This is a video I made for the song Empty Pockets, which I recorded back in February 2008 for the RPM Challenge.
(Originally uploaded to blip.tv)
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Tag: video
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Multipurpose equals Slow
I’ve heard that multitasking burns more brain cycles due to switching between things, and even though you may think you are getting more done by multitasking, you really aren’t.
You know how your computer seems really fast when you get it, and then after a while it seems like it’s not quite so fast? It’s because of all that crap you add along the way. Those widget, and music scrobbling clients, and Twitter clients, and calendar agents, and notifiers, and on and on…
Video editing is resource intensive, and what I’ve found is that if I’m going to do just editing, I will log out any other users on my Mac (damn you fast user switching!) and then reboot, and then launch Activity Monitor, and quit (or force quit if necessary) any process not directly related to my task. So with a fresh reboot, and no silly little processing doing silly little things, I can go about my work. Alternately, I suppose I could create an account dedicated just to editing, and boot into that, but that’s more of a pain to me…
The reboot and quitting of processes is probably a five minute process, but saves me well over five minutes of time within an hour of editing.
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Does HDMI work?
During the move, the ceremonial setting up of the TV happened a bit earlier than I expected, due to the cable guy coming three hours early. No matter, I was ready, and while he was finding signal loss, I was trying to use the HDMI cable again.
You might remember that I got a DVI-D to HDMI cable back in January 2008. I tried to use it, but I just did not see a difference in signal quality, and there was this nasty lag when changing channels.
So when Gabe was over, I asked him about his experience with HDMI and he said he couldn’t stand the DRM wrapper it put on the video. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about until I mentioned the lag I was experiencing in changing channels, and he said “Dude, that’s the DRM wrapper I am talking about!” or something like that.
So I am back to using component video cables, because as Gabe pointed out, the ability to quickly go through the channels is of great importance. The component video cables allow that to happen, and like I said, I just am not seeing any difference in image quality. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s my 3 1/2 year old HDTV, I dunno… but for now, we’ll do it this way.
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Video-Fu Time
I’m really getting into video editing again, this time with Final Cut Express…
iMovie was a great tool for simple video, and pretty much everything I posted on tinkernet between 2005 and 2007 was done using iMovie, but I’m enjoying the advanced editing possible with Final Cut. (Here’s the first quick ‘n dirty video I did with Final Cut Express, which I shot using a Canon ZR800: MilwaukeeDevHouse1)
Over at Z2 I just completed a much larger project, a behind the scenes film showing how we shot a large-scale commercial for a car dealer. This was a mammoth project compared to the few minute shorts I’ve done in the past. I ended up logging 130+ minutes of footage I had filmed on a Sony PD150, as well as going through 440+ photos for the visuals, and did a bit of homework watching a lot of DVD extras I had available, before writing an outline of the piece, and then having Eric write the voice over script. I actually recorded the 1st and 2nd draft of the voice over myself to get it in place for the rough edit, before I engineered the final narration which was voiced by Joe Haas.
I also ended up shooting another 20+ minutes of interview footage to add into the final piece. Eric ended up helping a lot by doing most of the writing, and much of the picking and choosing of interview footage to use. Cory and Deb of Z2 acted as the producers making suggestions and comments along the way. I got a bit ambitious on the titles, which looked great, but definitely increased render time.
There were a few things that I felt thing could have been improved, mainly the audio. I didn’t have enough time to clean up all of the audio using Logic, so I ended up doing much of the editing and leveling in Final Cut, which was not ideal, but worked OK for the piece.
We ended up showing it at the Majestic Cinema in Brookfield, which was a blast. The crowd seemed to like it, of course, they were the stars of the feature. It was a little weird seeing my work projected on a full-size movie screen, but it was definitely very cool. I look forward to more video editing in the future.
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BarCampMilwaukee2 Video
Our pal David at Korporate Media lovingly crafted this video highlighting BarCampMilwaukee2, and I have lovingly uploaded it for all to see.
In the time since the first BarCampMilwaukee held in 2006, we’ve come a long way. The folks at Web414 have become a great force behind events like these. Web414 also helped sponsor BarCampMadison in 2007 and the recent DrupalCampWisconsin. Our next crazy idea is MilwaukeeDevHouse with MKEDH1 taking place March 14, 2008. (And hopefully BarCampMadison2 in April 2008.)
We’ve built quite the tech community here in Southeastern Wisconsin, and BarCamps in Milwaukee just keep getting better. People are sharing, learning, and making new friends along the way. Enjoy the video… and we hope to see you at the next big thing.