Video geek alert. Yesterday I installed Final Cut Pro 5 and one really cool new feature is "multiclips." Basically you can link together multiple clips shot with different cameras of the same thing and then really easily make an edit, clicking back and forth between the different angles like a TV producer doing live Superbowl coverage. (you know: "ready camera 2... camera 2. Camera 3, find me a close up of a ref... ready camera 3... camera 3... ready camera 1.... camera 1...")

So I tested it out with some footage I already had captured of an Earth First demonstration. It was super cool. Something that would have taken a day to piece together took about about 30 minutes. The results are not perfect, and I purposely cut back and forth too often just to demonstrate how easy it is. But it works, and it's a fun little clip; about 5 minutes and 11 MB.

The thing about living in the desert is I almost always get at least a little dehydrated while I'm sleeping. If I also have a little bit to drink the night before, I get even more dehydrated, and wake up feeling hung over, more so than in wetter climes. Last night was a preview screening of a new film called Presente by another member of the Pan Left video collective, Jason Aragon. The film is about the Migrant Trail Walk, a yearly symbolic 7-day hike from the border to Tucson organized by border activists here. After the screening was an afterparty that was pretty fun. There were border activists and video people and it was at this house that's actually a small, sort of weird college, just a couple blocks from my house.

So after the party last night today I woke up feeling really worn, even though I think I only had like 3 beers. And tried to fix that by drinking coffee, more coffee than I should have, starting off a whole process for the day of too much coffee. After breakfast I started transcribing all the english in my Juarez film so that it can be translated into Spanish. I had to wrestle with software, looking for something that was just right, and I just couldn't find something to do what I really wanted the way I wanted. But Transana almost is sufficient. It's a cool program, but it's written by academics who want to analyze how people talk, I guess, rather than translate films. But really the only problem is it doesn't export to the kind of text file that DVD Studio Pro wants, STL, so i wrote a little filter in perl that converts. It's a actually the perfect sort of job for perl. I'm so glad I know perl.

Then I had a headache so I went and had a coffee while meeting with Daniela, someone else from Pan Left, and a high school teacher she's working with on a video production class. I'm going to be helping them out with a day or 2 of editing instruction. That should be interesting, teaching 15-year-olds how to use Final Cut.

Then I still had a headache so I had more coffee and worked on transcribing more. I guess I should have just taken a long bike ride or something relaxing to enjoy the beautiful day, but I really felt like getting more accomplished.

Well, now I feel okay and I'm going to go downstairs and make dinner. yay.