Apparently, a
pretty good form of torture is waking someone up every
hour. If done for a few days it can lead to insanity.
It should give you some insight to this project that
spending the last two nights waking up every 51
minutes and 30 seconds to change a DVD in the burner
was the most peaceful and wonderful moments of the
entire DVD making process. Yes folks, the state of DVD
authoring in the year 2004 is
that…friggin'…horrible.
I promised myself
after the T2 disc that I would find a new program, as
DVD it! Pro is easily the worst software I've ever
used…but alas, there just wasn't enough time. I
had no choice but to use it. The problems are stupid
to get into but it can pretty much be summed up in
vague errors that give you no idea what's wrong. So
you redo the disc from scratch ten times. But this go
round we had an entirely new problem…once the
disc was burned it wouldn't play correctly. 5 of the
20 videos just didn't work, but the rest of the disc
was fine.
After a night of
re-rendering each file, changing a million
settings…and still nothing working, I realized
this was probably not going to happen. There's just
too many things it could be. I was ready to go buy new
DVDs, a new burner, whatever. So Tuesday I started
with DVDs. I tried one, and no luck. Changed one
setting - tried one more and amazingly…it worked.
As of this moment, I have no idea what made it work as
the setting was completely unrelated…but it was
on now. I had 48 hours until my flight took off and I
had to make as many copies as humanly possible even if
that meant no sleeping.
The other kicker
in all this was I have no buffer period. It is routine
for me to labor over every second of my DVDs. Writing
down every sound problem, every picture or button that
isn't perfect - basically things no one will notice
but me…but this time, I had to live with it all.
Luckily, I've done this so often, that my first shot
is pretty kick-ass. The DVD is filled with all sorts
of goodies, and it's as much a part of the experience
as the live show is. There's a few things that irk me,
like the live show has one pause in it because I had
to break the show up in order for the program to see
it. It's at a good point in the show and most of you
won't even notice it but ugh….shit like that bugs
me. But really, that's about it. I'm just grumpy that
I can't obsess over it and redo it 500 times.
When all is said
and done I'll have about 40 DVDs ready, and obviously
cases for more and I'll just mail out the DVDs later.
Unfortunately I will have zero T2 discs and only 5 T1
discs available as well. That suuuuuuuuuuucks. But you
can blame all that on the guest house. As I sit here
12 hours before I fly home, I cannot believe what I
pulled off in the past 6 weeks. There's no way I
should have all of this ready. But knock, knock, knock
- I do…
…of course
not only don't I have the covers done, but I don't
even have it designed yet. Since I could do it in
Columbus, I had to put it off. I'm tellin' you man -
every possible second to get this done.
Unbelieveable.
But enough of the
technical bullshit, the final Trinitron DVD is done.
As well, it marks the end of the Trinitron Chronicles.
23 entries of pride and joy resulting in 3 pieces of
"art/content" that I couldn't be more proud of. They
are who I was at a moment in time, and are unbridled
creativity. More specifically, all that transpired
during T3 is just unheard of. It hit me last night
that you can see my wedding ring on the first
chronicle video, and that it's gone by the last one.
There's something in me folks. It's this insane need
to produce CONSTANTLY. It never wavers no matter how
bad the situation is. Hell we were moving into our
house last year during T2 - it was craaaaazy. And now
all this? It's what makes me feel destined to pull
this off. It's sub-conscious. My mind/body deals with
every possible roadblock as a reason to produce more
art. Good or bad, produce, produce, produce. And if
you can believe it last night I had an epiphany about
my next project that will consume the entirety of
2005. It's gonna be extraordinary.
For
now, enjoy watching me freak out about 1
of easily 35 problems in the last week.
And btw, I never really drank because of
this. I needed every waking sober minute
to pull this off, it just made
the
video
funny.
