Darkoshi

I still haven't yet used or installed Zoom. However, one of Qiao's nieces is having a Zoom wedding event in a few weeks (they already married a few months ago, but for some reason the virtual event ended up being scheduled for later...), so I'll probably get to try it out then. But I keep thinking "virtual event = I can watch online", forgetting the "Zoom = they can watch me too" part. I guess that means I should dress up a bit, or something? And that maybe it will be a bunch of individual conversations between people I mostly don't know, and it will feel like a real live social event where I just sit quietly listening to people talk? Although with his family, it will probably be a ton of people, so I don't even know how individual conversations could work. Maybe it will be a few people speaking and everyone else listening. I suppose I should get Zoom working on Qiao's laptop, so he can join and I can just look over his shoulder now and then. Hmmm. I wonder if his laptop even has a webcam?

For work, I've still only ever had one video call this last year.

I still haven't tried out any video chat apps on my phone. My mom tried out Google Duo a week or two ago, with her friend. When she'd mentioned wanting to try out a video chat app, I'd almost installed Google Duo on my phone, but upon seeing the permissions page I decided to wait, as I wanted to look into other options first. But really, I don't have any particular urge to video chat with anyone. That's why I don't get around to it.

I used video chat on my computer about 15 years ago, with Qiao on Yahoo Instant Messenger. And with my brother on Facebook once long ago.

Skype used to be a thing. I installed it on my computer to try out, but don't remember ever using it with anyone else. At work, we used Skype, but for texting, not video.

Since 2006, I've had a DVD that I haven't been able to play. I had tried playing it in several DVD players and on a few computers with DVD drives, but it didn't work in any of them. The DVD was supposed to contain video of a trip my German aunt had been on. A friend in Germany sent it to us after my aunt died. I suspected that the disk had not been finalized, and that was why I was not able to play it back.

Forestfen and I got to watch the video while visiting the aforementioned friend in Germany. But it always disappointed me that I hadn't been able to get that DVD to play so we could watch it again.

Today I came across a note I had written long ago, when I was trying to figure out a way of recovering the DVD. At the time, I didn't have a DVD drive in my computer. But I had made a note to download IsoBuster on a computer which did have a DVD drive, and to see if IsoBuster could recover the video.

So, today I did that. And IsoBuster was able to recover the video!!!! Yeah!

edited to correct date

(Warning: The following is my current understanding on these topics based on what I read, but I don't claim nor guarantee that my understanding is correct.)

The DVD standard is 720x480 pixels for NTSC and 720x576 for PAL. Video is stored on DVDs in that resolution, regardless of whether the video is intended to be displayed on 4:3 screens (like old TVs) or 16:9 screens (widescreens). When the video is recorded in anamorphic widescreen mode, the camera spreads the 720 horizontal pixels out over a wider area, as opposed to when recording in non-widescreen mode. So with anamorphic widescreen mode, you gain a wider view, but it doesn't have more details compared to non-widescreen mode (it actually has fewer details per horizontal unit than non-widescreen).

The pixels displayed on the viewing screen are not square in size. The pixel aspect ratio defines the width versus height of a displayed pixel.

When widescreen video is recorded/stored on a DVD in non-anamorphic mode, that is letterbox mode, with black bars at the top and bottom. Letterbox mode video has less vertical detail compared to anamorphic widescreen mode.

In interlaced mode, one "frame" contains data for two "fields"... where the fields are more distinct points in time. There is an odd field and an even field - the data for both is interlaced together; one line of the frame is from one field, the next line from the other field, and so on. The camera would have captured 2 images (fields) of data and interlaced them into a single frame of stored data, with half the data from each point in time. The camera may record at 60 frames per second to produce the 2 fields for each frame, even though the TV displays at 30 frames per second.

Video should only be saved in interlaced mode when it is intended to be displayed on a television. For viewing on computers, it should be saved in progressive (=non-interlaced) mode. This may require de-interlacing of the source data.

