Playing catch-up

I haven't been online that much, and barely checked in with LJ, so it appears I have missed the natal day of not one, but three whole wonderful people on my friends list: malisita, sisabet, and kita0610. Ay yi yi, I can't believe I missed all three of you, but I still wish you a happy belated birthday and hope you are continuing the celebration!

I spent most of the weekend struggling with Final Cut Express, but I'm also trying to cut back on the personal stuff here, though that won't stop me from griping about this damned program (ha ha, you can't stop me!). I went through the whole FCE Editing Workshop book that many people rec'd to me, and it totally sucked. The guy spends almost all this time on stuff I don't care about, like animating and compositing ugly title graphics, but no time on stuff I really do want to understand, such as how to make a real honest to god superimposition (or... I don't know what they call it in computer editing... overlays? Whatever). It seems totally useless to have multiple video tracks if you can't get them to play with each other and allow you to superimpose one on the other so you can actually, you know, see them both. He also gives all these keyboard commands that don't work. I wasted hours just trying to figure out why F10 only made my windows all separate, before finally figuring out that I had to find workarounds because something changed in the OS. I still have never been able to make this mapping to the master clip command work. Nothing happens when I try to delete in and out points, either. The book is out of date for Panther, obviously, but... I am not a smart person. Figuring out different commands, trying to sort through the stuff in the quick ref card and the book and such that don't work, when I can't even understand the program, makes it that much harder for me to grasp. Even stuff that worked in the lessons stops working when I do it in my real file. I know smart people think this is easy, but I'm really, really struggling with it.

The manual is almost nonexistent, so this tutorial book, I'd hoped, would be an answer. Alas, non. He doesn't address most of the things I want to do -- be able to apply effects when there are only a couple frames of source to work with, the superimposing (which this guys dismisses with a "superimpose doesn't work for anything except titles, so don't bother), and lots of other stuff. I miss so much of the things iMovie does -- allows me to watch my work in a larger window instead of this teeny dark thing, and lets me open it in QuickTime any time I want, without having to wait to open the program, so I can see what I've done and get ideas, or use the scrubber for editing clips with finer precision. I find all the tools like slip and slide and roll and ripple (and who the hell decided on that naming convention for making things as confusing as possible?) so clumsy and hard to use without being able to use the arrow keys to move a frame at a time, etc. Even after hours of work, I came away with a whopping 25 seconds yesterday on a vid, and most of it has effects that came from the show, because I can't figure out how to make FCE do them. Plus, the commands don't work -- I have to choose render all, becuase simple rendering, even of a specific clip, refuses to work, ever. I miss good old iMovie for that, too -- you could preview things and how they would look without having to render. Now I can't see anything unless I render, and it's always, always wrong, so I have to do it at least 12 times. Plus? It's still wrong. I'm so confused, and kind of heartsick: I spent all this money thinking I was getting a program that would allow me to do the kinds of complex things I could do in my head. I wanted to make the vids I saw in my mind. But so far, that doesn't happen because nothing seems to actually work, or its commands have changed, or they're hidden somewhere I can't find them. Now I have to decide -- give up on what I spent, and go back to the largely featureless iMovie and just accept that I won't be able to follow my vision? Or soldier on, and still not be able to follow my vision. Not much of a choice. (Though, barkley, I did figure out how to get the booping to stop, totally accidentally!) If I can ever even finish another vid on this thing, I am bewildered by how you can possibly make a QT movie for iDVD (though clearly others have mastered this). It doesn't seem to acknowledge that this even exists. Maybe it won't matter because I think whatever I make here will be largely unshowable. Cripes, even the newbies with no taste will be making better vids just because they aren't bogged down by the tools!

I know that everything lately, too, seems ten times worse than it is. Sis_r doesn't want to talk to me right now; she hasn't found out about her treatment options and she doesn't want me to ask questions or be concerned, even though I have to do both in order to assess whether I can go to Escapade or not, or go down to her place afterward, or something else entirely. She's in avoidance mode, which I understand, but right now I can't afford that, so everything feels edgy and tense. This is why refuge in the impersonal stuff like grammar and usage posts and unusual movies appeals to me right now. Sigh.

And finally, mlyn has the final installment of her Fast and the Furious series up now, Bump Start. The series was the continuation of a story I did last year, and it has come to a nice conclusion, I think, for the boys that feels organic to the original universe. Pop over there and follow the link, and make sure to leave feedback! (I wish I was the type to run an archive or something... we need someone as wonderful as rusty_halo to create a F&F web archive and get everything in one place, really well run and set up, beautifully formatted, etc., the way All About Spike has been. I, however, am not the person, since I can't even figure out how to use FCE!)