AV project reflection

Originally, I had an entirely different intention for my AV project. I borrowed a couple of cars and a couple of goPros from my dad, and my sister and I set out to video "people driving like jackasses." We figured out the camera issues and managed to get one mounted to the dash of my jeep (which resulted in pretty poor video quality, as the camera had to view through the windshield), and started driving around.... and then we got pulled over for driving like idiots (that was the point, right?). The police officer was not amused at my choice in topics for my "anything goes" video and let us off with a warning, provided I find something else to record... I complied, and after some frustration, the sushi video was born. 

Armed again with a goPro, I picked up several bottles of sake and joined some friends for a "sushi night" I was expecting a more traditional array of sushi ingredients, but the fact that my friends are weird actually worked in my favor. I recorded some shots of rolling sushi and drinking sake until my camera died(you have to charge those things?!) and then we played Cards Against Humanity and ate "sushi" all night. 

I hate editing video. 

I hate it with a fiery passion.

 Maybe if my laptop were capable of running video editing software and playing video at the same time, I would hate it less, but as it stands, I hate video; I hate my laptop; I hate Microsoft: and YouTube can suck it. 

There... Now I feel better. 

I began by attempting to download Windows Movie Maker onto my machine. It's easier to download Windows Essentials, so I went ahead and did that and I got a nice message that said that everything BUT Movie Maker was successfully installed, so I hit "retry." The same thing happened. I googled the error code, which led me on a wild goose chase through my program files trying to isolate and delete whatever program was not allowing me to download movie maker. After a couple of hours of this, I gave up. Why would Windows Movie Maker work on my computer, which runs Windows 8? That wouldn't make any sense. 

In my search, I found that my computer is pre-loaded with a program: CyberLink Power Director. (In hindsight, this is probably the program running a script that won't let me download Movie Maker...) This program is just about the same as Windows movie maker. I started importing my clips and arranging everything, and everything was going fine until I wanted to speed up a shot. This requires an upgrade in the software. I'd already come too far to go back now, so I shelled out sixty dollars to upgrade my software. 

CyberLink sent me an e-mail with a bunch of download links for the various portions of software I'd just purchased. Total download time for this: about 3 days. Apparently, not only does my laptop suck, but my friend's internet connection sucks too. ( I borrowed his house to do homework. There's a toddler living with me and he can be very hard to work around... I'd begged a friend to let me hang out in his house while he was working so that I could do my homework in peace...I do this on a regular basis... Don't tell my sister... ) At this point, I had a giant "FUCK IT" moment and used only the parts of the software that I could use without an upgrade. I'll let the rest of the software download this weekend so that I can use it for the next project. 

My computer is not capable of giving me a good preview of my project, so I was not able to watch the finished project until after I spent four hours waiting around letting my video render and upload (not to YouTube, because I can't get CyberLink to recognize my YouTube account being tied to my gmail account) to Vimeo, which I'm using for the first time. They also take extra time in posting if you don't upgrade your membership. Once I finally viewed my video, I fixed the text issue in the end scenes and went through the entire process again. Finally, success.. Needless to say, this assignment drove me to drinking. (Twice, actually, if you count the sake.)

Overall, I'd classify my process as perseverance in the face of frustration and the desire to bang my head against a wall.