though - although they seem to have used an actress for the "clinches" - maybe Anna refused to do those scenes? I recently downloaded a video of her performance on jay leno and I literally fall in love with her voice  If any of you is interested, I can try to make a .wmv of it. The original file is a hdtv stream (430MB for 3 mins) so it's not really practical to host it anywhere. Allen I'd love to see that if you can convert it! The easiest and quickest would probably be a 320x240 (or widescreen equivalent) version with say 300 kbps video and as high an audio bitrate as you dare.  If you can make and upload a 640 x 480 full frame version (or the widescreen equivalent) at say 1200+ kbps video, that would be fantastic (and should be well under 50 MB for 3 minutes, even with a high audio bitrate)!  Cheers, Dave |
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Post by alien on Oct 31, 2005 19:28:06 GMT
Thanks for the clarification Dave! Now that you explained what the song is about, it all makes sense now. I do agree they could make it a bit more tasteful though I'll try to encode the wmv once I figure out how to decode the .ts file. The usual TMPGEnc and VirtualDubMod are having problem opening the .ts file. I can only play it back in media player classic and powerdvd. How about 1Mbps video and 128kbps wma? That should be around 40MB. I've found some tools to convert .ts to mpeg2, will give them a try when I get home from univ later tonight. Allen |
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Post by gareth on Oct 31, 2005 23:53:50 GMT
I think artists should refrain from commenting about fellow artists in that way. They should concern themselves with their own performances only. I think that as long as the audience are allowed to comment about artists, artists should be given that liberty too, as long as they are not arrogant about their own performances. Portia, I totally and utterly disagree with you. It's unheathy for artists to degrade fellow artists in any way. And no matter what the context is in which Anna made her comments about Katherine, what she said was totally uncalled for. Whereas fans of singers have a certain liberty, the singers themselves should stay clear of that. They should concern themselves with their own performances, rather than be critical of their colleague's performances. I think that amounts to sheer stupidity. Any criticism by any artist of a fellow artist will have a habit of turning onto the artist who initiated the coments. Frankly, Anna was out of place when she suggested that Katherine's boobs where the source of her success - especially since Anna herself tried to use her sexuality to seduce some chap in that revolting video. Anna is trying to discredit Katherine because of her sexiness, while she herself tries to use blatant sex to publicise her own material. How hypocritical can you get. Cheers, Gerrit |
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Post by alien on Nov 1, 2005 2:09:40 GMT
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Post by portia on Nov 1, 2005 9:08:24 GMT
, I would have to disagree. Critique from other artists is a good, healthy thing, as long as the critique is justified. Sometimes, critique from artists may be better than from the audience because the artist is "in the know" so to speak. Also, no matter how much you say artists should criticize their "colleagues," they will still be doing do deep down inside, so why not be honest and admit it? The audience doesn't get special privilege because they're the audience. We're all human beings and we should all be allowed to speak of each other.
I will have to agree though, that one has to be very careful what one says in an interview. Because journalists do take things out of context. I think that maybe Anna wasn't saying that it was wrong for Katherine to sell with sex, I think she was saying that it was wrong for Katherine only to sell with sex. So who knows, perhaps Anna meant it in a much milder way.
I will also agree, the video was pretty bad. Not the man scenes - I can live with those because that IS part of Rusalka's story. The worst part is the floating lilypad on water. All the titillation and a white swimsuit.
