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NEW Enhanced Edition - CHICON 2008 - Jared's Solo Panel

Direct link.

My latest video is now up. It includes footage sent to me from AgtSpooky that I believe is not currently available anywhere on YouTube. In the first 2 minutes, there are 90 seconds that I couldn't find coverage for anywhere else in any form, and for the other 30 seconds I could only find one video with a Jared-shaped blur.

AgtSpooky's video was also recorded from a different angle than the videos currently on YouTube. It has a more direct view of Jared's face when he was facing the fans at the mic, because they only had a mic set up on one side. I cut between other videos, but AgtSpooky's footage makes up about 38% of my video. A full list of my video sources, with links where possible, is in the video description on YouTube.

I included the J2 and Jensen tags on this post because Jensen shows up at the end and there's some fun, brotherly-style teasing between them before they settle in for the J2 panel. That video is next in my queue.

A quick recap for anyone not familiar with this project…

In December 2023, I started this project to enhance old convention videos. I'm upscaling the videos and making other visual improvements, adding extra content to clarify various references, and adding good color-coded subtitles so you can better understand the sometimes-chaotic audio.

My goal is to publish the best, most complete, and most watchable versions of these older conventions yet seen, but this is only possible thanks to the fans who captured the footage in the first place.

A couple before/after comparison photos from my main sources...

#jared padalecki #j2 #jensen ackles #supernatural #sam winchester #dean winchester #enhanced edition con video #chicon 2008 #Youtube

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SAM AND DEAN WINCHESTER

Supernatural |

✨S4 EP17 : It's A Terrible Life

✨S5 EP08 : Changing Channels

✨S7 EP14 : Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie

Layout

#Ok THIS is really cool! #At first I just kept scrolling as I confess I often do when I see a wall of GIFs but then abruptly stopped and reversed direction

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Revised Enhanced Edition - CHICON 2007 J2 Main Panel v2.0

Direct link.

This was my fourth enhanced video. I didn’t want to ever update my videos after publishing them because it changes the YouTube link, which will probably cause confusion. However, I have to.

With huge thanks to AgtSpooky who sent me their original recorded videos, this version’s video quality is much better than the first. A more detailed explanation is below.

This is the last of my CHICON 2007 revisions. In case you missed any, here are all the links. My next completely new video is probably 1-2 weeks away.

J2 Breakfast Jensen Solo Panel Jared Solo Panel J2 Main Panel

Quick recap for anyone not familiar with this project…

In December 2023, I started this project to enhance old convention videos. I'm upscaling the videos and making other visual improvements, adding extra content to clarify various references, and adding good color-coded subtitles so you can better understand the sometimes-chaotic audio.

My goal is to publish the best and most watchable versions of these older conventions yet seen, but this is only possible thanks to the fans who captured the footage in the first place.

Why I "had" to revise this video…

In another post, I was excited to say I’d tracked down AgtSpooky who had recorded CHICON 2008. They had videos with footage I'd been missing up to that point and generously sent them to me with permission to use them. I upscaled them for my use, then sent the upscaled versions back as a very small “thank you”.

They’d also recorded CHICON 2007, so I offered to upscale those too. I had no intention of using them myself because I was reasonably happy with my original versions and I didn’t want to break the links. When I saw AgtSpooky's videos, I discovered the ones I'd used had originated from them but proper credit hadn't been given. Someone else added the burnt-in Portuguese subtitles and put them on YouTube.

I guess in the process of doing that, the video quality was degraded. I was shocked by how much better AgtSpooky’s original files upscaled. My original upscales now look embarrassingly bad to me. With AgtSpooky’s permission, I swapped out my original upscaled videos with these better ones. Most of the extra content has remained the same, aside from a few small standardization changes.

Comparison photos…

Click to enlarge, and you'll understand why I had to revise my videos!

#j2 #jared padalecki #jensen ackles #supernatural #sam winchester #dean winchester #chicon 2007 #enhanced edition con video #Youtube

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Revised Enhanced Edition - CHICON 2007 Jared's Solo Panel v2.0

Direct link. (I'm including the J2 and Jensen tags on this post because Jensen shows up at the end for the main J2 panel. His newly-acquired attire makes everyone, including Jared, laugh.)

