My First Video (Yay!)

Thanks to the expertise and wonderful support of a Labtails regular reader (RR), here is the first official video from my new handy-dandy HD camcorder.

Who is this fabulous RR, you ask? The one and only Nancy Akin, video expert and Lab owner extrordinaire from Team 3 Dawg Flite (her dock-jumping dog team and related blog, which was formerly called Team Fire and Ice).

And to boot (hehe, which is good for you and me), when she's not training or competing her three Labs, she's working as a professional videographer with her own videographer service called EverWord Media. Let me tell you... she really knows her stuff, yet she somehow manages to stay incredibly patient with techno-challenged people like me. And she's really good at what she does (I checked out her web site). If you need a videographer, and you live in the southeastern part of the United States, I'd highly recommend her.

And, just so you know, and to give credit where credit is due, Nancy saved me hours and hours and hours of work trying to figure things out on my own (I never could have done this without her) -- all with a kindness and generosity of spirit I rarely encounter in this world. She's a good egg. My Labs would love her (now that's high praise!).

Okay, now on to the video. One disclaimer: before you hang me, please note that even with Nancy's hours of help and tips I'm not very good at this yet (this video is far from perfect). I'm still learning about pushing the right buttons, and using the correct settings, and holding the camera still most of the time, and moving slowly (if I need to track one of the dogs, who btw have a frustrating lack of sensitivity about staying within my viewfinder's range -- how dare they!) and figuring out how to gently (not quickly or choppily) use things like the zoom function. Ahhh... so much to learn; so little a brain (hehe).

BUT, I am learning. So if you'll bear with me, we can figure this HD video thing out together.

Here is the very first video I've been able to convert from the HD file type to a Quicktime file (.mov), which I could work with on my laptop, and then to an mpeg4 (I think that's it), which I could finally compress enough to make workable on Blogger. :o)

See I'm learning all kinds of things: file conversions, movie editing, file compression -- gee... I never even knew I wanted to learn all this stuff (hehe)!

So here it is. I've entitled it Jumping Beans at Door and Gate. Creative, huh? (I couldn't come up with anything better at this point -- not enough brain cells left).

This is how the gang reacts when they see someone behind the door or on the other side of the gate (poor little Rudy better look out!). Oh, and note that Baxter is present in this clip, taken just before New Year's, but Tuc has the highest vertical leap (and is oblivious to who is underneath him). :o)






Enjoy!

And if you could, please let me know(via comments is fine) if you're able to play it back on your computers (or if you have any trouble). When I compressed the file, it became ridiculously small (like only 3 or 4 MB, from literally hundreds). I just want to make sure it works.

Anyway, we finally have one under our belts. Now it's on to the videos I really want to do.

Stay tuned for the next one (coming soon!). The next one, featuring our beloved Baxter Boos, is the one I've been wanting to get up on the blog for over two weeks now. I think you'll like it.

Until then,
Joan