This was a good ride today, but cut short because it was getting late. Well, next time to the top!
15.2 miles, 2:08 - but there was a lot of talking going on this trip. Not a time-record for sure!
Oh, and did I mention that I flipped the handlebars on this one?
Rode about 76 today, in about 5.5 hours. (Well, it was 6 total, but 5.5 hours on the bike.) Beautiful day - mid 60’s or so, partly cloudy so I only got partly sun-burned.
Well, I’m happy to say that I think both of these projects are complete. I’ll not know for sure until it hits the press, but all indications show that it’s at least almost done.
The Portuguese Lamb (O Cordeiro) has been a long process (as is any translation…) and I sent the final proofs to Calvin to look over once more. I did go over the audio this week, to try and clean things up a little and add some space between page-turns and the like, but not doing too much to it. That and the last minute corrections on the text (I think there was 5) and that’s it! We’ll probably wait for the Luxemburgish and German to be ready before going to press, as we’ll print all 3 at one time.
The Interactive Stranger has some testing to do on the DVD, and if that passes, then I’m sending it off to get duplicated. It’s a complicated process, and if you aren’t meticulous, it takes a long time to get it all ironed out. Part of my problem is that the common day is plagued with interruptions, so it’s hard to keep focus on something for very long. All part-n-parcel of working in a small organization. (This week it’s been the 7 of us, next week: 6. And that’s being generous, as some of us aren’t here every day.)
DC Offset
Amplitude adjustment if needed per section
Compressor
Noise Gate
EQ
Edit
Compressor
...but I’m just using this to keep record, if that’s ok!
total time: 1:59:47 hours
total distance: 30.47 miles
total time from Bada-Bing and back: 1:44:57
Today Barney and I looked at 2 other condos for sale. They were cheaper, but built in 84, and looked like it, too. For now, I’m opting for the unit I have a bid on, possibly moving downstairs to the ground floor if possible. All that I guess depends on if they are selling or not. But we’ll look into that here in a day or two. I do have a realtor-friend that is looking into it, to see if he can gather any more information on the deal. My realtor (someone else, to my chagrin {distress or embarrassment at having failed or been humiliated}) has been very hard to get ahold of to answer simple questions, but that’s what I have to work with for now.
I’ve been working on working the audio over for the Portuguese Lamb book. It came to me about a week ago, but needed a little help in the EQ and compression / levels, so I’m embarking on trying to make that sound just a little better. It is interesting trying to listen to another language for hours on end, but I think it’s coming. I’m using Soundtrack Pro (Apple’s version of waverform editing.) Yeah, it is getting the job done, but I’m not working well with the program for some reason. One day I would like to look into ProTools and take that for a spin. But this’ll do for now. Got up to chapter 4 done so far.
I was also packing today, as Lloyd was out of the office today. Not too many orders, but still a decent amount. 17 I think it was.
This morning Barney and I were going to ride up Lookout Pass, but because of the rain in that area, we opted to just go around Hayden Lake. I think this is my favorite ride so far. A little slower today, but that’s ok.
The Short:
I built another DVD today.
The Long:
Click on the picture
(sorry the text under the picture is hard to read…here’s a copy: This one is the most complicated DVD that I’ve put together so far. There are only 18 menus, 110 video clips, and navigation between them all. When a person plays one section, it goes to the menu containing the next clip to be played and highlights it—so the study doesn’t get interrupted by needless navigation through the DVD. This is an INTERACTIVE BOOK, where the reader reads a portion of the book, then watches a portion on the DVD, highlighting the goodstuff that’s found in our 11 hour DVD series. About 4 hours of video is on this one disc. I had to personally create over 500 files for this, and this disc took over 4,500 files to build.) (Did I mention this is the second time I built this? The first time took 4 days. That file got corrupted, and other things, so I started over with this. But it’s better, as it has both Closed Captioning and Subtitles in English. All drop frame, if you are following this blog!)
Now: to test it out!
I had been thinking that autorthing DVD’s was a pleasurable job. With Scnearist, you have total control over the building such projects, but there are other things that come in to play. Timecode, for one. ProCoder seems to be encoding to non-drop frame, eventhough the specs say otherwise. Put it this way - if I had everything set for ‘non-drop’ in the autoring process, things worked well between the video and closed captions and subtitles.
Since I figured this out a while back, I went and changed and exported all my caption files (and subtitle files) to non-drop, and life was grand.
But - since I got this Mac, I also noticed that all the DVD’s I’ve been building don’t play smoothly on the Mac. Hmph. So, I needed to upgrade my encoding software, and opted for Final Cut Pro Studio, which comes with everything you ‘need’ to produce DVD’s. A sorta true statement, though I find some things quite limiting.
Now, that I’m encoding with Compressor (Mac based), the files come out drop. So, that means all those closed captioning and subtitle files (did I mention there were over 320 files?) needed to be re-configured to drop frame timecode. And exported.
Oh, and to top it off today, on The Lamb PowerPoint DVD I’m building, some of the cuts in the video didn’t encode at the right time. Why? I don’t know. But took a while to track that down and figure the problem (I fixed it by putting dissolves over the cuts, and, because it still looks good, I opted to stop there and use that.)
All in a days work, but sure seems that a lot more could be done if things were a little better explained. Hopefully, hopefully, I have this figured out for next time. If so, life will be easier, and projects done sooner. But just wait until I get the Interactive DVD finished!
Got up early (not on purpose!) and thought I better get a ride in, because rain is in the forecast. So, I rode down to Higgins point again, about a 24 mile ride. I was still tired (from last night) and still sore (from Thursday’s ride) so I didn’t do too well!
Barney called, and I helped him haul some junk out of his garage. We ended up giving it to the neighbor here at the office (an old welder and joiner.) He was happy and Barney was happy.
I spent the rest of the day working on the DVD stuff and trying to figure out how to make things work right.
Took a jont around Hayden Lake after work. It was a 30 mile ride, in about 2:10. It’s a beautiful, but tough ride. Nothing flat in this one, either up or down.
If you haven’t noticed, we had a problem the other day with the server, and we had to roll back the website to a few days earlier, so there was about a week that was lost in my blog. We have since fixed the problem and are back up and running. I may get in here and rebuild the last couple days, but for now, I’m just letting you all know things are well so far!
After work I drove to Cataldo, ID and hopped on the Rails to Trails section there. Did 20 miles SE, then turned around and headed back home. Flat as anything, which at first was nice, but after a while got to be rather tiring. Hills break up life so you aren’t doing the same thing mile after mile.
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