This was my third enhanced video. I didn’t want to ever update my videos after publishing them because it changes the YouTube link, which will probably cause confusion. However, I have to.

With huge thanks to AgtSpooky who sent me their original recorded videos, this version’s video quality is much better than the first. A more detailed explanation is below.

I’ve updated all four CHICON 2007 videos on my YouTube channel, but I’m only posting one per day here on Tumblr. I hope spreading the posts out might increase visibility so people with the old links get the message. I haven't made any significant changes to the extra content I'd originally added.

Quick recap for anyone not familiar with this project…

In December 2023, I started this project to enhance old convention videos. I'm upscaling the videos and making other visual improvements, adding extra content to clarify various references, and adding good color-coded subtitles so you can better understand the sometimes-chaotic audio.

My goal is to publish the best and most watchable versions of these older conventions yet seen, but this is only possible thanks to the fans who captured the footage in the first place.

Why I "had" to revise this video…

In another post, I was excited to say I’d tracked down AgtSpooky who had recorded CHICON 2008. They had videos with footage I'd been missing up to that point and generously sent them to me with permission to use them. I upscaled them for my use, then sent the upscaled versions back as a very small “thank you”.

They’d also recorded CHICON 2007, so I offered to upscale those too. I had no intention of using them myself because I was reasonably happy with my original versions and I didn’t want to break the links. When I saw AgtSpooky's videos, I discovered the ones I'd used had originated from them but proper credit hadn't been given. Someone else added the burnt-in Portuguese subtitles and put them on YouTube.

I guess in the process of doing that, the video quality was degraded. I was shocked by how much better AgtSpooky’s original files upscaled. My original upscales now look embarrassingly bad to me. With AgtSpooky’s permission, I swapped out my original upscaled videos with these better ones. Most of the extra content has remained the same, aside from a few small standardization changes.

Comparison photos…

Click to enlarge, and you'll understand why I had to revise my videos! Jared's solo panel has probably the least dramatic improvement out of the four videos, but you can still see a lot more detail in his face with the new version.

#jared padalecki #j2 #jensen ackles #supernatural #sam winchester #dean winchester #chicon 2007 #enhanced edition con video #Youtube

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Revised Enhanced Edition - CHICON 2007 Jensen's Solo Panel v2.0

Direct link. (I'm including the J2 and Jared tags on this post because Jared shows up at the end to give Jensen some shoulder squeezes and kick him off stage.)

This was my second enhanced video. I didn’t want to ever update my videos after publishing them because it changes the YouTube link, which will probably cause confusion. However, I have to.

With huge thanks to AgtSpooky who sent me their original recorded videos, this version’s video quality is much better than the first. A more detailed explanation is below.

I’ve updated all four CHICON 2007 videos on my YouTube channel, but I’m only posting one per day here on Tumblr. I hope spreading the posts out might increase visibility so people with the old links get the message. I haven't made any significant changes to the extra content I'd originally added.

Quick recap for anyone not familiar with this project…

In December 2023, I started this project to enhance old convention videos. I'm upscaling the videos and making other visual improvements, adding extra content to clarify various references, and adding good color-coded subtitles so you can better understand the sometimes-chaotic audio.

My goal is to publish the best and most watchable versions of these older conventions yet seen, but this is only possible thanks to the fans who captured the footage in the first place.

Why I "had" to revise this video…

In another post, I was excited to say I’d tracked down AgtSpooky who had recorded CHICON 2008. They had videos with footage I'd been missing up to that point and generously sent them to me with permission to use them. I upscaled them for my use, then sent the upscaled versions back as a very small “thank you”.

They’d also recorded CHICON 2007, so I offered to upscale those too. I had no intention of using them myself because I was reasonably happy with my original versions and I didn’t want to break the links. When I saw AgtSpooky's videos, I discovered the ones I'd used had originated from them but proper credit hadn't been given. Someone else added the burnt-in Portuguese subtitles and put them on YouTube.

I guess in the process of doing that, the video quality was degraded. I was shocked by how much better AgtSpooky’s original files upscaled. My original upscales now look embarrassingly bad to me. With AgtSpooky’s permission, I swapped out my original upscaled videos with these better ones. Most of the extra content has remained the same, aside from a few small standardization changes.

