Photography Class Moved

Up until now, I’ve been hosting my Introduction to Photography classes on Google Video (YouTube doesn’t allow videos over 15 minutes).  Google is shutting the service down, so I have decided to upload the classes to Vimeo instead.  Each class is between 40 and 80 minutes.

Class 1: Introduction / Exposure
Class 2: Photo Composition
Class 3: Your Point & Shoot Camera
Class 4: Color and Lighting
Class 5: Photo Touchup (Photoshop)

The big upside to the move is that the quality of the video is much higher now.  The down side is that I have to pay to host the videos now.  Since I can’t advertise in the videos or on their site, I’d appreciate you clicking the Amazon links here on this blog when making purchases, especially electronics, to help offset some of that cost.  There’s now way Amazon referrals will cover the hosting entirely, but it will certainly help.

This class is freely available to all.  I’m on a mission to save the world from bad information.  With the videos hosted on Google, 30,000 people were helped in their photography education. Hopefully we’ll see the same with Vimeo. :)

2010

Since I’m really bad about getting Christmas cards and letters out (it has been many, many years), I thought I’d use my blog to publish what would have been my Christmas letter.  I can reach more people this way, anyway.

In many ways 2010 was much the same as the past several years, consumed mostly with my work responsibilities.  As many, but not all, of you may know, in late 2007 I got involved with a new business venture.  A friend of mine, Jared, contacted me to ask if I would be willing to create the cash register component of a Point-of-Sale system for a quick-service pizza restaurant being opened by a friend of his. Despite my hesitation to get involved in such projects in the past, I decided to undertake the challenge.  Soon we began to attract the attention of other franchisees in the chain, and before we knew it we were selling our product to others.  Since that time we officially organized Custom Register Solutions, of which I am part owner.  In 2010 we increased our size from 3 employees to a company with 15 people.  It has been quite a ride.  My brother Brent joined the company in June this year, helping to create the web site portion of our software.

In 2009 we were approached by some executives from the parent company of the same international pizza chain to see if our product could be adopted to some new and very specific needs.  It was pretty evident that we could, so since that time we’ve been working intimately with them.  We’re confident that we will be announced as their preferred POS vendor very soon (the only “iffy” part is when, not if).  Between the preparation for that upcoming announcement, the demand it will place on us when that happens, and our fast-paced development schedule in the company I have been working very long weeks for a little over 3 years now.  It is nice to be getting close to the realization of what was, at the time we started the project, an impossible dream.  We’re doing some very cool and innovative stuff, but I can’t talk about that just yet.

In spite of the many hours I spend working, I have still gotten involved in several other outside projects.  Everyone who knows me is well aware of my interest in audio, video, and photography, and I have always enjoyed working on any project that involved any or all of those three.  This year was no exception.  Early in the year I proposed the idea of a live Internet-streamed concert to an up-and-coming California-based artist named Sonnet who had become known in Utah for the soundtrack she provided for a popular television commercial, and she was gracious enough to accept.  Soon the project blossomed into an honest-to-goodness real music video as well, which my friend Dave would direct, and another friend Paul would shoot.  February through May included a lot of planning for those events, which took place the first through second weeks of June.  It was a very busy schedule, but it was also a lot of fun spending time with old and new friends as part of the crew.  Few of the final results have been posted on the Internet at this point , but I will be sure to let everyone know when they are.

I had the privilege of spending more time with family this year than most.  My youngest sister Christine graduated from BYU in Psychology in April, and my parents and sister Suzanne all flew to Provo to be there for that.  Christine was seriously dating her then-boyfriend Brennen at the time, and a week later they announced their engagement to be married in August.  Through the planning stages my mom came back to Provo to help Christine out for a few days.  The entire family came out for the wedding in August.  It was the first time that all of us had not just been together, but had the opportunity to go to the temple as a family as well.  It was definitely a memorable occasion which we are all grateful for.

After the craziness of the wedding wound down, it was back to work as usual for a couple weeks before I headed to Tucson for two weeks to help with the installation of our software in 13 store locations there.  It was hot and stormy the first week, and the second week it was hot and dry, but the condo we rented had no working air conditioning.  I spent many nights on the couch just trying to get comfortable enough to sleep, while working in the heat during the day.  I was glad to come home.

This year I also got to see one of my favorite musical acts, Celtic Woman, perform not once but twice.  They came to Salt Lake in May, and I took my friend Sarah as my date, and Dave and Paul tagged along as well.  Sarah spent several years in Ireland and enjoys Celtic music, so it was a treat for her to be able to go.  The girls in the group are pretty amazing.  I really enjoyed the concert, so when they went to Los Angeles at the end of August I decided to see them again.  This time I took Sonnet with me, who despite being ill that day had a good time.  It was also nice to see my new friend again and spend a couple days with her in her hometown.  We planned to work together to record a short Christmas album, but due to both of us having busy schedules that didn’t happen this year.  Maybe next year?

Other projects this year included shooting video for a handful of weddings, doing audio for an international dance/music festival in Sandy, UT, my annual trip taking pictures of fall leaves with my friend Dave, recording the commentary for a feature film, and being the regular sound guy for the Mountain Blue southern bluegrass A Cappella gospel group.  Mountain Blue kept me really busy in early December, with quite a number of performances in the first half of the month.  But I love anything involving audio, video, or photography, so any opportunity that comes is more than welcome.

I am spending my Christmas vacation at my parents’ home (as I always do) in Tulsa, OK this year, with nearly all of the rest of my family.  Only my sister Cheryl and her husband Blake and their kids won’t be there. Their family is getting big and it is becoming more difficult for them to all travel.  It’s sad that they won’t be there with the rest of us, but we understand why they can’t and they’ll be with us in spirit.  This year Christine will be bringing her new husband with her, so we’re excited to include a new family member in our festivities.  We’re very lucky that we have been able to have so much of our family together for Christmas for so many years.

Christmas is my favorite time of year, not just because I get to see my family, but also because it is the time of year when many people put their own desires aside and think of others, and because it is the time of year we dedicate to thinking about our Savior, Jesus Christ.  The spirit of the season is unique, and something I look forward to throughout the year.  It never lasts long enough.

First Video of Sonnet

I posted this forever ago on my Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts, but forgot to include it here on the old blog.

This is the first released video of the week with Sonnet.  There are lots more to come… you’ll just have to be patient with me.  I still have a bit of editing to do.  And the videos will be released periodically as Sonnet feels it’s time to do so.

So here’s Sonnet’s “Without You” as performed at her acoustic house concert in June.

