My number one goal for January 2023, of course, is to publish my book that I’d had hopes of publishing in December. That got derailed because of illness. First, I got really sick, then, just when we thought Ambrose had not caught it, he came down with it. Since Ambrose is my first-reader, I needed to wait on his ability to read and comprehend.
But I have some other things that I want to get done this month. The second priority is working on the video from our Thanksgiving hike. I’m still figuring things out when it comes to videos, especially when it comes to choosing a software to use. So far, I’ve put out videos using three different programs. I started with ClipChamp. Then I tried to use the GoPro Quik app, but the desktop version is deprecated and I couldn’t get it to function.
I thought Open Shot Video Editor would the one, but as I continued to work with it, a couple of issues became more problematic than I wanted to deal with. The video preview would only play sound once; if I wanted to listen to the video I’d created again, then I’d have to shut down the whole program and reinitialize. Then, when I added some video that had me speaking, the preview gave me a chipmunk voice. The output wasn’t like that, but I couldn’t get the preview not to do it and I found it very disconcerting to listen to my voice all Disney-ified.
I’m now working with DaVinci Resolve, the free version. I might get the paid version at some point, but right now, the free version is way more complex than I need. Which is great, in my opinion, because that means I can do some really neat stuff that I had no intention of doing. I just need to learn how. That’s a bit of a sticking point with this software, but I can learn. And there are plenty of instructional videos out there for this software.
Now, it did crash when I was working on a video file from my car’s dashcam. But I’m going to blame that on the weird file, because it hadn’t been crashing when I was working with files from other sources. The next test for DaVinci Resolve is working with my GoPro clips from Thanksgiving. If it passes that, then I think I’ll have my video program.
The final goal for this month is to finally port my blogs from the Blogger site over to my website. I intended to do this when we initially bought the website, but after an initial attempt failed, I never got back to it. I’m going to now. Twitter’s current ownership has demonstrated quite clearly that it’s better to have your own platform online, as John Scalzi has been saying for decades.
I think I can reasonably accomplish all these goals this month, as long as I don’t let them slide to the wayside.
And as long as I don’t re-catch the cold that has had Ambrose suffering so miserably for the last two weeks. . .