Oscar for best editing of short film safe from me

I have a love hate relationship with my computer and all its attendant gadgets. I adore the ease and convenience technology has provided me as a writer but in all honesty, I’d just as soon pull its life-plug.

I do not fear technology because of a possible apocalyptic future where artificial intelligence wins the war. I don’t secretly believe the human race will be reduced to gray matter preserved in big, glass laboratory jars. I don’t believe we will be reduced to living virtually, our floating brains hooked to computer circuitry that simulates life.

OK, maybe I have a little fear of that, or maybe I just watched too many bad sci-fi movies with my older brother.

My aversion to advanced technology is a direct reaction to the frustration it causes. If anything can possibly go wrong between technology and me, it will. If I set a digital alarm clock the odds are it will not wake me when I intended. I try to program a simple VCR to catch a movie and all I get is two hours of white noise.

My husband and I are in constant disagreement over upgrading to satellite with DVR technology. I just can’t cope with any more channels, and “The Hopper” is giving me nightmares.

Today’s adventure in Technoland started when I decided to upload photos from my digital camera. I’d forgotten that I recently shot a bit of video footage too. Well, the truth is, I wasn’t quite sure I was shooting video at the time and in fact highly doubted that I’d done it right.

Low and behold, there were the movies. Yes, there were three separate movies; something I had no idea I’d done. As it turns out, shooting three movies was a good thing because try as I might, I could not figure out how to edit the length of any of them.

I picked the best one and tried to upload it to my Facebook page. It seemed successful and then I noticed the little countdown timer indicating I had 432 minutes to wait.

OK, I know enough to understand the file was much larger than optimal for uploading and viewing. I know how to reduce a still photo from a resolution of 300 down to 150 or 75 for faster uploading and online viewing. I have no clue how to “shrink” a movie.

My IMac is loaded with some pretty sophisticated software thanks to the Adobe Creative Suite I had to use while earning a degree in Visual Communication. Many people half my age assure me that the software is very simple to use.

I’m convinced they are lying to me as part of a vast conspiracy to take over the world as we know it by making anybody over 40 feel so clueless they just give up and retire to the nearest Lazy Boy.

I thought I’d try a back door approach by uploading to YouTube first, and then just linking to my Facebook account. No such luck, I had the same wait time uploading to YouTube. Not sure why I thought it would be different, just hoping for some media miracle I guess.

As it turns out, I could have just let the upload run its time because three hours later I was still trying to figure out how to downsize the file with my iMovie software. And darn those smarty pants kids, they were right.

All it took was a few clicks in the drop down menus: Share > Export > YouTube. From there I could choose sizes appropriate for viewing across numerous media formats from mobile devices to Imax. OK, it didn’t really say Imax, but I’m sure it’s doable.

Success can be sweet but in my case, like watermelon, it always comes with seeds. Somehow I managed to duplicate the one-and-a-half minute video onto itself not one time, but twice, turning it into a 4.5-minute epic repeating loop.

I know one thing for sure, I won’t have to go shopping for my red carpet dress anytime soon.

Judith Liebaert was raised in Superior and now lives in rural Douglas County. She blogs on-line as the Mad Goddess™. Send your comments or story ideas to judith_ann@madgoddess.com.

Tags: opinion, commentary