This was a lot of fun to work on.  We had quite a few technical problems (don’t get me started), but the good things far outweighed the bad.  Not only did I get to get out my audio and video toys, and play with new video editing software, I got to work with some great people.  Sonnet is so much more than just a gifted singer and talented writer… she’s an amazing person as well, and I’m really glad that I’ve had the opportunity to work with and get to know her.  And I’m really looking forward to the other projects she and I have in the works.  I always enjoy working on projects with Dave and Paul… both are extremely talented filmmakers, and lots of fun to be around.  The music video they’re putting together is going to be fantastic!  And Brad is amazing as well… always so willing to help out with my little projects, and just brilliant when it comes to all things musical and electronic.  He was such a lifesaver helping setup for the house concert, and directing the camera operators.  Thanks so much to everyone!

So there it is… the first public release of anything we did that week.  It was such a whirlwind (I literally got 12 hours of sleep between Monday and Friday), but in a good way.  I’d do it again in a heartbeat… but plan to spread things out over two more days if possible.

How it came to be…

So a few people have asked me how this all came about… a girl I had never met from California getting hooked up with a group of guys from Utah… well…

Let’s backup to early summer 2009.  I’m watching TV late at night and a commercial for Lagoon Park comes on.  And it’s got this cute, quirky, catchy song for its soundtrack.  The sort of song you’d never pick for a theme park, because it’s just this sweet sounding girl with rich but subtle harmony and a piano, to a slow beat—far from the stereotypical loud in-your-face sort of song one might associate with an amusement park.  But extremely intriguing nonetheless.  I really liked it, so I looked up who it was.  It took a little digging, but I finally found out that it was a girl from Los Angeles named Sonnet (yes, that really is her name), that managed to land a contract providing the song for the 2009 Lagoon/Coke ad campaign.  I found her website, saw that she was on Twitter, and followed her (that’s how you “friend” someone).  And she pretty much immediately responded by following me too.  Kewl!

Fast forward a few months.  Over time I had made a few comments to Sonnet on Twitter and she always wrote back, and was always very gracious.  We didn’t have what I’d call frequent communication, but it was steady.  At one point I mentioned to her that I did sound and that if she ever wanted to do a concert in Utah I’d be glad to provide my services, but nothing more came of that (I assumed as much… she really didn’t know me from Adam, and knew nothing about my ability as a sound engineer). At one point she did come to Utah and performed a couple concerts at Lagoon, and despite how hard I tried to get there, I arrived at the park too late and couldn’t get in.  So I missed the one opportunity I had to actually meet her and hear her perform.  That was a sad day.

Anyway, as Christmas approached one day she tweeted (that’s how you say that you posted something on Twitter) that she was looking for an idea for a Christmas present for family and friends.  I mentioned to her (since she was a singer) that she ought to record a song and give that to people.  There wasn’t really time before Christmas to do that, but it started a little bit of a dialog about working together on recording a song together someday.  Completely hypothetical, but it did begin to open up the possibility that someday something could maybe possibly happen if I rubbed my lucky rabbit’s foot during a full moon while the planets aligned just so.  Long shot, but not impossible.

Fast forward another couple months to February… another girl I was following on Twitter had been advertising to her followers that she was going to be doing a live streaming concert.  She started announcing it several weeks beforehand, making it seem like a really big deal.  This other artist was better known than Sonnet, had multiple CDs out, a recording contract with a major label, and had recently landed a nationally-broadcast TV commercial with a huge company in a very public advertising campaign, so for sure this was going to be something big, right?  So I made a point to tune in, only to be very disappointed.  Instead of being something professionally produced (you know, with at least a real microphone), it was her sitting on her bed, playing her guitar, being recorded by just the webcam and microphone in her laptop under really bad lighting.  You could barely hear her sing or play.  My first thought was, “What a waste!  She has lots of fans watching, has spent a lot of effort promoting this event, and this is what we’re getting?”  It was technology heartbreak for me.

At that point I had the idea that her disappointing production was probably due to the fact that she didn’t know the right person to pull off something better.  And I also thought, “I have the equipment, the know-how, and other resources to pull off something much better.”  The problem was, this other artist was too well known to even bother responding to anything on Twitter, so there wasn’t any way that she’d even consider taking the time working with some no-name from Utah.  And frankly, her music wasn’t something that I really got that excited about, so I didn’t even really want to pursue that anyway.

So the next day as I thinking about the disappointment of the previous evening, I thought, “who do I know that is good enough to justify spending the time, has enough of a following for there to be interest, and yet is not so well known that they’d consider working with me to produce a streamed concert?”  Of course Sonnet came to mind, so I sent her a casual message on Twitter asking if coming to Utah and doing a live, streaming Internet performance was something she’d be interested in doing.  She said it was, so we connected via IM and started talking about the possibility.  Nothing definitive, but it got the ball rolling nonetheless.

I don’t really know what she thought of the whole thing at that point--I’ve never asked, but she was game for the idea.  And before long we started making plans.  Eventually we connected via email and on the phone, then started regular video conferences planning things out.  Once we found a location, and a suitable timeframe within her schedule and mine, things finally started coming together.

Sonnet was totally on board with the ideas that I had for what the concert was going to be like.  I wanted to keep it small (for many technical as well as other reasons) but completely professionally produced, with real lighting, multiple cameras, moving cameras, nice piano, high end audio equipment, shot in high definition at a nice location, etc.  The idea of just a small concert in someone’s living room struck a chord with both of us.  I’m really glad that she and I have been on the same page through the entire process… it has made it that much more fun.

Somewhere along the line I asked Dave and Paul if they’d be interested in running cameras for me for the concert.  They’ve always been really good about helping me out with projects when I ask, so they agreed.  But I think at first they just thought it was one of my silly little just-for-fun things that I do when I’m bored of the rest of my life, so there wasn’t a lot of excitement coming from them initially.

After a couple more weeks, I was frankly a little frustrated that they weren’t more excited about the project… I wanted them to be excited about it.  And to see what I saw in Sonnet—a sweet, beautiful, extremely likeable and talented singer with a catchy sound—so I showed them a couple of her YouTube videos.  Fortunately, they got it right away.  They saw the same things I was seeing, and they finally started to show some enthusiasm. 

So as we started talking about plans for the concert, somehow the idea of shooting a music video while Sonnet was going in town came up.  I don’t remember who it was that had the idea, but after asking her if she would be interested, plans for the video started coming together.  A song was picked.  Then a different song picked.  Then back to the first song.  Ideas for the story started to come and be discussed.  Too many ideas, in fact.  Later, two days before Sonnet flew to Utah her image consultant called me and Dave and we had an emergency two hour phone conference to simplify and focus things drastically.  Yes, two days before she got here we were making major changes.  Talk about flying by the seat of your pants.  Anyway, we landed in a place we were all comfortable.  (Okay, Doug, enough with the plane metaphors!)

