Techno Logic

Cutter's Log – Stardate 2102.22.80
Current Song – Stone In Love (Journey)

I decided to experiment with video during the season-opening volleyball match between Sterling and Rock Falls at Tabor Gym.

“Experiment” meaning breaking down a wall in the form of underclassmen coverage.

The plan was to film all of the sophomore match and all of the varsity match, which I wound up doing successfully. Normally in journalism, only the varsity gets the media treatment. I had been thinking about underclassmen incorporation for a few years now, and this is one of the steps toward breaking down that wall. (Just so happens that I went to grade school with RF's sophomore coach).

I'll have a column or Publisher's Desk note about underclassmen coverage some time in the near future.

With a bunch of video saved on my camera, now came the hardest part of all: saving, chopping, downloading and publishing. It's taking longer than I thought.

It's been six hours since I started working on it, and as of this writing I'm waiting for the sophomore clips to be uploaded onto YouTube, where I then have to bunch together and finally publish. (It should be noted that I'm originally typing these words onto a Word document instead of on the Blog platform because my Internet is so slow due to the uploading).

First came saving the master copies onto the computer. Then came finding what clips to divide and eventually dividing them.

I wound up choosing 27 sophomore clips. I'm regretting the large number now. I'd rather have it at 10 next time. I also wound up choosing 30 varsity clips, not counting all of the postgame interviews. Ten. Ten, Cody. Ten.

Along this process I have found some quagmires with timestamps, especially with uploading. When uploaded, all of my clips are scattered on the Internet in random order. So I have to eventually piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle.

I can only hope the quality turns out better.

One of the great things about experimenting is that you can take notes on your baby steps. Then you can find things to change later when another time comes around. Needing to decrease the montages to fewer clips is one of the things circled in my scratch paper next to my keyboard.

I am planning on releasing the sophomore montage right away, and the varsity montage for Thursday's front page. Then a Q&A on a Boylan Golfer for Friday (long overdue) before headed to the yet-to-be-determined Week 1 football game.

This is going to be a very interesting year.