I don't know what ever happened to Michael's original thread on this, so I'm starting a new one.
This has been another crazy week for me. I'm still struggling with my sleep, so I did three days in a row without any once again. It's not a big deal when it only happens occasionally, but when it is steady for three months it presents astounding problems. Anyway, the sleep stuff is a different story.
So tired and out of sorts, my Aunt called me late last week and asked me to help her get some pictures and music set up for her mother's memorial, which was yesterday. She's been working on these pictures for months, and presented me with a USB stick which has a couple hundred scanned photos on it. The 'music' was a list of song titles (without artist names), and I had less than a week to make something work in a hotel that I have never been to, and have no idea what kind of equipment they have to work with.
I managed to gather up some samples of music, and met up with her to go over things. She didn't like most of the stuff I picked (based on her nondescript list), and I had to redo a few songs. I don't know if any of the rest of you know the pain of this kind of stuff, but it is like this: Find a song and listen to it fully through and decide if it is good. If no, pick another one and listen to it all the way through and repeat until you find one you like. Then, play it again so that I can record it. Then play it again so that I can make sure that the recording is good and has good levels without clipping or being too quiet, or any other interference like e-mail or messenger notifications (multiple recordings). Then I add the pictures and adjust the timings, and play it through again to make sure everything is good. Then I have to compress the video out to a file that can be used on multiple devices, and I have to play it through again on computer, phone, tablet, etc. To try to put it into basic perspective, a single three and a half minute song is at least three hours worth of work. x10 is a fairly efficient multiplier. I ended up with about 25 minutes of video, and let's just say that I wasn't efficient enough to get it all done in a mere 25 hours.
I finally got everything sorted, and then tested my USB sticks on the televisions in my house, and only three out of six tvs would play it. Not good. "Don't worry" everyone told me. "A good hotel with conference rooms and stuff has to have top of the line new equipment, so it will work." I didn't believe them, and it's a good thing I didn't. I made contingencies. I copied the files to two laptops and purchased two DVI adapters to allow output to HDMI ports, and brought two Chromecasts, and two micro PCs (with HDMI and A/V outputs) just in case. I also brought HDMI and A/V cables, power cables, three power packs, two cell phones with copies and a spare battery for my phone as well. I had copies on three USBs, two hard drives, two laptops, and two phones. I brought two bluetooth speakers just in case the audio wouldn't work (and it didn't), and I had listened to all of the songs so many times that if I really needed to, I could sing them myself.
Just my luck, I got to the hotel and the TVs are second gen LCDs. Sure, they have USB ports, but they would not play videos. Thank goodness I brought several HDMI devices to be able to handle multiple independent screens, but since I couldn't sync the audio on independent TVs, I had to come up with something else. Their audio system was a 1/8 stereo jack in the wall (I did have cables though), but didn't work worth a s**t, and only played on one side of the room. So I used my phone to play the videos (for the audio) through a bluetooth speaker in the center of the room, and used my wife and another family member to simultaneously start the videos on each laptop to display on the screens in each half of the room.
It was hokey, but it worked. I spent so much time trying to figure out all of the little things that were going to cause me problems that I never did find the time to dye my hair red to pay homage to the great lady that I was doing this all for. All the better I suppose, because I don't have enough hair to color and I would have wound up with red skin instead anyway.
Thanks for letting me vent, to those of you who actually read all of this. Thank you to my wife and her parents for listening to me curse and disappear into my room in the basement for hours at a time for several days to make it happen, and of course thank you to Margaret - Thank you for letting me be a part of your life. May the fourth be with you, always.
This has been another crazy week for me. I'm still struggling with my sleep, so I did three days in a row without any once again. It's not a big deal when it only happens occasionally, but when it is steady for three months it presents astounding problems. Anyway, the sleep stuff is a different story.
So tired and out of sorts, my Aunt called me late last week and asked me to help her get some pictures and music set up for her mother's memorial, which was yesterday. She's been working on these pictures for months, and presented me with a USB stick which has a couple hundred scanned photos on it. The 'music' was a list of song titles (without artist names), and I had less than a week to make something work in a hotel that I have never been to, and have no idea what kind of equipment they have to work with.
I managed to gather up some samples of music, and met up with her to go over things. She didn't like most of the stuff I picked (based on her nondescript list), and I had to redo a few songs. I don't know if any of the rest of you know the pain of this kind of stuff, but it is like this: Find a song and listen to it fully through and decide if it is good. If no, pick another one and listen to it all the way through and repeat until you find one you like. Then, play it again so that I can record it. Then play it again so that I can make sure that the recording is good and has good levels without clipping or being too quiet, or any other interference like e-mail or messenger notifications (multiple recordings). Then I add the pictures and adjust the timings, and play it through again to make sure everything is good. Then I have to compress the video out to a file that can be used on multiple devices, and I have to play it through again on computer, phone, tablet, etc. To try to put it into basic perspective, a single three and a half minute song is at least three hours worth of work. x10 is a fairly efficient multiplier. I ended up with about 25 minutes of video, and let's just say that I wasn't efficient enough to get it all done in a mere 25 hours.
I finally got everything sorted, and then tested my USB sticks on the televisions in my house, and only three out of six tvs would play it. Not good. "Don't worry" everyone told me. "A good hotel with conference rooms and stuff has to have top of the line new equipment, so it will work." I didn't believe them, and it's a good thing I didn't. I made contingencies. I copied the files to two laptops and purchased two DVI adapters to allow output to HDMI ports, and brought two Chromecasts, and two micro PCs (with HDMI and A/V outputs) just in case. I also brought HDMI and A/V cables, power cables, three power packs, two cell phones with copies and a spare battery for my phone as well. I had copies on three USBs, two hard drives, two laptops, and two phones. I brought two bluetooth speakers just in case the audio wouldn't work (and it didn't), and I had listened to all of the songs so many times that if I really needed to, I could sing them myself.
Just my luck, I got to the hotel and the TVs are second gen LCDs. Sure, they have USB ports, but they would not play videos. Thank goodness I brought several HDMI devices to be able to handle multiple independent screens, but since I couldn't sync the audio on independent TVs, I had to come up with something else. Their audio system was a 1/8 stereo jack in the wall (I did have cables though), but didn't work worth a s**t, and only played on one side of the room. So I used my phone to play the videos (for the audio) through a bluetooth speaker in the center of the room, and used my wife and another family member to simultaneously start the videos on each laptop to display on the screens in each half of the room.
It was hokey, but it worked. I spent so much time trying to figure out all of the little things that were going to cause me problems that I never did find the time to dye my hair red to pay homage to the great lady that I was doing this all for. All the better I suppose, because I don't have enough hair to color and I would have wound up with red skin instead anyway.
Thanks for letting me vent, to those of you who actually read all of this. Thank you to my wife and her parents for listening to me curse and disappear into my room in the basement for hours at a time for several days to make it happen, and of course thank you to Margaret - Thank you for letting me be a part of your life. May the fourth be with you, always.