Anyway, thankfully we had a lot of other people jump in at the last second to help out.  A few days before we started shooting Sae Sae volunteered to help, and she did some amazing recruiting… she found people to help with lighting and moving equipment around (grips), hair, and makeup.  We owe a lot to her making things go as smoothly as they did!

Honestly, I can’t take much credit for the music video.  Dave and Paul really took the idea of the video and ran with it.  I really didn’t have that much to do with putting the video together.  Other than providing some of the equipment, while it was going on my main job was to make sure that Sonnet was where she needed to be when she needed to be there, and that she was being taken care of.  Sure, I’d step in to run a second camera, or move stuff around, but ultimately my biggest role for the video was really making sure that Sonnet was comfortable.

The Internet streamed concert was another story altogether.  Where I took a back seat during filming of the music video, I stepped in and took charge for the concert.  That was really my baby of the whole week.  Multi-camera videos are something that the others do rarely, but something I do with some degree of regularity.  Fortunately I have acquired all of the equipment to do so over the last several years, even designing, building, and writing software for quite a bit of it as well.  And I actually enjoy working with audio more than video, so this was going to be my only chance during the week to do what I enjoy most. 

I’ll save the many stories from the week when we actually shot everything for another post (and maybe some of the other people involved will post something on their own blogs… hint, hint?).  It really was quite an adventure, but in a good way.  So much fun, and definitely an experience I will never forget.  Frankly I can’t believe we pulled off what we did in so little time.  And that we survived the week of no sleep, super late nights, in the heat, on little food, without hating each other by the end (much to the contrary, actually—we’re all better friends), is kind of a miracle in and of itself.

Looking for some assistance…

Next week, a very talented singer/songwriter named Sonnet (www.sonnetmusic.com, www.youtube.com/sonnetsings) is coming to Provo/Orem from Los Angeles to shoot a real music video and perform a house concert which will be broadcast over the Internet.  Sonnet is well known in Utah for her “You’re So Good For Me” song, which was featured as the music for the 2009 Lagoon Park advertising campaign.  If you were in Utah last summer, you most likely have heard the song.  Her other music is just as good.

My role in it all?  Well, I kind of organized the whole thing, and I’m providing the equipment to make it all happen.

This is going to be an affair that lasts for several days and is going to require a significant number of people to pull it off, so we’re looking for a few extra hands to help out.

Before you stop reading thinking, “I don’t have any technical skills, so I can’t be of any help” please do take the time to finish reading.  While we do require some technical skill for some tasks, most of those are already filled, and many of the remaining roles do not require any technical expertise. 

Music Video – Tues-Wed, June 8th & 9th

We’ll be shooting the music video for her new song “Seesaw” on Tuesday and Wednesday (June 8/9) at various locations in and near Utah valley.  We have technical crew more-or-less covered for these events, but we could use a few extra people for various other things that it takes to shoot a video: extras to appear in the background in a few scenes, people to hold reflectors and other lighting elements, someone to be in charge of music playback, people to move props and equipment, and maybe even run errands at various times both days.

Unfortunately this whole project is being done pro-bono so we can’t offer any sort of financial compensation.  You will, however, appear in the credits for the video, and food will be provided while we are shooting.

For the technically minded, we are doing something new and trendy: we are shooting the entire video on Canon digital SLR cameras, just like this season’s finale of House, and some feature films currently in production.  The video quality is amazing!  We’ll also be doing a significant amount of green-screen work.  This is the real deal here, folks – it’s going to be shot professionally, complete with special effects, and is going to look fantastic.

If you’ve ever wanted to be involved in the creation of a real music video, whether as an extra, or crew, this is a great opportunity.  And certainly something that can go on the resume of anyone wanting to do any video or film work.  We don’t require that you be available all day, but if you have a few hours to help out it, we would be very grateful.  We’ll have a schedule of events finalized by this weekend, which I will send to anyone who expresses any interest in helping.

House Concert – Thurs, June 10th

Rather than doing a big concert in a regular venue, we have elected to do a small, intimate concert.  House concerts are currently popping up everywhere, and are becoming quite popular, even for well-established artists, so that’s the directly we have elected to take.  Her concert will be next Thursday at 7pm in Orem.

Sonnet has invited about 30 guests, giving her the opportunity to actually interact with those who attend and talk about her music in an informal setting.  We will also be shooting and broadcasting that event over the Internet for any of her fans to view (at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sonnetlive).  The resulting video will be re-edited later and be uploaded to her web site and YouTube for all to see.

Even though it will be informal, from a technical point of view it will be very sophisticated: we’re going to be shooting on 6 cameras, have everything professionally lit, and audio will be first-rate.  It will have the feel of something small and intimate, but look and sound like a first-rate production.

We have most of the technical assistance we need (though we could use one additional camera operator), but are still looking for a little bit of additional help.  We need someone to welcome guests and make sure they are seated comfortably.  We need a few people to assist the camera operators by making sure that cables stay out of the way.  We need someone to help with the camera dolly.  We might need someone to help with controlling the lighting.  A few additional hands to move equipment in and out in the morning and evening would be very much helpful.  None of these are difficult tasks, but we’re a bit short on people-power.

Again, we can’t offer any financial compensation, but your name will appear in the credits, and you’ll get to attend a concert with excellent music, and meet the artist. 

Can you help?

If you’re at all interested, and are available any time Tuesday through Thursday next week, drop me an email at sonnetevent@djmail.org and let me know what interests you and when you’re available.  And if you know someone who is interested in this kind of thing and would be interested in being involved, please pass a link to this blog post along.

Thank you!!!

Full Circle

My life as a professional programmer has officially come full circle.

The first contract programming job I ever did was when I was 12… some 24 years ago (ugh… was it really that long ago?). It was a project for a law firm in Omaha, NE (where my family was living at the time) that downloaded data from a piece of equipment that logged all phone calls in and out of their office to a computer, and present that information in a usable and meaningful way. The firm had approached my dad about writing this software for them and he decided to pass the software portion of it on to me, while he took care of connecting the hardware. It wasn’t a big project; we didn’t work on it long, and it didn’t pay a lot, but it was significant in that it was the first time that I was being paid for doing some programming.

Today I’m part owner of a company that creates, sells, and supports restaurant management software. We currently have 7 people working at the company, 3 of which are dedicated to taking telephone support calls. I am responsible for putting together the software that they use for supporting customers, and within the last couple of days one of the features I added was the ability to log data about incoming and outgoing phone calls. A box in the office records the caller ID information coming in, sends it out to the network where my software receives it and logs it in a database along with the duration of the call as well as which employee took the call.