In Sony Vegas Movie Studio, one blog says it's best to set the project properties with
Field Order = Upper Field First (This depends on how the recording device stored the data. For DV devices (digital video cameras?), it should be lower field first).
Full-Res Rendering quality = Best
Deinterlace method = Interpolate

(Don't save snapshots/still images from within Vegas; some lines get jagged edges apparently related to interlacing; I can't figure out how to prevent that. Instead play the video in WMP, pause it, and do a screen capture.)

Notes compiled from information on the following pages.

http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/10/30/understanding-pixel-aspect-ratios/
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/09/10/de-interlacing-with-vegas/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_widescreen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_aspect_ratio
http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Articles/PALvsNTSC/PALvsNTSC.asp
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/onneweer_barend/deinterlacing.php

Downloaded Nero 9 to try out Nero Vision. For one of my files with all the video from Munich, Nero was only showing 2 photos available and no video. I know the video is ok, since it worked in Pinnacle. For one of the other VOB files, when I dragged it to the timeline, it split it up into a bunch of separate parts, and I don't see any option to change it not to do that. Even worse, when you try to preview the video, it stops at the end of each small part, instead of playing the whole thing.
Another thing I tried was using the "Recode" to import a VOB file as mp3 files, but that also split it into 130 individual small files!

So then I tried Sony Vegas Movie Studio. Editing the video was more complicated than I was hoping for. The program had various annoyances; not doing things the way I expected.

So then I tried Ulead. Apparently Corel owns them now. Corel Video Studio 12. It doesn't have all the nice video effects I remember from the last time I tried the Ulead trial version (which kept crashing on me, on my other computer)(actually, maybe it does still have the effects; they're just a bit harder to find). I was able to import my videos and edit them and add titles. But when I go to create the DVD from them, it crashes while trying to add chapters. The DVD menu creation options are also very limited and not what I want (it doesn't have what Pinnacle has).

Windows Movie Maker doesn't recognize my file format (DVD files - the vidcam writes to mini-DVDs). I'd have to convert the files first, which might result in loss of quality or other problems.

So, now what? I can try the Sony Vegas program some more, I guess.

Or create a 54 minute long DVD with no menu or chapters.

Or start over in Pinnacle and hope that it doesn't mess up the audio again.

I reinstalled XP SP2, but Windows Movie Maker still locks up when saving a recorded file. The file gets saved, but WMM stays locked up until I reboot; trying to kill the process has no effect. It used to work; something between now and June of last year broke it. I had already tried a couple of other things, but that did not fix it either. Using the QuickCam software is difficult, as it saves vids as very large avi files, which I then need to open in WMM and convert them anyway.

I had thought of things to talk about, too, in a video. Not that I couldn't write them just as well or even better, but maybe some people would prefer watching and hearing me talk instead of reading text. I generally prefer reading - it's faster; but it is also sometimes nice watching a person and hearing their voice and seeing how they look and how they move.

But this seems to happen fairly often when I feel excited about recording or editing vids or audio... the technology does not cooperate. Excitement fades into frustration. And after a while it doesn't seem to matter anymore, because I know even if I had been able to do what I looked forward to doing, it wouldn't have made much difference.

So I post some vids; so a few people watch them. Does it make a difference? So I post some vids and they get hundreds, thousands even, of hits. Does it make a difference? So I post a vid where my chest is bare; do people see me as I see me? No, they just see breasts, which titillates them. Does that make a difference? Perhaps one in a thousand or ten thousand people would come close to seeing me as I see me.. but even if some of those few people watched my vid, would it make a difference?

I doubt it.

.

Supposing there is some supernatural being purposely causing me frustration, what would be its purpose? To get me to notice it, because nothing else has caused me to notice it? But why would it want me to notice it? Why? What does it have to offer me? And if it had something to offer me, why wouldn't it just come right out and say so, instead of resorting to unfathomable bother?

Eh.