Day Twenty-nine: late evening of August 30th 2009

The Bears are up by seven with about 30 seconds left in the half and I’ve just checked on the DVD that is being created by iDVD. I’m happy with the progress because the originally projected completion time was about 11:15 pm and now it estimated at about 10 pm. Bears have scored to make it 16 to 3 over Denver, updated to 17 to 3 with 13 seconds left in the first half.

I haven’t produced any DVDs on the PC, my wife’s graphic design class allows me access to Final Cut Pro on a Mac. She has a G5 tower at home that I can use, and have used, to make a variety of DVDs for her. I’ve also used Quicktime Pro and iMovie. Both possess basic editing features, although iMovie allows you to string your clips together and has some transition and titling capabilities. When I was involved in an after-school-program, the instructors, had the students set up web pages with HTML (a web authoring language), and iMovie to create clips for special projects.

The editing for this project, was relatively straight forward. Find the commercial breaks and remove them. I took me a few tries to remember how the cutting tool works. As you move down the clip, the first cut happens to the right of the cutting tool, and the second cut is to the left of the tool. Change to the select tool, select the commercial block, delete the block, slide the remaining clip forward, and look for the next block. The nice thing about Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express is they are nondestructive editing applications. What that means is your original clip/video is imported into the application, but any operations, cuts, rearranging, transitions are not applied to it, but in essence a virtual copy of it. This edited version is what is exported to produce the ‘final’ clip/movie. That clip can be used in a DVD burning application to produce a DVD capable of being played in a standard DVD player.

So, I’m going to stop here, go upstairs check up on the progress of the DVD, and return to the TV, to either check out the DVD or watch the end of the Bears’ third preseason game (the major players are being shifted out of the game) with the Bears ahead 17 to 10 with four and a half minutes left in the third quarter.