This new feature of the software is very similar to the first project I worked on professionally. They both record phone call information into a database.

Many other aspects of my current employment mirror programming experiences I had when I was younger as well. Knowing what to do with phone call data was a natural fit, because I had done it before.

The money that my dad and I were paid for that project went toward purchasing a printer for the computer we had at home. That printer was an Epson dot matrix printer (those really loud, slow ones). Today we are using Epson dot matrix printers for printing customer receipts as part of the cash register portion of our software. Many of the commands to control the receipt printers today are the same as the commands I learned to control that first printer we got nearly a quarter century ago. Learning to talk to the printers today was easy because I learned how to do it 25 years ago.

With the Point-of-Sale system we also talk to various pieces of equipment using serial ports on the register computers. In 1987 I wrote a telecommunication program whose primary focus was talking to other computers over serial ports. In 1989 I worked on a project where a computer would record data coming off of an induction pipe bending machine over a serial port. The project for the law firm also used the computer’s serial port.

There are other ways that I have seen things cycle back on themselves with our current project. It’s kind of weird to see things happen like that, especially considering the rapid pace of technological development. But at the same time the things I was doing 25 years ago (or more) were in a lot of ways preparing me in a unique way for the things I am doing today.

Now if only I can find a good multimedia programming project to work on so I can relive the stuff I made in the early 1990s.

The light at the end of the tunnel

For the last 3-4 weeks I have been keeping myself very busy working on rebuilding my video production equipment rack.  “What is that?” you might ask?  I’m glad you did. 

There are two primary ways that video is created.  There is taped video production, and live video production.  Most of the people that I know that work with video do taped production primarily… making movies, commercials, and the like.  Each shot is planned out ahead of time, shot multiple times from different angles. Video made this way can take a long time to create.

The other is live production, where a crew of camera operators, a director, and other technical crew members will setup multiple cameras at some type of event and switch between the cameras live.  A director sits and monitors the different shots from the various cameras, selecting different shots to go out “live,” and giving instructions to the camera operators on what shots to get to make the video interesting and flow naturally.

I love working with video, but I’m not a huge fan of the editing phase, so focusing on live video production interests me more than taped production.  Not only that, but there aren’t very many people that do live production, so it’s a relatively easy market to create a niche in, especially for lower budget productions.  So I have concentrated on building an arsenal of equipment to handle live video easily.  It’s a lot more of a financial drain than taped production, as it takes multiple cameras and very expensive live switching equipment at a very minimum.  I have 7 professional quality video cameras (5 HD), and sometimes even that doesn’t feel like enough.

After a technical disaster I had shooting the graduation of a local college recently, I decided it was time to rebuild my existing rack of video production equipment.  We were having issues with the video from different cameras cutting in and out, problematic communication equipment, just to name two of the major issues that came up.  When I found out that my stake is having another conference a few weeks after that (this coming Saturday and Sunday) my pace for rebuilding was picked up drastically.

The 48 cables removed from the previous video rack.
These are NOT going into the new rack.  Good riddance!

This was also a great opportunity to upgrade the capabilities of my equipment.  The focus of the new setup is a 64x64 video router, which has inputs for 64 different video sources (like cameras, DVD players, etc.) and outputs for 64 different destinations (like DVD recorders, video monitors, etc.)  (For comparison, my previous router had 16 inputs and 2 outputs.)  I have had this thing for about two years but it has been sitting idle waiting to be used.   The router itself can be seen in later pictures; it’s the big blue thing on the back side of the rack, or the device with tons of blue wires coming in and out of it in the “inside” pictures.  Here’s a screenshot of some software I threw together to control the video router during the testing phase.

I had used some inexpensive cables in the old rack, and this was causing at least some of the problems I was having, so this time around I spared no expense on cabling.  I used extremely high quality video cable, with the best connectors available on each end.  Each cable was cut to the exact length needed, and the ends were crimped on.  Here’s an example of what a completed cable looks like:

I had to make about 80 of these cables in various lengths from a few inches to a couple feet.  Each one takes about 5 minutes to create.  A few shots of some of the cable after installation…

I especially like that last shot.  The 16 short cables all lined up like that are kind of pretty.  :)  But even with those, it still doesn’t look like there are 80 blue video cables in there… but there are!

The making of cables didn’t end there.  Because my rack also processes and mixes audio, I had two panels of various audio connectors, and a pile of cables to create for integrating an audio mixer.  The connectors in the next shot were particularly time consuming, as there are six individual wires that need to be attached to each one, in a relatively small space.

Instead of being crimped, the audio connections all must be soldered… on both ends.  That took quite a while to get all of that done.  I spent several days sitting at my workbench soldering connectors.

The rack also houses communication equipment.  A sort of intercom system that allows communication between the director and the camera operators.  None of that is visible directly here, but it took nearly as much time to wire as the audio connections did.

Those of you with a keen eye will notice that there is a considerable amount of twisted pair (CAT-5) cable in the rack.  This is because my former roommate Brad and I developed a system about 5 years ago that sends all of the audio and video signals over a CAT-5 Ethernet cable (one per camera).  Each cable carries two video signals (one from the camera, one to the camera), an audio signal from the camera, bidirectional intercom audio, and tally (the red light that lights up on the active camera).  An Ethernet cable is run from the back of my equipment rack to a small box of electronics at each camera.  Yes, we did build these from scratch:

This makes setup much easier, as once the production rack is setup, it’s just a matter of running a single Ethernet cable to each camera to get things going from there.  Much faster than running four or five cables to each camera, though I still do have that option if I choose to exercise it.

So here’s the finished rack…

One thing obviously missing is a video switching console.  I may be one of the only people on the planet that does video switching that doesn’t use a conventional console to do so.  I have come up with something much more innovative and easy to use.  It’s all done on a computer with a touch screen monitor.

One of the pieces of equipment in this rack takes up to 16 of the 64 video sources and compresses them down into a single signal that is sent to my laptop.  The laptop then displays these sources in a 2x2, 3x3, or 4x4 grid (depending on how many cameras I might be working with at the time), then the touch screen of the laptop is used to select video sources.  So all I have to do is touch the video I want to be “live” and the computer sends out the signals to the equipment in the rack to re-route the signals as needed to make the transition to the new video source.  I’ll try to remember to get some screenshots while I’m using it for conference this weekend, but it’s very slick (though VERY unpolished at this point).  It only takes about a minute to train people on how to use it, which is certainly not the case with conventional video switchers.  My system also announces (verbally) the typical instructions that directors give (“Ready 3…. Take 3…. Dissolve 2”) automatically over the intercom, freeing me up as a director for other tasks, like monitoring all of the cameras and giving meaningful instructions to the camera operators.