Comparison photos…

Click to enlarge, and you'll understand why I had to revise my videos! It made an especially big difference with Jensen's panel.

#jensen ackles #j2 #jared padalecki #dean winchester #sam winchester #supernatural #enhanced edition con video #chicon 2007

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Revised Enhanced Edition - CHICON 2007 J2 Breakfast v2.0

Direct link.

This was my first enhanced video. I didn’t want to ever update my videos after publishing them because it changes the YouTube link, which will probably cause confusion. However, I have to.

With huge thanks to AgtSpooky who sent me their original recorded videos, this version’s video quality is much better than the first. A more detailed explanation is below.

I’ve updated all four CHICON 2007 videos on my YouTube channel, but I’m only posting one per day here on Tumblr. I hope spreading the posts out might increase visibility so people with the old links get the message. I haven't made any significant changes to the extra content I'd originally added.

Quick recap for anyone not familiar with this project…

In December 2023, I started this project to enhance old convention videos. I'm upscaling the videos and making other visual improvements, adding extra content to clarify various references, and adding good color-coded subtitles so you can better understand the sometimes-chaotic audio.

My goal is to publish the best and most watchable versions of these older conventions yet seen, but this is only possible thanks to the fans who captured the footage in the first place.

Why I "had" to revise this video…

In another post, I was excited to say I’d tracked down AgtSpooky who had recorded CHICON 2008. They had videos with footage I'd been missing up to that point and generously sent them to me with permission to use them. I upscaled them for my use, then sent the upscaled versions back as a very small “thank you”.

They’d also recorded CHICON 2007, so I offered to upscale those too. I had no intention of using them myself because I was reasonably happy with my original versions and I didn’t want to break the links. When I saw AgtSpooky's videos, I discovered the ones I'd used had originated from them but proper credit hadn't been given. Someone else added the burnt-in Portuguese subtitles and put them on YouTube.

I guess in the process of doing that, the video quality was degraded. I was shocked by how much better AgtSpooky’s original files upscaled. My original upscales now look embarrassingly bad to me. With AgtSpooky’s permission, I swapped out my original upscaled videos with these better ones. Most of the extra content has remained the same, aside from a few small standardization changes.

Comparison photos…

Click to enlarge, and you'll understand why I had to revise my videos! Not only are their faces much sharper, but you can see things like the stripes on Jensen's shirt and the texture of the background wallpaper that were lost before.

#j2 #jared padalecki #jensen ackles #supernatural #sam winchester #dean winchester #chicon 2007 #enhanced edition con video

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I’ve only been on Tumblr a few months, so I’m definitely not an expert, but I read this post (check the comments also) not long after I’d joined which may answer the above question. Apparently if somebody else tags a post that way when they reblog it, it affects the visibility of the original post even if they never tagged it that way and didn't even see it that way.

To me, it seems like a dumb way to handle things. Maybe it was intended as a way to give members some sort of policing control? If someone fails to use an appropriate warning tag for their post, someone else can add it and "protect" everybody else who doesn’t want to see that “evil tag”?

The problem is that so many things, especially ships, are up for interpretation. Especially when so many Tumblr posts are image-based. One person's friendship is another person's romance. A reblogger might tag something with the more romantic connotation (i.e. Wincest) when they reblog it because it gave them the feels they were looking for and they want to be able to find it later, but then it affects the original poster's visibility who may not have intended it that way.

I've been less affected by this issue on my own feed because I don't have any ship tags blocked, just anti tags which I think are more cut-and-dry. I've also had some of my own fairly innocuous J2 posts reblogged as tinhat, which I don't mind on principle, but it's a little frustrating to know my posts will now be blocked from people who might enjoy J2's friendship but don't want to see tinhat content.

