Saturday 26 December 2009

Its Sunday morning, for days I have been meaning to write something here but at Christmas God hits the fast forward button on my life and before I know it three or four days have zoomed past. So did you get all you wanted from Santa?

In a few hours we are off to a Spanish island called Tenerife where it should be hot, my son Dylan cannot understand that we are getting on a jet at Glasgow in a snow storm and walking off into heat, I'm sure he will be happy with it once we get there.

Im not taking my Mac with me.. I have many hours of video that I could edit on holiday but I really need to take a break from it, but when I get back there will be plenty of work to do and its all gonna be in HD on YouTube from now on.
I have been filming in full 1080 HD for about six months, I keep every bit of video even the stuff that I will never use, got around 1TB of video in store and an new 1TB fire wire 800 drive on the way which I will fill soon.

I thought about digging out all the old videos that are on YouTube in poor quality and remastering them on the Mac, but some people would complain, what do you think? Should I remaster or not?

The older videos were edited using Windows Movie Maker, once I had edited them I saved copies at the highest quality setting possible then uploaded them to YouTube, but a lot of the time YouTube really messed up on the rendering and the quality was sometimes simply terrible even though the originals were perfect, some of the videos are short so I would like to string three or four together on the Mac and upload in HD. I would still be doing my usual one new video a week as usual.
Wish I was going to POW today, its a beautiful forest but with this snow it would be stunning.

John

Monday 21 December 2009

Been so busy the last few days I just never had the time to write here, just put my daughter to bed so I am grabbing a few minutes to write. My daughter is two on 28th December but can already count to five, my son who is almost eight could not even say five when he was my daughters age, why I am telling you this I don't know.
Saturday, I finished off the latest video from POW then installed the latest Mac operating system onto my MacBook, took an hour but the difference is fantastic, the internet is so fast videos loading almost instantly, programs start faster etc.
Then I installed iMovie 09 WOW! Super fast and so many new options plus output in 720 HD to Youtube, pity its not 1080 HD which is the format I record most of the Airsoft video on but its still nice to be able to edit and upload in HD with ease.
Sunday... Nice fresh snow on the ground and its still falling as I head out to an Airsoft site called Section8, only twenty five miles from my house and set in 1600 acres of forest which is totally snow covered, it looks amazing. I walked alone on the rough road through the forest, all I needed was John Lennon and Yoko in front of me and it would have looked just like I was in the Imagine promo.
I filmed sixty minutes of HD video at Section8, left in a hurry as I wanted a video on YouTube the day I filmed it for you guys, within thirty minutes I had picked a clip added the titles etc and was running it to YouTube, I LOVE iMOVIE 09
So now I am off to finish the edits on the latest video for this Thursday, well not really edits, the full game lasted seventeen minutes, it was the final game of the day at POW, the rule for defenders was if hit your out of the game and with 40 v 40 it was kinda fast n furious, I had to trim a few bits out and its down to about ten minutes.
OH damn I just remembered I gotta book car parking at Glasgow Airport, I am off out of the UK this coming Sunday, will tell you about it later.

John

Saturday 19 December 2009

Well at last I got a new video uploaded, I had to trim a full eight minutes off it which annoys me.
I went to see Public Image (Johnny Rotten) at the o2 in Glasgow and because the latest video had a running time of over eighteen minutes video I left it uploading while I went to the concert. when I got back Youtube told me the video was blocked due to the running time, this pissed me off because YouTube Partners are allowed unlimited video uploads and there should have been no problem with the video.
Anyway I did a quick edit this morning and got it uploaded for today Saturday, should have another ready in a few days.
The concert last night was good, I have seen PIL a few times in the past but last nights was the longest set I have ever seen them play, Johnny was on good form and seemed very happy to be in Scotland, he can be a little moody at times but was not at all like that last night.
The snow is falling fast here, at least an inch in the last ten minutes, if it stays like this I will go to Section8 tomorrow and film, hopefully they have had snow there.
Well thats it, Im off to Blockbuster to pick up a few DVDs to watch tonight, any excuse to drive in the snow.
John

Thursday 17 December 2009

Just in from work and WOW its snowing here, thick and fast, the trees at the front of my house are looking beautiful already, the kids are gonna freak out when they come home.
Got most of a new video done, just got a few more edits and some footage to add then its good to go. I will upload it to YouTube tomorrow 18th December before I head into Glasgow for a concert.
Im going to see Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols with his band Public Image, they are doing a short UK tour, Im driving some of my friends up so it will be an alcohol free night for me, should be interesting though.
I missed the last gig I was supposed to go to a few weeks back, they are not that big in the UK but American readers may know of "Five Finger Death Punch" I was on the guest list to see them for a private show in Glasgow but never made it due to a lack of baby sitter, damn.
My next concert is...KISS...at the SECC in Glasgow, should be fun.
Later
John

Tuesday 15 December 2009

Well Hi!

Hey at last I started a blog, as if my life is SO interesting to others, is it?

Well my head is sore.. I tried to do some video work last night and had endless camera and software problems, the software does not see the video files from my night vision camera which I had ran to DVD. Figured out I needed a cable to connect to the camera straight to my MacBook and then capture via imovie 08, then I decided my Mac wants new software so I gave up after five hours.
I popped a bottle of nice red wine ordered the new Mac boxed set with iMove 09 and latest operating system and found the cable I needed on Amazon.
Then I chilled in the lounge with my son Dylan and watched a new DVD boxed set I had just go of a UK TV show called "Phoenix Nights" such a funny show, after that I chased the cats out of the house and went to bed, WOW I lead such an interesting life