Today was a mixed day. Part administration and part a meeting. Wednesday is the day David our part time administrator/book keeper comes in.
I went in very early [for me] - about 8am - to try to get things started before he arrived. I needed to do some invoices for facilities to partner organizations. We realised that there were a largish number of bills not paid so David went off and paid them. And then he began to get caught up with the rest of the paperwork.
It's not a full time job our administration, but it is probably 1/2 time. So, one day a week means we are permanently behind. It's the kind of job that would suit a retired person with the right gifts who likes the sun of Cyprus [hint].
Although David never gets to the bottom of the pile, he is beginning to do more and one thing we are bad at is chasing up when people owe us money. We are hoping that will be something he begins to take on - sending out monthly statements to remind people when they owe us something!
The meeting was with one of the partner groups we are working with for the SMS system, plus with the main software developer for the web interface. In between talking with David we managed to get one of two partners upgraded to the new system which includes email connection as well, and the other one is ready for upgrade the only problem is who will do the tech support for the change over. Not us!
The system is working well enough that there are hopes of rolling out similar systems for many parts in Africa and India and Parkistan. Again those are outside out 'patch' so others will be doing it. Encouraging to see that though.
Finally just as Peter left through the door he said that he thought that it was now mostly working, although there are a couple of sigificant wrinkles still to be ironed out.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Monday, August 29, 2005
The big picture?
This morning Pete and I spent the time together talking about the plans for the future… and praying a little. We decided this will be what we do each morning this week. It's very easy for us to get caught in the hussle and bussle of every day work without seeing where we are going.
For instance, one project we have been working on is a gateway between SMS mobile phone messages and a secure website, so that people responding to the radio stations can send SMS messages. It had been causing us grief keeping it all working and we were wondering if it was worthwhile. At a meeting a few weeks back we found that there were about 15 messages per day going through the system and growing. This sort of thing helps us focus on why we are doing what we are doing… rather than just doing it!
Pete's feeling a bit under stress with keeping all the Internet stuff going and we really need more technical support. We have so little free resources that even trying to improve things can end up causing problems elsewhere. Of course, this is the story of non-profit organizations the world over, but it doesn't ease the stress.
Anyhow I spent the afternoon catching up on email and helping Peter with one of the problems that is bugging us. We have two ADSL connections to the Internet. This is both to increase the bandwidth we have available and to have some redundancy. The redundancy is the problem. We want to allow people to connect to us on the second link if the first goes down. Sounds easy, but implementing is somewhat more difficult. At 6pm we left the office with it still not working.
So, back to the big picture… there are way more things we could do than have manpower and money to do, so deciding/finding out from God which we should do is the issue. Please pray that we find out God's will for what we should do in the next 12 months and what we should not do! Oh, and while you're about it, pray for more people to help us and the money we need, particuarly the money needed to cover the costs of such mundane things as the rent.
For instance, one project we have been working on is a gateway between SMS mobile phone messages and a secure website, so that people responding to the radio stations can send SMS messages. It had been causing us grief keeping it all working and we were wondering if it was worthwhile. At a meeting a few weeks back we found that there were about 15 messages per day going through the system and growing. This sort of thing helps us focus on why we are doing what we are doing… rather than just doing it!
Pete's feeling a bit under stress with keeping all the Internet stuff going and we really need more technical support. We have so little free resources that even trying to improve things can end up causing problems elsewhere. Of course, this is the story of non-profit organizations the world over, but it doesn't ease the stress.
Anyhow I spent the afternoon catching up on email and helping Peter with one of the problems that is bugging us. We have two ADSL connections to the Internet. This is both to increase the bandwidth we have available and to have some redundancy. The redundancy is the problem. We want to allow people to connect to us on the second link if the first goes down. Sounds easy, but implementing is somewhat more difficult. At 6pm we left the office with it still not working.
So, back to the big picture… there are way more things we could do than have manpower and money to do, so deciding/finding out from God which we should do is the issue. Please pray that we find out God's will for what we should do in the next 12 months and what we should not do! Oh, and while you're about it, pray for more people to help us and the money we need, particuarly the money needed to cover the costs of such mundane things as the rent.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
It worked! [at last]
Finally completed the conference video that was wanted urgently. I don't know how many times I tried rendering it... I have lost count. I started on Friday and then every few hours over the weekend I would walk to the office to check it had worked... and it hadn't. It was so frustrating. I like equipment to work - or at very least have a reliable fault you can fix. This was just plain flaky.
I had made the DVD masters and I was trying to make the Video CD masters. Every time it would stop or freeze at a different place. I would try this and that and the other to try and fix it... then leave it for a few hours to while it should work and it would fail again. Its the part of the work I hate.
