#1884
Where did I leave off with my last randomness?
Saturday 5/19
Saturday we spent the day attending the wedding and reception of two good friends. I have been friends with her for many, many years, since maybe even kindergarten. Steve has known her for about 10 years now and both of us have known the groom for about 6 years. It was wonderful watching their ceremony, especially. From the moment I met him, I just knew they would one day be married, even though for years she introduced him as, “my friend.” But the rest of us… we just knew. :)
Sunday 5/20
Sunday two different men separately told me, “I like your haircut.” I had to stifle the laughter because… I got my hair cut on April 5th and I have seen both of them since then! Maybe it’s finally grown into niceness? I feel like I am in need of a haircut!
Sunday night I screwed up the Avid computer. In my defense, however, I was only doing what Microsoft told me to do! I did exactly what the article said but an error occurred and about a thousand important Windows files were deleted, literally. It was strange, however, because it continued to run until it was restarted and then it wouldn’t come back up.
Monday 5/21
I spent Monday with our wonderful Avid specialist trying to get Windows to boot and to restore the single file we thought was deleted. This guy was bringing us our UPS anyway, so it’s not like he was there to help with this only. We couldn’t do the Windows repair method because it would tell us there was no hard drive installed in the system. We think this is because we have SATA drives. So we ended up driving the machine out to their offices and taking our hard drive out, slaving it in their system (which is near identical), and getting the important file. However, after that, we realized it wasn’t the only file missing so I decided to just grab my files, chalk it up, and reformat the stupid thing. So using the same method we grabbed my Avid Project Files (which are a BIG deal), the My Pictures folder, and a few other things such as the Avid upgrade. Thankfully, I had plenty of room on my two jump drives and actually had the second one with me. I just realized just now that I probably lost my title templates, because those, I believe, reside somewhere in the Programs folders, but all the media is safe because it is stored on our external Avid drives (more than a terabyte of space, baby). I can recreate title templates no big deal - I don’t use the same ones all the time anyway. The only thing that I am sorry is gone are all my Quicktime reference files for Sorenson Squeeze and the squeezed files that were waiting for me to compile and archive our stuff to DVD. So for the third time I get to output and squeeze these. They total was over 14 Gigs, so not enough room on my jump drives. Oh well, the biggest problem is just that it’s very time consuming to squeeze.
But the reinstall of everything went… just marvelously. I was surprised, actually. Both other times (the first system then the second system after we called on the “lemon law” with HP due to many hardware issues in a new system) I was not the one doing the original installs and setups. But I am learning more all the time with Avid and such and with the newest installs I have realized that some of the settings I relied on the first times around were not default but were set by our first person for us. So I’m having to learn what those are and where to change them. I still have to find out where to set the button for the marker because I’m still hitting F5 and it isn’t set to do anything and just beeps at me for now. :)
I was glad, too, that I took my laptop as I was able to use it to research the problem I was having in the beginning and then later because I was bored to death during the long reformat and was able to play The Sims. :)
Tuesday 5/22
Tuesday was spent editing the Memorial Day veterans video. I was supposed to do it on Monday, but the unforeseen problems caused me to lose a day!
But the video is coming along nicely - though I HAVE to get it done tonight. I know I had said the Easter thing was the most extensive project I’d done, but this beats that out. First time I’ve worked with more than 2 tracks of audio. It’s amazing how some of the stuff is coming together, making me look really good, haha - you know, the timing is just perfect, makes it look like I’m a math whiz or something who figured it all out down to the proper second. ;-) I’m really excited about this project though.
The only thing right now that I am very worried about is how it’s going to sound on the big sound system when we show it on the big screens. There was no option to use the professional audio equipment for taping, one person just cannot do it alone. So when I did the first two interviews I used our remote camera. It is a professional video camera (mid-grade) and it does do good audio but there is some background noise. Like a low roar, I think you know what I mean. It picked up noise from the AC (it was hot that day) and the florescent lights even, etc. Not to mention I was shoulder mounting it and it’s not too steady (though the video quality itself is good). Gotta admire those guys that do that kind of thing every day. I’m just not used to it anymore, I rarely run a camera, I stick to the directing and editing. Then the rest of the interviews (seven or more I believe) were not done by me and were on an even less-professional camera. It’s a nice camera, just not professional grade and it was having even more of an issue with the lights and its audio is lower. Not to mention the shots are not set up the way I would have preferred, but what can you do? It was wonderful, actually, that I didn’t have to do those seven interviews because likely I would have had to add another 420 miles in traveling to this…
But anyway, as far as playing it on the Avid, it looks awesome. I’d love to post it online but we’re at just under 40 minutes, or maybe 37, whatever, and you can imagine the file size that time would put out. So most likely only certain special people are going to get to see it… of course, I’m not opposed to mailing out DVDs to friends… ;-)
Tuesday I was also presented with this wonderful piece of work and had to snap a cellphone shot since I’d forgotten my real camera:
What is wrong with people?!
I also got to relax a bit Tuesday evening and finally finally finally finished uploading all our photos from our little day trip on April 28th. Of course, probably some more to come on that later…
