This morning Russ and Ken took off for meetings up in Canada, and Lloyd and Faith are on their way to Indonesia. Tom is in Seattle, so that leaves Rachel, Barney and I to run the office for a week or so. It’s not been too busy, but keeps us on our toes.
Today a small skid of the Spanish Workbooks came in. It’s good to see them arrive, as it’s been a long time coming. It will probably take a week to get them available online for sale, as I’m not sure of the procedures to putting new products into our accounting software. I’m sure I can get some help to do that, but for now I’m opting to let it wait.

Ken and I got back from Las Vegas, where there was the huge NAB Convention. While there are bigger conventions in Vegas, this was big enough for me.
Last time I went (a year ago) I was more sheltered from the filth of the city than this time. Because we had our own car on the last trip, we just drove to the center and back to the hotel, and didn’t do much else. But this time we walked from the Sahara hotel to the convention center and back. A 3/4 mile walk with over a couple dozen newspaper style dispensing machines filled w/ porn. One day we walked down to another hotel that had an Ansel Adams exhibit. But that walk took us through the heart of the city, which wasn’t very pleasant. People standing on the street handing out porn cards to get you to go into night clubs and whatnot (I’m assuming that’s what it was—I was tempted to take it and rip it up and throw it away, but just ignored it and kept walking, or looked in the eyes of those handing it out with a good frown…)
I was thankful to get out of there, and glad I made it before the fire and brimstone fell. But it did show me how merciful God is, and, eventhough He is grieved by this, He still allows people time to turn to Him.
Riding the monorail (which isn’t that smooth) they were giving some statistics. Overall, 40 million people visit, of which, 87% gamble. And, those that gable, spend on average around $600. That was the end of the stats, but if you do the math, it’s over 20 billion spent. And they didn’t say how much money was won in that time by those people (or lost.)
The time spent in the NAB Convention, however, was a profitable time. A lot of ideas for new equipment, but nothing concrete just yet.

Just keeping up with another project I’m working on - building new Stranger DVD discs. The main reason was because of our new logo, but there are other benefits.
1. The software I used to author these (Sonic Producer) didn’t support Global Variable, so doing subtitles with a menu structure wasn’t really an option. This is why the set doesn’t currently have subtitles. However, I did put Closed Captioning on it instead.
2. The menu order of events is a little choppy, so I’ve re-designed that a bit so it’s smoother.
3. The cameras we used has some issues with them, so the bottom 2 lines in the video would flash on and off. You can’t see this with a regular TV, so most people won’t notice, but if you play it back on a computer, it’ll be obvious. So, since I’m re-doing the set, I’m re-rendering all the footage, blanking out that portion so it’s not a problem.
4. But in doing so, it destroys the Closed Captioning that’s on the video files now. But that’s ok, because I can now add CC in the DVD Authoring process.
So, all in all, it’s just a major crunch—in the sense that the computer has to crunch through all this data (over 130 gb) converting it 2 times before it’s ready for me to re-author.
Believe it or not, this is less work than putting together the Interactive DVD a while back. And it’s just on the heels of doing all this yet another time for the eLearning course we are building.

And just for fun here's an old video from cutting a tree down at Jamie & Chris' place in IL.

And while I'm at it, I might as well put up the other one, recorded by our neighbor. (No audio to speak of, as it was from inside the house.)

Another lake ride - 17.1 miles (but I think it’s a little longer…) @ 58:50 this time.
Also, I moved out of my house-sitting job and back to the Legers today.

Found out today that I’m pre-approved for a loan of around $110… @ 100%, 6.75%. Not much here in the area for that, but it is a start. There has ben some properties for under that, in need of serious work. Still looking, and needing wisdom in which direction to go.

Up for the sunrise service, which was good. It was a neat time to remember the fact that Christ was raised, conquering death so we all can be made alive in Him. However, I should have brought my ear plugs! I am not against music, but I do believe there’s a volume limit!
After, I came home , had breakfast, took a nap, then went for a bike ride. This time I climbed Canfield mountain, which is basically right outside my door (of the place where I am currently housesitting.)
The ride hard, but good. The images below will give the feel of the trip, and speak for themselves!

