All sense of time evaporates.
I set myself a goal for an evening: just get this task done and call it a night. But either the task takes far less time than I had anticipated and I give myself a fresh goal, or the task encounters a snag and I won't stop until I've solved the issue. And sometimes, the task just takes longer than I had planned and I keep going until it's done.
I'm talking about editing my videos.
The program is robust and I can do a lot with my video but it's also quirky, cumbersome, and downright glitchy. Sometimes, the seemingly simplest task takes the most about of time. And sometimes, the program will do something to a video clip that I can't explain or find the root problem. I'll work for hours to try and solve the issue—sometimes, to no avail—and I'll just get tired and accept the glitch for the sake of completing my project.
But that glitch will drive me nuts.
Take, for example, my video of Porto. For a second, one scene is upside-down. This clip was taken on DW's iPhone and for some reason was imported upside-down. When I viewed the source file, it appeared right-side up, but as soon as I dragged it into the timeline, the image was flipped.
I was able to isolate the clip and perform a 180-degree rotation, and that appeared fine in the timeline. But as soon as I compiled the video to export as an MP4 file, the clip was completely upside-down again.
I went back into the project and rotated it again, and compiled the video once more, and the clip was right-side up. Except for the first second.
I learned that in that segment, the cross-fade effect to transition from the previous clip to the upside-down clip flipped the image. I would have to remove the transition to solve the problem but in doing so, I'd have a hard break from one scene to the next.
I weighted the options and in the end, I decided that a second of a glitchy clip was better than a hard cut and start between different scenes. I hate that glitch but it's there, and has been seen more than a thousand times already.
Later, I experimented with a similar issue (it seems that almost all of the video clips that DW shot with her iPhone, while in Portugal, are upside-down) and discovered that if I flipped a video clip and then rendered it, on its own, to an MP4 video (from a MOV file), I could then import that MP4 clip into a timeline and it would appear right-side up.
When I was working on the latest video project, there was a scene that was crucial to the video but, unfortunately, it was captured on DW's iPhone. The scene was essential, as it captured me tasting two amazing port wines from a vineyard where we had stomped on grapes, in Portugal's Douro Valley.
I flipped the clip (say that quickly, three times!) and exported it to an MP4 file and then imported into this video, and it ran smoothly. But because the clip was almost five minutes long, in which I pause between words, linger with a mouthful of the fortified wine, or sit back and relax, I did a lot of cutting.
Watching the timeline playback, it looked great. I was happy.
Oh, and I should say that at this point, it was after midnight on a weeknight. DW had long earlier gone to bed.
But I had set myself the task of getting to the end of the video and, by gosh, I was going to finish.
As I watched the video render, frame by frame, I was happy with the video. In my personal opinion, it was my best video to date. The story was unfolding well and no issues seemed to present themselves that would make me want to go back and change anything.
Until I reached the scene where I'm drinking the port wine. It started out fine, with all the cuts, but as it approached the halfway point, the screen went grey and a giant circle with an arrow that looked like a Replay symbol appeared for about 10 seconds before the video resumed with me talking and nursing a glass of tawny.
I nearly screamed out loud but it was after 1 am.
I went back in the project, ran the timeline, and all seemed fine. I checked each clip segment and the properties showed nothing unusual. I chalked it up to a rendering glitch and tried again.
The issue happened again at the same spot.
I heard DW get up to use the washroom and then she called down to me. "Are you still up?"
It was nearly two in the morning. I had to get ready for work in a handful of hours. I shut down the computer, turned off all of the lights, and headed upstairs.
"I need a better program than Pinnacle," I told DW.
"You need to set boundaries," she replied. "You've become obsessed with your videos. It's unhealthy. You need rest."
"I would have been done hours ago if the program wasn't so glitchy. I need to look into a better editing tool."
"You had better finish this project first. If you move to another app, you'll have to start all over again. Now go to sleep."
I was a wreck the next day. It's a wonder that I got through all of my meetings, including a one-on-one with my boss.
It's true: my video editing has become an unhealthy obsession. It takes me tens of hours to put together 15 minutes of video. Once I start working on a project, I find it hard to tear myself away.
I need to set hard stops when I'm working on a video. No more than two or three hours at a time, and no work beyond 10 pm.
There's no one anxiously awaiting my next video. I've only just reached 100 subscribers (thank you to those of you who have supported my channel!). This was supposed to be a hobby but it takes more of my time than my writing ever has.
I meant to have the video ready to share today. But since Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I've decided to slow down. Pace myself.
And until I find a replacement to Pinnacle, I'll work on my project until I fix all of the glitches. With any luck that'll happen in time for me to share the video on Monday.
Wish me good luck. And restful evenings.
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