McKay Christiansen, my nephew

This post is for Shelli to show to her son, McKay. He was so cute!! And isn't it great to see mom and dad? Of course I have a longer version of Kyle's departure, but this super short movie is just for you. (Sorry about the quality-I had to change the contrast because it was so dark....)

Great News on My External Hard Drive

I received email today that Buffalo is going to honor my One Year Warranty on the External Hard Drive (even though it was a few days past one year). I am so happy! I purchased it on June 12, 2009 and it is just not working. I sent them an email about the problems it was causing on my computer, that it would cause my programs to freeze - not letting me quit programs,, that it wasn't able to be ejected, and worst of all it wouldn't even back up! I kept getting "back up - failed".

Today I had to send them a copy of my receipt. The plan is they will replace the hard drive. Good news for me!

I'm still going to get a different brand of an external hard drive. Brock suggested I get only a 500 GB drive because the bigger they are the more problems they have. How he knows this stuff - don't know!

Woo-Hoo!

Had a great success today! I burned two DVD's.

1. Rogers Family
2. ATC Riding

The DVD makes all the difference. I purchased Verbatim DVD-R. It worked perfectly. I am so excited and feel like I'm going to really make some good progress. I made sure that I saved the project before I closed iDVD and I was able to pull up both projects again. Yeah!

Today was a good day......this is me smiling.......

i DVD Problems

I burned my first project which was for the Rogers family of Kisha & Shalene's 10 year birthday party, Bobbi's talk at Shalene's baptism, and the snow outing that we had with their family. I burned the DVD and it played for a while on my DVD play, then became pixelated and froze. Disc menu would show up, but would not play two of the movies.

The disc plays just fine on my computer, although the menu does not appear at the first.

I have been researching what the problems could be. I found this on Apple Support:

DVD quality

1. iDVD 08 & 09 has three levels of qualities.
iDVD 6 has the two last ones
• Professional Quality (movies up to 120 min.) - BEST
• Best Performances (movies less than 60 min.) - High quality on final DVD
• High Quality (in iDVD08 or 09) / Best Quality (in iDVD6) (movies up to 120 min.) - slightly lower quality than above

2.Video from
• FCE/P - Export out as full quality QuickTime.mov (not selfcontaining, no conversion)
• iMovie x-6 - Don't use ”Share/Export to iDVD” = destructive even to movie project and especially so
when the movie includes photos. Instead just drop or import the iMovie movie project icon (with a Star on it) into iDVD theme window.
• iMovie’08 not meant to go to iDVD. Go via Media Browser or rather use iMovie HD 6 from start.

3. I use Roxio Toast™ to make an as slow burn as possibly eg x1 (in iDVD’08 or 09 this can also be set)
This can also be done with (Apple) Disk Util tool.

4. There has to be about or more than 25Gb free space on internal (start-up) hard disk. iDVD can't
use an external one as scratch disk (if it is not start-up disc).

5. I use Verbatim ( also recommended by many - Taiyo Yuden DVDs - I can’t get hold of it to test )

6. I use DVD-R (no +R or +/-RW)

7. Keep NTSC to NTSC - or - PAL to PAL when going from iMovie to iDVD

8. Don’t burn more than three DVD at a time - but let the laser cool off for a while befor next batch.

Father's Day 2010

The kids came over tonight to wish Steve a Happy Father's Day, so I took the opportunity to hook my computer up to the TV and play the old movies I had transferred to my computer. Everyone had such a great time watching the movies. This is what I want to do when the family comes over from now on. It was so fun to listen to how excited each of the kids were to see themselves at different ages. Their spouses had fun watching too, and the grandkids couldn't believe they were looking at their own parents as youngsters. They couldn't recognize them! It was really fun!

Steve had so much fun watching the videos of the boys, Darin, Grandpa Huffaker, and himself riding the ATC's at the dunes and at Sycamore. Priceless!

Tomorrow I'll be transferring more and finding more nuggets of old time memories.

I'm a Movie Making Maniac

I went for 2 1/2 hours to the Apple Store Project Session. I had imported quite a bit of VHS footage to work on while there. I had most of my questions answered and learned some new things. I took my computer and external hard drive. My computer froze when the hard drive was connected and the Mac Specialist couldn't eject it either. So he arranged to have a technician check it out (since it's under warranty and all). It was determined that the hard drive is defective and causing the computer problems. I agree. But, of course, I bought it on June 12, 2009 and today is June 19, 2010 so the one year warranty has expired- BY FIVE DAYS!! Geez Louise! I called to beg for any extension of warranty. Well, I'm just plain out of luck. I guess I'll be getting a new external hard drive.

In addition to that, I worked on many movies and I'm getting much quicker at editing and working my way around the movie program. Stuff to remember:

• Always send to iMovie before importing more VHS footage
• Export finished movie to Share>Media Browser rather that iDVD. It's easier to pull from there if you are putting more than one movie on a DVD
• Choose the Standard 4:3 rather than Widescreen for these home videos

I have to keep my computer working on these movies "round the clock". It takes "real time" to import the old footage, about 1/4 the time to send to iMovie, then you edit, then it takes "real time" to send to Media Browser, then once you've made the DVD, it takes "real time" to burn the DVD! Three times you handle this footage. All I can say is, I dump a lot of stuff in the trash before I make the final movie edits. That makes two of the waiting sessions are a little shorter!

