. Spinning .

Finally gave up on the embedded a/v player that I had posted here to share some of what I’ve been working upon.  The hokey little player that Typepad allowed was just not working–stopping every couple seconds and driving me nuts.  It was a sure bet that none of my readers would have the patience to deal with it if I didn’t on my own work.

Curiously, there’s an argument going on (isn’t there always?) about literature as it takes different forms.  I for one am strongly for letting it develop any way it wants to go; being fairly confident that the text format will never be replaced but rather offered in different ways. 

Here’s one very good example of why digital media will never completely do away with the book.  Books don’t jam up and refuse to let their pages turn.

A test to see if it works–it’s a one and a half minute a/v job, but it’s 8 mb, and takes about double that to load with a high speed connection.  Here’s the link: Recycling

Kicking and screaming, I was dragged into the digital world of art, clinging to the classics and the old masters as being non-replicable in the odd world of computers.  I’ve learned a lot different.

I’m one who is anal retentive about original and hand-wrought.  It took me a while to accept photography as original art, since the camera just took a copy of what already existed.  Purist, or pure stubbornness against a changing world.

But just as my dad peeked over shoulders at computer screens, afraid to sit down and try it himself–though I know he desperately wanted to–I have that fear compounding my sensibilities about art and originality.  And though my dad lived his final three years with a computer likely doing naught but gathering dust, I have four that I love dearly and am not afraid of–at least of most of the programs I’ve learned.  So this past week, I’ve dared go exploring.

With a project in mind, it becomes necessary to seek out the method of presentation.  Working on a comparison of film versus text, I discovered Sound Recorder, embedding audio, working a microphone, and Media Player.  Well that was fun, and satisfying when it all came together.

But it led me down a new trail:  producing an a/v from scratch.  I’ve been sadly without all my mental abilities lately, so excursions into Macromedia Flash showed me I was way over my head.  I had a starting point–just pull out one of the poems in my files, and a mic to read it (though I really, really need a new sound card that allows one to adjust the bass), and images both on file and some new ones I could take with a digital camera.

So then it comes down to the process.  Would the technical interfere with the sublime?  Well, it looks like the technical can get pretty sublime when the kinks need to be worked out in a creative fashion.  In other words, it didn’t offend my artistic nature and in fact, taught me to organize even the most free-flowing ideas.  And, nothing got in my way.  But I would add here that on a serious project, a larger one with a purpose and deadline, I can absolutely see the value of a team working together over an individual attempting to wear all the hats.

New barriers to overcome in place of writer’s block.  Though I did have some experience with Photoshop to play around with images (on another forced learning through project, in Powerpoint a couple years ago), I’ve taken it farther with this move into this field. 

There are glitches, there are loads that I could have done better in this three-day effort of a one and a half minute movie, but the frustrations of Windows Movie Maker crashing the computer every five minutes and the relative unimportance of the piece made me want to move on rather than going back yet one more time (reminiscent of rewrites, yet in writing I’ll stick with it).  If I have the courage, and if Typepad will accept it here, I may post the finished product.

In the meantime, I just wish you could see my smug satisfied smile.

The movie, it is done.

Windows Movie Maker is a bitch to work with; it kept freezing after every transition between frames.  I had to shut down and reboot, get back into the program and throw in one more fade, save, try another and it’d freeze.  This is why it’s taken me two days to finish it, and because the length of the frames kept changing after every transition–actually making it shorter rather than longer–and it had to be in sync with a reading.  Moving frames that are a sixteenth of an inch on the screen isn’t easy. 

Now I just have to burn it on a disc and save it to a different file type.  Cross your fingers.

I’m getting really bummed out by technical difficulties.  Don’t know if it’s the laptop itself or just the Windows Movie Maker program, but the project I’m working on is becoming more frustrating than fun. 

I’ve gotten no further on it in a whole day of working on it because it keeps freezing on me.  All I’m able to do when I get into it is try to fix the transitioning between image clips and try to delete some of the images in the collection to unload the system.  I barely have a minute of play, and I’m up to through the fourth verse of a seven-verse poem, but I can’t seem to get beyond that. 

Checked into Flash 8 to see if it were easy enough to use instead of WMM, but it’s really not, even with the experience of timeline and storyboard of WMM.  Hate to chuck the whole project now that I’m hot on it, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to get beyond the technical glitches that give me only a couple minutes’ time to work on it.  It even freezes when I hit ‘Save’ and half the time I’m saving when I have to restart the computer. I seem to have plenty of space and memory to work with, so I just don’t know what the probem is.  I’m also losing transition effects in between, and the visuals and audio keep changing in length and sync (or disappearing)so that’s a big time waster too.

One thing I do know:  I’m absolutely ordering an external hard drive for backup this week.

There may be a reason why Windows Movie Maker keeps crashing AND my printer suddently won’t print this morning.  I did click "Yes" when asked:

Are you sure you want to send ‘Jesus’ to the Recycle Bin?