Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Taking a little time to talk about movies...

No, not ones we've gone to see lately (although, we do highly recommend the new Sherlock Holmes and latest Mission Impossible flicks). I mean home movies.

For Christmas, Mr. Perfect desperately wanted a really good table saw and compound miter saw. We found them on sale
 for an amazing price (Black Friday shopping at its best; there were only four people in line ahead of us at the Lowe's at 4:30 am, with the doors opening at 5:00). However, that left us with a little bit of a dilemma of what to give poor, neglected Most Happy Girl (yeah, right; so neglected). While perusing the Thanksgiving ads for Black Friday, we found the perfect gift for the girl who loves taking pictures and watching movies: a Panasonic fully-HD camcorder.

It was the right price. It had enough bells and whistle to keep her happy for a good two or three years before needing an upgrade. After the slight, non-craziness of Lowe's and Big 5 (as stated before, no big lines at either store), the line for the Costco opening was a little daunting, but most of the other people wanted the T.V.s. Hurrah for our side!

As you can see from various previous posts, we've been having some great fun with the camera. However, there was one thing we hadn't fully researched before making the purchase, and that was to see how compatible the file format is with a Mac. You see, I'm a Mac girl. I love me my MacBook Pro. In fact, we've all become so Mac happy, we know that our next home computer purchase is going to take about three years of saving up to get. Ah, the joys of technology. Well, we discovered that the software that comes with this particular camcorder isn't compatible with a Mac. What to do, what to do?

Now, anyone who knows anything about Macs knows that they come with movie making software. It's part of the big sell for Macs. They have this software called iDVD that lets you burn DVDs of homemade movies with menus and separated chapters and all that fun stuff. However, to transfer the images from the camcorder format to a format iDVD recognizes would mean upgrading the iMovie that came with iLife '09 to iMovie '11. So, we bit the bullet, bought the software upgrade (I think it was a whopping $15.00), and have now successfully made a DVD of the first half of the Broadway Review/Melodrama evening, complete with chapters for each song and an Extras menu that has Drama Queen's big song (see the Hakuna Matata post).

So, I'm now lovin' me some iMovie. To get both halves of the evening on one DVD, I'll need to lay my hands on some dual layer format DVDs, but they are already on their way to my home. In face, they should arrive today. I'm a happy, happy girl.

Happy reading, my little pupils!

No comments:

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Random labels

30-day challenge 9-11 about me acapella accidents amazing America Anamaniacs animals animation anniversaries April Fool's Day Arizona art astronomy babies baking ballet ballooning baseball beaches Beatles Beethoven Belgium birthdays blogging boat ride Book of Mormon reading books bread cabin California camp camping canning car carrots castles Cedar City changes children chocolate bunnies Christmas church civics clouds college construction contests cookies cooking coyote gulch daily prompt daisies date night dealing with youth death December Despicable Me dining disater preparedness discovery Disney Disney World Disneyland dog Drama Queen ducks Easter education Elder Bednar empty-nesting engagements Escalante extended family fall family vacations fashion Father's Day FHE fishing flowers food foreign freedom friends frustration Game Boy gardening General Conference genius children giveaway glasses gospel truths government graduations Grand Canyon grief hair Halloween Handel happiness health hiking Hilary Weeks holiday holidays home decor home improvements honors hospitals HTML classes humor illness injuries iPod Isle of Mull Jim Tomlinson July 4th jury duty just for fun kids' stuff Lagoon Lawyer-in-the-Family Lawyer-in-the-Works leaves Life of Christ light lights London love love love Mac Man in Plays Manito Gardens memorial Memorial Day Messiah minions missions MJ Structural Engineers morning Most Happy Girl Mother's Day mothers mountains movies moving Mr. Director Mr. Perfect Muppets music nature New Beginnings normal life O.K.Go ocean opera outdoors patriotic Percy and Harry photography piano piano guys pie pink pirates plants playing with Photoshop politics poppies portraits Psycho Wunderhund pumpkins quote of the day reading red remembering resting roller skating roses RSE San Antonio school Scotland seasons Shakespeare shopping singing skies smoke in the air Sondre Lerche space Spokane spring Stacey Kent standing stones Star Wars storms sun sunrise Super Teacher Woman SUU symphony teaching technology television Temple Square temples Thanksgiving theatre toddlers travel trees uinta mountains University of Utah USF Utah Utah Jazz Utah Symphony Valentines Day Veggie Tales voting Wasatch Front water weather web design wedding weddings wordless wednesday work world trade center writing yard work Young Womens Youth Conference YouTube YW camp