Just gripe'in a little...

[Walczak Photo]

Hey Ya'll
This is just sort of a bunch of random gripes, so please don't take anything here too seriously...I just need to vent a little.

So I've been working on putting together this slide show of some of my work in Adobe Premier. I've been messin' with different software packages over the last several months and Premier seems to do what I need it to do better than most of the others...and since I'm starting to play around a little with video/videography, it seemed like the best way to go.

Now before I go any further, let me first say to all of you new folks out there who are just learning the ins and outs of PhotoShop...I feel your pain! Learning Adobe Premier on the fly like this is like learning PhotoShop all over again from scratch! It took me two days last week to figure out that I could just "drag & drop" clips in my projects and several hours to find out that all I had to do to add a transition was to hold the freakin "alt" key down! LOL!!! I had learned PhotoShop kind of progressively over the course of several years (I started with version 4.0)...there was never really a "today I will sit down and learn PhotoShop" or anything, so when I started editing my own images and such, I already knew pretty much what I needed to know. Learning this stuff on the fly while trying to put out a reasonably professional looking presentation....wow ("Where's the freakin' UNDO button???" LOL!!!!).

Anyways, as I'm messing around with various DVD authoring packages (since I'm using an older version of Premier due to my OS and have to use a separate burning tool), I came to realize that I was starting to have some problems with my PC. Now this is on top of all the problems I was already having with trying to figure out how to set up some decent looking DVD menus in Nero...which apparently can't be done. I spent several hours messing around with this crap and was rather frustrated to begin with. Regardless, as I said I started having problem with my system. Now I knew that I've had an issue with spyware and such for sometime on my system, but haven't really gone out of my way to do anything about it. It didn't really seem to be hurting anything (at least not apparently) so it wasn't worth my time and effort to really pay too much attention to it. In the past, I've never really been all that concerned with "spyware" anyways...I've always figured, "hey...someone wants to know what I'm doing on my computer, who cares?". Anyways, after finding out that my new DVD burner had crapped out, I started poking around on my system a little. The burner itself was working fine on my wifes system (it's an external USB so it was easy to check) and once I eliminated any hardware issues, I came to the conclusion that the problem had to be something in the software.

After running a couple of virus scans on my system...and having everything come up clean, I started snooping around on the web a bit to see what kind of info I could dig up. It seems that things like "Spyware" and "adware" have gotten a tad bit malicious over the years, so I downloaded some anti-spyware software and found I had...are you ready for this? -131- incidents of spyware on my system!!!! YIKES! A program called "Spybot" was able to remove most of it, but I ended up with one that was reeeeeeaaaaallllll stuborn. A nasty little bugger called "Smitfraud". Not technically a virus I guess, but close enough. I'll spare ya the details, but the clean up had to be done with special software because the damn thing kept replicating itself, and had to be run in Safe Mode of Win2K...which runs slower than doggie doo thru molasses! This alone took several hours. The real interesting thing was that after I got rid of all the spyware, then my virus scanner started picking up the virus(s). I had like 5 different viruses on my system that were apparently being "cloaked" or something by the spyware!

Anyways, to cut to the chase, I've just spent the last 2 days cleaning my freaking system of all of this crap! VERY frustrating to say the least! I also now have spyware blockers on my system...to go with popup blockers and everything else. I have no idea how this stuff got past my hardware firewall to begin with. While I truly appreciate the capabilities of computers today with programs such as PhotoShop and such that allow me to do all the amazing things I do as a photographer and an artist as well as all the things I do as a musician and learning this video stuff, I honestly have to say that things were soooooo much simpler back in the days of DOS 3.3! LOL!!! Back then ya just popped in a McAfee's disk to clean a virus and that was it...system fixed. Now a days, it's getting to be very much like "home dentistry"...very painful to say the least.


I guess to give this all a point for posting (other than me just blowing off some steam that is) for some of you folks out there that are kind of newbies to the world of digital imaging...or even some of you old timers who, like myself, have started to become a little complacent about your systems, the lesson here is to do regular system maintenance and keep up on all of the crap that's out there. If I had of been keeping up on stuff like spyware and such like I should have, I wouldn't have had the last two days of headaches that I did. I'm not usually a paranoid person...one of the reasons I wasn't too worried about spyware all that much to begin with. I'm not the kind of person who runs around like a chicken with his head cut off cryin' about viruses and such...I used to be a PC tech and I know that sometimes "sh*t happens". I thought I had my system reasonably protected...online virus scanner, hardware firewall on my cable modem, etc., since I do download a lot of things off the internet sometimes, but 131 counts of spyware and 5 viruses??? Some of this stuff is getting pretty ridiculous and a bit nasty and aggressive.

Anyways, I hope ya'll don't mind my little ramble there...please consider it as simple words of warning.

Peace,
Jim

[gldiana]

ah.. time we can save just by reading the manual

[Bonish Photo]

Hey Jim, one thing I've found to be helpful when ever I get a new piece of equipment, whether it be a program or new camera body...I just type into Google

"Tip and Tricks for CS3" or "Info for Canon D30" I might try numerous sentences till I find something that might give me a bunch of good info, but I can almost always learn a bunch of tip & tricks before I ever open the program.

