Notes on the video from FDP MI Jam April 2005
Editing this thing took forever.
There were two video cameras, un-manned, one recording to tape (very high quality), the other right to hard drive (virtually no time limit).
For camera #1, dumping the three tapes to files afterward resulted in three 12-14 gigabyte files to work with. Camera #2, straight to hard drive, had five files totaling 7 GB. Three laptops and one desktop PC shared the load of editing and storage.
After putting many hours into it, more than half the work was corrupted by a bad external hard drive. (It was, without warning, and at rare intervals, changing bits when copying files.) Though I thought I shouldn't put in more time, I couldn't resist re-doing the most important tracks, and another couple dozen hours resulted in all but four of these files being re-created. It took way too long (or I would have re-done them all).
I cut out most of the between-songs banter & noodling, with the exceptions of Telecast's intro to the event, and introduction of Oz's Stick playing.
The main image or background for most of the videos was from the unit on the far side wall of the room, which was recording to tape (highest quality).
The inserted image from most of the videos was from the second camera, which was recording to hard disk. The advantage of this setup is that the hard drive can record for a dozen hours without running out of space.
For videos where the lower-res hard drive image was used as the primary, or only image, you can assume those were tracks where the tape had run out on the first camera (this includes half of track 26, and tracks 27-33).
A lot of the special effects, inserts, fades and moves, etc., were chosen to compensate (where at all possible) for the use of un-manned cameras - a lot of the footage was of people's backs, or the backs of people's heads, etc.
The remaining special effects simply reflect my learning curve, peculiar tastes, and questionable judgement.
Not having edited video like this before, it was quite a learning experience. Sorry if it seemed to take a long time, but it was easily over 40 hour's worth of work (a bit tough, as I also do over 40 hours a week at my day job). Of course, now that I've done it and know what I'm doing, I could do it again in perhaps half the time.
I hope I never have to do it again.
Until the next FDP Jam, that is.