The last couple of weeks have been hectic around here. Besides rushing like mad to finish the edits on Shifter Born (I’m really proud of it), I attended an intensive computer seminar that was both interesting as well as exhausting.
Software Review
Yesterday, I put in more than five hours, working on my first trailer. It’s going slower than I would like, but so are most learning experiences. Years ago, I helped to build a television station down in West Palm Beach, Florida. Part of that process was installing and learning the basics of an Avid post-production computer. Since I don’t have a few thousand dollars to spend on a custom hardware and software system to make trailers, I went looking for Open Source solutions.
There are two popular ones for my Kubuntu Linux desktop. A simple and stable one is called Kino. It seems to work, but doesn’t have the bells and whistles to which I’d grown accustomed. Then, I found KdenLive.
All software packages have a series of numbers after them. These are usually shown as three numbers separated by a period as in XX.XX.X. The numbers refer to the release version of that software. If you’re not a programmer, only the first one is really important. If that number is zero, it means the programming team considers it to be BETA, or still in development, with known bugs. The current version of KdenLive is 0.7.6. If you’re an impatient soul, than consider that a warning. After looking it over and seeing all the professional bells-and-whistles, I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try.
Yes. There are some memory management problems that cause an occasional crash. Don’t let that stop you though. Save early and often and it’s merely a minor frustration. The program is easy to use and feature-rich. If you are running a Linux box and want to do video post-production, give it a try.
Snowbound!
Yep! You heard me right. It looks like we’re snowbound her in the DC metro area. A record-breaking snow started late yesterday and has already dumped more than a foot of fluffy white stuff. If their predictions hold, there will be another foot or before it stops, sometime Sunday.
Looks like I’m going to have plenty of time to work on my trailer and when I need a break, finish writing an erotic south seas pirate tale I promised my friends over at Captiva Press. There are some really exciting things coming from them and I’ll be sharing a lot more in the near future.
Here’s hoping you and yours stay toasty warm and safe over the holiday season.
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