This post contains filtered tags

#yourmosthatedship

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this shit ⬆️ is literally diabolical. wicked. foul. well now of course I have to click the damn button. i'm weak i can't resist it. tumblr please quit the sadistic mind games

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Here's the original photo. Source. At the bottom it calls her dress a “trench dress”, so I guess somebody got… inspired? 🤣

I didn’t see the photoshopped version in my Google Image search results, so I didn't find any hints as to what the photoshopper was imagining with their new and improved version. A fashion model AU, maybe? Maybe Sam and Dean were posing as the fashion police and they were about to arrest Castiel for supernaturally bad (or at least impractical) wardrobe decisions?

Can someone please explain to me what the fuck is happening here 😭

#Fashion AU #Things that make you go hmmm...

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Speaking as someone who hasn’t yet watched this show… did anyone else expect a cat or some other creature to jump out as they were scrolling down through the post? 🤣 (I didn’t notice the bloody  handprint in the 3rd gif my first time through.)

Beau Arlen & Jenny Hoyt (with Cassie Dewell) in Big Sky [373/∞]

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Missing CHICON 2008 footage found!

For those who saw my request for help finding CHICON 2008 footage for my Enhanced Edition Con Video project, I just wanted to share my gleeful news that it has been found!

I decided to make one more attempt at the search. I again failed to turn up any new videos, but I did run back across an old LiveJournal post from AgtSpooky. They'd attended the convention and provided a download link for their videos, but the link was long dead and they were no longer active on LJ.

I'd seen it before, but I'd written it off as yet more old footage forever lost to time, just like all those frustrating dead links on Supernatural Wiki's convention pages. This time I did a little more digging and I managed to track down some contact info through a series of bread crumbs they'd left on various web sites. I've tried to reach out to a few other fans before but I've never had any success, so I didn't have very high hopes.

However, this time I actually received a response! You've never seen a computer mouse move as fast as mine did when I glanced at my in-box and noticed the e-mail. They very graciously sent me their videos from the main CHICON 2008 panels and gave me permission to use them. And they have all the pieces I was missing. Finally, after a week of repeatedly hearing Jared's panel open up with a fan saying "I know, and I almost was one too", I finally know what the fan almost was. 🤣 (I'll leave y'all to speculate on that one until I post the video. Your speculation will be more entertaining than the reality.)

The videos upscaled nicely and I'll probably use them in several other places aside from just filling in my original gaps. They were shot from a different angle than the other videos, so that gives me more options. It also helps a lot with the subtitling when I have videos from people who were in different sections of the audience because the surrounding noise levels will vary.

This definitely made my day, so I just had to share because I know a few of you will understand. :)

#enhanced edition con video development

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Warning: Dimples Ahead!

I feel like I should issue a warning that my next CHICON 2008 video will be full of dimples.

This is a comparison image from one of the original videos versus what I've ended up with after upscaling and trying to do some color corrections.

The quality was already pretty good to begin with, at least compared to most of the other videos I've been working with from this time period. If you look at the full size version though, you can definitely see that the upscaling improved the details.

I think the color adjustments also helped. Truth is, if I'd worked on this video before I lost my mind over colors for the Comic-Con 2008 video, I probably wouldn't have seen anything wrong with the original colors and I never would have thought about trying to change them. I still don't trust my judgment, but I think I'm at least a little more aware of what looks bad than I used to be.

There will be portions that are of a lesser quality when I have to switch to an alternate source, but the majority of Jared's solo panel should look like this.

#jared padalecki #enhanced edition con video development #chicon 2008 #dimples!

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CHICON 2008 Request (and a tiny sample!)

This is a shot in the dark, but I thought I’d ask. Does anyone have a video of any quality, good or bad, that covers the below portions of the CHICON 2008 panels? I have videos for the vast majority of it, but there are a few small gaps annoying me and I'd love to fill them in. If you have something you’d be willing to let me use in my next set of enhanced con videos, please let me know. I would of course give you credit if I use them! Or anonymity if that's what you prefer. Even an audio file could be useful.

If you don't have anything but you're willing to reblog to increase visibility, that would be awesome too. I haven't had any success the few times I've tried to directly contact fans who were posting content back in these early days, so I don't think many are still out there, but I figure it doesn't hurt to ask.

Gap #1: The beginning of Jared’s solo panel, before he starts telling the story about his dogs sleeping with Jensen. I managed to find a very low-quality 30-second video near the beginning where he talks about the fan video that played, but it cuts off. The better-quality videos start just before Jared tells the dog story.

