A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Episode 2 is up. ~50 minute ~300MB MPEG-4, and if you're lucky you should be able to watch it while downloading. No torrent this time because Broadcast Machine hates me. Seriously, I can't get the goddamned thing to work right. I dunno how I managed to make torrents of the first two shows in August. Probably I shouldn't have upgraded.

Does the encoding work for you? I stole the codec & compression specs from a downloaded episode of Veronica Mars, and it looks pretty good, in my opinion. It's a huge file but it's also nearly an hour long, so, shrug.

FInal draft of episode one. The download links are underneath the picture. It's torrent-based, but the "Easy Downloader" link should hold your hand through the process if you don't know about BitTorrent. Please let me know if you have any problems. Seriously, do. I'm not convinced that it actually works at all, see.

The page looks all nutty because it's the result of Broadcast Machine, a web application that I had high hopes for but which alas I must presently assign into ever-popular bin of open source software high in concept and garbage in user interface. I wanted to share another file with you, but it's just not letting me do it, and not telling me why. So, for now, one's all you get.

Why don't you just post a direct link to a movie file? Cuz I want to do this "right", using torrents and RSS, and BM (haw haw) seems like exactly the right solution. But, see Figure 1. I'll figure something out over the next week or so, now that the pressure's off.

Also I really really want to be able to say that I'm airing on TV via SCAT, and over the Web via BM. I just wouldn't stop laughing. EVER.

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Some self-critique about the episode content:

We made a workflow error. This is what we should have done:
Shot gameplay -> plan & storyboard -> shot host segments with plan in mind -> edit

This is what we did:
Shot gameplay -> shot host segments with no plan in mind -> attempt to plan, realize error -> edit-> give in to despair

I really thought the host bits would just be segues. It turns out they're actually the best parts of the show, because our analysis is (if I may say so) kind of interesting; we're both self-styled game experts and I like to think that we actually do sound like we know what we're talking about. The clips, by comparison, are very weak, or anyway too weak to support the weight I put on them.

The entire Shadows over Camelot segment, in particular, is just painful to watch. I would not be surprised if most people who don't know me and try to watch the show get bored and leave after five minutes. I did what I could. I could have done more but to be honest I just wanted to finish the damn thing and start thinking about how to make show #2 better. I will say that I used to be twice as bad before someone convinced me to make it half as long as it originally was, so that's good.

Look for later episodes to have more artful interweaving of the host segments and the clips, more variety in the board game footage, and for the hosts to speak with a little more confidence. And working bluescreen effects. Probably.

The URL mentioned at the end of the show doesn't exist yet, but it will by the time the show actually airs on TV. I don't yet know when this is.