Early this morning I received an email with the subject line “Rudy’s House”. The circumstances were such that it clearly was not going to be good news. It turned out that a good friend’s house burned down overnight. Rudy, his wife, and their four daughters (all under 10) got out safely. The house was pretty much a total loss, and he’s not yet sure how much business material he lost as well.
It seemed that a wiring problem with a bathroom fan sparked the fire, which started around 3am. The smoke detectors worked, and they woke my friend and his wife. Each of them grabbed one daughter, and a policeman grabbed the other two. The fire was on the local news (Boston area), and it was pretty surreal to watch the video.
Although the smoke detectors did work, none of the kids woke up. Apparently, that situation is not uncommon. So please check your smoke detectors to make sure they work, and that they are loud enough (and located appropriately) to wake adults. Go ahead and check now; I’ll wait here.
So what do you do for a friend who has lost everything to a fire? Between family and the Red Cross, their basic needs were covered. But we’ve been friends for years, and we’ve traveled together for business many times. Given the business we’re in, the answer was obvious. I was going to enlist everyone else in our inner circle to reprint as many pictures as we could, and copy as many videos as possible. When you speculate about what you’d grab in the event of a fire, pictures and home videos are usually on the list right after people and pets. From there, we’ll see about their needs. For now, it’s something positive.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Adobe Product Launch
The 4EVER Group has built an excellent relationship with Adobe Systems over the nearly three years that we've been active. That relationship led to a pretty cool invitation for me. Yesterday, in what was billed as the largest new product launch in the 25-year history of Adobe, I was among an elite group of 200 at the live roll-out in New York City.
Although I don’t edit video anymore, it was clear that the product upgrades were significant. Adobe also created better ways to maneuver between programs within the editing suite (called ‘bridge’). The one piece of Adobe software that I do use is PhotoShop, and they’ve improved that as well, by significantly reducing the time needed to load the program. As a non-editor, one of the cooler features of the product demo was showing how the program allows you to remove stray audio from a scene. It was like taking an eraser to the audio wave-form.
The product roll-out was simulcast on the Adobe web site. And, as can happen, about half-way through the demo, they experienced an equipment failure. The software was working fine, but the hardware—not so much. In the end, they had to stop the demo for about a half hour, while they made repairs.
Everyone in the room had experienced something similar, at some point in their careers. Stuff does happen. And while I would not have wanted to be one of the team on headsets, trying to trouble-shoot, I did enjoy being part of the audience, because that was when they opened up the bars, and started butlering some specialty drinks. Key lime martini? They were tasty.
In the end, the launch was successful. Adobe has some cool new tools for people in our trade, and everyone in attendance has a new story to tell.
Although I don’t edit video anymore, it was clear that the product upgrades were significant. Adobe also created better ways to maneuver between programs within the editing suite (called ‘bridge’). The one piece of Adobe software that I do use is PhotoShop, and they’ve improved that as well, by significantly reducing the time needed to load the program. As a non-editor, one of the cooler features of the product demo was showing how the program allows you to remove stray audio from a scene. It was like taking an eraser to the audio wave-form.
The product roll-out was simulcast on the Adobe web site. And, as can happen, about half-way through the demo, they experienced an equipment failure. The software was working fine, but the hardware—not so much. In the end, they had to stop the demo for about a half hour, while they made repairs.
Everyone in the room had experienced something similar, at some point in their careers. Stuff does happen. And while I would not have wanted to be one of the team on headsets, trying to trouble-shoot, I did enjoy being part of the audience, because that was when they opened up the bars, and started butlering some specialty drinks. Key lime martini? They were tasty.
In the end, the launch was successful. Adobe has some cool new tools for people in our trade, and everyone in attendance has a new story to tell.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Meeting in Houston
So I took a trip to Houston the other day. I had a presentation scheduled for March 14, to the Houston Professional Videographers Association. As usual, I took an early flight. This allows me to (mostly) miss rush-hour traffic, and allows for some wiggle-room in the challenging world of air travel. I’d been using a particular off-airport parking lot, so I also have to allow a few extra minutes for all that that entails.
