Finally had a chance to look at the Flash export for Encore CS5 and I have to say I wasn’t expecting any changes actually but it’s very nice to see they updated the playback features on it. The usual chubby looking buttons for pause and skip are now replaced with a sleek little bar for playback, volume, subtitles, and even search:

     The best improvement I think so far is the ability to scrub (seek) in the video, instead of just skipping through chapters. The search feature lets you find chapters that contain a keyword and actually allows search engines to find your Flash file as well, but for an actual movie, I haven’t found much use for it yet.

While I like the new features though and the redesign, there are a few issues:
     - Playback controls show up on menus. In previous versions they were hidden until a video started playing. Here they overlap the menu constantly as soon as you move the mouse.
     - White bar beneath the video. This is more or less just a bit of sloppiness on Encore’s part. If you look at the image above, you’ll see a white bar beneath the navigation. That was not an error in resizing the screen on my part; there’s actually a white strip that is part of the Flash SWF the entire time.
     - Flash applet loads slower. I had the old CS4 version side-by-side with the CS5 DVD. I have to say that whereas the old version loaded instantly, the new one took a few seconds to come up and start playing. Keep in mind that this is on my desktop computer. Over the internet, this delay might be longer because you’ll the connection to worry about as well.
     - Still no “Hide Controls” feature. You’ll notice they changed the playback bar to be a solid black now. In the past, it was semi-transparent so it wasn’t as intrusive. Now however you’ll actually have part of the video completely obscured by the controls. Unfortunately the only thing you can do is wait about 10 seconds for the controls to fade out.

     I was actually thinking of converting all my current Flash DVDs to the new CS5 player, but I think I might leave them be. Having the DVD load the first menu, that should be mightily impressive, but have it appeared tampered with by having an intrusive playback bar is something I don’t want to deal with yet. For newer works though, I imagine I’ll have to use the new CS5 version no matter what.

Thinking of ideas here for Halloween. Would like to do a short video but somehow my ideas always go a bit on the long side.
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A young influential doctor is called in to assist in the operation of an elderly high-profile patient. The patient has been left in a paralyzed state by unknown causes but continues to have thought processes and dreams; the paralysis is believed to have a mental rather than physical basis. New technology by an experimenter is being used that would allow the doctor to enter the patient’s dreams in an attempt to free him from his condition. The doctor was chosen because the technology is not entirely understood, and it is hoped the doctor would be able to figure the situation out quickly once inside the patient’s mind.

The doctor is placed into a deep sleep next to the patient, his head in a device connected to the head of the patient’s. The doctor awakens in a bed that is not his own and quickly realizes he is in the mind of the patient. The world he explores is constantly changing. The people he meet seem real enough at first but do not last very long, either disappearing or changing personalities. Several times, he also meets a young person with the same name as the patient, leading the doctor to believe the person to be the patient’s younger memory of himself. The patient keeps telling him he shouldn’t be here or that it is dangerous, but also tends to disappear (not into thin air but just running away). He comes to realize that the only consistent entity is the environment itself and that everything in this world is actually the patient.

The doctor then tries to communicate with the patient in some way, but the environment becomes harsher and more violent, signaling the patient’s anger and refusal to cooperate. The patient tells the doctor that “He” is angry and that the doctor should go away before they all die. The doctor is confused by the 3rd person reference and wants to tell the patient himself to stop, but the patient has already run away. The doctor himself becomes alarmed as he realizes that dying in the dream might result in his actual death, leaving his body in a vegatative state. However, when the doctor is in a near-death scenario, he somehow manages to escape in his panic. He eventually realizes he is able to influence the environment to some degree and takes advantage of this to remove it entirely to reveal the patient lying on a table in front of him in an empty room similar to the room the experiment is taking place.

The doctor is confused at first and examines the patient when the patient suddenly opens his eyes and reaches up an arm. The doctor panics and accidentally stabs the patient to death. The patient vanishes, as well as the room, and the doctor is left in an empty white space.

The story leaves the dream to show the patient awaking suddenly, able to move but panicking once he sees his reflection. The doctor’s body is already standing and kills the patient, who is now actually the doctor. The patient was killed by the doctor accidentally, but a third character was also in the patient’s mind and had been responsible.

So I just spent the last three days trying to figure out why my printer wasn’t working properly. After every ink refill or head cleaning, it would start leaving roller marks or dripping ink on the paper (I suppose it dripped ink on the rollers as well). Colors were also appearing faded as if there wasn’t enough ink flowing through.

I tried the usual head cleanings, cleaning solutions, reinstalling ink tubing, etc to no avail. I was beginning to think maybe I had worn out the printer, but it turns out the answer was much simpler. The waste ink bottle was getting full. Those of us who have installed a seperate waste ink system usually do so to avoid ink filling into the printer instead and lowering its lifespan; just remember to empty it when it gets full.

I’m guessing the reason it caused all these other issues is because it’s also involved in the suction created on the ink tubings; when the bottle is full, there is not enough room for ink to flow. This also would lead to the waste ink overflowing in the printer and spilling onto the rollers or dripping from the printhead. I had thought fresh ink was being dripped, but it was apparently waste ink instead.

On a side note, those of us who do experience this problem will be left with a printer that leaves tons of roller marks. No worries, here’s an easy solution:
- Take a paper towel, preferably the rolled up kind that you can cut at a couple feet’s length.
- Insert the towel end into the printer paper feed and print a blank page.
- The towel will be taken into the printer and ejected out. If possible, try to leave the printer cover open so you can take the towel out if it doesn’t feed into the front rollers (thus causing a jam).
- Repeat until you no longer get roller marks.

This method is much more economical than using regular paper to keep feeding until you clean up the rollers.

It’s been like half a year since I made anything, so I’m very happy to be making a song again.

Right now, it’s nothing compared to the “Cloudless” song I made last time, but I’m hoping it will top that one eventually. I’m having a really hard time remembering this one whenever I go to record it, so as of currently, it has no lead instrument and no real direction. Also it’s missing a lot of transitions, so the song tends to change abruptly but ignore that for now.

View: Raindrops

Suggestions and ideas welcome! I’ve had like no inspiration lately. -_-

I just spent the last day trying to figure out why my Encore CS4 didn’t have any library content. I also found out the library folder was missing entirely from the Adobe Encore folder in the install.

I’m using the boxed DVD set, not the download. I tried reinstalling Encore a few times already; also looked for a “Encore Library Content” to install but there wasn’t such an option.

After digging through the discs a bit, I finally found a folder called Premiere Pro Content. Inside is another folder called “Adobe Encore CS4 Functional Content“. Installed this and it fixed the issue. I’m not sure why it wasn’t part of the original setup/install and had to be put in this way. I’m just hoping this helps anyone else that might be stumped about this.

I’m running a x64 operating system if anyone’s curious. Originally the libary content setup wanted to install in the Program Files folder (not 32-bit one), so maybe that posed part of the problem.