Just a thought. Google is my best friend when it comes to things like this and can usually save a few hours of beating my head against the screen!

[Walczak Photo]

Hey Guys

"ah.. time we can save just by reading the manual Wink"

Well, I guess part of the problem is that I really just learn better by doing and thru repetition in most cases. I usually only refer to manuals and help files only when I really need to. Yes...I'm one of those people who sits down to put something like a bicycle or something together and doesn't look at the instructions until I realize somethings wrong...like when the handle bars are bolted to the seat post! LOL!!!

Part of my problem here is usually terminology and definitions though...for me, it's hard to look something up in the manual when you don't know what it's called or what to look for (such as the case with learning new software). Manual's aren't usually real good about listing things like "how to connect the doo-hicky" or "use this to adjust the thing-a-ma-bob". You can spend all day looking for the term "doo-hicky" in the manual's index, but you just can't find it anywhere! It's sort of like the old joke where a kid asks his father, "How do you spell anthropomorphism?" and his dad tells him to go look it up in the dictionary. The kid looks at his dad and asks, "How am I supposed to look it up if I can't spell it?" . Anyways, I know there are people out there who sit down with the owners manual for a week or so before they ever even install a program like PhotoShop or Premier...I'm simply not one of them. I'm just one of those people who likes to dive right into something...it's just that sometimes I really need to learn how to swim...or at least tread water first.



"Google is my best friend when it comes to things like this..."

Hey Pat, I certainly agree with you 100%. Google -IS- probably the best tool out there. I think part of my initial problem simply comes down to what I said to Luca above...it's kind of hard to do a Google search on something, when you don't know what that "do-hicky" is actually called or what it actually does. It's like taking a person who is completely new to digital imaging and telling them that their image needs a "Levels adjustment" and they look at you and say "peachy...what the hell are levels?" LOL!!! To a person who is a complete newbie to digital imaging, the term "levels", which is so rudimentary to all of us who've been doing this for a while, doesn't mean a thing. In other words, if you don't know what levels actually are, let alone what they actually do or why you need them in the first place (other than maybe your image looks a little off), it's a little hard to do a search on Google to find out how to actually do it. Then once you discover what levels actually are, as your weeding thru alllllllllllll the information on "levels" in that Google search, you start running across things about "curves"...what? huh?? "I thought "curves" was something that refered to women??" LOL! Sooner or later, if you keep at it, it does "click" but sometimes it just takes a while. It's easy to forget that we were all newbies at this once.

There's also been a bit of an issue with the version of Premier that I'm running. It's an older version...version 6, and a lot of the stuff out there is about the newest version (CS3 I believe?). I keep forgetting to put the number "6" into my searches so I ended up with a lot of information that may or may not apply to what I'm doing...or trying to do...or learning how to do. I got this version from a buddy of mine...he own's a small audio/video production studio and I get a lot of his "hand me downs" when he upgrades things (well...software-wise at least). Free, registered copies...who can really complain (other than me of course, LOL). He and his wife inherited a small, but rather successful business from her father when he died, so money isn't really a big issue for him (yea...must be nice) and as a result, he's usually got the latest, greatest "toys" and such on his studio systems. When he called me a couple of weeks ago and asked me if I wanted his old Premier 6...well...I just couldn't pass it up. As I said originally, I've been playing with a couple of different software packages over the past several months trying to see what would work best for me since PowerPoint wasn't cutting it at all and as with photo editing, I just kept coming back to Adobe.

Anyways, I'm sure the both of you would agree though that as with PhotoShop, even with all of the books, manuals and internet searches your fingers can muster, there -IS- still a rather sizable learning curve to all of this. As with PS, there really is -A LOT- of stuff to learn here...stuff like video codecs for example is completely new to me. AVI, DiVX, MPEG (1, 2 and 4) and the related compression schemes of course. Frame rates, size ratios, transitions, rendering...it's a pretty big slice of pie to try and swallow all at once. Then there's the little detail things of working with video...like some fonts for example just don't translate well to a TV screen...something I learned the hard way! Don't even get me started on individual software issues...like why my audio/mp3 files seem to keep dropping out of the DVD menus or why my "reds" keep coming out a little "pink" because I don't have a reference monitor to do gamma corrections. Like I said...just lots and lots of stuff here to learn, I'm learning it on the fly and the data absorption rate of my brain really just doesn't keep up with the transfer rate of my harddrive or my internet connection any more! LOL! The technology is getting faster and more complicated, but my brain seems to be getting slower and slower...I'm sorry...what was I saying? LOL!!!

Of course that's why I'm working with my own material right now...trying to do slide shows of my own work and maybe a couple of video shorts and such. This way when it comes time to actually do something for a client, it won't be such a big deal. Hopefully by then I'll have all of this down to a art.