Gap #2: After the J2 panel, immediately after Jared finishes signing the posters and leaves the stage. The videos show Jensen clapping for Jared as he exits, but they cut off mid-clap. The next video picks up post-clap with Jensen saying, “Maybe we should wait ‘til he’s out of the room.” I think there are only a few seconds missing, not really enough to be annoyed by, but... 🤷‍♀️

Gap #3: At the very end of Jensen’s solo panel, as he’s getting ready to leave, he thanks the fans and talks about how many more viewers they've had that season. The last video cuts off before he finishes talking.

Other than that, I have a complete span of content for all three of their panels. It adds up to about 1.5 hours that will be split into 3 videos. I think the gaps are all short. I read through some fan reports and I didn’t see anything mentioned that wasn’t covered in the videos I have, so we're probably not missing anything big.

I'm only just starting the editing process on this set. so it will be a while before I have a new video to release. In case you missed it, I did publish the CHICON 2008 breakfast video earlier this week. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with this tiny sample of one of the things I’ve wanted to do so many times while watching con videos.

I always go slightly bonkers when Jared and Jensen go off in separate directions on stage, because the camera can’t possibly follow both of them. I usually end up pulling up all the videos and trying to find one that follows each of them so I can flip back and forth between them. 🤣 Now I have the power to take two separate videos and show them simultaneously. This silly thing makes me very happy.

Context: this was at the end of the J2 panel. Jensen made a show of removing Jared's chair, and then Jared took Jensen's chair and replaced it with a smaller chair. It will be more coherent when you see the full video; I mainly wanted to highlight the split screen parts for this post.

#enhanced edition con video development #J2 #Jared Padalecki #Jensen Ackles #CHICON 2008

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CHICON 2008 - Enhanced Edition of J2 Breakfast Panel

Direct link.

Here's my newest video. The video quality is very bad, despite the enhancements. It’s better than the original videos, but the main panels will be much better (with brief exceptions). If this is your first time seeing my videos, please don’t judge them by this one.

I figure this can serve as a test case for my earlier assumption that people aren’t interested in the lower-quality videos despite the other enhancements. Feel free to prove me wrong. :) This is why I skipped LA 2008 which would have been even worse than this.

The rest of the panels should come out well, so I wanted to do this con and I hated to skip just the breakfast and not have a complete set. Besides, there are some really funny moments here. So I did it for myself and hopefully a few others will enjoy it too!

If you want more details about what I did to enhance this specific video, including a comparison video showing the original vs enhanced versions and a preview of the main panel quality, check the long post. If you want more details about this project in general and links to my other videos, check the index post.

#enhanced edition con video #J2 #Jared Padalecki #Jensen Ackles #chicon 2008 #the misunderstanding with the fan from Germany was my favorite part #but I loved Jensen's reaction to Jared's ice pack shenanigans too #and seeing how proud Jared was of Jensen's Eye of the Tiger moment

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Hopefully this works... Tumblr went completely wonky during my attempts to convince it to add a video to a reblog!

We’re supposed to be doin version one man 😄

You said do versioN TWO! 😂😂

No! 🥰

We just did version one! 🙌🏼👐🏼

Yeah but I didn’t get the lahn in which means we have to do version one agEEYAN!

#J2 #rock paper scissors #gag reel #plus aired scene

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Microphoned

I blame Jared for the fact that I just spent the past 20+ minutes of my life reading people's arguments about how to spell the abbreviation “mic” when used as a past tense verb so I could properly subtitle him. 🤣

Mic’d seemed to come slightly ahead of miked in the popularity contest by my non-scientific count. I saw F-bombs hurled at those who chose mic'd and slaps threatened toward people who chose miked. This is clearly a serious matter!

I also saw a few votes for mic’ed.  Miced, however, is universally frowned upon unless the subject in question has been pelted with rodents.

