Video Pod Chronicles

I've been cranking out video and playing with it in iMovie HD. YouTube is digesting one video of Claire getting groomed and another of my grandson James cavorting on a couch at a family party today in Maine. These are also my first experiments with adding audio from the Podsafe Music Network, an excellent pairing of podcasters and musicians that benefits both groups.

Here is the GrandsonCam:



YouTube has not yet completed the upload of YorkieCam, so I may need to try it again tomorrow.

Each step in this video process is time-consuming and potentially frustrating, but I'm learning all the way. Just playing with the closing titles and credits on the James video took two hours, so it's past midnight and I need to quit!

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Actually, it's been nearly 40 years since I was in Poughkeepsie, where my first wife attended Vassar, which seemed a long, long way from Harvard at the time. Today I am delighted to find we are only 200 miles from our destination after six days on the road from Denver. But the driving may be slow in a heavy rain.

Road notes, about 7 minutes long, from the Days Inn, Poughkeepsie, New York:

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

My sister's youngest, Jesse, is working on his latest movie. It's a stalker flick set partly at an innocent little soda fountain, and, well, I don't want to spoil the story. I caught up with Jesse here in State College, where he will be a junior at Penn State in the fall, studying film and video. We talked about how such a pleasant fellow finds himself making movies that will do for ice cream what Steven Spielberg and Peter Benchley did for swimming in the ocean.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

I seemed to remember that today was going to be a short little jaunt from Chicago to Toledo. So we lingered in the Loop until after 1 p.m., and Toledo seemed to keep moving further away as we tooled down I-80 across Ohio. By the time we got to the Radisson, even Claire was bored and road weary. Now it's even later than we think, with the time change.

I'm having fun experimenting with iMovie HD on the MacBook Pro, trying to figure out which settings make the best viewing on the web. Darlene is humoring me by playing along with the camera, and Claire, of course, is a natural.

This video podcast lasts just under nine minutes.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Yesterday we checked into the InterContinental Chicago hotel on Michigan Avenue, smack dab on the Magnificent Mile, which is truly magnificent--and very clean. Finding grass for Claire was a challenge, as you'll see in this video podcast, filmed on the run as we hooked up with a Bennington friend of mine, Valerie Ellis, and her husband Eros Leotta. This morning has turned gray with drizzle, and we're headed for Toledo tonight.