travl

Live blogging is fun, but kind of hard to do when you are going 60 miles per hour or in a moving vehicle. So I took detailed mental notes instead. I will try to get that same stream of consciousness language that is all the rage in the blogosphere.

Tuesday - 12:30am (Wednesday technically)

Although I have to get to work early tomorrow, I nevertheless stayed up to my usual lights out time. Tonight I was working on a budget for a future shoot. Rent something 6 times and you might as well buy it, I say, I hope. This is true for camcorders under a certain price anyway, not so much for BMW's. Too bad.

With this done, I e-mailed the Excel to myself and hit the sack.

Wednesday - 6:00am

See my previous post to see my odd waking procedure...Got it? Great.

I manage to roll out of bed at 7am, feed the cats, shower shave etc. No time for breakfast, so I grab a promotional box of raisin bran I got in the mail and a bowl of pasta from the fridge, leave my wife a note and bail. My car is a mess, inside and out. It has been raining in CT since last November, so there is plenty of mud and grime on the car. Luckily Saturns are plastic so it will never rust. The inside, while I cleaned it over the weekend, still contains lots of trash.

Who cares, right? It's a live blog. Not everything is meaningful. This reminds me of college. I was a DJ at WSAM, the carrier current AM station on campus - I think we had 1 watt. I got an award for talking too much. About nothing. Also I played a lot of Van Halen, when I was supposed to be playing songs by then unheard of bands like Phish, Spin Doctors and Blues Traveler.

Hey you wanted stream of consciousness.

Back to our story...

7:25am

Stopped for gas then fired up the iPod and hit the road. One advantage of going in early is the lack of traffic in the Waterbury, CT madness. Here's an image of our local interchange, the "mixmaster." http://maps.google.com/maps/mm?hl=en&client=firefox-a&q=waterbury,+ct&ie=UT...

Speaking of a mess, I realize I have the old timey version of the iPod, but it is really difficult to navigate songs while driving without an abrupt meeting with a guardrail. So I try to make a playlist. This week I am listening to new episodes of the Bowery Boys, NY City History podcast; TED Talks; and of course the latest episode of Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me. One of these days I WILL get Carl Cassel's voice on my home answering machine.

7:45am

Pulled up to the office...now the fun begins.

The reason I intended to go to bed early last night was because I have an appointment at 2pm to demonstrate a DVD. Yesterday I made all the DVD menus, imported them into Adobe Encore 1.5 on my laptop. While CS4 is a great improvement, 1.5 is pretty stable...and portable. More on this later.

8:00am

With fresh cup of coffee in hand, I fire up three computers:

1. Laptop. Open Encore and Photoshop. Import pre-made animations (rendered to MPG2 yesterday)
2. Edit station in my office. Start capturing a DVCAM tape needed for an ongoing edit that our PA is working on this week, so it is ready when he arrives later on.
3. Edit station in another office. My colleague had done the initial final edit yesterday, pending my review and tweaks. I sat down to review and tweak.

9:00am

My, where did the time go? I have been reviewing the edit, making slight adjustments as I go. As an experiment, I export one sequence to MPEG2, just to see how long it will take later in the morning. It took about a minute, so that is good news, as there are 14 sequences going into this not-yet-authored DVD project.

10:00am

Email from my client - can I move our meeting up to 2pm from 2:30? Of course.

10:02am

Darn. I needed that extra half hour.

11:00am

Editing seems to be done. The original footage for this project is a combination of HDV 1080i and SD 4:3 DV. Options for the final edit are either HDV 1080i, but then the DV looks bad, or 16:9 SD DV, so the 1080i shots are full screen and the 720x480 4:3 SD DV is centered over black or in any number of split screen positions, or 4:3 SD DV with the 1080 footage letterboxed and the SD footage full screen. You never know what type of monitor the end user will use, so you pick the lowest common denominator, which is usually SD DV 4:3. Even though you can do 16:9 SD DV and know that the MPEG2 will play back correctly off the DVD, not all DVD players are setup correctly for 16:9 televisions.
For this project, for now, it is 4:3 SD DV, however I may switch to 16:9 SD DV for the final edit, once I know if the end user will be using 16:9-ish computer screens.