In the end, at the risk of getting slapped, I went with the only version legitimized by dictionary.com and merriam-webster.com. 😛

#enhanced edition con video development #grammar #subtitling #rabbit holes

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Thank you! I haven't done much to the sound on any of the videos, except to try to make the volume levels consistent if I need to use audio from different sources. If I have a choice, I do try to use audio from whichever set of videos I think is the easiest to understand, so the audio you hear won't always be the audio that originally went with the video you see. However, that's only applied to Comic-Con 2008 and this new video so far, and the above sample wasn't one of the sections where I did that.

You might be onto something with the inverse of lowering the volume in the car to see better. 🤣 It really does kind of make sense, because if their faces are easier to see (because you're not blinking and cringing and flinching from the incessant flashes!) then you can see more of the movements of their lips to aid in interpreting what you hear.

The watch later list on YouTube makes a lot of sense. It's rare for me to watch a con video all the way through in one session, but I didn't create a YouTube account until I started posting these videos. I always watch on my laptop, so my tactic was to load the video onto a browser tab and just leave it open. I'd slowly work my way through it whenever I had a few minutes here and there.

Next Enhanced Video In Process - CHICON 2008

WARNING: Heavy camera flashes below.

I thought I'd post an update in case anyone's curious. After finishing Comic-Con 2008, I moved on to CHICON 2008. The videos for the main panels are decent and they're upscaling nicely, but you'll all hate the quality of the Breakfast video. I'm doing that one first.

I made some improvements to the originals which are explained and shown below, but I couldn't upscale them. Jared came out ok, probably because he was closer to the camera, but even the most light-handed approach distorted Jensen's features too much.

However, one thing I improved were the flashes. The original videos are nuts. Flashes have been bad on other videos too, but I think the lighting in the room made them stand out worse here. I was afraid they'd give someone a seizure or something so I found a way to reduce them. I probably won't do this again on other videos because I used a free trial that expired and I've already put way too much money into software for this pet project. I don't think it'd work as reliably on the less dramatically flashy videos anyway, but I may reconsider the purchase if I encounter more videos like this down the road.

I also tried to do some color corrections, but it's erratic. Suppressing the flashes doesn't change the real life effect they had on the lighting in the room. Maybe that's why the color correction settings I applied didn't have consistent results throughout the video. I separated out some longer segments of drastically different colors and fixed them independently, but there was just too much fluctuation. Individually analyzing and correcting all 37,440 frames is way beyond the scope of this project (and my patience) and would probably require more lifetimes than I have.

Anyway, I wanted to post a short comparison video so people can see the difference. I think when people just see the enhanced video by itself they'll be like, "this sucks!" I was hoping people might not hate it as much if they've seen how it originally looked. I think the "enhanced" version, once I publish it, will be the best version that's been posted to date, even if it's still crappy.

This video has three 30-second samples:

Original version of Breakfast video.

My modified version.

Sample of upscaled main J2 panel to prove it will get better again after the Breakfast video. (No flashes removed. You can see them, but I think they're less painful.)

I've also made other adjustments that aren't seen in that sample:

The best-quality video has interruptions because the video taker also took pictures. This caused the frame to freeze and the sound to cut out. When possible, I edited in an alternate lower-quality video at those moments. I also edited in the alternate video to cover brief segments missing in the main videos.

The only other video that has the 1st two minutes is one where the video taker was scared to be too obvious about what they were doing and so recorded their legs and random non-J2 objects instead. 😂 But it was still helpful, because I substituted that video's audio in for the sections that cut out on the primary video due to the picture taking. We'll still have a few freeze frames in the first two minutes, but at least we can hear what was going on.

Speaking of hearing, there were some truly ear-shattering screams when Jared and Jensen first came out. I lowered the volume a little in those moments to save your ears some trauma.

This breakfast video will be the next one I release, but my video releases will be increasingly slow. I have something going on in real life that's eating up most of my spare time and will probably continue to do so off and on for most of this year. Nothing bad, just very time-consuming. This is a shorter video though, and I'm already well into the work on it, so hopefully it won't take too long.

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Thanks, I really appreciate the suggestion!  In my case it’s more about my priorities and my willingness to spend the money than it is about my ability to do so if I really wanted to. I just have more practical things to save my money for right now. I wouldn’t be comfortable taking any money for this project.

