I had the honor to help out with The Green Party and Libertarian Party’s “4 Party Debate” this past week at the Lariat Steak House in Peoria. Specifically, I helped do the recording of the event and also assisted in live streaming it to Facebook.
It went well. I had to watch my equipment instead of watching the debaters. My end product turned out OK. I found out that my Zoom4 recorder does not keep time like my Canon T5i. How is that possible? Digital devices recording 90 minutes with nearly a 60 second variable? I have to assume it was the Zoom. Its a decade old. Talk about a nasty editing session. I had to go through and parse the audio at every convenient moderator question to start “lining up lips”. I was sure I had it all sorted out and looked it over three times to make sure it looked good before hitting “Make Movie”.
It takes forever for 90 minutes of video to process on this PC. So, I did what I normally do when this process starts… I went to bed! The the next day, I double checked the file to make sure the start and finish were OK. Thats an ugly error. When you hang a file out at the end of the edited clips and it shows up as a bonus 10 minutes of black air at the end of the video until a small un-sequenced clips pops up and runs its course. Obviously… Its happened to me a few times! I know the drill now!
So, this morning, I uploaded the video to YouTube and was happy to say “Done!” to all my Libertarian friends. Later, around lunch… I grabbed the clip and copied it to another page. I took a quick look to make sure it was all good… Thats when I noticed Sheldon’s lips not running correctly to the audio. And it was early in the video. DAMMIT! I spent way to much time on this to get burned.
Lesson learned… Even if you are in a rush. Step away from the edit and regroup before releasing. Unfortunately, with this video… Time was a factor and I am locked into leaving it up as I released it.
It does pain me to know I messed that up!!! I will probably retool it in the meantime. Here is a link to the video.