Licensed Music better that copyright lawsuits?

Now this may be just my ignorance of how the music industry works showing, but bare with me.

I just watched a video which told me that Tom Waits employs sixty (60) or more people to search YouTube for channels that had uploaded videos using the sound tracks of any of his songs. When found, they immediately file a copyright claim and or a take down notice of the offending video. And he is not alone. For the vast majority of video creators, a copy lawsuit is a waist of time as there is no money there to recover.

Is it me or does this seem counter productive to anybody (everybody) else?

If you have ever looked into licensing a song through BMI, ASCAP, Marmoset, SESAC, SOCAN or any other media licensing company, you will have found the cost can run into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. There are a confusing medley of different licensees for variable circumstances. And the complex fee schedule varies as well, which obviously puts the music out of the reach of all but a few tip of the top YouTubers, who only want to share their favorite music.

With approximately 86000 new videos added per day and 60 people searching? I would say that your group are trying to stop an army of ants with a magnifying glass on a partly cloudy day. And I'm not suggesting let it all go free. After all, music has value. What I am suggesting is making it cheap and easy for video content makers to get a one time license for a video. It could go as easy as this.

Users create a social media account on, lets say, a special BMI website (this does not exist, its just an example). The account might contain the users personal information and contact info. Click on a new license form and fill it out, click pay and the site would spit out a one-use license in a PDF for print or email. The license contains the license number (an encoded version of the video description provided by the applicant) and the composer credit text that must appear in the video (end credits) and/or in any extended text description section available on the particular platform.

In order to make and keep this non-transferable social media license valid, the following information would be entered for registration: The date of application, the single upload web site (ie YouTube, Vemo, twitter, whatever), the account or channel name, the name of the video, the song you are licensing, if its the original track or a cover performance, your current follower/friend/subscriber count (more on this later), if your video will be monetized, and your expected publishing date. The License would permanently cover THAT one song on THAT video uploaded on THAT site on THAT channel. Additional uploads or songs would require their own license. IE one (1) song on one (1) video uploaded to YouTube and Twitter = 2 uploads = 2 licenses. Or five (5) songs on one (1) video on one (1) upload on YouTube = five (5) licenses.

License costs would be on a sliding scale (below based on one (1) song, one (1) video, one (1) upload);

$5.00 US - all non-monetized videos regardless of subscriber count.

$10.00 US - monetized video with less than 100,000 subscribers/followers

$25.00 US - monetized video with more than 100,000 subscribers/followers

Seems pretty cheap. But is it? YouTube alone gets about 80,000 hours of new uploads a day. According to Quora.com, the average length of a video on YouTube is less than 5 minutes. That comes out to about 86400 videos a day. If you low ball the figure and say only 10 percent of those bought a $5.00 license, that comes to $43,200 a day. That's per DAY and that only includes the $5.00, non-monetized, video license.

How much are your artists making on those uploads now? Oh, that's right your paying 60 people at 40 hours a week to police just YouTube. And I'm sure there are lawyer costs mixed up in there somewhere (there always are).

The cheap price is the key. Affordable by everyone. The license code makes checking against a database easy. The text credits make publicity for the music that is being paid for by the licensee, and its easy to check the video license validity. Now for a few bucks content creators can avoid video take downs, copyright strikes, all the bad stuff. Who wouldn't do that?

With proper announcements the site would be flooded with applicants. At the very least it would pay for its own operation, policing, and royalties. And since take downs don't make money, instead point creators to the licensing site where they could buy a license and get their video creation restored.

This is not an original idea. There are already sites on the internet that license music for uses like YouTube. But at $14-150 dollars a pop for unknown artists, their percentage of uses on videos is limited. To my thinking, the value here is volume. Getting a great rep and building that 10 percent to 40-50-60 percent licensed with a large and happy repeat user base.

So as I said at the start, I'm not a professional musician. I'm not an executive responsible for collecting royalties. I'm not paying 60 people a day to make me no money and spread animosity about my brand by doing take downs on YouTube. But even I would stop using free Creative Commons music in my videos if for five or ten bucks each a I could use popular music.

Be Well.

The New Look and New Name

Saguaro Cactus, Mesquite and Turpentine bushes

So I figured that it was time that I stop lying to myself (not about anything important), but about this Blog.  It was never going to be any kind of serious discussion of animation. Thus far there is hardly any reference to animation at all.

So as Google again changed the format of Blogger, I thought it was a good time to change the format of my Blog as well.

