It's Pretty Much My Favorite Operating System

[Setting: A cozy living room.]

[We pan down to see the 30 Marens crowded around a computer screen.]

Announcer: 30 Marens Agree...

30 Marens: [in unison] Keep your software up to date!

[The Marens all nod in agreement]

Maren Markley: It's the little things that keep life running smoothly.

Maren Reynolds: Procrastination is like shooting yourself in the foot, my dear.

Maren Majauskas: Sometimes, change is good.

[The Marens continue to nod]

Announcer: 30 Marens Agree. Update your software regularly.




The background story, as if you care:

Recently, my dear husband asked me to make a nice dvd out of an old recording to give to some friends. It's the memorial service for a senior member of their family, recorded on mini-dvd a year ago. I agreed to take the project on, thinking it would be good to finally figure out how to use iMovie and iDVD on my Mac. No sweat.

Step 1: Put the disk in the camcorder, plug it into the computer via USB. Ok. Wait, not ok. It plays the disk. Hmmmm. No, I want it to transfer the files.

Step 2: Smack palm to forehead. I finalized the disk (of course) so that we could watch it on our DVD player. Well, it's finalized now and isn't a "file" anymore. How am I supposed to make a copy?

Ok, no more steps. Now it's just a mess. I went to facebook and sent a message to one of my former bosses under whom I had worked in California. He is a total guru, and he checked his sources. "Handbrake", he said. "That's what you need to download. It will let you break into the finalized dvd and make files again." Mark, you're awesome!

I downloaded Handbrake, and sent it to work on one half of the disk. It was a long wait, but finally I had a file! It was an mpg4 file. Didn't mean much to me, but I was glad to have that over with! Ok, open iMovie, import file. Freeze. Try again. Freeze. Eh?? What was I missing? I was missing an updated version of iMovie- you know, the kind that could import an mpg4 file.

Oh, well, of course. Easy enough, I'll just... um... huh. That only works with the latest Mac operating system, Leopard. (OS joke- snicker.) Well, I had to upgrade someday, didn't I? This is where I needed to stop and explain the process to DH and get clearance to spend actual funds. Ok, Mac Box Set on it's way! Celebrations!

After installations and tutorials galore, I dropped my little files into the software and proceeded to tinker. The whole show was rather long (an hour and 23 minutes, actually), but it was working! Transitions- bam! Titles- zing! Chapters- zap! Whew. That only took days to do in all my spare time. Now, to get it into iDVD, I just go up to the "share" menu and choose iDVD.... What?! It's going to take 29 hours to prepare the file?! No way. Surely it's one of those estimations that will diminish significantly here in just a minute... uh... hmm. Nope. Really, it's going to take 29 hours. Wow- that was a REALLY long time to wait!

All righty, here we are in iDVD all ready to go! I've got my nice "Bronze Wedding" theme, my clip looping with the beautiful music playing on the menu page, my scene selections, button choices, highlight colors all picked out, it's been tested and we're ready to burn. Burn, baby,burn. Two hours of burning. Luckily, all subsequent discs took about 20 minutes each. Yahoo! The DVD is done! A few errors, but I'm not redoing it at this point.

So, it needs a cover. Along the road to upgraded status, there were a few fatalities. Most were not a big deal. But Photoshop refusing to open is not ok and must be dealt with!! Photoshop is the one software I use most and I cannot live without it. What to do? I once had a legitimate version (it came on a lot of diskettes), but my latest one was acquired because my former boss (not the same former boss) said "I want you to know this program well, so take it home and install it on your computer." Thus I have Photoshop 7. Yup- it's 8 years old. And working fine, I might add- or was.

Mark to the rescue again. He and my former co-worker, Robyn, suggested Adobe's free trial version of Photoshop Elements. I'm on day 4 of my 30 days, and it's becoming clear that Elements is missing some rather important tools. It's a great little thing for most users and I do recommend it, but I like my channel mixer and curves and duotones and am not willing to go without them. I have given fair warning to DH that CS4 will need to be purchased soon. Thank goodness for the Adobe Education Store where educators get a real break!

Yes, it's a long story with familiar twists and turns. We've all faced such technical obstacle courses and made it through somehow. Sunday, I will hand over the 6 DVDs as an offering of friendship, never letting on that they were the instigators of so much... learning.