I don’t have a video done yet, but I think this deserves its own post. Especially since it’s possible that the video won’t be done ever. Turns out, my laptop’s strange problem that I mentioned earlier was the least of my worries in this case.

So I shot a 42-minute video on my iPhone, the idea being that I would speed it up. I copied it to my laptop, opened Windows Live Movie Maker, and imported it there… and then my laptop crashed. Like, turned itself off. Apparently it had overheated.

Trying it again yielded the same results. Seeing that Windows Live Movie Maker wasn’t working, I went with Adobe Premiere Pro. It’s an incredibly complicated program, and I couldn’t figure out any of it. I actually attempted Windows Live Movie Maker two or three more times before admitting I’d have to figure it out, resulting in two or three more crashes. So after a few hours, I’ve finally figured Adobe Premiere Pro out, and have completed my project on it. I click on “export”, wait for the file to save…

And my laptop crashes. Again.

My laptop has never acted like this before, so I feel like it isn’t what’s wrong here. After talking with Jim Groom about it, I realized the file takes up a whopping 3 GB; he told me to get it compressed to a smaller file size. I go to MPEG Streamclip in order to do just that, and while the file is converting… yup, my computer crashes yet again.

I have a desktop, yes, and that’s much less likely to overheat. It’s also slow as hell; though it’s been updated many times, the fact remains that it was built way back in 1995. Attempting to import my video to it just plain didn’t work. Additionally, no other computer in my house besides my laptop has all of the programs I need to work on this. So I try MPEG Streamclip again, messing around with the settings as much as I can. I also try Adobe Premiere Pro – again, with different settings each time. No matter what I do, it makes my laptop crash. I even downloaded Camtasia, but it doesn’t have the tools I need. Odds are high that it would probably make my laptop crash, too.

Basically, what I thought would be a quick, simple video project has become hell. I don’t think any other ds106 assignment has been this frustrating for me. Fortunately, I got an extension for this, so hopefully I’ll have it up later today. I’m going to see what I can do on my mother’s laptop, which hopefully will not overheat. When/if I post the final project, I’ll mention how I made it – this is a post about how I didn’t make it, after a couple days of trying.