Xena Anthology
| Vid | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Xena Anthology |
| Creator: | Matt Savelkoul (on some sites the name is Andreas Hloupy) |
| Date: | 2001 or earlier |
| Format: | digital, RealMedia Player |
| Length: | |
| Music: | Various |
| Genre: | |
| Fandom: | Xena: Warrior Princess |
| Footage: | |
| URL: | archived vidder's web page |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Xena Anthology is a series of early Xena vids by Matt Savelkoul. Each vid focuses on one episode. By 2001, approximately 13 vids had been created.
Vidder's summary
"The Xena Music Video Anthology is a project with the aim to create one music video for each X:WP episode that exists. This very ambitious task may never be finished, but that's no reason not to try ...There are 8 NEW anthology music videos (and don't forget the 5 new videos in the "Music Video" section) in addition to the three already existing. If you have problems downloading and watching the clips (or want to make your own videos), find helpful answers in the "F.A.Q." section.
More or less following the story:
"Xena Anthology E1 - Sins Of The Past"... ANYTIME YOU NEED A FRIEND
"Xena Anthology E2 - Chariots Of War" ... ALMOST DOESN'T COUNT
"Xena Anthology E39 - A Day In The Life" -... MANIC MONDAY
"Xena Anthology E3 - Dreamworker" ... COME TO ME
"Xena Anthology E4 - Cradle Of Hope" ... SEARCHING MY SOUL
NEW - Ep. 4 - Cradle of Hope ... "Searching my Soul" ... more or less following the story
NEW - Ep. 5 - The Path not taken ... "She's the one" ... focuses on Xena and Marcus
NEW - Ep. 6 - The Reckoning ... "Always on my mind" ... split into two parts, with focus on the bard in the second one.
NEW - Ep. 7 - The Titans ... "Total Eclipse" ... listen to the powerful voice
NEW - Ep. 8 - Prometheus ... "It's my life" ... a powerful song for a powerful episode
NEW - Ep. 9 - Death in Chains ... "Who wants to live forever" ... watch the slow sequence at the end
NEW - Ep. 10 - Hooves and Harlots ... "Feel so different" ... a long video for an important episode
NEW - Ep. 105 - Married with Fishsticks ... "I can't watch this" ... to be watched even or *especially* if you hated this episode....
NEW - Ep. 39 - A Day in the Life ... "Manic Monday" ... a more humorous look at a brilliant episode
NEW - Ep. 58 - The Bitter Suite ... "Melancholy (Holy Martyr)" ... a dramatic video with all the great visuals from the episode
Vidder's Creative Process
"HARDWARE:I work on my PC at home which I bought almost a year ago: a 450 MHZ PII, nothing fancy. I always recommend lots of memory, because it really is a speed booster (128 MB and up). I have a fairly good graphic card (Voodoo 2, but any modern card will do, doesn't even have to be a 3D accelerator - again, memory is important). I have a standard home-user video capture card (not the cheapest, not the most expensive - a MIRO DC-10 Plus … only necessary, if you digitize your own clips) and a good soundcard (SOUNDBLASTER LIVE!).
With this equipment I can work pretty well ... but don't let lack of hardware lure you away from the path. If you are committed to a target, a lot less will do as well.
SOFTWARE:
All of the software I needed I got along with the hardware or downloaded from the Internet. The software to edit the clips came with the capture card - it produces AVI's. I have downloaded the free Real Producer from REAL to make Realvideo files out of the AVI's … and of course I use Winzip for the zipping.
HOW TO DO IT:
Basically it's a pretty straightforward job. I believe that the important thing is to have a concret idea of how the video should look like, what it should be about. I usually write a little outline before I start so that I know which episodes to capture from and which scenes to choose from (it's good to have a fair visual knowledge of the show and its episodes).
It takes between 1 and 5 hours to do the capture part (for "I turn to you" I had to go through more than 20 episodes). Then, depending on the amount of preparation, I need 1/2 to 2 hours per music video minute to cut the whole thing together. "Duel of the Fates" was the quickest, because it's pretty linear. "You gotta be" took the most time, because I jumped into it without any preparation and basically switched back ad forth between capturing and editing (trust me: don't do it that way!).
The first step is to digitize the clips. Then I use the editing software to cut them together the way I want to, adding the soundtrack, texts and effects. The result is a pretty high quality piece which is much too large to distribute over the net (500 to 900 MB). Thus, I have to convert it down ... my target has always been a maximum of 2 MB per minute - sure, you lose a lot of quality on the way, but you need to compromise.
I usually cut my videos in PAL format (about 700 x 500, which leads to huge video files) and convert them into Realvideo format (320 x 240 - I use the FREE Real Producer you can find on their web page). This format provides a quite good results and keeps the size of the clips down to manageable 5 to 10 MB - something you can watch full screen and still enjoy (most of the videos on the net are smaller, but I still like many of them).
UPDATE: I switched to the larger format of 360 x 270 (started it with "My Way"). Other good news: I managed to enhance the quality of my videos some more. The more recent ones now have a slightly larger frame, much better sound and increased picture quality ... that also means that the file size went up, but 10 MB is still my limit (approximately).
I use a video capture card to grab the clips from my X:WP video collection (some are converted from NTSC tapes, but most are from PAL tapes which have a much better resolution). My equipment consists of a usual VCR, and I tend to capture about 5 to 8 GB of video data before I start editing. Of course you can also use clips from the Internet, but personally most of them are too small to serve me well.
In most cases, I get the music from my own CD collection, but it is also possible to use MP3 files from the Internet (I did it once: see Doc's "The Ides of March")."[1]