Graduated Hardship

Once again, I signed on to shoot and edit my school’s 8th and 12th grade graduation, and produce a DVD of acceptable quality. To accomplish this fabulous feat of filming required the borrowing of numerous pieces of equipment from the school, including a laptop, since nothing I own has sufficient power or software. But before I continue, I should speak more about the school laptops, that you may understand just a few of the things I faced.
The brand is Fujitsu, the RAM is decent, and the memory acceptable. Sounds like a good deal? The casual observer might assume so, but would reckon without the CP. Computer Personality. As in, these laptops each have their own personalities, for better or worse. Okay, maybe just for worse. Take, for example, Laptop 15. Once upon a time, 15 was a good little laptop. It had its problems, but all in all, it was safe. And then it died. Literally. Then there is another laptop who, if it doesn’t take an immediate liking to the user, will actually scream at the person using it. Through the speakers. The laptop I used simply had most of its screws missing, so if you picked it up wrong, the bottom was in danger of falling out….
Anyway

I had just finished both parts of the DVD when I discover that somewhere in the second part there was a problem. And I don’t just mean ANY problem. I mean a PROBLEM. The file writing process worked okay, until a certain spot about one-third the way in. Then it would crash. The entire program, along with the file it was writing. Keep in mind that it takes each video file roughly 2 hours to write. Eventually I got so fed up with the entire process that I sat for two solid days in front of this ornery little laptop hunting down this one error as tenaciously as a tube sock clings to a large foot.
Eventually I discovered the PROBLEM’s root: a split-to-two-second clip of film that the program simply didn’t like. It took me another day to root it out entirely, and another day to fix a PROBLEM of similar quality. And then ANOTHER day to finally produce a working DVD of acceptable quality. And then another one to re-record the source file because there was a problem with the one burned to the “quality” DVD……