Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Aaaarrrrghghghg!

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there was a rock band called Appliances-SFB. They once did a live concert at Madison's public access cable station. My brother had a copy of it on VHS and about two years ago he gave it to someone to transfer to DVD. He just got it back and gave me a copy. For the last few days I've been trying to edit it into individual songs so they can be posted on YouTube and stuff like that. I figured that since it isn't encrypted, it would be easy. Hah! It turns out iMovie won't import DVD files, so it needs to be converted to another file format. Someone told me to use some free software called Handbrake to do that, so I did, tried to import it into iMovie and it just spins it's wheels and nothing seems to happen. The original video is almost two hours long and isn't broken up into chapters or anything, so it looks like it needs to be converted in one big chunk, which seems to mean that even if it works, it won't be fast. I've left the computer running overnight to do its thing, but it still isn't working. I've done google searches and Apple user forum searches and waded through tons of different articles, but none of them directly address my particular needs. I don't want to drop any money on software to do this, particularly since there doesn't seem to be any guarantee that it will work.

IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY!

Just needed to vent about that. If anyone reads this who happens to know an easy (and inexpensive) solution, it would be, like, totally awesome if you shared it with me.

4 comments:

Suzy said...

Just MOTS (more of the same) in the continuing saga of this legendary band.

Fran said...

Would that be bon MOTS Suzy???

Sorry I digress.

I hope you get it figured out, I want to see/hear this!

buzzwig said...

Hey, I might be able to help you with that. Be sure and mention it to me.

Ed said...

Suzy: Yes, given past history, you're absolutely right.

Franiam: Non, definitely not bon MOTS, given past history. I'll blog about that some day.

Buzzwig: I would most definitely be interested in any help you might be able to offer. I forgot that you might have some expertise in this area. I heard a rumor (I think I read it in the Isthmus) you might be coming with to pick up kids on Saturday; maybe we'll have an opportunity to talk about it then. You can always e-mail me, too. Jen has my address. I suppose I ought to figure out how to enable people to e-mail me through this blog. Someday...