J2 Panel - Tumblr Posts
Index of Enhanced Edition Con Videos
I'll maintain this index in a pinned post for easy reference. Click the links to go to the YouTube videos, or click here for a more readable Google Docs table which includes these links plus a tab noting which events I skipped, temporarily or permanently, and why.
2007-11-11, Chicago - J2 Breakfast (00:23:42)
2007-11-11, Chicago - Jensen Solo (00:21:55)
2007-11-11, Chicago - Jared Solo (00:29:44)
2007-11-11, Chicago - J2 Main Panel (00:38:24)
2008-07-27, San Diego Comic Con - SPN Panel (00:50:52)
2008-11-16, Chicago - J2 Breakfast (00:26:16)
2008-11-16, Chicago - Jared Solo (00:26:20)
2008-11-16, Chicago - J2 Main Panel (00:35:04)
2008-11-16, Chicago - Jensen Solo (00:34:36)
2009-08-30, Vancouver - J3 Breakfast (00:31:53)
2009-08-30, Vancouver - Jensen Solo (00:27:17)
2009-08-30, Vancouver - J2 Main Panel (00:30:25)
I'm now working on the Breakfast panel from CHICON 2009.
Thank you to everyone who has shown an interest in these videos. The reblogs and likes all made me very happy, and I especially appreciated the kind comments some of you left in your reblog text and tags. I'm unsure of the proper Tumblr way to respond directly to that in a way that won't annoy people, but I've definitely noticed and appreciated it!
An explanation of this project and my tentative plans for it are listed below the break. A lot of it will be familiar if you've read my earlier posts, but it's more detailed -- and excessively long! There's also some info on how you can help, especially if you have any old videos or audio files that you'd be willing to contribute.
Why Do You Call These "Enhanced Editions"?
The videos I'm using are not my own, but I've spent many hours adding enhancements to them. My goal is to make these the most watchable and accessible versions of these older convention panels published to date. Credit and links to the original videos are in the video descriptions. These are the typical enhancements you'll see:
I'm upscaling the videos as best I can. It isn't remotely perfect, but it's a little more watchable than the originals. The videos I'm working with are very low quality by today's standards. and they were also recorded under difficult circumstances. Video taking wasn't permitted at most of the earlier cons, so the people who took them did so at the risk of getting kicked out. They couldn't exactly come waltzing in with a tripod, so the videos are shaky, they don't always have a clear view of the stage, and sometimes they cut off at unfortunate moments. They can be frustrating to watch, but we owe these people a debt of gratitude for capturing this footage because otherwise it would have been lost altogether.
When necessary, I'm correcting colors on the videos to try to make them look more natural and consistent. I'm very inexperienced in this area, and I don't consider it to be one of my strengths, but I'm learning.
The original videos are usually in multiple parts, but I'm editing them together into a single video as cohesively as possible. I may use videos from multiple sources to provide the most complete video possible, and I'll select the ones with the highest video quality and/or the best view of the action available. Sometimes I have to make difficult choices between the video with the best view (meaning a clear view of their actions and/or facial expressions) and the video with the best quality. I usually lean toward the one with the best view in those cases.
I'm adding extra content to help clarify references people make during the panels. The videos I've worked with so far don't take up the full width of a modern video frame, so I've taken advantage of that extra space to display the extra content to the side where it's less obtrusive. There are explanations for obscure references that are way funnier when you understand what they mean, plus episode references to help jog the memory for those of us who haven't rewatched the show a million times. In rare cases where I think it will enhance understanding, I'll insert brief episode clips that highlight what they're talking about.
I'm putting a LOT of time into adding good, color-coded English subtitles that can be turned on and off with YouTube's CC button. These videos can be frustrating to understand because the audience often drowns them out and Jared and Jensen tend to talk at the same time when they're together. I can't always figure everything out, but it's far better than the crazy, auto-generated nonsense that many videos have. YouTube can then translate my English subtitles into other languages, so this may improve accessibility for people who are less comfortable with English. The color-coding helps with telling who's saying what: red for Jared, blue for Jensen, green for the general audience, yellow for the current fan at the microphone, and white for other people such as staff.
If there's missing footage that I can't find anywhere, then if I can find a source that seems to have reliable details about what was discussed, I'll add static images with a brief summary and a link to my source in the video description.
What Conventions Do You Plan to Enhance?
I don't want to make grand promises that I'll enhance videos for every old convention, although I definitely love the idea of doing so. How far I go with this will depend on how much sustained interest there is from other people and how much spare time I have myself. My output speed will probably be erratic depending on what's going on in my life at the time.
My general plan was to start with the oldest conventions and work my way forward. For now, I'm focusing on the panels with Jared and/or Jensen since they're my main interest. I may temporarily skip over conventions that they didn't both attend, but with the intent to go back and fill those in later. If I obtain any mostly-complete videos of Misha's solo panels that upscale well, I may also do his panel if I'm doing panels for Jared and Jensen from the same event.
One big constraint will be whether I can find enough videos to work with for a convention, and just how bad the quality is. I've found that some videos are too poor of a quality to upscale. Since these videos are painful to watch in their raw form, I suspect people will be less interested in watching "enhanced" videos that don't include at least some noticeable improvement in visual quality, but please do let me know if I'm wrong. For that reason, I'll probably skip past cons if I can't upscale the videos, at least for now.
As I work through the old conventions, I'll make a good attempt to upscale the available videos. If I don't have much success, then I'll skip over that convention with the hope that I might be able to get some video files that upscale better. (See the "Can I Help? section.) After I make it through all the low-hanging fruit, I want to come back to those problematic conventions and just create a cohesive edit with color corrections, special content, and subtitles even if I can't upscale the video.
These are just my general thoughts right now but the project is young, so my strategy may change.
Can I Help?
If you have any old convention videos or audio files that you're willing to contribute, please message me! Maybe I can use them, maybe I can't, but the more I have to work with, the better chance I have of creating something more complete. If I do use your material, I'll credit you in whatever manner you prefer.
Even if your videos are on YouTube, I've found that the original files may upscale much better than videos pulled off YouTube. I think the videos were degraded when they were uploaded to YouTube, at least back then. If you send me videos that I'm able to upscale, I'll happily send the upscaled versions back to you for your collection regardless of whether or not I use them. (If you have any videos you don't want me to use for this project, let me know and I'll respect your wishes.)
Even if your video looks terrible, you might just have a missing piece of footage that I couldn't find anywhere else, or your video might upscale more easily than another. If nothing else, I might be able to hear something in the audio that will help me fill in a subtitle I couldn't figure out.
Likewise, audio files can be helpful even without video. If nothing else, they may help me fill in some subtitles. If the audio file is consistently easier to understand than the audio on the videos I'm using, I can also substitute the audio from your file in place of the video's audio. If you have audio of sections of the panels for which no known videos exist, that could also help me fill in those gaps.
If you're watching my enhanced videos with the subtitles turned on, please do let me know if you catch any errors or if you can clearly understand something I marked as [inaudible]. I can't change the videos themselves on YouTube, not without breaking the links and causing confusion, but it's pretty easy to update the subtitles because they're a separate file. It's important to me to try not to put words in their mouths that they might not have said, so I'm trying not to guess purely based on context if I can't tell with confidence that they said what I think they probably said. However, there were times when I felt like I should have been able to understand what they said but I just couldn't manage it, and I'm sure someone with different ears may be able to figure out some of the parts I couldn't.