The EZ Pass-style frequent parker system they have in place wasn’t working, so I had to use the regular ticket system. No big deal. The transfer was pretty smooth, and I was off to the airport. Since I was flying USAir Express, I went off to Terminal F. Turns out that my flight was in Terminal C. I passed through security in F, where I had to wait behind one person, and took a shuttle over to C, where the security line was considerably longer.
In Houston, I stayed at the airport hotel. Since I was being picked up for the trip to the meeting, staying at that hotel made sense. Shortly before I was picked up, however, rainstorms of Biblical proportions started. The storms raged on and off for 3-4 hours, making numerous freeways and surface roads close to impassable, due to the high water. I really did think we were going to have to swim to the meeting.
My presentation was “Do the Math”, which produced the same surprised reactions that it always does. What was a surprise to me was that there were three MBA-holders in the audience, which is three more than usually attend videographers meetings.
After the meeting, roughly half of the group went out to eat at a restaurant (I’ve forgotten the name) that had a giant, mirrored armadillo out front. Now, under normal circumstances, I seem to be a bad service magnet. With a group of 20 people, this was way beyond normal bad service. The waitress was nice enough, but the place was pretty much understaffed. And, being a bar-restaurant in Texas, people were free to smoke inside.
At least the rain had subsided, and the standing water had mostly drained off, making the ride back to the airport relatively easy. It became a very late night, however, due to the slow service at the restaurant.
This is a good time for me to thank the Houston PVA for inviting me to speak before their group. I'll be back there in October with another program, and I look forward to that. I also want to thank Sandy Buller for being my driver, which was made all the more challenging by the weather.
The next day, I was able to catch an earlier flight back to Philadelphia. USAirways was kind enough to only charge me $25.00 for making that change. But since I slept through the middle of the flight, I missed my bag of deluxe mini-pretzels. There was barely enough room to read a book in the seat, so sleeping seemed like a good use of my time.
There were issues with the jetway operation in Houston. I’m not really sure what happened, but the in-bound flight spent about 20 minutes at the gate while they tried to figure out how to operate the jetway. All that made our flight arrive a bit late to Philadelphia. That fact, however, didn’t mean that our gate was clear. We sat on the plane for over 20 minutes, waiting for the gate to clear. Given the troubles that other airlines have had, 20 minutes is nothing, right?
But the final indignity was at the parking lot. Using the ticket system, as a transient, one-time user, my fee would have been $19.90. My AAA membership saved me $2.00 off that. When I compared that to the trip I took in January, which was almost the exact same amount of time in the lot, using my frequent-parker discount, I actually paid more as a frequent parker, $23.90 vs. $17.90. That seemed a little absurd to me. By then, it was after normal business hours, so I couldn’t call to complain. I sent an email to the general manager, who has yet to reply. I will give him some slack, since it was the weekend. Meanwhile, I’m looking at other parking lots for future trips.
And there will be future trips, as I’ve been working on a variety of programming for The 4EVER Group (www.4EVERGroup.org) that will mean more road trips in the next few months. NAB (Vegas) is coming up next month, and there will be others. I plan on having pictures available for some of those trips.
The EZ Pass-style frequent parker system they have in place wasn’t working, so I had to use the regular ticket system. No big deal. The transfer was pretty smooth, and I was off to the airport. Since I was flying USAir Express, I went off to Terminal F. Turns out that my flight was in Terminal C. I passed through security in F, where I had to wait behind one person, and took a shuttle over to C, where the security line was considerably longer.
In Houston, I stayed at the airport hotel. Since I was being picked up for the trip to the meeting, staying at that hotel made sense. Shortly before I was picked up, however, rainstorms of Biblical proportions started. The storms raged on and off for 3-4 hours, making numerous freeways and surface roads close to impassable, due to the high water. I really did think we were going to have to swim to the meeting.
My presentation was “Do the Math”, which produced the same surprised reactions that it always does. What was a surprise to me was that there were three MBA-holders in the audience, which is three more than usually attend videographers meetings.
After the meeting, roughly half of the group went out to eat at a restaurant (I’ve forgotten the name) that had a giant, mirrored armadillo out front. Now, under normal circumstances, I seem to be a bad service magnet. With a group of 20 people, this was way beyond normal bad service. The waitress was nice enough, but the place was pretty much understaffed. And, being a bar-restaurant in Texas, people were free to smoke inside.
