Off the prompt "cuddles."

computer made hideous screeching noise, still not sure if it was mechanical or from the speakers, then spontaneously rebooted.

It was not a long reboot, and everything came back up fine, but...

...what?

TERROR. I THINK TERROR IS APPROPRIATE.

I have just received a Festivids assignment!

It contains 171 requests.

(Bad dress, good open?)

It's four in the morning. What are YOU doing?

Since waking up at 1:30am, I have:
--subscribed to someone on the strength of a Vorkosigan AU
--priced Final Cut keyboards
--decided that putting Final Cut stickers on the keyboard I use regularly would be a good way to go INSANE
--discovered from close examination of Final Cut keyboard images online a set of shortcuts I will probably integrate in my repertoire now (⌘+1, +2, +3, +4, +5 goes through Viewer, Canvas, Timeline, Browser, Favorites)
--priced Final Cut keyboards on ebay
--dredged up my ebay ID from the depths of the internet to bid on a Final Cut keyboard on ebay
--refused to be sucked into bidding wars on ebay
--checked local craigslist for Final Cut or easily mod-able keyboards
--figured while I was making wishlists, priced flight to DC at end of October ($400)
--contemplated moving my desk three feet to allow vidding from bed and cause me to make some further effort regarding organization in my room

Wow I spent a lot of brainpower on that Final Cut keyboard issue. Uh.

ETA: Apparently what I actually want is to apply keys, not stickers to my standard issue NOT aluminum apple keyboard. If only it didn't cost $80.

But hey, three year warranty from Lacie, should be able to get her fixed or replaced. And I hadn't been using her for anything but a slut drive yet, so nothing on there not duplicated elsewhere.

I have been burning the candle at both ends, hit the ground running at six thirty in the morning, never off work on time because it's goddamn rush season, all week long. And it's only Wednesday Thursday, and my classes start tomorrow some four hours after I have to get up, and next week I am working until 9 every night per schedule.

I keep thinking of entries I want to write and never being at a computer to write them. I want to write vidding meta. There was a entry in my head today about how vidders (ones I know anyway) choose songs, and how some songs are obvious to everyone and some are only obvious in retrospect once the brilliant vid is made. And I keep thinking about writing up some really basic Final Cut stuff, because things like markers OMG SO USEFUL yet news to some friends.

Anyway, since I am failing at getting those entries started on my own, I would like to put it out there, is there any part of vidding as a process or my vids in particular that you would like me to talk about? I am now taking questions from the audience. seperis, I am looking at you.

Not off the ground yet. Still hanging out in Sky Harbor. Got felt up at security (I think they were checking to see if I was hiding something in my voluminous skirt), got dinner at Starbucks, watched vids on my nano for a while, now taking advantage of the free wireless.

niq made it safely to Chicago before I ever left the house. While it was nice to have a day to make sure I had my crap together and freak out and have lunch together, I kind of wish I was there already.

When I went to make up effects blood I discovered I had neither corn syrup nor food coloring in the house. That was about half an hour until my pick up for the airport so at that point I shrugged and said "Eh, I'll get it at the store in Chicago." I feel very silly for going through the trouble of finding a 3 oz container to carry it in, though. And also I feel like a crazy person, I could have SWORN the materials I got for a shoot last year were still around the house somewhere.

I also realized I won't be able to clip or lay timeline on the plane unless there's an outlet by the seat I can plug Jenny (the new external hard drive) into, because while I have all the media I meant to bring on Jenny, and then some, I did not put any on the laptop. Oh well, I can listen to vidding songs on repeat on the nano (manual repeat; if there is a way to set it repeat a single song I have not figured it out).

I'll be getting into Chicago around midnight, going straight to the room and falling down, I think. Or possibly hooking up Jenny and giving vidding a go. Who knows.

The plane is here, most of the previous passengers have disembarked, so I think I'll close up the laptop and pay a little attention.

In conclusion: CUPCAKES.

(fucking a'.)

Baby Bit [my netbook, whose proper name is Free Bit from Lady Gaga's self-censored "I'm a free bit**, baby" lyric, but goes by Baby Bit much of the time because tiiiiny] seems... less inclined to randomly fade to white, or whatever the fuck she's doing [the exciting screen malfunction that made her unusable three weeks after purchase]. echan declared it was a Windows problem not a hardware problem. No idea. Anyway, since she seemed like she was inclined to behave, I started loading shit back on.