Setup Media Encoder with all sequences and hit Start.

11:05

Darn - forgot to eat breakfast. Oh well, it will have to wait.

Sat down at laptop, and started setting up the DVD navigation. With a complex project, it helps to have either a diagram, flowchart or a good memory. I find that if I logically name my DVD menus in advance, this becomes flow-charty by its nature.

A DVD project has a sequence - how you perform this sequence is up to you, but make sure you do everything:

Turn text or button objects into buttons. I find it easier to make text as text and buttons as objects in Photoshop, then convert to a button in Encore, which automatically adds the (+) symbols in the layer sets.

Check the button navigation - remember not everyone uses a mouse. Also add extra button areas so the user does not have to click the text precisely.

Assign button links - either to other menus or to timelines. Since most of the MPEG2 files are rendering, I can setup the menu navigation and the limited animations which are timelines.

Set timeline end actions. I like the end action to return to the last menu. Or if ambitious, to return to the next option on the main menu - lead the navigation.

Set menu color set colors and the color set used on each menu.

12:10pm

Ok, got the new MPEG2 files from Media Encoder in the other room. Transfer over the network to the laptop. I keep a shared folder called INBOX where everything goes, then move it as needed once you have the files.

Import the new files into Encore then make timelines for all, set end actions and link everything up.

12:40pm

Navigation, links and testing complete. Given the rainy weather and typical traffic on the Merritt Turnpike, I need to get outta here. Still need to export an ISO file burn and test the DVD. What to do...

12:45pm

The reason I put this project on the laptop is because I knew this would come down to the wire. I grabbed the mouse, mousepad, power supply and threw these and some blank DVD-R discs in plastic clamshell cases into my satchel, left the laptop running and took everything to the car. I set Encore to compile the ISO file and hit the road.



The ISO actually finished in about 10 minutes. I pulled over (you think an iPod is dangerous in the car - try a laptop) and shut down. Burning can wait.

12:50pm

Stopped at the mini mart for coffee and I have to get some food. Of course this is the one mini mart in America that does not sell prepackaged sandwiches. I wound up with a cookie dough flavored energy bar. I see why this particular mini mart is always surrounded by kids on BMX bikes. Note to self, add BMX Bandits to Netflix Queue. Nicole Kidman was a cute teenager.

1:15pm

Got on Rt 8, next stop Merritt.

1:28pm

Merritt Pkwy - right on schedule...for now. Suddenly the sky opened and traffic ground to a halt. Note to self, pick up some gopher wood on the way home.

1:58pm

The traffic and rain over, I arrived at my destination, checked in, got an ID badge and went to my client's office. Fired up the laptop to burn the DVD. Meanwhile they showed me the all-in-one PC/Touch Screen they are evaluating for this project. I knew this was a possibility, so I intentionally made the DVD menu buttons big enough to use your finger.

Disc burned, inserted into touch screen, and all is good.

3:05pm

Meeting complete, time to get back onto the slip and slide...er..Parkway, for the ride home. There was a tree down so once again it was a parking lot.

Whenever I leave the office, some secret Bat signal must get illuminated, because suddenly I get a lot of phone calls and e-mails. Well if you think an iPod and a Laptop are difficult to use while driving, a Blackberry is even worse. Even dialing the phone is a challenge if you are not using a speed dial button.

This made me think of the Operating Room. Many OR's now have voice controlled functions for such things as CO2 pressure, light illumination, camera position and even iPod controls (seriously). Why can't cars have some kind of head-up display with voice activation? We must have the technology.


One day perhaps.

Speaking of one day, one day I made this video of driving through Waterbury and up Rt 8 into the Lichtfield hills. Exciting isn't it.



4:30pm

Arrive home safe and sound. Oh yeah, the dishes. At least I unplugged the toaster this morning...oh wait, i didn't have breakfast. Which reminds me I am hungry. What ever shall I eat?

How about some pasta with clam sauce. I think this calls for another grainy home video, don't you? Sometimes non-HD, point and shoot poorly exposed video of our pets is just what the doctor ordered.



Thanks for reading.

Mike Cohen