A week on!

It is a week since I last blogged. I find that interesting as I have not felt the inclination to do so for the last seven days. It is not that I have not been doing interesting things, but maybe the better weather has had a calming effect on my mind?

This post is a reflection on the week, and as such anyone looking for more stimulating discourse is very welcome to click away now.

My last post was just prior the annual Curry Cup. Briefly this is an annual fixture amongst a group of friends (22 years now!) where the group all go out for a curry after. The winner gets to choose (and organise!) next year's venue and match and the loser gets the hottest curry in the house. The only choice the loser has is which type of meat?

I have played with this group for the last ten years or so and as a poor golfer I have been the recipient of the "hot curry" more than once, including last year. This year however I finished well out of the curry zone and as such enjoyed the freedom on the menu and relinquished the trophy toilet seat to an old friend.

It was a long, but comfortable drive home on Saturday, made all the better for the Lions winning the last test in Australia. There is something special about good radio commentary and that is what I was left with.

My personal time this week has been dominated with trying to make a video for my daughter's upcoming 18th birthday. My wife wants a whole collection of photographs and video clips of my daughter, from birth to today, put on a video over some music tracks.

Sounds simple eh? Well it is easier than it was in the past, but still not easy. I use Serif's MoviePlus X6 and it does a decent job with a lot of flexibility, but it still takes a long time; time to scan a load of old photographs, time to go through and select digital photographs, time to review and clip video pieces, time to make the music work and time to try and put it all together so that it looks decent.

The overall length will be around 9-10 minutes and I have easily taken 9-10 hours so far - and it is not complete yet. The other night the problems started. Firstly the amount of processing required caused the PC chip to overheat and the system to just close down. Fortunately I did not lose work, but I did lose time as I needed to let the PC cool down. I should say that I have a decent PC, but it is an all-in-one so maybe the cooling is not optimal?

Now I am aware of the heat issue I can deal with it, but complexity has appeared. I was trying to do it all in one video file. This was OK until the number of clips and effects became too numerous and the complexity caused performance to mimic swimming through treacle. At least that is my suspicion of the cause. So now I am trying to break the video into pieces that I will render and the construct at the end.

I will state the obvious - video editting is not my day job, so I know that I probably miss some obvious shortcuts or simpler approaches. This all adds to the time. I have a week left to complete this and believe that I will have it done in time. That said, I am pretty sure it will fall short of what my wife wants/expects, but it will be a hell of a lot better than nothing.

On another video note, I have not seem my standup comedy video yet and will have to chase them soon.