Stumble, fall, and ascention

Greetings,

Earlier this week I had a system wide laptop crash that virtually destroyed everything I had on it. Also, my backups were also corrupted. The only thing I can think of is that I was hit by some virus. Needless to say that I was not a happy camper. In fact I was down right pissed off. What made matters worse is that my student grades database was lost and it's back up was corrupted also. However, thanks to their credit, after informing my students of the situation and making a request to get back their papers today a vast majority of them did so. Those who didn't have either some or all of their paperwork asked if they could turn it in late and of course I said yes. Also to alleviate their anxiety I am letting them turn in copies of the original and I am also going to email them with what I have so that they can reconcile any discrepancies.

Now on to the movie.

The movie is at a fine cut stage. Because of the laptop crash I was not able to do some finish work, i.e. two more cutaways and end titles because of well, the laptop crash. What I can say is that the images look good, it flows well and while there are some cutaways I need to redo, for the most part it holds up well and conveys the story I wish to well, convey. The one issue I have is that Sherman's audio is a little "soft." What I mean by a little soft is that it is not as crisp as the rest but the fix is a minor one and should take only about 10-15 minutes.

After that's done, the next thing to do is to transfer it to DVCAM and get all nervous about showing it to a whole bunch of people...

Peace,

Jon

Conversion continued

Greetings,

Yesterday I came in to capture material from my Firewire drive into the AVID HD system and I had a 15% failure rate of material successfully transferring. To some people, they might think that a precentage that high is a failure but in my eyes, it is a resounding success! I've worked on recreating the media (AVID stated that the data was corrupted), which doesn't take a long time to do, especially since it is simple camera movements of stills plus I've been working on creating new media to replace older pieces that I felt were problematic. I'm still not done and have a lot to do in a VERY short amount of time but I realized I'll get done what I can in the time alloted and hope for the best.

Oh yeah, all of the HD footage has been captured at high resolution and there are no artifacts created. Of course I haven't seen what it looks like projected and when we did a presentation for the Deans last year it did have some problematic streaking but it might be the projecter at fault and not the image. At least I hope so.

Peace,

Jon

Conversion process is on the way

Greetings,

For those of you who have worked with AVID in its many forms you are aware that because uncompressed video is a space hog and can slow down your computer it is common practice to work with it in lower resolution. For the AVID DS HD the common compression is 1/4 resolution. Well, because I'm preparing the project for its premiere I am re-capturing the video at full resolution. And so far, so good. Now I need to put in my Adobe After Affects stuff and add some new video that I shot but so far, so good. Hopefully I'll not have too many headaches getting it all done. I'm hoping to have it done by tomorrow and any last minute pick up shots added before Friday. I can feel the crunch and having to lead a class discussion in rhetorical criticism in class isn't helping much. In case you're wondering what my discussion is in, it is the rhetoric of social movements. I'm examining the metonymy of AIM (American Indian Movement) at Wounded Knee 2 using a three academic books and a number of scholarly journals.

Peace,

Jon

Pick up shots, part 1

Greetings,

Today I went out with Christina and I was able to get some pick up shots done for some potential cutaways. It was interesting because we had her two foster children with us and moving them and the gear around was interesting but fun. Another interesting note is that I had Christina dress in warm winter clothes and well, it was rather nice outside. I hope that it invokes a mood that I need for her section and I figure that I'll need to do some more shooting to finish it up BUT the HD camera is going to be used by UWTV until the 15th so that does put me in bit of a crunch.

Anyway, I still have so much to do, redigitizing photos at higher resolution, etc. Oh yeah, I still have a couple of papers to write and numerous papers to grade and tons of reading. Oh well, I wouldn't want it any other way.

Peace,

Jon

P.S. the part 2 will be coming later...