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Post by Richard on Nov 1, 2005 9:14:35 GMT
It's unheathy for artists to degrade fellow artists in any way. Whereas fans of singers have a certain liberty, the singers themselves should stay clear of that. They should concern themselves with their own performances, rather than be critical of their colleague's performances. I totally agree with you Gerrit!  I don't like to hear performers running down other artists, whether I agree with them or not. One thing I've always noticed and admired in Hayley is that she never says a bad word about anybody in interviews.  Best Wishes from London, Richard |
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Post by gareth on Nov 2, 2005 0:14:56 GMT
Hi Allen, I have downloaded the vieo, and will make a smaller wmv version available from my Anna Netrebko page. I noticed the audio/video synchronisation is a little bit off - I'll try to fix that. Cheers, Gerrit |
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Dave
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Post by Dave on Nov 2, 2005 5:53:24 GMT
Wow, thanks Allen, what a fabulous performance by Anna... and an excellent recording and video, too! It is so good (in performance and technical quality) that I want to make it absolutely perfect so I, too, am working on the lip sync - and also a few seconds of faint crackles towards the end on the left channel, which I think I can.eliminate completely... I hope! Watching a performance like this simply reinforces earlier comments about that Song to the Moon video... Anna should stay well clear of that sort of thing in future and stick to what she does best... what she did in *this* video. Wow! Cheers, Dave |
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Post by alien on Nov 2, 2005 6:45:15 GMT
Now that you mention it, I do notice the audio sync problem too. Must be when I was repairing the AC3 audio with AC3Fix. Sorry about that... Which wmv encoder do you guys use? I don't have much experience with wmv, I usually encode to svcd or divx since my dvd player doesn't play wmv  EDIT: turns out there's a -360ms offset for the audio. Didn't realize that until I ran the original file through dvd2avi. The setting seems to work well for the dvd I'm encoding. Allen |
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Dave
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Post by Dave on Nov 2, 2005 14:45:33 GMT
Now that you mention it, I do notice the audio sync problem too. Must be when I was repairing the AC3 audio with AC3Fix. Sorry about that... Which wmv encoder do you guys use? I don't have much experience with wmv, I usually encode to svcd or divx since my dvd player doesn't play wmv Allen Hi Allen, I never worry about audio sync problems as I can fix them easily in Sound Forge (it came free with a new sound card a few years ago). Those few clicks and even fewer encoding artifacts on your audio track are minor compared with what I often get when converting AC3 (I often have trouble with that) so they are no problem and I think I can eliminate them. The overall quality of your conversion is excellent! I use Windows Media Encoder for converting videos to .wmv files, I always use the two-pass options (although it more than doubles the conversion time as it's a typically slow Microsoft program). For audio-only conversion, I use either WME as before, or Sound Forge - which is faster (obviously, as it isn't Microsoft, lol). I often use Virtualdub or VirtualdubMod as an intermediate conversion stage to allow frame accurate editing. I use lossless compression for that unless the files are too big, when I have to use divX compression etc., with a high bitrate and I-frames only. I love 192 kbps or higher audio bit rates (like yours), which I find nearly indistinguishable from uncompressed audio - well on my PC anyway. From 128 kbps down to 48 kbps I can usually tell it's compressed if I am paying attention, and I find that below 48 kbps, compression is blatantly obvious. But everyone is different with compression, I guess. Oh, WME and the utilities are free from MS! Cheers, Dave |
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Post by gareth on Nov 2, 2005 22:25:23 GMT
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Post by alien on Nov 3, 2005 1:00:25 GMT
Gerrit, you can set the encoder to 320x180, that should give the correct aspect ratio (16:9). The original is 1920x1080.
Allen
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Post by gareth on Nov 4, 2005 13:43:15 GMT
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Post by alien on Nov 19, 2005 0:09:09 GMT
Hi all,
I just came across a video with Anna Netrebko and Villazon performing "Libiamo, ne' lieti calici" from La Triviata, it's from Wetten Dass in Germany on Nov 5.
The video is 3 minutes long but is over 150MB, I can make a wmv of it if it hasn't been posted before.
Allen
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Post by gareth on Nov 19, 2005 21:20:41 GMT
Hi Allen,
150 MB for a 3 minute video seems a bit much. I haven't heard about this viedo before, so if you can make a smaller version available, I will add it to my Anna Netrebko index page.
Gerrit
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It could certainly have been done more tastefully though - although they seem to have used an actress for the "clinches" - maybe Anna refused to do those scenes?
If any of you is interested, I can try to make a .wmv of it. The original file is a hdtv stream (430MB for 3 mins) so it's not really practical to host it anywhere.
If you can make and upload a 640 x 480 full frame version (or the widescreen equivalent) at say 1200+ kbps video, that would be fantastic (and should be well under 50 MB for 3 minutes, even with a high audio bitrate)! 
