You mean with "life, the universe, and everything?"

:O)

And all this time, I've thought that the file on my hard drive, aum.exe, was the Adobe Update Manager.

"aum.exe, was the Adobe Update Manager." One could see the similarities; the beginning-starting of usable software, middle- bloat ware infection, the end- software dies a death of un-usage ability.

Cultures seem to get re-invented a lot, as individuals, including a lot of professors, tried to express their personnel believes that they are right. One should view the rewriting of history with a critical eye....... its like the dinosaurs; first they were cold blooded, then warm blooded, now they have feathers, it's the matter of reviewing actual data correctly vs persisting the facts say something else.

We could have a never ending debate about Hindi impact on cultures thru the centuries, but arguing about them focusing science is little misleading. Development of number systems and "inventions" are more driven by need of..............etc ....I've going to avoid this conversion to avoid pissing people off.

I think the key is that many civilizations and cultures have contributed to what we have today.

One civilization invented the "zero." Seems a questionable invention until you realize the scope of it.

Before the "0" there were notches for each whatever you were counting. Why would you need a mark for "nothing?" Must be a stupid idea...

Then another civilization stepped on the shoulders of those who had invented the "0," and they came up with the positional system for numbers. That suddenly made possible vast progress in calculations, as they no longer had to figure "MCMXLIX * CCCLXIV = ?"

"Hindu" btw was how the Portuguese referred to the people who lived in the Indus river valley.

The cool stuff in science and the arts was done by the Vedic civilization, which was a very, very highly developed society. Quite a bit beyond where we are now in several areas, but like all other civilizations, it didn't scale over either population growth or time.

The Wall Street Journal had a "January 1, 1000" issue that was included with their 1/1/2000 newspaper. Very interesting to see how Europe was totally backwards at the time compared to the Middle East and the Far East, great fun to read actually. It was written as if the WSJ had existed at the time, and looked at the world of business and culture at that time.

Here's an idea. For off-topic threads, we should post them in the sub-forum "Vegas Pro Production Assistant". With barely 40 posts in over a year (and the most recent post almost a month old), it's obviously not being used much.

This way it becomes the default OT forum, without having to create one.

Fragmentation killed the old civilizations, and I think that is also the reason there isn't much going on in the Vegas Movie Studio, Vegas Pro-Audio, Vegas Pro-Scripting, Vegas Pro Production Assistant, or Vegas DVD Architect forums.

Everybody comes here to get their answers whether it's about video, audio or scripting, etc.

Nobody wants to shuffle back and forth, so this one forum gets the volume, which in turn makes it the best source for solutions also to problems with audio, scripting, DVDA, etc.

My two bits is this: it's a tool. Even with the wrong tools, a skilled visual storyteller can create something really enchanting and interesting. Just think of all the stuff that barely uses a camera (heavily composited pieces) or none at all (digital animation).

Back in my reporter days I talked to an illustrator who had, for the third time in a row, won the Corel Draw illustration contest. His illustrations were truly outstanding, and contained depth and character that really stood out from the crowd. That said, he was using the oldest crappiest computer I've ever seen. It was dated. He wasn't even using the latest version of Corel Draw to do his work. But his attitude was, "I'm an artist...a tool is a tool...I can paint with an old brush or a new one...with skill and vision you can adapt."

As for me, I've shot industrial videos with a combination of DVX-100B and a little Sony HD Handicam. With good lighting, technique at patience, you can make it all work (the fact that Vegas integrates the video seamlessly made my life a whole lot simpler).

I'm technology agnostic when it comes to this kind of thing. Given the choice, give me a little more time and a few extra lights, just in case, and everything will work out fine.

In a pinch though, a DSLR with HD is definitely handy as a "just in case" tool.

And to think that the SCS Vista Users sub-forum used to serve that purpose.

I lost my story many posts ago :(

I found several definition, one being "An account or recital of an event or a series of events, either true or fictitious". I can add adjectives to that abstract noun like "epic", that works but when I try "visual story" or "visual narrative" I loose my audience.
For a language that adds new words to it's vocabulary at a staggering rate why has English failed to address this. Perhaps someone here can propose a new word. Think of the impact it would have over the next thousand years. Kids in school look it up in a dictionary and read that the word originated in a Vegas user forum.