Maybe if I’m still doing this in December, I’ll reconsider. That’s when I’ll have to decide whether to renew an expensive annual license fee. But in truth time is the bigger constraint for me, so my decision is likely to be based more heavily on whether I feel like the time I’m spending is justified, and whether I should really spend more money just so that I can spend more time in a way that might not be the best choice -- if that makes any sense!

I’ve had a lot of fun doing these videos, and it's satisfying because I'd really wanted to see this done. I’m treating it as a hobby, both in terms of the time and the money I’ve put into it. Unlike my other hobbies which tend to be more solitary, I love being able to share the results with you and with the few others who are interested, but if I was hoping to make money then I would definitely be doing something else with my time.

The response here on Tumblr has been very generous, definitely more than I expected when I first posted, but based on the actual watch time I see in my YouTube statistics, I think a lot of people like the idea of the project but don’t have time to watch the videos themselves. Most of the view counts must be either from some sort of autoplay process or from people just watching out of curiosity for a brief time.

And I can completely understand people not having time. I often see interesting but lengthy content on here that I’m unwilling to give up my limited free time to delve into. I've skipped watching much shorter videos than mine because if I spend much time consuming other people's content, then I run out of time to do any work on my own project that day. Since this is a site full of creators, I imagine a lot of other people are making similar choices.

Next Enhanced Video In Process - CHICON 2008

WARNING: Heavy camera flashes below.

I thought I'd post an update in case anyone's curious. After finishing Comic-Con 2008, I moved on to CHICON 2008. The videos for the main panels are decent and they're upscaling nicely, but you'll all hate the quality of the Breakfast video. I'm doing that one first.

I made some improvements to the originals which are explained and shown below, but I couldn't upscale them. Jared came out ok, probably because he was closer to the camera, but even the most light-handed approach distorted Jensen's features too much.

However, one thing I improved were the flashes. The original videos are nuts. Flashes have been bad on other videos too, but I think the lighting in the room made them stand out worse here. I was afraid they'd give someone a seizure or something so I found a way to reduce them. I probably won't do this again on other videos because I used a free trial that expired and I've already put way too much money into software for this pet project. I don't think it'd work as reliably on the less dramatically flashy videos anyway, but I may reconsider the purchase if I encounter more videos like this down the road.

I also tried to do some color corrections, but it's erratic. Suppressing the flashes doesn't change the real life effect they had on the lighting in the room. Maybe that's why the color correction settings I applied didn't have consistent results throughout the video. I separated out some longer segments of drastically different colors and fixed them independently, but there was just too much fluctuation. Individually analyzing and correcting all 37,440 frames is way beyond the scope of this project (and my patience) and would probably require more lifetimes than I have.

Anyway, I wanted to post a short comparison video so people can see the difference. I think when people just see the enhanced video by itself they'll be like, "this sucks!" I was hoping people might not hate it as much if they've seen how it originally looked. I think the "enhanced" version, once I publish it, will be the best version that's been posted to date, even if it's still crappy.

This video has three 30-second samples:

Original version of Breakfast video.

My modified version.

Sample of upscaled main J2 panel to prove it will get better again after the Breakfast video. (No flashes removed. You can see them, but I think they're less painful.)

I've also made other adjustments that aren't seen in that sample:

The best-quality video has interruptions because the video taker also took pictures. This caused the frame to freeze and the sound to cut out. When possible, I edited in an alternate lower-quality video at those moments. I also edited in the alternate video to cover brief segments missing in the main videos.

The only other video that has the 1st two minutes is one where the video taker was scared to be too obvious about what they were doing and so recorded their legs and random non-J2 objects instead. 😂 But it was still helpful, because I substituted that video's audio in for the sections that cut out on the primary video due to the picture taking. We'll still have a few freeze frames in the first two minutes, but at least we can hear what was going on.

Speaking of hearing, there were some truly ear-shattering screams when Jared and Jensen first came out. I lowered the volume a little in those moments to save your ears some trauma.

This breakfast video will be the next one I release, but my video releases will be increasingly slow. I have something going on in real life that's eating up most of my spare time and will probably continue to do so off and on for most of this year. Nothing bad, just very time-consuming. This is a shorter video though, and I'm already well into the work on it, so hopefully it won't take too long.