Today was average, it seemed. I’ve been working on an eLearning course that we are putting together, which will entail about 11 hours of video available to all. We’ve a lot of work to do before it’ll be ready, but hope that it won’t take too long. Today I’ve been creating the actual video clips - which takes a few steps. First is to edit the clip to fit the eLearning format (basically chopping the front part off, as well as the tail.) That then gets exported to another file, which later gets compressed to Flash Video, uploaded to the servers and ready to go.
But I also want to do captioning (suprise!) and my captioning software doesn’t output to the standard I need. I hope they make it available, but Barney says he can do all 50 lessons in a couple hours if they don’t pull through. But the captions will need to be suited to fit the new video files - not a big job, but another step non-the-less.
Really, this is a lot less ‘work’ than the Interactive Stranger - because that has 110 clips, this only has 52. Granted, these clips are longer, so there’s more processing time, but that lets me get other things done in the mean time (like writing thank-you’s!)
Went for another 17.1 mile ride today (it was a beautiful 63 degrees today!) and pulled it at 0:59:25. Yeah!

17.1 miles, 1:01:40 - I tried to break 1 hour, but couldn’t make it. There was a small tail wind on the way out, which turned into a headwind on the way back - just couldn’t pull it off!

After Tom proofed the DVD-I (The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus Interactive Edition), I had 3 changes to make. One was quite blatant, and am glad it was found. The other 2 weren’t as bad, but it did make the product better.
I think the DVD part of this is done. All that’s left is the cover of the book, the label for the DVD and the ISBN / CIP information for the book itself. Oh, and money to get it published.

This is not the ‘cleaning’ I used to do at the office 10 years ago, but instead, backing up the old files off the server then deleting them. It’s some work going through 5 years of work, but it is going well.
17.1 miles, 1:04:00

Not like a couple weeks ago (with 53 boxes going out the door), today we only had 10.
But, in my time off, I went and talked to a friend who writes mortgages to see what kind of money I’m worth. It was interesting to note that it was more than I expected, and will even be looking at a place tomorrow. (Barney and I looked at the same place today, but will be going down w/ a realtor, another friend, to take a look.)
James 1:5
17.1 miles, 1:11:14

Ok, last Friday I finished a ‘good’ copy of The Interactive Stranger DVD. It was a long, hard project, but seemed to do well. I gave it to Lloyd to proof ‘watch’ for me. Well…he came back with some informaiton I didn’t want to hear - that the first couple words were being clipped when playing.

When I was building the video files, I was cutting things pretty close, thinking it wouldn’t be a problem. But it ended up being a problem. So this week, I’ve been adding 1 second of black video to the beginning and end of each clip (110 of them, remember?) That threw the closed captioning / subtitles off 1 second, so fixing that was in order. That’s 220 captioning files to work and export.

To implement the idea, it was better than expected. I didn’t have to delete much of the programming on the DVD disc, just all the video tracks from the Scenario Editor. Then you have to delete the tracks. Then you have to delete the video and audio clips. Once done, you can import the new clips, build your tracks (with Subtitles and Closed Captioning) then position them in the Scenario Editor, hooking the menu links back up.

I did all this, to come to find out that it now won’t fit on one DVD disc (adding 220 seconds to the clips made it too big.) Wasn’t much, about 12 mb, but there’s nothing to cut out. Sooo, after attempting to burn a DVD+R DL (Dual Layer), and succedding, but with much hassell, I decided it best to re-encode the audio to a smaller spec, saving about 57mb. I couldn’t squeeze the video anymore (there’s minimum standards for using VBR (Variable Bit Rate) and I was already as small as I could go, without jepardizing the quality significantly.

But - it worked just fine. It now fits on a single layer DVD and we are back to proofing it to make sure everything is right on.

