Highlights

Production

Finished SU sequence compositing.

Stills from final composited shot for the SU sequence.

Blocked out the new/replacement LA-2 shots, which are set in the Mission Control Room. I have not yet gotten to the lip-sync animation, but I believe the camera moves are good now.

LA-2-B: Long lens shot shows a row of controllers. Tracks in on Capcom as she calls “Intermediate” during the pre-launch sequence (meaning the thrust level as the engines get up to speed).

LA-2-C: New, moving establishing shot, tracks sideways across the back of the Mission Control Room.

LA-2-D: Moving camera emerges from the right large monitor in Mission Control, views the rooms, then settles on the Capcom. The Large monitor will be replaced with a video panel of “LA-7” shot showing the rocket boosting on core and all four pod stages, then transition to a video-textured appearance for the end of this shot.

Created a new, slightly longer assembly of the LA-Launch sequence, as well as reviewing the whole-episode assembly. The story has expanded to 17:40, with 3:15 combined titles (opening logo, main title, and end credits), and 3:19 for promotionals — including the Patreon spot, Preview, and DVD promotional.

Found and corrected a problem with rendering the Soyuz interior shots. The console video texture was missing on the server, because it is stored in the Renders folder, since it is generated by a Kdenlive file in the source tree. But I had not set up my “pull_Lunatics.sh” script to fetch these files. I corrected the script, re-ran, and confirmed the shots are rendering correctly now.

Renders from the rendering server were rendering wrong, not showing the console video texture (LEFT), while on my workstation, they rendered correctly (RIGHT). This was because the “pull_Lunatics.sh” rsync script I wrote didn’t include renders, and the video texture is generated from a Kdenlive file and stored in a renders folder for the “Library” project branch. I needed to revise the script to include these textures.

IT Work

Fixed a crash on my dynamic YunoHost web server due to running out of disk space by upsizing the droplet and the attached storage volume. This caused a small increase in cost, but mostly cut off the possibility of economizing by downsizing it. My reasoning is that this is acceptable, because it has to run at the higher size to avoid glitches with PeerTube and Misskey, and it should all be replaced by the colocated server once I get that sorted out.

I also made backups of all the important apps on the server and uninstalled the unused ones (mainly the video conference app we never got working).

Corrected major faults in the Let’s Encrypt certificates and Apache2 configuration on our static web server (the Digital Droplet I plan to keep). I also added user logins with passwords for personal websites on the server.

Development

In addition to the “pull_Lunatics.sh” script correction mentioned above, I also had an error in the “push_Renders.sh” script I used to move the rendered output onto my workstation. This was happening, because I had relocated the Renders folder on my workstation. When it tried to put them in the old location, it overfilled a drive and crashed. The fix was pretty simple, though.

I had been treating these scripts as temporary stopgaps, since I was going to change to using Nextcloud for source synchronization, but it looks like I’ll just be keeping them, particularly since I’m keeping the Dell R720 server at home for rendering (having bought an R420 to setup as the colocation server).

Other Business

Caught up on worklogs and summaries: I had fallen very far behind. I’ve now completed February through May summaries. I also edited and posted my video logs, and have made a start at recording them weekly again, which I think will work better.

A lot of maintenance work this month. My office chair broke and I replaced it. I bought and installed a new set of “double shot” key caps on my keyboard, as the old one had most of the letters worn off.

I also purchased a 9U server rack to install in the studio for on-site server equipment, since I’m now planning to keep Narya on site for rendering. I have not yet assembled and installed it, though.

I am still trying to get all services charged to a single bank account, but have had some revert, so that’s still ongoing. Basically, I’ve had problems with the current business account, so I’m moving things to charge my personal account. Then I’ll probably get a new business account at a different bank, and move the business stuff onto that.

June 2025 Timelapse Video

Video Logs

Video Log 2025-06-20: Audio for “Suiting Up”

Video Log 2025-06-28: Mission Control Room Shots

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