At least the rain had subsided, and the standing water had mostly drained off, making the ride back to the airport relatively easy. It became a very late night, however, due to the slow service at the restaurant.
This is a good time for me to thank the Houston PVA for inviting me to speak before their group. I'll be back there in October with another program, and I look forward to that. I also want to thank Sandy Buller for being my driver, which was made all the more challenging by the weather.
The next day, I was able to catch an earlier flight back to Philadelphia. USAirways was kind enough to only charge me $25.00 for making that change. But since I slept through the middle of the flight, I missed my bag of deluxe mini-pretzels. There was barely enough room to read a book in the seat, so sleeping seemed like a good use of my time.
There were issues with the jetway operation in Houston. I’m not really sure what happened, but the in-bound flight spent about 20 minutes at the gate while they tried to figure out how to operate the jetway. All that made our flight arrive a bit late to Philadelphia. That fact, however, didn’t mean that our gate was clear. We sat on the plane for over 20 minutes, waiting for the gate to clear. Given the troubles that other airlines have had, 20 minutes is nothing, right?
But the final indignity was at the parking lot. Using the ticket system, as a transient, one-time user, my fee would have been $19.90. My AAA membership saved me $2.00 off that. When I compared that to the trip I took in January, which was almost the exact same amount of time in the lot, using my frequent-parker discount, I actually paid more as a frequent parker, $23.90 vs. $17.90. That seemed a little absurd to me. By then, it was after normal business hours, so I couldn’t call to complain. I sent an email to the general manager, who has yet to reply. I will give him some slack, since it was the weekend. Meanwhile, I’m looking at other parking lots for future trips.
And there will be future trips, as I’ve been working on a variety of programming for The 4EVER Group (www.4EVERGroup.org) that will mean more road trips in the next few months. NAB (Vegas) is coming up next month, and there will be others. I plan on having pictures available for some of those trips.
Monday, March 5, 2007
Video Tape Does Not Last Forever
I’m just finishing up part 2 of a massive tape-to-DVD transfer project for a client. They had more than 60 hours of home videos of their kids and vacations, another 10 hours of old movie file that I’d transferred to a pro format for them about a decade ago, and their wedding video. That brings me to the point of this post.
This couple got married in 1992, at one of the premier hotels in Philadelphia. They had one of the leading videographers of that time document the day on tape. Although they may have had the choice of buying the Master tape (a professional video version of the VHS tape that they received), they only had the VHS tape to give me for the transfer.
In their wedding, the Best Man’s toast went on for quite a while. This couple did watch their video frequently and often skipped over the toast by scanning on fast forward. The “scan” mode allows you to see the video as you move forward, so that you can go back to play more readily. On occasion, they left the tapein the VCR for a day or two at a time.
I’m not going to give you a technical explanation of what happened, mainly because I’m not an especially technical person. When they dropped the videos off, they told me that they weren’t sure what was going on with the toast segment, but they were concerned that they “wore out the tape.” When I transferred their wedding video from VHS to DVD, I discovered that their concerns were completely justified. The Best Man’s toast had basically vanished. Sure, every few moments you could see something, but you couldn’t hear anything. When I opened the shell, the tape obviously had been damaged over the years. So now an important memory from their wedding is lost.
The problem had obviously been growing for years. Let me offer a few observations:
-Always fully rewind a valuable VHS tape after watching it.
-Always return the VHS tape to its container after rewinding.
-Always store a VHS tape on its narrow end, with the tape side to the bottom.
-Always store a VHS tape away from any electro-magnetic source, like stereo speakers.
Most importantly, get your VHS tapes transferred to DVD immediately. And when I say “VHS”, I’m really referring to any home video format, including Betamax, Video 8mm, and Digital 8mm video. The longer you wait, the greater the chance you’ll have a problem like I’ve discussed here. Remember, that wedding video wasn’t quite 15 years old and an important segment was gone.
If you send me an email (steve@videoccasion.net) by April 15, 2007, you’ll receive a special discount on your tape-to-DVD transfer.
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