One other innovation I have come up with, and has been made possible by using the huge 64x64 router is the ability to send different video sources to the different camera operators.  Each operator has an LCD monitor mounted on top of their camera so they can see the live video that is being broadcast or recorded.  With this new rack of equipment I can now each allow operator to select which video source they want to see on their monitor, whether that be the live program feed, the preview feed (the next source about to go live), the feed from another camera, their own camera, or even a script or set list coming out of a computer somewhere.  But as of now I can also send a combination of these things.  Each camera operator can now see which video source is live, plus all of the other cameras at the same time should I choose to send it to them.  An example may help to illustrate:

This isn’t exactly what an operator will see, but it gives you the idea.  The top 3/4 of the screen show the program feed (active video program), and the bottom row shows feeds from three cameras (the same source is being used for all three here, but normally these would be different), and the preview feed.  So each camera operator can see what the others are doing, and know which source is about to go live.  That makes my job as a director a lot easier, as a good camera operator will make sure to give a different type of shot than everyone else, and especially different than the live feed. 

Another example of what can be sent to the cameras, this time using color bars:

Even though the rack is finished I’m still not done with the project.  I need to spend a couple days working on my switching software to make it work with the new setup, and take advantage of its capabilities.  Hopefully it will all go smoothly.  And if I remember I’ll post some screenshots to show just how easy to use this system is.

Home Theater Makeover, Part III

I’ve been wanting to build a real platform for the second row of seating in my home theater ever since the living room makeover started five months ago, but my miter saw was misbehaving, so I didn’t dare use it (never trust a malfunctioning saw).  Which meant I had to wait until I could afford a replacement.  Two weeks ago I finally got one, and Brad was kind enough to assist me in building a new platform.  He brought his fiancé Erin along, who picked out the carpet for it and offered moral support.

So there it is… 8’ x 11’ x 10” of very solidly-built platform, constructed and carpeted in a hair over 3 hours.  It might not necessarily look that sturdy, but it is built very well – much stronger than the floors in your home, so I trust that it will last a long time.  And it has lots of storage underneath.  I’m thinking of adding safety lighting underneath too, but I’m still undecided on that.

And here’s the new saw, a DeWalt DW717.  It’s very nice.  And hopefully I’ll never have to replace it.

Next up for the home theater: a new equipment rack, and a stand for the TV and center channel speaker.  But who knows when either of those will happen.

Doug’s Typical Day

Times vary widely, but the activities are fairly typical of any given day, Monday through Saturday.

11:00 am – Wake up, process any incoming software orders, grab some toast, a yogurt, banana, or bowl of cereal from the kitchen, head back to the computer to eat while continuing the day.

11:05 am – Look over the 50-60 emails received overnight, begin responding to the most critical, easiest to answer, and the ones that have been sitting in my inbox too long.

11:45 am – Check the technology news sites for anything new and exciting in the last 24 hours. 

12:00 pm – Take a look over the databases and logs from the different stores running our Point-of-Sale software.  Perform any needed grooming and fix any issues with any servers or registers that have obvious problems. 

12:30 pm – Begin working on one of the various programming projects I’m involved with… these days that is usually the Point-of-Sale system, in preparation for Pizza Expo in early March.

4:00 pm – Time for a break.  That usually involves showering, getting dressed, checking the mail, processing any email from the last few hours, and making a quick lunch/snack.

4:30 pm – If I have any shopping or other errands to do, do that for the next little while.  Back to the computer to do (you guessed it) more coding.

6:00 pm – I’m on shift now for technical support calls for the Point-of-Sale system, though I often get some rollover from the prior shift starting around mid-afternoon.  Still coding when I’m not taking care of POS issues.

7:45 pm – Time for another break.  Quick second lunch or snack.  This is usually when the TV gets turned on to catch any evening shows I follow, but only in the background (I’m not mentally able to just sit and watch TV without doing something else). 

8:00 pm - Back to coding, unless it’s Friday, in which case it’s time to start cleaning up the living room and kitchen areas for Movie Night guests.

10:00 pm – Phone calls and emails have subsided by now, so I can really concentrate on getting some good programming done.  (Phone calls during the day, even quick ones, throw me off by as much as 30-45 minutes each, so my post-10 pm ‘no interruptions’ time is special.)

12:00 am – Snack break.  Check tech and news sites and my email again and catch up on any friends’ blogs that have been updated.  Back to coding.

3:30 am – Start to look for a good place to wind down programming for the day. 

4:00 am – Really start to look for a good place to wind down programming for the day.  Start thinking about going to bed.  On a night when I’m at a good stopping place, this is about where I can start wrapping things up.  Otherwise…

Between 4:15 am and 5:00 am – Finally getting to a point where I can really wrap up coding for the day.  Climb into bed.

Between 5:00 am and 5:30 am – Scripture study if it’s a day where I can still keep my eyes open.  Flip on a TV show or two or three I’ve seen a million times so I can …

Between 5:15 am and 6:00 am – Finally fall asleep.

What is your typical day like?   Post on your blog, then paste a link in the comments section below.

I think I might be sick

I can't sit still.  I have a really hard time sitting and doing next to nothing, whether it be to watch TV, read, even talk on the phone.  My mind goes a million miles an hour, thinking about everything that I need to do, as well as everything I want to do.  I just can't get the various projects I have out of my mind no matter what I do.

There are times when I should be relaxing to maintain my sanity.  We can't just work all of the time, right?  But every time I try I feel guilty that I'm not doing something productive. 

I can't go to sleep at night because I have so many things that I want to do.  And I'm only getting about 5-6 hours of sleep (or less) every night because I want to get back to work on different projects as soon as I can.

I find myself not taking time to eat.  One "meal" a day is all I take time for, and even then it's only long enough to prepare whatever I eat (usually something quick, like cereal, or a sandwich) and eat while I'm doing something else. 

I sometimes don't answer the phone when friends call, just because I'm right in the middle of an idea that I don't want to interrupt.

The funny thing about this is that none of this seems to be causing me any stress.  Deadlines and pressure from people to finish other non-work-related projects cause some stress, but not any of the "work" I'm involved with.

Is this a mental illness?

(This is meant as a rhetorical question; I'm not asking for responses.)