Added:
-AVG
-Firefox
--adblockplus
--add to search bar
--delicious bookmarks
--epubreader
--fireftp
--ljlogin
--noscript
--resurrect pages
--screengrab
-OpenOffice
-VLC

Got me a pretty wallpaper and forced Bit to recognize the existence of my desktop computer and steal episodes from it. One by one I will drag Numb3rs over here for my traveling entertainment.

Fade to white has occurred three times while I've been doing all that. First time was when I first abandoned her to download shit off the desktop computer over the wireless, because that looked like it was going to take forever. Baby Bit went to standby, screen dark, and when I jogged her back on, whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite. I glared some and fiddled with the power save settings to take stand-by out of the equation. I was hopeful for about five minutes. Then I got me some more fade to white, twice, roughly half a minute each time, in the half an hour I've been playing around since.

I'm having to add everything back on because product support's big helpful suggestion to solve the problem was wipe everything, return to factory defaults. While I could pursue further support under warranty I am... kind of not impressed so far. Especially since they did not suggest I back anything up before taking that step. (I didn't lose anything irretrievable, but that is bad support.) If it is not a hardware problem, as echan claims, then I feel like either I or one of the more technically proficient people I know should be able to solve it with poking, and leave support out of the equation.

The fade to white phenomenon--as best I can describe it, the screen holds images longer than it should, so everything seems brighter as static images are reinforced; the mouse leaves trails and is easiest to follow if you move it very sloooowly; paging down when reading something results in a fade to the next page of text; and when typing in a text box like oh say the post entry page, the letters will come up as fast as you type them but will have a vertical line between each, as the screen remembers each iteration of the cursor. Presently this phenomenon is intermittent and brief; my last go-round back in May, it got longer-lasting until it seemed permanent. jetpack_monkey suggested it was a heat-related phenomenon (boo hardware) but I do not think that can be so as it would occur when the computer had been hibernating or just plain off for hours or days.

So. Anybody got thoughts on my Free Bit, baby? What could cause my problem? What could solve it? Does it have a more recognizable name than "fade to white" that I could google?

--And as I finish up this post I'm getting a more sustained instance of the phenomenon; it's been about ten minutes now that it's stayed, and Bit's had some flashy moments where fade to white and regular view seemed to be duking it out. Flashy with a lot of horizontal lines across the screen. Fade to white seems to be winning. And oh look, finally just now I got her back. Through nothing I can tell that *I* did.

So, question, if one wanted to post a daily digest of one's delicious links to dreamwidth, how would one do that?

(I went googling and found delicious glue, which as far as I can tell, nounverb's original and updated links are no longer active, and I found a copy altered by a fan but as I read through it I realized I had no idea if it would work for dreamwidth as opposed to livejournal or how to make it do so.)

I'm running range check on this vid right now (which makes sure that data isn't too bright or saturated for television; if it is, you dump Broadcast Safe filter on it and it clamps the relevant above max data). Now, normally stuff you get that's been on TV? Passes range check. And only stuff you've fucked around with fails. And furthermore I'm vidding Supernatural; if there was a "your footage is too dark, no one will be able to see jack shit" check, I would expect it to go off every four frames. (There is not. Even though it is actually possible to have blacks blacker than broadcast black. Go figure.)

However, it would appear Supernatural fucks around at the edge of range a lot. So far, things that have set off the meter:

--the burning light of SATAN
--Sam killing Alistair
--Sam killing Lilith
--gunfire
--Colt bullets burning out demons
--backlighting through venetian blinds
--things Sam sees in visions
--the COVERS of CHUCK'S BOOKS (seriously what)
--candles

PS Sam was like, two feet from Daddy Azazel when he shot him in the leg. There should not be a three-frame time gap between him firing and Azazel being hit. Just saying.

ETA: Relevant Bruce the Yak quote: What's the sound of one luma clamping?

I've had Free Bit like, three weeks and she's having weird screen issues.

The following is not so much vidding advice as general video editing advice. These were taught to me as good practices for ensuring that no matter what wacky thing you do to your project, you have back-ups.

Caveat: I work in Final Cut Pro; to my understanding Avid and Premiere run on similar principles, but all my menu/keystroke instructions will be for FCP.

( tl;dr on how to make sure your vid is always recoverable )

That's all I know about backing up your project files and sequences. I was thinking of doing another entry about my workflow, which of course is not the only way to do it but hey, I might know a few useful tricks?

Let me know if you've got any questions, about this entry or about Final Cut in general.