On top of all of that there was the spyware issue which just really put the stress levels right over the top. It was more than a little frustrating to have to switch gears from "student of video production" to PC technician at the drop of a hat like that. Dealing with things like viruses is a pain the the butt to begin with now a days, let alone having to do it while your learning something new and especially something intense and really involved like video editing. Just ain't nothing like having to drop everything your doing and have your PC out of commission for two days because of malicious software.

Anyways, like I said originally...this really isn't that big a deal. I'm just venting more than anything. I've been pumping a lot of information into my poor, dysfunctional brain over the last couple of weeks and I just needed to release the ol' pressure valve for a bit.

Peace,
Jim

[gldiana]

Jim,

I'm exactly like you. I like to learn first hand, but after a while (ok, a long while) I'll browse quickly through the manual and learn something new, then it's experimenting again.
For my CSS website I got this 1000 pages manual and I'm stuck at page 350, can't manage to get motivated to keep studying.
I think I read 2 pages of my 30D manual hehehe

[Walczak Photo]

Hey Luca,
Yes...I do often go back and read manuals and such after I've played with things a bit. That way there's a certain degree of "OH! So that's what that thing does!" or "Wow...I didn't know you could do that too!", LOL! Of course, sometimes it also comes down to the manual or documentation too. For example the stuff that came with the Nero Vision 5 I'm using is fairly worthless...I've read better motherboard installation manuals! LOL!!! Nero documentation SUCKS! Even with this Adobe Permier...I had been searching thru the manual and the help file on and off for a couple of days looking for something specific, but again because I didn't know what that something specific was actually called...I never did find it. All I wanted to do was move a group of "clips" back and forth on the timeline without having to move and resize each one individually (which if your working with 30-60 clips or more such as my slide show, can be a SERIOUS pain). I looked thru references on "timeline", "working with clips", etc...nadda. In this case, I just figured it out by accident...all I had to do was hold down the alt key again...Premier seems real big on that stupid alt key! LOL!!!! ("Press any key to begin... Where's the damned "ANY" key??? LOL!!!!)

Then you get the other side of it where the documentation is like reading "War and Peace"...the book for my Cakewalk Sonar 4 Producer's Edition software (another hand-me-down) is over 800 pages...I don't think I've read more than 10 or 12 pages! LOL!!! Very often I find that if I read the manul before I start messing with things, most of it doesn't actually register or make much sense. As I said to Pat before, it can be hard to adjust something like levels if you don't know what they are or how they actually work, so reading about it ahead of time doesn't really help. I had a lot of the same problems down in my music studio when I was trying to learn the ins and outs of MIDI...banks, patches, synthisis, samples...it was like "Who cares??? I just want the damn thing to make some noise!" LOL!!! Fortunately, a very nice program called "Reason" came along shortly after that and all those problems and concerns went away . Reason was just so well layed out and so logical (to me at least), I'm not sure why anyone would do MIDI any other way...and I don't think I've ever even touched my Reason manual...I just installed it and started recording with it. I love it when people design software that works the same way I think!



Now I will say that the manual for my Rebel XT was the one exception to all of this...I had read the whole thing before I started using the camera. There was a reason for that however...I didn't actually have the camera yet! LOL!!! I had bought the camera as a refurb off Ebay and I knew it was going to be 2 weeks before the thing arrived, so I downloaded all the docs off Canon's website...it gave me something to do in the "heat of my anticipation" LOL!!!!!!!!!!!! By the time the camera arrived, I knew what everything in all the menus did, how all the buttons work, etc.. . It's worth mentioning though that while my Rebel was my first DSLR, it wasn't my first camera. I grew up with and had been shooting with an old Canon FTb 35mm SLR for many years as well as my beloved Sony H1 for a couple of years...I knew what things like "aperture", "shutter speed", "exposure", "white balance" and all that other stuff was already. If my Rebel had of been my first camera, again I'm sure reading all of that stuff ahead of time really would not have helped much, if at all. As I said originally, there's a lot of things I really don't "get" by reading...I learn by doing. I guess it really just comes down to perspective.

It's the same way with learning video for me right now. I have a pretty good grasp of how to work the video camera both technically and artistically. In many ways, it's not really too different than still photography. Stuff like the rule of thirds, lighting, focal length, exposure, yadda, yadda, yadda, all still apply. I even have a basic understanding of editing principles...at least in regards to film (cutting & splicing and so forth ). My grandfather, many years ago was something of an avid amature videographer...in other words, he shot A LOT of home movies with his old Super 8! LOL!!! In fact I still have his camera and all his home editing equipment up in the attic. It's the doing the video editing on a computer with the intent of authoring my own DVD's that is new to me...again learning things like codecs and compression for example. I doubt my grandfather ever gave things like "gamma correction" or "aspect ratios" a second thought. On the other hand, after having seen his old home movies, I'm not really sure he knew what "exposure" really meant either! LOL!

Anyways, that's it for now. I'm typing on my wife's system because mine is tied up with a burn project and my wife's keyboard is driving me nuts (I like my clunky old IBM AT keyboard that feels like an old IBM typewriter, not this new-fangled thing she's got). I'm still trying to figure out this audio bug in this new Nero software as well so I got more surfin' and research to do.

Peace,
Jim