So much has happened over the last two months I don't know how I'll summarize it on the blog. Maybe I'll do it in chunks? The Kirby Krackle "Sounds Like You" release show at the Triple Door was pretty insane considering the venue is basically a dinner theater. Not sure how easy it'd be to rock an audience that's seated and politely slurping Singapore noodles, but we pulled it off. I would even say we were nearly upstaged by our openers H2Awesome, who were crackling with so much crazy pent up we're in Seattle! energy I actually feared someone might fall off the stage and end the tour prematurely.
You can find a ton of photos of the night, along with our opening guests The Doubleclicks (who released their newest album that same day) and Molly Lewis, at the Kirby Krackle Facebook gallery, which I believe is public (and if not, tell me and I'll go yell at Kyle).
(tl;dr: skip this post unless you like iMovie tutorials.)
Okay so I recently made the mistake of dragging 24fps movie clips into a 30fps iMovie project. Well, it's not exactly a mistake. You can totally do this. But iMovie will warn you -- once -- and give you the option to covert the whole project to the lower frame rate -- once. If you ignore this warning like I did, iMovie will try to play your 24fps clips at 30fps. The result will be your 24fps clips will be all stuttery and jerky in the final product.
The obvious solution would be to lower the project frame rate to 24fps, right? Here's the bad news: once the project frame rate is set, you can't go back and change it. So the title of this post is a bit misleading...
However, there is a workaround! Which I'm altruistically posting here for posterity. And the Googlebot.
You can't change the project frame rate, but you can export the final movie at a different frame rate. It's actually pretty easy; the biggest drawback is you can't share the movie directly to YouTube or Vimeo using the options built into iMovie. You have to export the movie first, then manually upload it to whatever video site you use. A small price to pay for salvaging weeks and weeks of editing, IMO.
Here's how to do it:
From the iMovie Share menu, select Export using Quicktime… from the pop-up menu:
This will pop up a Save Exported File As... dialog box. Before you do anything else, click the Options... button near the bottom of this box:
The Movie Settings pop-up will appear, revealing some info about your project. Note that here the frame rate is set to 30fps. We're going to change that. Click the Settings... button at the top:
This will launch the Standard Video Compression Settings pop-up. Choose the frame rate you want from the Frame Rate selection box. In this case we want to ensure that the project is converted to 24fps, which will fix my conflicting frame rates problem:
Now click OK to save your changes. Note that on the Movie Settings pop-up the frame rate has changed to 24.
Click OK again to return the Save Exported File As... dialog. Click Save to begin exporting your movie. When it completes, the finished movie file should now play at 24fps consistently.
Ta-da, your movie is fixed and looks awesome again. Again, you can't directly share the video from iMovie to YouTube or Vimeo with the built-in sharing options. You have to locate the exported movie and upload it via the web.
Hope this helps someone out there.
UPDATE: I did find some message board threads that suggested editing the iMovie Project file to reset the frame rate. The Project file is literally called "Project" (no file extension) and is a property list file (aka plist) which can be edited by hand. Personally I wouldn't recommend this unless you're comfortable messing around in the guts of your Mac OSX application settings. If this is you, go nuts. But backup that file just in case.
Kin to Stars is kind of ice for the summer as we figure out what to do next. That said, Jerin and I will be performing solo sets at Egan's Ballard Jam House in Seattle this Friday June 28th. Which means the probability of a KtS song or two is high.
YEAH A SOLO SHOW! I haven't played my own stuff in looooong time. And I'm pretty excited because Jerin booked the show so I don't have to do anything except play which the best kind of show because lord (and longtime readers) knows I dislike just about everything about booking shows. So I've been pretty blessed out putting the setlist together and rehearsing after work. And it's motivated me enough to actually finish off a few new songs that I'll slip into the set. Let's hope I remember all the words and that the audience is patient and forgiving.
He's been gone for almost a month now, but I wanted to note his passing here, since Slayer was the first metal concert I attended. It was at the Phantasy Theater in Lakewood OH, during their tour supporting "South Of Heaven" and it was likely the summer of 1988, between my freshman and sophomore years at the U. of Akron.
My roommate during my freshman year, Sean, was a super-smart ROTC guy who played bass guitar and was into thrash in a serious way. Up until then my exposure to metal was limited to Möthey Crüe and the occasional Judas Priest tune. What Sean brought was a huge collection of terrify-your-parents vinyl, not just the standard "Big Four" stuff but also Venom, Deicide and Kreator, Nuclear Assault, Overkill; venerable stuff like Priest and Iron Maiden and Diamondhead; German metal imports on white vinyl and hand painted covers; and just a ton of records by obscure bands you've never heard of and probably never will. But of all of them, Slayer occupied the throne.
At the time, Slayer was at he height of their power, having released their watershed "Reign In Blood" prior to this tour, and Slayer fans everywhere were going LOSING THEIR MINDS. I'd been to shows with mosh pits before, but watching this one from the balcony above the fray, I decided early there was no way I'd be going down there, and Sean and I were content to sit at the railing and air-guitar along to every riff.
So RIP Jeff, and I hope you're shredding with Dimebag up in heaven. Or, you know, the other place, whichever you prefer.
I forgot to mention! We have a single out now from "Sounds Like You" called Grandma's House. SPOILERS: it's about going to your grandmother's house. Listen here:
Kyle took us in a different direction with this one. It's first time we've recorded as a live band, meaning instead of tracking drums first, then bass, then overdubbing guitars and building the recording like a lasagna, we went into Litho and recorded our parts all at once. It's subtle, but there's definitely a X-factor of awesome that comes from that approach that's noticeable in the tracks. They spark and jump with some real energy.
Another thing that's changed: songwriting content. Early on, Kyle confided that he wanted this record to stretch beyond songs about specific superheroes, video games and instead reach for more common themes while keeping the topics nerdy. Last year's single One More Episode is a prime example: instead of being a song about a specific TV show, it's a song about bonding over a shared love of good TV. If you liked that, you're in luck! There's a ton more where that came from on this record.
And if not, that's okay, there's a GoT-themed song on this record that will kick your ass. Anyway, lots more music stuff going on this summer to tell you about.
