Stopping to take a breath.

After 10 weeks incorporating over half of them being enforced weekends away for various reasons, and other weekday madness... I've stopped.

My plans for while Sharon was at Swancon were that I would only do the basics required to care for Lex - everything else could go to hell. The last couple of weeks especially, I've been so busy that playtime with him has been minimal, so it's nice to get back to my real priorities again.

Some of you may have noticed I'm doing a lot more on Twitter than on here. It's about being time poor. I always feel I have to make a 'proper' post on LJ (yes, I know, it's stupid, but I'm odd like that), whereas I have a random thought and I can just pop it up on Twitter. All the silly drivel I chuck up on Twitter is the same drivel that I'm tempted to put on LJ, and rarely do. So this is either a good thing or a very bad one.

Also, given how busy I've been of late, I've just not had time to read LJ. Started trying to catch up yesterday. So if there's important news you like I should, or would like to know, fill me in.

Spoke to Sharon yesterday. She was confused at having nothing to do. This is exactly why I sent her away. Oh, BTW, her PDA is dying, and her phone isn't going well. Any of you with advice for her on either, both, or devices that combine the two, please chat with her about them. She works best with info and needs to be looking into this, so you may help give her a great starting point.

My love to all of you at Swancon. Wish I was there, but you can all see me at WorldCon or next year's Swancon, or Continuum 7. *big hugs*

Vidding question for the hive mind

So, in the last couple of weeks, I had to put together some clips. Now in the old days, I would have just grabbed the video tapes, cross-taped the relevant bits, and the whole thing would have been done in a few hours. It was literally pause recording where I wanted the next clip, set the source running, release pause, press stop and it was done. With all my source stuff on their separate tapes, I could chuck together a presentation in 2-3 hours.

With DVDs I find it's get the clip, dump it down, try to put it in the editing program, find the program didn't like the format, fuck about for a few hours trying variations, lather, rinse, repeat. The five minutes of clips from a single DVD literally took me well over a week to get sorted. Once I solved the basic issues and figured workarounds, it was quicker, but still slow and clunky.

As I have a few friends doing the songvid thing, I wanted to ask what programs people are using. Preferably free programs, though I'm not averse to paying for stuff. What are the pros and cons for the progs you're using, how do you find the functionality, formatting, and so on.

Basically I'd like to break the process down to the smallest number of steps possible, so I can have a nice collection of good quality clips for panels and the like at the end, without losing days and days to the drudge-work..

The Tweets of April

( Cut for non-Twitterites... )