App Wrestling

So I spent the better part of four hours putting together a 28 minute collage of recorded video from Good Morning America. Four hours of my time, maybe eight hours of lapsed time. Half of it was spent waiting for the final version to render. And of course if I didn't get it right, I had to edit it and re-render it.

I started off using six or seven different applications. One to edit it. Another to render it. A couple of others to try to convert it to a smaller format so it wasn't ungodly huge. The RAW file (the complete two hour episode of GMA) was about 5.5Gb. My first "edit" cut it down to 28 minutes, but the output (an .avi file) was something like FOUR GIGS! No idea what the heck happened here. I crossed swords with it a couple of times, but it kept winning. I'd try to smoosh with other products, but the smallest I could get it was like 500Mb. A good bit smaller, but still waaaay to huge, especially considering it was only half an hour of video.

Finally, I stumbled across Adobe Premiere. Waaaaaaay more complex than anything I've ever used. But once I produced the final clip, I was able to compress it into a web-friendly format. And it got uploaded for my August 29th entry.

I like the program. I was getting really sick of app wrestling. I'm going to try to use Premiere some more, and post additional videos. So hoooopefully it is the start of something new.

I just pray it doesn't take me so long to grind out projects!