I have no idea what I'm doing, but that never stopped me before.

The background picture is my first lie.  Titled "backyard" or something, it's actually about a mile or so north of my house.  If you'd like to see more, just Google "phoenix mountain preserve saguaro" and select images.  They are outrageous cactus and grow in a very limited area. I intend to change the picture occasionally if I get out with my camera.

If you are reading this Blog and you are not ON Blogger, then you probably are not seeing the pictures anyway.

The only thing I regret about changing the Blog is that I lost the pendulum clock that told visitors the time in Arizona, which doesn't change (we don't need no stinking daylight savings). I miss the ticking and the chimes on the hour and half hour.  It was a nice reminder of just how much time I was wasting.  But I cannot seem to get Blogger to accept the gadget again.

As for the entries, they will be whatever comes to mind, I suppose.  I have no great plan.  No mission.  And no agenda.  

I hope these changes find you well.  And I hope you stop by the Blog, the real one...
http://distorteddogma.blogspot.com/  and leave me a reply or comment.

I'm also working on some new cartoons for my YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/distorteddogma 

So, enough.  Time to move on to something more interesting.  Whatever that will be.

Be Well.

Taking No Hostages...

So I have been absent for over a year and a half, partly because I've been busy, but mostly because I did not feel that I had anything to say that anyone would be interested in reading.  Even if someone was reading.

Simply put, I had a series of major changes in my life, all linked, and happening in what seemed to me to be a rapid succession of cause and effect. 

I was happy about none of it.   

So what to do with my now empty days and nights?  

My kitchen more or less BEFORE

Call all my friends and cry on their shoulders until they began avoiding me? Nah. 

Write it all out here so my private life would be spooled on so many backup tapes and archived for a hundred years? Again, nah. 

Maybe curl up in a fetal position on my bed at night and cry myself through it all?  

Definitely, nah.

Instead I did something that I had been wanting to do for a very long time, but my ex and I could never agree on what was to be done....  I remodeled my house. Not that I could afford it, but thanks to some timely offers of deferred interest from some local do-it-yourself retailers, I pulled it off.

So days at work and working nights.  It took eleven months. If I could have rustled up some more credit, I'd still be at it.

More or less AFTER

Some rooms got just paint, others got more.  Ceiling fans, light fixtures, paint, furniture, drapes, floors, cabinets.. nothing was sacred.  For the first few months, my right hand held little but a three pound sledge hammer.  I had lived in this house for nearly nineteen years and had changed only the laundry room and a bathroom.  Now those were the only rooms semi safe (although the bathroom did get a change of towels and shower curtain). The kitchen would be the biggest change. Lights, cabinets, floors, ceiling, counter tops... the works.

This would be my sanctuary, my therapy, the route to a new life.  I would do it myself (which I did about 98%). I would not go down, and if I did, I was not taking anybody down with me.

No hostages.

Having a head cold is not the same as having a cool head

 I hope you will excuse my recent absence as the New Year has brought me the opportunity to explore the staggering semi-liquid production capacity of my nasal passages in the form of a whopping great head cold.  A journey which I continue this morning.  

I have also been struck by the amazing resistance, which my affliction exhibits, to all forms of remedy, store bought names, generics, and home styled.  No matter the active ingredient, nor the manufacturer, all seem to be totally ineffective.  

At one point it was suggested that it might be an allergy and not a cold at all.  But alas, Allergy meds from A to Z have also been tried only to find their way to the kitchen dustbin in miserable failure.

Felled by my cold have been boxes of various name brand facial tissues, all of which I now equate to the coarsest and most abrasive sand paper.

No sneezing, no “itchy eye,” no fever, or ache, just a continuous production of ever changing colors and consistencies as tissues by the truckload are filled and tossed away.

So excuse me for not participating in all the resolutions, hoopla, and joy exhibited by some.  I'm just not up for it right now.  

Happy Fricken New Year.

Yellow Ink

My brand not pictured

I needed an ink cartridge.  My printer was insisting that it could not go on until the yellow ink cartridge, which had run out, was replaced.  It insisted on this even though the tax document I was attempting to print contained no yellow.

Unable to convince the stubborn machine otherwise, I headed out for our local office supply store.  The printer is not a newer unit (more than two years old...imagine), so the outlets available to buy new ink are limited.   Why not replace it with a newer model?  It works very well, it's connected to our little intranet and everyone uses it.  It also has, what seems to be a vanishing attribute, a straight through paper path.  What I mean is, the media that you are printing on does not need to bend as it moves through the printer.  This is very handy when printing business cards, clear vellum sheets for overhead projection and other media that is not simple #20 inkjet paper.

