The ads on the site are gone. They’re staying gone. I’m going to launch a Patreon campaign next week. (Probably Monday.) My hope is that the campaign will cover the loss of ad revenue. And if it doesn’t? Eh. I’ll figure something out. It actually feels great to not have to worry about the ads. <\/p>\n
Remember when I made videos? It’s been a while<\/a>. In the past I used Windows Movie Maker, but after I upgraded to Windows 7<\/a> I found that the bundled version of WMM had been neutered and was barely fit for making family photo slideshows. It didn’t seem worth my while to try to get the old version working, since it was a bit crap, crashed all the time, and didn’t support HD video. The open source alternatives weren’t all that great, and the commercial ones were too expensive for my tastes. <\/p>\n But!<\/p>\n I had a very generous donor right after I talked about my fight with Google, which I discussed on the most recent Diecast<\/a>. I used that money to get myself some video editing software, so now I can make videos again. I’m not going to start turning out tons of video content or anything. I know my prose is the big draw around hereOr so says the people who prefer to read my prose. Hm.<\/span>. But it’s nice to have the option available. <\/p>\n I just don’t “get” most video editing software. I suspect that a lot of them are based around the ideas and nomenclature of old-school cut & splice film editing. That’s nice for seasoned vets moving to the digital age, but for people like me who are new to everything it’s just inscrutable. One program felt a lot like the early Blender interface<\/a> to me. Every clip had its own window, and you were sort of editing them all at once, and none of them was the “main” video you were working on. There were always lots of buttons, and I couldn’t intuit what any of them did. When I pressed them, very often nothing would happen. Did that do something I don’t understand, or did it actually do nothing?<\/em><\/p>\n For the record, I got CyberLink PowerDirector 12<\/a>, which is just about the worst name for a software I’ve ever heard. It sounds like a couple of 90’s era C-list Image<\/a> superheroes: “CyberLink and Power Director team up against the Terrifying Twelve!” This complete lack of self-awareness extends to the way they name product tiers. The lowest<\/em> tier is “Deluxe”. Ha ha. Hey CyberLink PowerBomber: 1950 called. They want their marketing backHey Shamus, 1990 called. They want their “X called and want their Y back” joke back.<\/span>.<\/p>\n But I really dig it, cheesy name and all. I didn’t need to read a single document to get rolling. I was able to jump right in and figure it all out through guessing and experimentation. It uses the Windows Movie Maker timeline editing paradigm, except not stupid and broken and horrible. <\/p>\n And yes, I’m aware of the irony of dumping the ads and them announcing it by praising a commercial product. For the record: This is not an ad and I’m just praising the software because it made me happy. It could easily piss me off tomorrow and be the subject of a 2,000 word rant. You know how we do things around here<\/a>.<\/p>\n