Green Computing

I've been doing alot of reading lately on how to be a greener consumer. About a month ago, I changed all the 60 watt light bulbs in the house for 14 watt compact fluorescent bulbs. I know they aren't "green" because of the mercury content, but they do use only a quarter of the electricity. I'll probably change out the rest of the bulbs in the apartment for fluorescents very soon. After the initial purchase of power saving bulbs, I started to look into cheaper computing. I've always been a fan of desktop computers because of their lower pricetag and higher performance., but after reading some more, I found that the total cost of ownership is the same or higher than laptops. A typical laptop only uses around 65 watts when the system is fully used give or take. Compare that to a desktop which uses easily twice that without even considering the monitor. A gaming machine can use quite a bit more. Then I read somewhere else that an LCD monitor uses only a quarter of the power of an old CRT the same size. WOW! Once you do the math, the total cost of ownership can be much less with a laptop. The exception: Apple! iMacs use less than 100 watts at full performance, and the mac mini uses about the same as a laptop. One more reason to switch to a mac.

If anyone actually reads my blog at this point, please leave more energy saving tips in the comments if you know of any. Thanks.

stupid green screen video

I found a really stupid green screen video. It's pretty ridiculous, but somewhat funny for anyone that works with video or green screens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei9JQ6br-y0

2 Camera Shoot

I'm still working on exporting the Jamaica footage. It's a slow process. I got more tapes in the mail a couple days ago, so I can finish up what's left. I also got a 22" reflector, and shoe mount to mic clip adapter. I can finally use real mics with my camcorder effectively. Luckily, I got to shoot some video yesterday. The Central Florida Vineyards had a big rally in Lakeland, FL. There were easily a few hundred people there. We did a 2 camera shoot using a Canon GL1 and a Panasonic GS180. The video turned out pretty good, but the Canon wasn't properly white balanced. It had a red tint to everything. Fortunately it wasn't too bad. I added some blue midtones and highlights and it looks much better. Not perfect, but better. I might play with it some more later. I'm hoping to make a DVD of all the worhsip teams that played. If I get the go ahead, I may actually do something that requires Double Layer Discs. That's exciting. Hopefully I'll be able to find double layer lightscribe discs so I can add some decent art to the discs and not the tacky sharpie handwritten label.

Peace Out,
Ben

Exporting Video

Don't ever use Sony Vegas to edit Video. It's really not that great. Final Cut or Premiere would be the better choice. I use Final Cut Pro at school in our TV studio, and Vegas Studio for personal use. Many of things Vegas does very much counter-intuitive. After using both, Final Cut is the champ; one more reason I can't wait to get a Mac.

Anyways, I'm only bringing it up because I'm exporting some video footage that was taken on the mission trip I went on with my church to Jamaica. We shot about 13 hrs of video. Importing was easy, but there is no tape backup because the entire 13 hours was shot using only 4 minidv tapes. It's been stored on a 200GB drive since last June, and now I need the drive for some coming up projects. So I've started exporting the original footage to tape. Some of it is not going very smoothly. I'm on the first tape now and already I'm seeing wierd stuff happen. I'm going to back the stuff up as mpeg2 files as well, just so I have it around. Not as good I know, but I need the space on the external drive. We'll see how it goes. Anyways, I'm going to try to post a picture from the Jamaica trip to make this post sound a bit more positive.

- Ben

First Post!

Hey, just signed up for this thing. It's my first blog so we'll see how it goes. I tried Journaling at one point, but that never really lasted. I think in 2 years I may have written in it 15 times. Anyways, I liked the idea of this one because of its interoperability with gmail and also there is a plugin for rapidweaver that supports this sight. We'll see what happens. Peace Out.

- ben