Dana Robb, January, Family Home Videos on dvd

First off-introductions:  I'm a homeschooling mom of four entertaining and energetic kids, and wife to one very patient man.  We've been in West Jordan for almost nine years.  I love all things holistic-food, health, etc. Reading and yoga are my constant outlets.  If I could, I would hire a cook and a maid and spend all my time creating things with my kids and playing outside (hiking, mountain biking, rockclimbing, etc.)...Maybe in another lifetime.   And how do I trace back to Nora?  It all started when Robyn Noel invited me to book club.  That's when I first met Nora.  And also two other                                                                               friends on the blog-Amber Smith and Marisa Johnson.

On to the project:

One of my favorite memories as a child was going to Grandpa's house. He would set up his projector, put on his 8mm films, and my mom, as a little girl, would come to life.  Even now, the whirr of the projector and the flicker of the film on the white screen, are vivid in my mind.  A few years back,  I collected all those 8mm films, 16 hours worth, digitally converted them and then put them together on dvds.  It was an intense project that consumed me for, oh, a number of years.  But it has become a treasure to my family.  I was able to share it with my grandpa just a few months before he passed away.  Now, as I look at the collection of video clips we've recorded of my own kids, I wonder why I haven't devoted the same effort to compiling and creating dvds of my children's lives that wecan enjoy right now.  Technology has made it increasingly easier.  All I needed was a deadline.  In comes Nora's project.  

Mine was the simple goal of finishing a dvd for each of the past two years, (the other eleven of my marriage will have to wait-or maybe I can hire it out?).  In case you think I took on this monumentous task all in one month, let me clarify.  I was technically almost done with this project when I signed myself up for it in January.  I'd been working on it off and on for the last year, but I needed that deadline to just get it done, instead of pushing it off as other timely things come up.  And I can report a partial success! I did finish 2013.  (2012 is almost there.)  

Here's the rundown:

I kept it simple.  Realistic.  Editing?  Nil.  Music?  Nada (unless it was recorded with the footage)  Lots of cute subtitles and transitions?  Nope. This was challenging for me.  I spent a lot of time in a past life working on short film projects and wanted all the extras for my home movies, but I realized that was part of the reason why I'd put off compiling this part of my family's history for so long.  So, It won't win any Oscars, but I know my audience will enjoy it and it could become a Sunday afternoon favorite.

I used Windows Live Movie Maker and it actually has some cool options (which I totally ignored)  It was simple enough to add my clips and move them around as desired.

The most complicated part was that I used two devices for recording video and had to sync up all the clips to my laptop.  It was easy to get the clips off of the sd card in my camera but more challenging to figure out the best way to get them from my tablet to my laptop.  Uploading them to the web was my first choice.  That was a hassle.  I ended up using a 2.0GB thumb drive that could only be loaded with a few videos at a time.  Next time I either need a larger thumb drive or a usb connector that links the tablet to the laptop.  

The second setback was in the labeling of all the videos.  Halfway through the project, I realized I needed a better organization system.  I was throwing each clip into Movie Maker as I came across it and realized they weren't chronological.  I ended up organizing the clips by year, month, day with maybe a summary of that clip. i.e. 20130111 eve crawling.  Had I organized them previous to putting them into Movie Maker, I could have put them all in at once, known exactly when the video was taken by scrolling over the picture, and not have had to do so much moving around.

The third thing I learned: Limit your movie to under two hours (or break the year up into parts) because the dvd only holds up to 120 minutes.  All our video clips from 2013 combined totaled 3 hrs 45 min. I went to burn a dvd and t wouldn't let me unless I cut out half the clips.  After panicking over the idea of individually removing half my video clips and reinserting them into a new project (no cutting and pasting between projects in Movie Maker) I had some inspiration.  I saved it as a .wmv file, opened up a new project, added the movie file and then sliced it in half. Burned part 1. Then started again with part 2. Whew.  And it's done.  Here's a sample: