Major Website Overhaul & Sony Vegas 8.0

It's been a very long time in the making, but I finally have most of my website completely overhauled with a fresh new look and cool functionality. You may have noticed a new look to the blog. It's been kinda embarassing since I did web development and application programming as a profession. But, when you do it 8-5, it's tough to get motivated to do alot of the same work in your free time. In fact, it just wasn't possible for me other than this blog stuff and a couple of other efforts.

But, it's finally done and I'm pretty pleased with it. It's finally compliant with both IE7 and Firefox 3...with the exception of the old Stormpage. I've spent ALOT of hours the past few weeks getting it done and I think it was worth it. It's a sense of accomplishment to be certain. The two projects I have remaining is getting my chase reports page done and revamp the Stormpage which was my menu-driven data analysis page. Those two projects will be accompished over the winter months at a lower level of priority...but it will get done.

Other than that, it's just tweaking and fine tuning stuff. I want to rework some video clips, like the intro for instance too. I've got a few other things I want to take a swing at, but that will come later.

In the meantime, please browse through the site and see what you think. I'd appreciate any feedback or suggestions as I truly need a fresh pair of eyes on it to offer an impartial perspective. Take a gander at my gallery and humor sections too! :-)

In addition to ALL of that, I've been very busy using Sony Vegas Pro 8.0 to put together some video projects both in preparation for my chase reports AND for my annual contributions to the National Weather Service. I dropped off a disc of images and carefully edited video to the Amarillo office and sent copies to Fort Worth, Lubbock and San Angelo. I think I've got some good stuff on there that they can use for their training and education purposes.

Back to Sony Vegas, I'm pretty pleased with it so far as it works well for me. The tutorials are great for anything I need help with. But for the most part, it's all pretty intuitive with only a little learning curve. I personally like it better than Premier I guess in part because it's easier to me to use and yet packs a punch with all of the tools at your disposal. The input media formats are awesome and there's hardly anything it doesn't import or export for that matter. The ONLY drawback is it doesn't do flash files, but I understand why because of licensing and proprietary issues.

One of the things I like is the multitude of media FX with many different ways to enhance the video. You can stack them too which I do often with brightness/contrast and unsharp mask and a few other controls. You can tweak the settings while the video is playing which helps a great deal...and even flip each on on and off to see the effect. However, doing so can start to eat at the RAM on your computer. It's a great excuse to go add another gB. :-) Even with 3gB, it works very well. I just have to make sure everything else is shut down or even do a fresh reboot. I have not run into any errors or problems running this under XP on a Pentium 4 3gHz processor. I must note though that some of my more complex editing with lots of FX and envelopes, the rendering can be excrutiatingly slow. But, it has never once errord on me or dropped frames or any other glitcy rendering...which I have had with Premier.

One of the great features is the highly customizable workspace. Move, shift, add, remove, and rearrange everything to your liking.

So far, the only complaint I have is with trying to do timelapse. Although it's easy by simply doing CTRL+drag of the video track, it limits you, but stil about 10x speed I estimated and read on a forum. You can add a velocity envelope to eek out some more to obtain about 12-14x playback which for most efforts is adequate. Adding the velocity is easy.

It comes with DVD Architect Pro which I have not used yet, but have just completed skimming through the users manual. My first impression is a very good one. On the surface, it seems easy to use and highly flexible so you can do your own thing. I'm looking forward to taking it for a drive soon.

If you haven't given it a try, you can get a 30-day trial from Sony's website.

I've also taken some time to become better versed in matters of copyright and trademark laws with a couple of good books. One that I highly recommend Carolyn "Photo Attorney" Wright's book as an outstanding primer. It's concise and well written and packed full of good information for an idiot like me. Read her blog too....excellnt info!!

With that in mind, I just finished putting all of images on disc for the past 3+ years to send off to the Copyright Office this week. It was a daunting task, but I am so glad to get that out of the way. Now I'm just waiting for somebody to steal something. BWAHAHAHA!!! >:-)

Anyway, that's it for now. I will certainly have some more time freed up to jump into some other pressing matters of a business-related variety. So, if you haven't heard anything from me in awhile or I haven't responded to emails, now you know why. :-) I still anticipate having little free time in the future. But, it's all good though. Just be patient with me if I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. I'm looking forward to a little break though this Saturday night. ZZ Top is performing here and Jay McCoy and I are going to go rock out!