Category: Video
Continuing education
Herself had a video-production class the other day and so we screwed around shooting footage of Miss Mia Sopaipilla and Turkish. She used a bunch of Mia clips, so I decided to give equal time to the Turk (a.k.a. Big Pussy, Mighty Whitey, the Turkinator, Turkenstein, et al.).
Using my little Flip HD makes the process pretty much a no-brainer — why Cisco croaked this product is a mystery to me — but I’d kind of like to try one of the newer Canon HD digital camcorders. I have a Canon ZR500 that records to Mini DV cassettes, but it’s kind of clunky, doesn’t do HD and spazzed out when Herself tried to add some of its clips to a collection for her class. Strictly stone knives and bearskins — I mean, jeez, the thing is 5 years old! If it were in Maine, it could have a job.
In unrelated feline news, do cats dream (if only of Hollywood superstardom)? National Geographic wondered that, too, and here’s what they found out, via Discoblog and Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, a dude who has his own feline issues. Plus he’s a Trekkie to boot. I wonder whether the old “Star Trek” episode the Drums and their cats were watching happened to be “Assignment: Earth.”
Voodoo child
I had the urge to go Hollywood again yesterday, so I grabbed my Flip Video Ultra HD and the Voodoo Nakisi and rolled over to Palmer Park.
I spent ninth grade through high-school graduation living a stone’s throw from the park, which we called “The Bluffs,” and which played host to all manner of nefarious activities. In my dotage, I’m only about 10 minutes away by bike, and so I’m usually in the park at least once a week — more often if it’s windy, as it has been this spring.
Palmer Park’s 730 acres comprise some 30 miles of trails, some of them absurdly easy to ride, others not so much (think full suspension, body armor and a solid health-insurance policy). Quite a few can be navigated on a cyclo-cross bike, and those get even easier on the Nakisi 29er with its triple chainring and 700×38 WTB Allterrainasauruses; the 700×45 Panaracers I used at first were overkill. It’s not difficult to arrange a couple satisfying hours of riding in the park without too much repetition.
This little video required some repetition, however. The Flip (which Cisco recently discontinued) is no GoPro Hero or Contour HD — it looks like a Hershey bar mounted to a helmet and catches on bits of this and that if you happen to be riding through the trees, as I was. And getting it mounted at the proper angle took three trips down (and back up) the trail.
Plus importing the video into iMovie is fiddly. You can’t just click “Import from Camera” — the clip winds up truncated by about a third. No, you have to hit “Import Movies,” and then fetch the clip from the Flip. A minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.
As it happened, I stumbled across another videographer during my ride. He had a Contour attached to his helmet and professed to be very happy with it. Naturally, gadget envy seized me at once. So if you suddenly start to see more and better video around here, you can blame him.
Nothing to see here, move along
Pay no attention to the man behind the iPhone. I shot a few frames of cellphone video during today’s Snowpocalypse in order to have an excuse to play with iMovie, something I need to do more often if I’m ever to be one of the cool kids.
Meanwhile, the potential for meteorological suckitude is not limited to the Rocky Mountain states. Here’s hoping the Tour of California peloton remembers to pack its embrocation.
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