halfcactus | [fanvid] Qihun - 光年之外 Light Years Away (with English subs) + process notes

"[ENGSUB] 棋魂 Qihun - 光年之外 (Light Years Away)" (Watch on Vimeo)

Also on AO3

Second attempt at vidding--the first one was in 2018, and it took me an entire month to put out something that was barely over a minute long. I used a trial version of Adobe Aftereffects last time, learning as I went, but I can uhhh no longer get AE to work for me? So I downloaded Davinci Resolve 15 (free) and I like it! I don't vid so I don't really have any basis of comparison, but for simple vidding with typesetting (like in the video) I found it pretty intuitive to use. I guess it helps that I've used AfterEffects that one time so I have a rough idea of keyframing basics so I can get the type to behave how I want it to.

I'm not very sure what other features it has. I still don't know how color grading works (took me forever to desaturate the Dear Missy clips--if I had to replicate a type of coloring, I wouldn't be able to do it), and if I can do any kind of masking in it. There's a fancier paid version that has more bells and whistles and motion graphics functionality, but I probably don't need those?

Anyway I'm trying to be better at documenting my process, so:

This video took me around 3 days, but it was 3 days of not sleeping much, because revenge bedtime procrastination.

This vidding process had 3 steps:
1) Audio/video editing (I rearranged sections of the song to get the feeling that I wanted)
2) Typesetting the lyrics
3) Translating and subbing the lyrics to English

1) Editing

Cutting and dragging clips was pretty straightforward. My only issue was that I had to convert my mkv files to mp4 videos. XDDD

Audio: I wanted start with the 2nd verse, but use the first version of the pre-chorus, because the singing style and instrumentation chorus#1 matched the mood I wanted to achieve.

I had to do a little doctoring so my audio timeline looked like this:
[INTRO] » [VERSE 2] » [PRE-CHORUS/CHORUS 1] » [OUTRO ("我沒想到")]

The jump from verse 2 to pre-chorus 1, as well as the sudden ending XD, are pretty obvious but it's not really a big deal.

2) Typesetting the lyrics

This was also pretty straightforward. Adding a few basic effects (fading in/out, dynamic zoom, keyframing the tracking and opacity) was easy using the Text+ tool. There's a regular Text tool that doesn't have the same animation options, but has more static text effects like dropshadow, etc. I didn't really want the text to divert too much attention from the video clips, so I stuck with the basics.

My only problem was that I didn't know how to change the default font. Every time I added a Text+ layer, it would default to something like Open Sans, and I'd have to manually pick the Chinese font.

3) Translating/Subbing

I tried not to spend too much brain on translating the song, especially since it's not a particularly complex one lol. I tried to keep it light and easy to read along to, but I'm not sure I succeeded, especially towards the end.

古路無行客，寒山獨見君。

This is a line from a poem that I only skimmed the explanation of, but from what I understand it's about traversing an old and desolate road to see a friend who secluded himself high in the mountain. The basic themes are of loneliness and friendship, their respective points of origin representing their loneliness (the long empty road and the high cold mountain).

I ended up just subbing that line as On the ancient road, there are no other travelers / On the cold mountain, I found you to emphasize the encounter and the company, which, while not exactly accurate, is what Chu Ying is thanking Shi Guang for.

Ftr the official iQiyi translation of this line (which I drew inspiration from) is There are no travellers in the ancient path / On the cold mountains, you stand alone, which I think is great! But it emphasizes the loneliness more than the relief of meeting. It's just that you need a little more time to process the meaning, and unfortunately the scene quickly moves on. But I do like how it characterizes CY as someone who's remembering how lonely the past how 1,000 years have been. :(

ISSUES:
- Idk, RAM? I kinda regret not maxing out my computer stuff when I had the chance. I wasn't really sure how to pre-render the clips so I could preview them as they should be, so for the most part I was previewing a lurching timeline. The software also crashed now and then, even when I wasn't running any other programs. But for the most part I managed fine.

- UX design is not very beginner-friendly--when you hover your mouse over a button, you don't get a tooltip that describes what that button does.

- I also don't know where my Davinci Resolve working file is stored??? I can't seem to find it. It's not an issue for me because I don't plan to go back to editing this video, but it would be a problem if I were vidding regularly and wanted to reuse or edit some of my projects.

- This isn't the fault of the program, but my video files were in .mkv which Davinci Resolve doesn't accept. ^^; So I had to convert every single one and stick them into a temporary folder, which means I was also avoiding pulling from too many episodes.

- I didn't know how to set up a default font style. :( So every time I typeset a line from the song, I had to manually select the font.