I had a different brand of printer that had only two initials as a name and it had a folding paper path.  the continual jams, stutters, and waist brought about its sad and untimely demise on the office floor.   With a few kicks to be sure the beast was dead, I went and bought the printer we are still using today.

The one that is currently out of yellow ink.

I hear on the TV and radio how poorly the economy is doing and how retailers are struggling to get by with a skeleton staff.  Its very hard for them to keep the doors open.  You could not prove it by the parking lot of the mall outside the office supply store. Its 114 degrees in the shade (of which there is none) and the lot is full to brimming over. 

Cars are parked on any available open spot, marked or not, making the search for an open spot more like the "Dodge-um" amusement park ride than a .. well... search for an open parking spot.  After circling the lot and watching the temperature gauge on my old minivan slowly climb towards the red line, I finally slip into a spot that is not completely out of sight of the office supply store.

Victory! 

"Too bad for you, slackers," I smile as other cars pass by my old van with heated scowls.  For a moment, I actually entertained the idea of realigning my parked vehicle in its spot, just to watch the circling parking piranhas come flying together only to be disappointed as my van slipped back into the same parking spot.  Muhahahaha!

But the moment passes and I pause to survey the trek ahead of me across the hot asphalt.  I should have brought water. 

And maybe a camel.

Crossing the parking lot is no easy task.  Pass between parked vehicles is safe enough, so long as you watch where and in what you are stepping.  I learned long ago the little green puddles can be as slippery as sheets of ice and catching your balance by placing bare skin on a sun baked, painted car hood can be just as painful as landing on the asphalt.  But the most dangerous by far is crossing the streams.  Referred to as "access drives" or "lanes" by the uninitiated, they are streams filled with creatures more deadly and unpredictable than anything in the rivers of Africa or the Amazon jungle... impatient drivers.   Some are on the hunt for a parking spot, others attempting to escape the mall altogether.  Each are equally desperate.  Each are equally dangerous should an opening arise with you in between them and their intended target.  Having just been one of the pack, I wave them by, patient waiting for my opening to cross. 

Sweat is running down my back as I enter the store and a chill runs through me as I plunge my body into 78 degree conditioned air.  I'm greeted with a hollow "welcome to ..." by one of the minimum wage drones behind the service counter who does not even look up to see me as she speaks.  I make no attempt to get her attention or even reply, but make my way to the aisle with its perforated gondolas filled with ink cartridges in sealed plastic hangers.  All the brands are here and even some generic refill kits.  And my brand hangs right here....

Hey.  It's gone.

"Can I help you" asks a young girl covered in her "Big Box Store" smock.

"My ink is gone," I say pointing to a display now filled with another brand.

"We moved those down here," she says as she leads me to the far end of the aisle.

"But its not here either," I say as my eyes dart from one packaged ink to another, "its the one with a guitar on the box."

"Those are over here," she says point to an opposite row.  "Personally, I don't like those because its hard to read the box."

"It has a guitar on the box.  Its the only one with a guitar on the box.  Others have horses, or butterflies, or something, but only one has a guitar on the box."  My explanation failed to impress her.  "There are only singles here," I pointed out questioningly.  "Where are the multipacks?"

"I don't know," she said, "we might have them online."

I thought of my printer which is stopped mid page and demanding an ink cartridge which it did not need.  Could it sit that way while I wait for ink to be delivered?  I shook off the thought and resigned myself to paying $20 for a single ink cartridge.  I would find the multipacks somewhere else, perhaps online...

Producing the proper "member" card saved me nothing, but it did inform the management that there was still someone stupid enough to be buying ink single packs and just who that idiot was.  I maneuvered my way back to my old van and cautiously opened the door to allow the trapped heat to escape without singeing the hair in my mustache and eyebrows.  And a mere 20 minutes later I was approaching the exit. 

Back at my office I was greeted by my printer, still stopped mid-page, its little green and red lights blinking.  I pressed the red flashing button and the ink carriage swung out into the open where I could pop out the old yellow cartridge and snap the new one into place.  The printer jumped into life and ran its cleaning cycle to bring the new cartridge online, thereby being ready to not print yellow in the twenty-five page black and white tax form still in my computers print buffer.

Cleaning...

Cleaning...