At least I'm getting other projects done (sewing, cleaning, watching SYTYCD) during the "waiting periods".

Well here's new video. Uh yes, my singing debut, with some back-up dancing!

iDVD info

I went through all of the iDVD tutorials today. Magic iDVD seems like an easy way to make a quick movie with a menu that can have multiple movies on the DVD. What they don't tell you is there is a lot of waiting.....waiting.....waiting. You need to have many projects to do in between all the waiting.....waiting.

I sent the Kisha/Shalene birthday party to iDVD from "Share". I just made the DVD but I can't figure out if I can add an additional movie to that one.

Tomorrow I go to the apple store for a 3-hour project class. I will find answers!

Making a DVD

Today is the first time I am trying to burn a DVD. I made a movie in iMovie of Shalene and Kisha's 10 year old birthday party. I did quite a bit of editing and the final movie is 40 minutes. I went to SHARE>iDVD. Right now it is creating the movie and preparing the project. I'm timing it to see how long it takes. Interesting....it took 40 minutes. So will it always take as long as the project is?

Tomorrow I'm going to watch the tutorials of iDVD before I burn the DVD.

I wish I would have put chapters in the movie before I exported to iDVD. I did learn how to put in "comments" and "chapters:. Darn, wish I'd thought of that!

My friend forever!

This is a special little movie just for my friend, Bobbi. I'm just saying, back in 1989, we were still young 'uns. Oh...the memories!

Another old movie clip!

Here's another movie clip that makes for fun memories!

I Movie is "hanging"

So, I'm having this problem again. When I'm working in iMovie, the program freezes or "hangs". Before I went in to the Apple store, I had to force quit the program. I'm working on the project through the external hard drive and I think that is the problem. I stopped "Time Machine" from backing up while I worked, but it is still happening. Right now it's been "hanging" for about 3 minutes. I need to figure out how to pull it onto my computer hard drive, work on the project then save it over to the external.....I guess.

After force quitting imovie again, (it wouldn't quit until I turned off the ext hard drive), plugged back in (turned off the back up), then back to my project, I finally finished my first short movie! Here it is...it is 1:53 and took 3 minutes to export. Choose SHARE>Export> then there are size choices: Large, Medium, Mobile, Tiny. I chose MEDIUM file and it is an Mpeg-4 of only 22 MB.

Kirk should get a laugh from this. Footage from 1998 - wow:

I first exported it as Quicktime file, but it was too big. The blog can only take videos up to 100 MB.

Info

I read this on lifehacker.com. It looked like it might be important information.

Though the suggestion so far has been to save video in the DV codec, with enough video you'll need a significant amount of disk space to store it. If you're comfortable with more aggressive compression, encoding your newly digitized videos in MPEG4 or H.264 will help save a significant amount of space. Encoding at a data rate of around 2mbps and an audio data rate of 192kbps should provide you with a smaller file and a negligible loss of quality.

Here's more:

Storage and Organization

If you've made it this far, we've talked about creating a ton of files. With thousands of new documents, pictures, songs and videos you'll need a plan to keep things organized. Ultimately this will be defined by you, but storage options will help you dictate what you'll do with your newly digitized life.

Local Storage
The easiest method of storage is buying a large external hard drive and organizing the files in a simple folder structure. The upside is the simplicity of it. The downside is that you have no backup. If you don't plan to store your files anywhere online, you'll want to—at the very least—purchase redundant storage so a hard drive failure won't necessarily cause the loss of your data. Configuring a RAID Array is the more common and best methods of accomplishing this, but you can also simply keep a separate backup. If you do keep a separate backup, storing it in a fire safe box or somewhere outside of your home will reduce the risk of losing your data.

Cloud Storage

While local storage is somewhat of a necessity, keeping local backups isn't. With excellent online backup tools available for free or very little money, storing your data in the cloud is another option. Online storage doesn't necessarily need to be an exact replica of your local drive. An alternative to storing your data using a backup service is posting your media to social media sites. There are several options for video and photos. OfficeDrop (formerly Pixily) hosts your documents. You're not confined to using traditional storage and bearing the associated costs thanks to a number of free and low-cost sites that handle it for you. The exchange? You may have to settle for lower quality copy of your digitized life.

Talking about storage is a lot like talking to a lawyer: they're always going to give you a conservative response. It's easy to say you need to keep three copies of everything and go through as much trouble as you can bear to ensure you never lose your precious data. There's nothing inherently wrong with this approach but it's not necessarily realistic for many people. When deciding how you're going to store your digitized life, be sure to factor in a storage and organization process you'll actually follow. Find a balance that allows you to keep your data safe while not overwhelming you with too much extra work.

Today is Day 1

Today I went to the Apple Store for a One on One session because I have been having trouble with my external hard drive. They helped me get everything ready to go.

So I have:

• VHS to DVD Roxio digital converter
• Mac Book lap top
• 1 Terabyte Hard Drive
• Set up to work on IMovie from the hard drive

I should be ready to start. Day 1 finished.