Feeling A Little Overwhelmed Today

I'm kind of feeling a little bit overwhelmed with everything I have to get done in the next little while. Here's just a sampling:

• Edit the video I shot at a college graduation a few weeks ago, make several copies of the DVD, and send them off.
• Edit the video I shot for my friend Amber's wedding and make a DVD, and send it off.
• Edit the video I shot of my sister Christine performing at Velour, and post it for my family.
• Copy and send out the recording of Christine playing at Ozz, and send it to my family.
• Edit pictures I shot for Michael & Kiley's wedding, and order prints.
• Edit and mix down recordings I made of Richard and Gabe forever ago.
• Edit family pictures taken at Christmas, make DVDs of the video I shot at Christmas the last three years, and get those sent out.
• Make several significant changes to a tuxedo rental system I just created, and install and train the store owner and employees on how to use it.
• Extract the audio for a golf seminar from a hard drive recorder, burn DVDs, and send them off.
• Order more equipment and install another two antennas in my stake center for an upcoming stake conference.
• Make changes in FileBack PC (my backup software) to make it work better on Windows Vista, and fix a bug preventing encrypted backups from being restored. (Most of those parts are done.) After making changes, build a new release package, a new update package, upload both, notify the sites hosting the program that a new version is available, then send out announcements to my customers of the changes and that a new version is available.
• Move my company web site to a new server.
• Start cleaning the house in preparation for my parents visiting next week, and sister Cheryl and her family the following week.
• Arrange and build a float for the Freedom Festival 4th of July parade.
• Write a synthesizer engine for my GuitarToy software, finish debugging, create a web site and press releases, and post it.
• Do final cleanup on my ActiveClip utility, build a web site for it, and release it.
• Update my stake web site's calendar. I think I'm only 3 months behind right now.
• Build an inventory manager for the point-of-sale software I'm working on. And build the employee scheduling module. Plus a ton of other changes.
• One of these days, shoot and edit a training video for the point-of-sale system.

That's just what comes to mind immediately. Mostly this is my own checklist of things to work on. But it's depressing because I think I'm getting farther and farther behind rather than getting caught up. Anybody know where I can have a clone made?

I’m Up To No Good

Okay, I'm not really… But it seemed like time to add a post about what I'm doing with my life, rather than just venting or dispelling information of high value. J

The last year or so has been full of changes in both my personal and professional life. Fortunately it has pretty much all been for the better.

A little over a year ago I received a phone call inviting me to do some contract programming work for an engineering firm in Houston. My friend Brian had referred me to one of his customers, and they were pretty excited to have me come down and do some work for them. So Brian flew up to Utah and we drove back to Houston so I could begin working on the project. It turns out they wanted an easy way to track the projects they were working on and coordinate between employees. A pretty simple idea, really, and the resulting program is actually pretty slick. They're very happy, so they've had me come back down for followup and an additional project since then. I'll be heading back down for yet another followup visit shortly. They treat me pretty well, and each time I go to Houston I get to visit Brian and my sister Suzanne. It works out really well for everyone involved.

In August my brother Brent was asked by his former boss Jared to help out with a Point-of-Sale application that would end up in pizza retailers. Before long it became obvious that the project requirements were outside his realm of expertise, so Jared asked me to take on the project. The catch? It needed to be ready to use in a Little Caesars store opening in just four weeks. (Has a decent point-of-sale system ever been written in four weeks? Somehow I doubt it.) Anyway, I got the basics done in time, and it has actually been a really fun project to work on. Learning how to interface with fingerprint readers and design touch-screen friendly interfaces has been enjoyable and a nice deviation from the sort of software I usually create. Plus we've been able to come up with some really innovative stuff in it, like very accurate sales predictions and intra-company email messaging. The package has a lot of potential and could really shake up the industry if we can market it properly. I say "we" but really I mean Jared and Rob; I'm not much of a marketing guy. It's still keeping me busy with new development. The last week or so I've been trying to tackle staffing needs based on predicted sales, with limited success. I'll get it, though. After that I'll target pizza delivery and begin working on the training video.

As part of the sale of the Pizza POS (we'll call it "PPOS" for short) I was invited to go to Washington state to help install it in five stores. And the locations just happened to be within my mission boundaries, one of which was in my greenie area. So for the first time in 13 years I got to go back and tour my mission. We didn't have a lot of time to play or visit, but it was nice to see a few of the people that I lost contact with a long time ago, and amazing to see just how quickly we were able to reconnect.

I was also asked to go to Tulsa, OK to install our system in a Little Caesars store opening there. That's where my parents now live (as of one year ago), so I'll spend about a week there visiting the folks and working in the store. I don't know an exact date as to when that will happen, but it should be in the next 3-4 weeks or so.

In October and November I taught an introductory photography class in my home and streamed it out live to the internet. The videos for the five classes are now available on Google Video: Class 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (my favorite). And the backdrop I used for that is still hanging in the living room… it is so much more attractive than the inside-of-a-1970s-sleeping-bag wallpaper!

Speaking of photography, in August I had my first out-of-state job. It was a wedding I shot was in Portland. And the couple was very happy with the results, and I was glad to go to a city I'd never seen before. But it didn't increase my "I've been to 45 states" number; I had been to Oregon before. When am I going to get a job in Alaska, Hawaii, Minnesota, Michigan, or Wisconsin?

For Christmas I spent two weeks in my parents' home, much of the time was spent doing projects around the house: wiring the house for a network, hooking up TVs to the satellite dish, building a workbench, and doing other electrical work. I love doing that kind of stuff, and it's fun to work on that stuff with my dad and other family members. I'm sure we'll find more projects to work on during my upcoming visit.

It kind of sounds like I've done a lot of travelling, doesn't it! I guess I have… Several months in 2007 I spent as much time out of Utah as I did in Utah. Crazy. 2008 will likely be the same. April looks like it's going to be one of those months.

Let's see… as far as other projects I've worked on recently…

• I'm currently working on software to allow you to play real music using Guitar Hero and Rock Band controllers. It's working really well now. But before I release it "out in the wild" I'll have to write a synthesizer engine so people without MIDI pianos/keyboards can use it. Not totally sure when I'm gonna get it done, but it's coming along. I'll post it on my web site and do some viral marketing using YouTube when it's ready to go.
  
• Over the last couple of days I've been writing a game (at least that's what I guess you'd call it) for my new Toshiba Portege M700 Tablet PC. It's a game where you navigate a ball through a maze using the accelerometer in the computer – you tilt the computer to make the ball roll. Not something I intend to do anything with professionally, just a "can I do it?" kind of thing.
  
• I finally wrote the software to allow me to do video switching with a touch-screen monitor about a year ago. In addition to controlling all of the video switching and routing hardware, it also controls multiple DVD players to synchronize video playback with the video transitions. The project is kind of in limbo right now, but it's a fun one that impresses everyone who sees it, even non-techies. With the Tablet PC I just got, setting up the system will be a lot easier.
  