AH! Here it goes.  The print head swings into position, data begins to move, and the computer beeps and stops. 

It would seem that the head cleaning was all that remained of the light cyan.

Just how many rendering processors can you afford?

This may be the best idea that has come down the pike in some time. It's called Corefarm.org. Unlike its commercial sibling Corefarm.com, Corefarm.org is free to use, sortta.

Here is the idea. All of us could use a large render farm from time to time, but not everyday. The Boxx render farm units start at $2000 US each. That could be a lot of money sitting on your desk most of the week waiting for you to finish your latest masterpiece. And there are other times when one or more computers in your office are sitting idle. Why not combine the two? Don't buy a render farm that you might not be ready to fully utilize, let your computer idle time earn you render hours on the Corefarm.

What is Corefarm? The web site describes it as;
"Corefarm is a place where you can either submit your Yafaray rendering job or participate to other users' rendering tasks. Corefarm splits your job in several small pieces and distributes them across the internet, leading to impressive rendering times."
Windows users; use Firefox to log into Corfarm.org (after you register) and walk away. You are given a localhost login page. Open that page and your system is part of the Corefarm. As other users submit XML projects prepared by Yafaray, buckets of render information are processed by one or more of your processor cores. Every job processed earns you points toward free rendering time on the farm. Up to 10 projects can be processed at any one time and to stop participating, you just logout.

There are similar processes for other operating systems as well, but as I don't use them, they are just plain over my head.

But you should spend a few minutes and check it out. If you have a server system that already farms out processor time, or if you have multiple computers, they can all share the same login earning your account points. The more systems logged in the more powerful the Corefarm is. Contact William Le Ferrand or see the information on the Corefarm.org website..

Corefarm is only rendering Yafaray at this time. Corefarm.com is a pay for use site that renders in both Yafaray and LuxRender.

Going 3D with Blender 2.53

So at this point, I know nothing about 3D animation and graphics. I do understand using 3D environment in a 2D project, but it's hardly the same thing. I use Toon Boom Animate Pro for most of my projects now, having graduated from Studio to Digital Pro and finally to Animate Pro. For 2D, I don't think you can find a better program. It out flashes Adobe Flash© and runs circles around any other competition.

But this Blog is not about Flash or Toon Boom. It's about Blender. Specifically, Blender 2.5.

Wow.

I had downloaded Blender back in 2000 in the 2.0 or 2.1 phase. It was interesting, but I really was not into 3D graphics back then. It seemed awkward and clumsy, but so did all 3D programs.

I downloaded the new 2.53 beta is 22 megabytes (52.2 megabytes installed). I already had Microsoft C++ 2008 Redistributable Sp1 and Python 3.1 installed so installation went without a hitch.

Opening the program was a surprise. The new 2.5 menu layout was great. I had no idea what all the menus and buttons meant, nor what they actually did, but there was a big build view screen and menus to the left an right. It did take me a while to find the wiki documentation online and because this is a Beta version, the documentation is far from complete. But there are lots of great free online tutorial sites for 2.5 already (Blendercookie, Blendernoobies, and BlenderGuru ) and it's not all that hard to make the leap from the 2.49 tutorials (.Creative Cow, Lynda.com, and others). Honestly, they are everywhere and many are free.

In just a couple of evenings I was able to set my personal preferences, create my own version of the work space, and make this simple 3D text

Screen from my machine. Click to enlarge.

As I said, I have no CAD or other 3D experience, so as little as this is, it's big to me at this point. Below is a short video that outlines Blender's history


From Blender 3D 1.60 to 2.50 from Allan Brito on Vimeo.

There were some things I recognized right off the bat. Key Frame animation, by default the time line runs across the bottom of the screen, working with Bezier curves, Inverse kinematics and more.

I've been reading comparisons between the commercial softwares (Audodesk's Maya and others) and Blender, although slightly behind in some features, it seems Blender has lead the way in others and the new 2.5, when complete, should bring Blender up to the industry standards across the board

What does it take to run it? Lets do a simple compare with Maya:

Bender System Requirements
Operating Systems

• Windows 2000, XP or Vista
• Mac OS X 10.2 and later
• Linux 2.2.5 i386
• Linux 2.3.2 PPC
• FreeBSD 6.2 i386
• Irix 6.5 mips3
• Solaris 2.8 sparc

Minimal specs for Hardware

• 300 MHz CPU
• 128 MB Ram
• 20 MB free hard disk Space
• 1024 x 768 px Display with 16 bit color
• 3 Button Mouse
• Open GL Graphics Card with 16 MB Ram

