Jubilation!

We are pretty much feeling like this little guy around here right now...



We recently had some work done on our jumbo A/V computer which went well until I realized several days later that my DVD drive was no longer being recognized. Which wasn't a huge problem until I got home with some new software tonight and was quite excited to try it out until I realized that the drive wasn't working, damn.

It's really vital at this point you understand that I'm not the most mechanically inclined person in the world, in fact it might be more accurate to say I am quite possibly the least mechanically inclined person in the world, things of a mechanical nature are always a bit of a mystery to me.

So I screwed up my courage and popped the heavy metal case off the computer and took a look, MJ came in to give me a hand and in about five minutes we realized that during the repair the tech had simply knocked the power supply out of its plug. So I plugged a power dealie into the empty outlet fired up the computer and voila! It worked! Huzzah!

Two things, the first is a question for the computer geniuses who infest this blog, :) Are all the power leads in the computer set to the same rating? Or are some of the leads set to different amperages or volts or crispies? I'm guessing their all pretty much the same.

Two, the new software we picked up is Adobe's Premiere Elements3.0. I needed a better way to save files as Flash video and this was by far the cheapest option. I just finished saving the first file and Wow!

I'd been using Sony's Vegas Home Studio, which is a fairly robust program but it assumes you know an awful lot and isn't very helpful if you're not already a film wiz. Premiere is definitely friendlier and has quite a few more presets which can of course be quite helpful the newbs. And of course the ability to import and export Flash is rapidly becoming the coin of the realm as regards web video and Sony Vegas has nothing to do with Flash, which was a problem.

Ironically, a program that would simply render Flash video started around $250! There were cheaper options, and I downloaded several demos and they certainly embodied the old chestnut of getting what you pay for.

So if you're in the market for video editing software Adobe's Premiere Elements is definitely worth a long look. This is actually our second "Elements" program, MJ has the Adobe Photoshop Elements and is delighted with it.

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