• Six weeks ago Brad and I created a two minute video on how to make an apple pie for one of his classes.
  
• Within the last year my first two (1, 2) real television commercials have aired, both for car dealerships in Idaho. I also created one for the Utah Flash, but that project fell through and it never aired.
  
• One of these days I'm going to create my car computer. Kind of hard to describe, but essentially it will be a music player and navigation system with a lot of unique and innovative capabilities. I've already figured out how to do some of the neatest things about it, like door-to-door driving directions, real-time weather maps, XM radio. It will also have real-time email notifications, and WiFi internet sharing for anyone in the vehicle. I'm still trying to figure out how to do two separate video feeds, one for the passenger, one for the back seat. I'm sure I'll figure it out, but I'm still in the very early design stages of the software. The hardware installation is going to be a big deal, too, because it will require rewiring a significant portion of my audio system, and building a new center console to hold some of the equipment.
  
• Lots of new toys in the last year (as always)… two new high definition video cameras and three new laptops, just to name a few.
  
• Brian and I attempted to start a podcast a few months ago, but we've found that we're too busy to coordinate schedules long enough to do regular recordings. Oh well… the idea had promise and it was fun while it lasted. Though I haven' totally given up on the idea.
  
• As part of my calling in my stake, I was asked to figure out how to send video between multiple church buildings back in August. We installed the equipment in January for a stake conference a few days later. I think I'm still coughing up insulation. But the idea worked. Sometime before this coming June though we're gonna do the first equipment upgrade so it works even better, so I get to spend even more time in the attics of the local church buildings. I sure do spend more time in attics than I like. And it is fun to setup my video equipment. This last time we had four cameras going.
  
• Since I started the PPOS project, I haven't had as much time to dedicate to FileBack PC or my eClipse presentation software. I still have big plans for both, just no time to work on them.
  
• About a year ago I started attending the family ward that I live in. The ward itself is fine, but I feel like a fish out of water, being one of just a couple unmarried adults.
  
• Speaking of being an adult, I recently had my 35^th birthday and yet I still don't feel like I'm a grown-up. Does anyone ever really get over that? Maybe after you have kids? The one thing that makes it feel more like reality is that my "little" brother is 28 and my "baby" sister (14 years younger) is almost 21.
  
• The last several months have been filled with really late nights working on PPOS and working with Jared and Brad on various projects. We like to get together late at night, flip down the projection screen in the living room for one of the world's largest computer monitors, and work on various programming projects into the wee hours of the morning.
  
• I haven't had a ton of professional video jobs lately, but when I have had them my customers are more than thrilled with the results. I just need to figure out how to advertise my services a little more. But not a lot more, I like the balance I have between different types of projects now, and I think I'd get burned out on video if I were to start doing it a lot more often.
  
• Since I'm no longer involved with any singles wards, the occasions to get out my professional audio equipment have been cut back greatly. It's kind of a shame that I have some of the nicest equipment in Utah Valley, and care more about the way things sound than most sound guys, yet the equipment and I sit idle most of the time. Of all of my hobbies, this is the one I wish I could do more.
  
• Along the lines of "sound" and "idle…" I've been watching American Idol this season again, and am very glad that there are two strong LDS contestants. They're not the first, but they both seem to have a better shot at winning it all than in previous contestants did.
  
• A lot of people ask me about the iPhone. It's cool for what it is, but way too simplistic for my needs. There are several core features they'll have to add before I can even consider one. But if you're considering one, hold off until this summer when the new model ships.
  

Overall I love my life. I've got the best situation with my "job" if you can even call it that. I get to do all of the things I love doing. It's the best.

Making a Webcast (Creating my Photography Class)

Anyone following my life in the last couple months knows that I recently taught a 5-episode class on photography techniques, and some of you even watched along as I broadcast it across the internet. What a lot of you probably don't know is what it takes to make a webcast happen. So I felt it appropriate to share a little bit of the "behind the scenes" stuff that goes on.

Over the last couple of years I have had a number of friends approach me and ask me if I would be willing to teach them how to take pictures. Of course I'm happy to do so, but in most cases we never got around to doing anything about it, and when we did, I didn't have my thoughts very well organized and honestly I don't think I was really that much of a help. But earlier this year I thought about organizing and teaching a formal class.

It all started by planning out what material I wanted to cover in the class and organizing it into 7 general topics that would fit in about an hour's time each. Since I had been thinking about teaching a photography class for months before even announcing it and most of my thoughts were already fairly well organized as to what I was going to teach, I was well on my way. But I needed to categorize it, and present it all in an order that it would make sense. A lot of time was spent deciding just how much background I would give with regard to a specific point of information, so it turns out I ended up researching, categorizing, and coming up with graphics for about five times as much information as I would be presenting in-class. But that ended up working great because when a student would ask a question, in almost all cases it was along a topic that I have had experience in, or was right in line with something that I had researched beforehand. If someone asked me, for example, "how does depth of field work mathematically?" or "how do you define 'in focus?'" I was actually prepared with an answer for that, complete with graphics to illustrate.

Once the basic outline of the class was set, I had to build a web site to present information about the class and allow students to log in to update their interests and schedule. My brother Brent actually did the vast majority of the programming for it and the biggest chore I had was to design the look of the site and integrate Brent's code into it to make it work. There was about a full day of labor there. But what you nobody ever saw was a custom-written piece of software that I put together to maintain the database on that site. Originally when planning the class I was going to have each class twice in a week so that the most interested people could attend, and the timing of those classes was going to be decided based on when interested students could possibly attend. The software I came up was designed to allow students to input their schedules for the next week, and it would then actually calculate the best days and times of day for between one and three episodes of each class based on who was interested in a given topic and their schedules. I could, with a single mouse click, see when I should hold a class to get the most interested people there, who could attend, and who would not be able to attend. It was actually pretty slick even though it was only eventually used to decide that Thursday at 8 was the best overall time to hold a single class.

Creating the opening graphical video sequence was another task that had to be performed ahead of time. By the time I actually sat down to create it I had a color scheme in mind, so choosing the appropriate background graphic wasn't that hard. The most time consuming part was finding the appropriate pictures and adding them to the timeline with just enough motion and effects to make things interesting. Music was selected, and a DVD made containing the full opening/closing graphic sequence in two versions: both with and without music after the opening (so I could have music playing under my voice as I was introducing the class). Total time creating the opening sequence was about 10 hours.