Good specs for Hardware

• 2 Ghz dual CPU
• 2 GB Ram
• 1920 x 1200 px Display with 24 bit color
• 3 Button Mouse
• Open GL Graphics Card with 128 or 256 MB Ram

Production specs for Hardware

• 64 bits, Quad core CPU
• 8 GB Ram
• two times 1920 x 1200 px Display with 24 bit color
• 3 Button Mouse + tablet
• Open GL Graphics Card with 768 MB Ram, ATI FireGL or Nvidia Quadro

For 32-bit Autodesk Maya 2011

• Microsoft® Windows Vista® Business (SP2 or higher), Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (SP3 or higher), Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional operating system
• Windows: Intel® Pentium® 4 or higher, AMD Athlon™ 64, AMD Opteron™ processor, AMD Phenom™ processor
• 2 GB RAM
• 4 GB free hard drive space
• Qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL® graphics card
• Three-button mouse with mouse driver software
• DVD-ROM drive
• Maya Composite media cache requirements for playback:
• 10 GB minimum, 200 GB recommended
• HDD: IDE, SATA, SATA 2, SAS, SCSI
• Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7.0 or higher, Apple® Safari®, or Mozilla® Firefox® web browser

For 64-bit Autodesk Maya 2011

• Microsoft Windows Vista Business (SP2 or higher), Microsoft Windows XP x64 Edition (SP2 or higher), Microsoft Windows 7 Professional, Apple Mac OS X 10.6.2, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5.4 WS, or Fedora™ 11 operating system
• Windows and Linux: Intel® EM64T, AMD Athlon 64, AMD Opteron, or AMD Phenom™ processor
• Mac® computer: Intel-based processor
• 2 GB RAM
• 4 GB free hard drive space
• Qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card
• Three-button mouse with mouse driver software
• DVD-ROM drive
• Maya Composite media cache requirements for playback:
• 10 GB minimum, 200 GB recommended
• HDD: IDE, SATA, SATA 2, SAS, SCSI
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher, Apple Safari, or Mozilla Firefox web browser

Now that we know what it take in hardware, what does it take in GREENWARE?
Maya - $4000.00 plus a license for every machine it runs on.
Blender - Free (Contributions encouraged) and the same price for every machine it runs on - Free.

If you are just starting out or planning to expand your operation, it's worth a look.

Scene 1 Background Painting

Although I would love to say that the activities pictured in my previous blog were being repeated again this year, it's just not the case. Due to a series of sob stories which I will not burden you with, my vacation is a "stay-cation", as in stay at home.

But one good thing has come out of it. In the last week I finally finished the background design for the first sequence in my fall holiday cartoon. One that I started last year and didn't even come close to finishing anything but the dance movement study (Which you can see as "Not Quite A Nutcracker" on the second page of this Blog or on YouTube).

The frame above is actually eleven layers which will be animated separately to create the illusion of 3D space. There are details (such as stars and such) which are only added in the final shot. All in all I expect this painting to be on screen for about 10 seconds or so.

And that is why cartooning alone take so much time.

Be Well.

Karen's Gypsy

The illustration at left was not done by me. Although I wish I had. It was done by my wife, Karen, a very talented scenic artist. This was done on a software platform called "Dabbler 2." By Fractal Design. It's rare for her to work on such a small scale as most of what she does is on a 30 X 60 foot muslin drop (I get her to give me some photos and I'll do a separate blog on painting really BIG.

I on the other hand have always been a cartoonist. Event the most serious sketches I have done always have a cartoon edge to them. That's why animation interests me so. I have piles of files of ideas that didn't work. My biggest problem is time, and perhaps I'm a bit lazy. My reason or excuse is that I have already put in 8 to 10 hours by the time I get home from work, then spend time with the pets, the family and dinner, and it's getting late. The job starts early.

The type of sketch cartoon I want to do does not really lend itself to the "cut-out" style of cartooning I have done so far. My attempts at drawing each frame ends up with me finishing a few seconds of animation after literally months of nights with my eyes watering as I try to finish one more frame before I go to bed.

Thus far none of the animations I started this way ever got anywhere. By the time it's just starting to take shape, I'm bored with the story and I'm ready to move on. What I need is to find a way to meld the two disciplines and figure out when to use which to move the story along.

But I have time, I think, thus far it's been an expensive hobby, but I've enjoyed myself.