Learning from instructional videos on YouTube

Been watching YouTube instructional videos on rendering in FCP. I think I get it. Why it's taking so long is that I have brought together different types of files - audio, text, stills, as well as my video footage. What I should have done was batch edit everything to a single file type, which, if possible, I can't at present test this out (as my video's been rendering for almost 24 hours and I'm not interrupting it near the end!), would mean no rendering at all. Wow. Yes, taking courses would help with learning the video editing software but this I cannot afford at present. Other ways of learning, by trial and error, reading the manual (at 1200 pages!), watching instructional videos (yes, some great ones at YouTube, very helpful) can get you there, if in a zig zag slower fashion. Mostly, with the 'just do it' 'trial and error' method, is that when you hit a snag or a problem you go looking for answers.

The Internet is a vast storehouse of information, isn't it. How did we ever live without it?

I use FCE (Final Cut Express), the cheap version of Apple's video editing software. It's $199. versus $1,199. for FCP (Final Cut Pro, in Canadian prices). Besides sometimes having to use a drop down menu rather than having a button handy on screen, I haven't found anything missing in FCE compared to the FCP version. Apple has been good to us home users. FCE is a full system that more than meets most of our video editing needs.

About all I've found is that FCE only ships with one extra program, Live Type, and that's probably pared down; whereas I believe FCP ships with a whole bunch of programs. Also FCP is stronger, more of a power tool, faster. Which isn't an issue with me as a homeuser. My clips are short and the videos I make are mostly under 10 minutes.

Tonight I watched instructional videos on rendering in FCP. When my FCE finally finishes rendering the video I'm working on, I'm sure I'll find that everything the pros were talking about is possible in my version.

                                                        

State of Video Rendering Tonight

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My state of rendering tonight - 26 layers, right now at 50% so I can see if it'll work. It takes nearly 3 hours each time to render so that I can watch it. I edited the prosepoem posted earlier for possible inclusion, as an audio recording, but I don't know if I'll add it or not. Jose Travieso's piano solo is so amazing, I don't want to disturb it with spoken words. If I do add the prosepoem, it'll be at the very end, and will push the video to about 9 minutes. As a boring art video, probably an extra minute or so won't matter, but I'll see. I just spent a few hours making a mini movie of two layers so that I could import it into this video and crop it to cover a thermostat, a crop that changes with all the colour variations of the video through its duration so you'll never know the thermostat was there. It is I who has to be satisfied, ultimately. I don't expect much feedback on this video, or high view counts.

Instead, I focus on making the best video I can given my level of expertise, my aesthetic standards and the material I have chosen to work with.

Creating takes time, and I accept that video-making, especially for someone like me who creates the palettes of the moving image as one would a painting, is a long and careful process. 

                                                        

What is Hidden in Ourselves?

What is hidden in crevices, tiny tide pools, our obscure and wayward selves? Our main narrative, who we are, what we've been through, how we think of ourselves, our stories, the way we present ourselves to others, what if that falls away? Our mainstream still, empty, non-existent. Creeping out of the shadows, slithery, bat-like things, or fairies, gnomes, sylphs and undines, or a cast of characters of every shade and tenor, or visions of sublime beings composed of light? Would the inner child – of fears and magic – creep out? Would we utter pure poetry, mad phrases? Would stray, incoherent thoughts stream by, seed fluffs floating, promising blossoms? Can we surprise ourselves? Do we know ourselves? Are we open to stories of our lives that don't fit the main narratorial road we've carved out of the mountains and sand and ocean of our experiences? Can we accommodate our minorities, submerged selves, to create an inner democracy between what composes us? Listen to stray thoughts on the edge of your consciousness – what do you hear?


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I wrote this prosepoem 5 years ago, but edited it for Big Tent Poetry’s June 4th poetry prompt: where will our wild things be?

Sure... it's a rephrasing of the question posed by Big Tent's auteurs, but you can see from my piece, I understand what's being asked! ::grins::

(I've been all those things - sublime vision of light, and yes the slithery bat self -when I dare!)

The Lady and the Chimera, 12" x 9", 30.5x23cm, oil on canvas, 2010.

                                                        

Rendering, rendering...

Rendering, oh my life is rendering... what you see here only a small bit -  2 hours before I can watch it 'to see.' I hover over my work like a worrisome hen. And only at 50% resolution (any higher resolution and I'd be waiting days for every little bit to render).

What I'm working on has taken days, and will take days to render when it's finished, something like 30 hours, and the videopoem is sooooo boring! Oh, not the music. The solo piano of Jose Travieso is incredible. I decided not to interrupt his ecstatic playing with voice but to have words you can't quite read float over the screen. Of course I'll tell you what they are when I upload the video, if, if that day ever comes! The footage of me dancercizing in the living room leaves a lot to be desired, for sure. Originally I liked the funk of the ordinariness of it. My house shorts, dog-walking Summer clothes, baggy, unglamorous. But it all bores me now. My apartment is small and overstuffed. I've layered way too many filters. I am finickity, perfectionist, long, long hours without stopping. What is this strange obsession to finish what is dull?

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