Yes, Steve set me up well (emphasis mine, heh!):
With almost no time to prepare we will be taking a test flight of some new equipment at this years CNHT Annual Taxpayer Family Reunion Picnic in Hillsborough. If you are there, and you should be, we’ll be (most likely) set up in the far left corner from the main entrance (by the emergency exit). Come watch Skip wrinkle his brow as he looks over the top of his glasses and fusses with all the new stuff.
Well, a whole lot more than a wrinkled brow with hands waving and lots of muttering. Back to Edison:
“I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
Or something like that as it seems he MAY have said something like that, or some derivative of that, or it’s just folklore. Anyways, I found a whole bunch of ways to NOT make it all work (and spent an addition $900 in trying….sorta). Sigh…good thing most engineers have backup systems in place.
First the backups:
- the old reliable FlipCam (which was a “thing” during the early days of blogging about 10 years ago). It was a technical marvel of the day – a formerly shoulder mounted tape recording camera reduced to the size of your hand. Flip has been out of business for years but this still keeps rolling along. Limited to about 2 hours, it still is HD quality video in a very small package.
- the old reliable “recording camera” – a Canon prosumer camera about 8 years old now with which I outfitted with a Rode shotgun mic. Works well for what it was intended to – and thanks to the Eldest who made the ride down to the Picnic with me and manning it yesterday.
As far as the new stuff:
- The new “big” camera is the JVC streaming camera. For our purposes, it will be great for doing what it is supposed to do – add video to aid in telling our stories as bloggers (and not professional videographers – although by the time I figure it all out, I may be much closer to being one than I first intended). Easy to set up, records all day long without messing with SD card swappings in and out. Yes, it recorded but in viewing the recording, what I thought would “help” out in a low light environment turned it rather grainy even after I tried putting one of my LED light panels closer to the podium. With the plethora of switches and software parameters, it is clear I have some studying to do.
- Mevo cameras – big disappointment yesterday as I got NUTTIN’ out of them. Problem? Me, I am assuming. First time putting them on the “Boost” battery / capability extender and what I thought was “On” wasn’t – problem just indicators of “Hey, I just found a honkin’ big battery for myself”.
- Livestream Studio – the new software for doing, well, livestreaming. When it came up, I couldn’t bypass a real annoying popup that demanded that I upgrade to a livestreaming package even though all I wanted to do was to have it recognize the JVC and Mevo cameras simply to record. So, I “upgraded” at the cost of $900 on the spot (yeah, more money I don’t have).
It still didn’t work. I canceled the subscription this morning.
Back to the drawing board – and we’ll start with some smaller baby steps. Will probably add to the list of “how not do things” as this will be my concentration this week as I break everything down to much smaller steps and units and then try to build them all back up. Thus, blogging will be light from me this week and I try to get this all meshed together. I guess the best response is this after Jody Underwood, President of the SDGANH (School District Governance Association of NH – the conservative alternative of the NH School Board Association) asked:
Well? How did livestreaming go?
Crashed and burned. Back to the drawing board….sigh….just not enough time to learn how all the new variables interplay (or not!) with each other.
I admit – I was overly ambitious in thinking I could make it work. So, in the spirit of the phrases “nothing ventured, nothing gained” and “go big or go home”, well, I’m home.
But the Dumpster Fire image at the top of this post pretty well sums up my ire at myself when it was clear that nothing was clear.