Next came building a set. My regular living room isn't very camera friendly, and certainly wasn't laid out in a very classroom-friendly configuration, so I had to actually rotate the room 90 degrees from normal and put up fake walls using photo backdrops (called "muslins") for the wall behind me and to create a fake wall behind the projection screen to hide the home theater system behind it (incidentally, I still haven't taken them down; they are much more attractive than the wallpaper behind them). I also had to build the "desk" that I used, which if you were to see it in person, is very oddly shaped and wouldn't make any sense in any other situation. Building and painting the desk took about a day, putting up the fake walls and lighting the room took another half a day.

Next came the video cameras (all 5 of them), two of which had to be mounted to a wall because there was no room for tripods. Running cables for the four microphones (3 on the ceiling for the three couches and my wireless lavaliere mic) and 15 video sources (yes, there really were 15 video sources) to my "studio" followed, but ironically the most challenging part of setting up the set was getting video from the laptop computer I was using to my monitor, the projector, and out to the web simultaneously. I needed to be able to see my computer desktop but present the informational slides simultaneously on three different types of display devices (projector, LCD and CRT monitors, and output to the web). I won't go into any more detail, but it was actually the biggest technological challenge I had setting up for the class.

Video from the two main cameras was shot by one or two operators who generously donated their time (David Skousen and Paul Green, thank you!), and sent down the hall to the studio where former roommate and great friend Brad Riching selected different between the different sources using a proprietary video switching solution (more about that in a minute). Brad also ran the audio mixer to combine just the right amount of sound from each of the four microphones (and when necessary the music from the DVD), and the audio, along with the video was sent to processing equipment to make it look and sound better for DVD and web broadcast. In short, each microphone is run through multiple processors to make sure that levels are both loud enough to hear and not so loud that they distort, another so that speech is intelligible, and after all of that the final signal is processed yet again in the same manner before being sent to the recorder and out to the web. Video is handled in a similar way. (On a side note, if all of the audio and video processing equipment used was stacked, top to bottom it would be about 10 feet high.) The processed audio and video are distributed to a hard drive-based video recorder, a computer to encode it for web distribution, and three on-set video monitors simultaneously. That way I (and my class) could see exactly what was going out to the internet.

The encoded video was sent to an in-house server, and was pulled from that server to another that has a direct internet connection, provided by my great friend Brian Westfall. When the webcast is watched from home, it was actually Brian's server that you were connecting to because my internet connection at home isn't anywhere near fast enough to handle more than a couple people watching.

For each class I began researching topics specific to that class about a week beforehand. On average I'd spend about 8-12 hours reading information online from different photography web sites and in magazines to get a better feel for other photographer's techniques so the material being presented wasn't from just my own experience. On the day of (and sometimes the day before) a class, I would spend the entire day searching for sample images, taking pictures, and building the slides that would be shown in the next class. I also would spend about 3-4 hours building an outline for me to follow while I am teaching. In the first couple of episodes you'll see my outline on the desk (incidentally printed on blue paper rather than white to avoid blowing out the video camera exposure), but by the third I began using a new "notes" feature in my slide presentation software (again, more on that in a minute). Originally I had a video prompter setup so I could read my notes without having to look down at my desk, but I found I wasn't using it so it was abandoned after the second class.

Another helpful piece of technology was the IFB (In-ear FeedBack earphone monitor) I was wearing in my ear as I was teaching. While the class was going on I could hear the introductory music, myself, the classroom microphones, and occasionally Brad would speak up and remind me of something or give me helpful hints. On numerous occasions I would forget to mention something, or misspeak, and Brad would come on and tell me without anyone else even knowing that was going on. Several bits of misinformation and cases of missing information were avoided because of that one small thing.

Okay, so on to the proprietary technology. As it turns out, other than Windows and the photo imaging software I covered in the last class, every piece of software used to make the class was something I had written at one time or another. The slide presentation software is something I started working on about 3 years ago and it has grown quite a bit since that time. I don't know if anyone noticed, but the slides are of much higher quality than those made by PowerPoint, and I could create slides in real time. As far as I know there isn't any other software out there that is capable of doing that, and it certainly made the class run more smoothly since, as students would ask questions, I could pull up images or slides to illustrate my answer even if they weren't part of my original presentation. The only problem I ran into with the software was that for some reason it was taking next to forever to resize images for television display (as was seen in the first 3 classes) on the laptop that I was using to run the slideshow. Fortunately I was able to fix the problem and images came up immediately for classes 4 & 5.

Next was software for running the video switcher. Conventional video switchers use an array of video monitors, one per video source, with rows of buttons (multiple per video source) to select which source is sent to a "preview" and the outgoing "program." Not only is this an ultra expensive way to do things requiring a ton of equipment, it isn't the most ergonomic way to do it either because you're having to look at video monitors directly in front of you and correspond them with a row of buttons away from your line of sight. So what I came up with was a touch-screen based video switching solution. Brad sat in front of a touch screen monitor which showed 16 video windows simultaneously, and simply had to touch one of them to select it to go out to the program feed. Of course it also allows selection of the type of transition between video sources (in the case of this class we used cuts between camera shots and dissolves between graphics). Having such a simple interface is what made it possible for Brad to run both the video switcher and audio mixer at the same time, otherwise running a video switcher is an all-consuming task. Again, I'm not aware of anyone doing anything like this anywhere, so a fully custom piece of software had to be written. As the class went on this software evolved to the point where the DVD players with the graphics could be controlled right from the touch screen interface, and I even added the capability of automatically selecting the slideshow video source as I brought up the slides. Very cool stuff if I do say so myself.

There were other smaller pieces of software that I wrote to make the class work. Of course the color wheel software (download link) that I showed on camera was something that I threw together, and I mentioned earlier the software I created to keep track of students and their schedules. There were other little things, though, like a small program to display the "The program will begin in…" screen before the start of the webcast had to be created.

After each class was held, I had to capture it on the computer for editing. I haven't gone back and cleaned any of it up, mind you, but capture is done in real time, which gave me a chance to watch each class to critique my teaching and look for any holes in the content. After each was captured I added closing credits, encoded it into WMV format for upload to the internet (encoding each episode took about 6-8 hours) and I would then attempt to upload it to Google Video, a process that in and of itself took about 3 hours to complete.

So long story short, for each one hour episode of the class, there was about 3 days of work to create and present it. If I were to offer any advice to anyone thinking of creating a video web or podcast, I would say to do it, but only as long as you are enthusiastic enough to take on that kind of a load and have the time to do so. I had a ton of fun working on every aspect of it, and if I could guarantee that I'd get higher levels of participation from class members and continue to get such great help from my friends I would definitely do another series on something else. Who knows? Maybe one of these days I'll end up doing a class on just Photoshop, or writing software, or running a home recording studio, or making videos. Maybe even a webcast on how to create a webcast.

I'd love to hear your comments.