Video

Having a baby means it's time to start doing all kinds of things I wouldn't normally do. For example, 3 AM feedings. Wouldn't normally do that. Not something any normal human being chooses to do. But, this post isn't really about that. No, the thing I am doing now is videotaping.

Now, people had video cameras when I was growing up, but they were pretty few and far between. And, they were huge. I remember video-cameras that look like something they tape TV shows with. The brick cell phone had nothing on these things. My family was not a video family. In fact, we were pretty late adopters of the VCR. This is all a little surprising considering my mom actually grew up with movie cameras. She still has her old films somewhere in the attic, although we don't have anything to play them on.

Home videos have changed a lot since my mom was a kid. It has changed a lot since I was a kid. Our super-cool new camcorder doesn't even use tapes. It just has a hard drive that records the video. I am guessing the editing has changed a lot too. Gone are the days of a razor-blade and tape to edit the film. Now I get to use my MacBook the way it is actually meant to be used. Of course, all is not as easy as it sounds. First I have to get the video from my camera to my computer. Then I have to convert it to a format that works with the software on my MacBook. Finally, I get to edit. Now, I have two programs for editing. One comes with the computer and is pretty scaled down, but easy to use. The other, we got inexpensively when Betsy was a student, but it is a pretty serious full-function editing tool. I started with the full-function tool. That was a mistake. Way too complicated. Once I imported some video, I had no idea how to do anything. The instruction book is far too big.

Next I tried, the easy editing tool that comes with the MacBook. Ah, Mac simplicity at work. iMovie let me do everything I wanted to do. So, I made my first video of Ian complete with music from a musician Betsy and I really like. Finally, I had to figure out how to export it in a format that people could view on their computers. Good times. Way to waste about 4 hours on a Saturday morning.

I still have to figure out where and how to post the video so people can see it. I don't want to put it somewhere public like youtube, so it might take a while to find the right place. In the meantime, if you want to see the video, email me or Betsy and we will send a copy to you.

As always, here is your picture of the week as a reward for reading this far: