I will never vid again

[gwyn]

I got home late last night and did a few things and then got online and DLed mail and such, and checked out my computer, because black_bird_777 put my new 512MB memory chip into the little iMac this weekend and now I have like 767MB or something (zoom!) and I figured I'd test it out and see if Final Cut would open. Which it did, and I took one look at it and closed it immediately.

I will never make a vid with this program. At the Apple store it just looked skeery, but they had some actual video in there and so you could see stuff being applied. In my computer it is a big blank screen with another blank screen and teeeeeny little command names and features that I can barely squiz out, and worse, names that make no sense in English. They sounded like Japanglish -- "the updown reversal dissolve" and unintelligible things like that. I feel like if I work on it I will be in a spy movie with bad code dialog: "The purple ripple overlays the crossfaded in-out point." "Ah yes, I select the degaussed transgendered effect. DuPont Circle station at 9." I mean, I know I balk at the ridiculous words computer "we couldn't be bothered to look up the real words used for 100 years in film history" programmers use to describe perfectly serviceable words like superimposition (I couldn't even find anything that vaguely resembled a Japanglish word for superimpose; I have no idea if it even exists) or dissolve, but I had no idea what half the terms they were using in that effects panel meant. I am doomed. (insert Charlie Brown voice here)

No way can I make a vid in time for Escapade and figure out this you can fly your own 747 control panel program. It's back to iMovie for that, for me. If I can even figure out what to make. My Miami Vice vid plan is scotched; so now I'm torn between Mag 7 and Keen Eddie, but I did Keen Eddie last year, and I can't figure out what to do. In iMovie, of course.

Comments

[przed.livejournal.com]

I thought exactly the same thing when I first got hold of FC. But it's really not as scary as it looks.

How I got over the panic was to attend an Apple demo. Apple does demos in a lot of major cities of their big software packages. Just seeing someone use the program for 3 or 4 hours and working through a short video project made it a snap to start using.

You should be able to get on an Apple mailing list for demos in your city. (I'd give you the URL, but I forget where I signed up, exactly.)

[jackiekjono.livejournal.com]

http://www.apple.com/seminars

I have gone to a few of those. They are loads of fun and when they are over, you can ask the nice people running the demo how to do stuff.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

you are right! Look what I found here:

http://www.apple.com/retail/universityvillage/week/20041212.html

FCE at the store this Thursday (there are several stores in WA with different time slots).

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

It figures! That's my late night at work. Seems like they enjoy Thursday night for some reason. Oh well, i won't have any time for it for a while anyway, so I think I'm on my own unless something happens during the sale that makes my schedule free. (Like, they don't offer me a contract during the transition!) Then I'll have tons of time!