As for "Aum". I had it stuck on top of the petrol tank of the 500cc Enfield I rode 1,000s of miles around India. Wherever we went, it went before us. Garnesh was in my wife's backpack, we made it unscathed, I think Garnesh was looking out for us. That little sandalwood carving has pride of place in our display cabinet.
.
I had plans to return to India this Christmas, this time with a video camera but the airfares are killing. Should make it later next year to shoot the Durga Puja in Kolkata. Would love to shoot the Ganga Festival but the mere suggestion of that idea freaks out my Indian friends. For those who don't know what the Ganga festival is, suffice to say it attracts so many millions of people it can be seen with the naked eye from space.

Bob.

As for "Aum". I had it stuck on top of the petrol tank of the 500cc Enfield I rode 1,000s of miles around India.

What a treat! There is so much to see in India, and it has a magical ambience, where it feels like "time doesn't exist." Interestingly also how even the poorest of the poor ("leased loin cloth, four grains of rice for dinner") have a personal dignity that I never saw in poor people anywhere else. Their faces said, without words, "I am a human too, just like you!"

Ganesh was in my wife's backpack, we made it unscathed, I think Ganesh was looking out for us. That little sandalwood carving has pride of place in our display cabinet.

I have a beautiful Ganesh overlooking my main Vegas system, got it as a business present in India.

And Ganesh also has a story with depth. In addition to being most commonly known as "the #1 goto-guy for helping with obstacles," he also represents the principle of induction (i.e. knowing the whole through knowing the principle/structure/pattern of the whole), as opposed to the principle of deduction (knowing the whole by knowing every detail).

It's like vector graphics instead of raster graphics, same idea!

(I hope your wife can appreciate that analogy :O)).

Would love to shoot the Ganga Festival but the mere suggestion of that idea freaks out my Indian friends. For those who don't know what the Ganga festival is, suffice to say it attracts so many millions of people it can be seen with the naked eye from space.

That would be quite a treat also (with compact video gear, I think the SI-2K would really shine there!) , and I think the difficulties are manageable, especially if you're traveling with someone who speaks at least Hindi (the other national language besides English, and of course the dozens of regional languages, about a dozen of which are on the banknotes).

I ran into a friend/colleague still shooter last night and we got to discussing the convergence of DSLR's and video (just saw the term VSLR used today in a blog posting)

I truly love the form factor of shooting with these cameras, but to be honest, not sure about the amount of compression being used with the codec used on these cameras and the fact one is limited to 12 minutes of HD video - where I've had instances of needing to leave the camera running for the full length of the tape with no pause.

Now companies like Zacuto, Cavision, et al are now producing support gear specific to these cameras. Now taking into account there are many here who have a preference for the form factor of traditional video cameras - what's the deal with all the hoopla. I admit I'm being affected by the onslaught of scuttlebutt all over the web - and from contemporaries who are being seduced to get rid of their XH-A1's, EX3's etc and replacing them with these VSLR's - my understanding is, shooting a format like m2t, XDCAM, etc are superior formats for editing compared to the highly compressed h264 format being shot by the Canon cameras. Nikon appears to shoot in MJPEG with an AVI wrapper - again, the sheer volume of information out there is leaving me dumb founded on what to believe, etc.

My friend raved about the narrow depth of field, low light capabilities, etc. of these VSLR's

I'm left in a state of confusion over this since shooting with my current tape based cameras is all I've ever known as far as shooting video. But tapeless acquisition has begun to appeal to me more.

Any insights from others here?

Cliff Etzel
Videographer : Producer : Web Designer
bluprojekt

Having moved to solid-state recording a year ago, I would/will never go back to tape--not in a million years. The work flow is so much simpler.

Here is a video (75-minutes) by Doug Jensen discussing the advantages of the EX cameras over tape-based cameras.

Yes, it's a longer than your average YouTube fare, but well worth it!

I've been shooting tapeless for many years and will never go back, no way!

But DSLRs for video? That depends on what you're shooting, and the time limit is a show stopper for some.
Then the focus pulling, and the double sound that is necessary for quality audio, etc.

What you do get is video that can look stunning when everything is right.


Nobody should edit in H.264, just transfer it to a more edit-friendly codec asap.