Well, that’s about it for the week. A good learning experince, and one that I hope I never have to repeat!

Been having some trouble w/ my blog. Not sure what the deal is, and this is just a test.
BTW: Some of the video files don’t show in IE7. I might fix it - or just take them out. Time will tell…

Just a quick report - The Lamb DVD - Just the Story came in today. It will be a little while before it’s up for sale on the web, but it’s good to know that it made it in today. Last week, What’s in a Name and Flying Truth in Formation came in too. These were not real big projects, but were drawn out to completion because of all the other things going on. But I’m glad to see them finished!

The Problem:
In creating DVD's using Sonic Scenarist, the Subpicture (Subtitle) Menu is designed for use in the Video Title Set (VTS), not the Video Manager (this is not Sonic Scenarist's problem--it's the DVD format that has the problems.) However, the Stranger Interactive (and the STR) DVD need the Subpicture Menu to reside in the Video Manager (as each VTS is set for each chapter represented) to save duplicating the Subtitle Menu 16 times.

So, to get around that problem, one needs to use GPRM'S (General Parameters) to track the Subpicture Status (whether on or off.) One problem with this is that if the user selects SUBTITLES on his remote during a video clip (setting the SPRM (System Parameters) to "64",) the GPRM is not updated, and hence, upon playing the next video, the subtitle selection will default to the setting BEFORE the user changed it with his remote.

The Solution:
Before a video clip is played, it needs to check the GPRM if the subtitles are ON or OFF. At the end of a clip, the SPRM needs to be checked and adjust the GPRM if the Subtitle setting has changed.

The Subtitle Menu just sets the GPRM accordingly.

My Variable Settings:
GPRM0=variable setting. (0=off, 1=English (track1), 2=track2, etc.)

PreCommand of the First PGC:
Move GPRM0, 0
Move GPRM1, 64
Move GPRM2, 65
Move GPRM3, 66
Move GPRM4, 67
Move GPRM5, 1
Move GPRM6, 2
Move GPRM7, 3
Move GPRM8, 4

SubtitleOFF PreCommand:
if(GPRM0==1) link PGCN_SubtitlesON)

SubtitleOFF Button Command:
{Move GPRM0,1; Link PGCN_SubtitlesON}

SubtitleON Button Command
{Move GPRM0,0; Link PGCN_SubtitlesOFF}

PreCommand to ROOT MENU in each VTS
if(GPRM0<GPRM5)SetSTN subpicture=1:OFF
if(GPRM0==GPRM5)SetSTN subpicture=1:ON
if(GPRM0==GPRM6)SetSTN subpicture=2:ON
if(GPRM0==GPRM7)SetSTN subpicture=3:ON
if(GPRM0==GPRM8)SetSTN subpicture=4:ON

PostCommand for each video clip
SetHL_BTNN HL_BTNN=2 (or whatever the next clip is)
if(GPRM1<SPRM2)Mov GPRM 0,0
if(GPRM1==SPRM2)Mov GPRM0,1
if(GPRM2==SPRM2)Mov GPRM0,2
if(GPRM3==SPRM2)Mov GPRM0,3
if(GPRM4==SPRM2)Mov GPRM0,4
CallSS RSM=1, RootMenu

I'm sure there are other ways of going about this, but for now that's the best I could figure out.

One thing I learned today:
Don’t make a video clip for a DVD, that starts ‘right now.’ Allow at least a second of black before the clip action, as some DVD players have a little ‘lag time’ in there. If you start too soon (speach within the first 10 frames) you’ll loose words!
This would be not such a big deal, except the DVD in question has 110 video clips, each with both Subtitles and Closed Captions, and a 4 day authoring time (there was a learning curve in there for this one.) And to fix, I need to put some time on the head of each clip (and tail, while I’m here), render that to AVI, then convert that to M2V, change and re-output all my captions (timing is now off) and then the subtitles. Then my hope is that if I clear my Encoded Cache files, it’ll all work right when I open Scenarist. We’ll see…