Eventually I traced it to a faulty RAID card [the RAID card is the thing that turns two normal hard disks into one very big, very fast hard disk for video editing]. It's another casualty of the upgrade. One of the new 'caddys' that enable us to swap hard disks around was faulty and totally wrote off a new RAID card and one of our original RAID cards, and it appears that it damaged this one. The problem is that you cannot buy the RAID cards we need in Cyprus. So we are dead in the water so to speak...
Anyway, at least its finished now, so I can send off copies to the UK head office, and I actually completed 2/3 of what I intended this week.
Tomorrow is a new week!
I had made the DVD masters and I was trying to make the Video CD masters. Every time it would stop or freeze at a different place. I would try this and that and the other to try and fix it... then leave it for a few hours to while it should work and it would fail again. Its the part of the work I hate.
Eventually I traced it to a faulty RAID card [the RAID card is the thing that turns two normal hard disks into one very big, very fast hard disk for video editing]. It's another casualty of the upgrade. One of the new 'caddys' that enable us to swap hard disks around was faulty and totally wrote off a new RAID card and one of our original RAID cards, and it appears that it damaged this one. The problem is that you cannot buy the RAID cards we need in Cyprus. So we are dead in the water so to speak...
Anyway, at least its finished now, so I can send off copies to the UK head office, and I actually completed 2/3 of what I intended this week.
Tomorrow is a new week!
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Editing completed
When you make DVDs or VideoCDs there are four parts to the process [excluding the filming] which are:
When the editing is completed the files have to be converted to the correct format for DVD or VCD. This is called 'rendering' and take 2-6 times the duration of the programme. So for this which is a 60 minute programme in 2 parts it will take about 10 hours to render both the DVD and VCD files. It's not something you have to sit and watch [which would be very tedious] but with the problems with the video editing machine the programmes that do the conversion seem to be having problems... I have done the conversion twice on one part and have left it trying again overnight.
When the files are converted I can start the 'authoring' process, which is adding the menus and titles that you see at the beginning of DVDs and make the master DVDs from which copies can be made.
- Video editing
- Sound editing and mixing
- Convert files to DVD/VCD format
- DVD/VCD authoring
When the editing is completed the files have to be converted to the correct format for DVD or VCD. This is called 'rendering' and take 2-6 times the duration of the programme. So for this which is a 60 minute programme in 2 parts it will take about 10 hours to render both the DVD and VCD files. It's not something you have to sit and watch [which would be very tedious] but with the problems with the video editing machine the programmes that do the conversion seem to be having problems... I have done the conversion twice on one part and have left it trying again overnight.
When the files are converted I can start the 'authoring' process, which is adding the menus and titles that you see at the beginning of DVDs and make the master DVDs from which copies can be made.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Video editing
Today I spent the whole day woking on video editing one of the seminars I recorded the week before last. The content of it is timely so we need to get an edited DVD and VCD [Video CD] out as soon as possible.
The project involved adding in the Powerpoint graphics that the speaker used at the presentation. Many of you will know what Powerpoint is already, but for those who don't it's a Microsoft program to create graphic presentations on a video projector that can be seen behind the speaker as s/he speaks.
Sounds simple enough... export the graphics from Powerpoint and import into our video editing program [we use Adobe Premiere]. However... there is a small amount of information lost around the edge of a normal TV screen which is not lost when a presentation is projected onto a screen. This means that speakers often use the entire screen for text, some of which will be lost on the TV screen. So many of the graphics have to be re-worked for the video edit.
Alongside that problem there is also the problem of animations. We can export each graphic, but we cannot export the animations, so all the animations have to be re-created by hand in the video editing system. This often means that a single graphic will have to be exported a number of times with different stages of the animation and then put together as an animation afterwards.
The audio was recorded separately on the new Edirol R4 system, which worked exceedingly well, and part of the reason for using it was that we needed to record the audience reaction as well as the speaker. That means that we then have to mix the audio to go with the video. For those interested we use ProTools for that. ProTools is a pretty high end tool for mixing audio and it was a joy to do the audio for the seminar on it. Using tools that make the task easier also make it more enjoyable. We have so many struggles with equipment, having something that works easily is a real joy!
Now I've probably painted the picture that shows recording and editing a simple seminar is not as simple as it might sound at first. What made it more of a struggle is the problems we are having with the video editing system decribed in earlier blog entries. Still, it's progressing on slowly, despite having problems with the video editing system. Tomorrow I continue... hmmm... no I won't, my son arrives back from two months away and we will collect him from the airport in the morning.
The project involved adding in the Powerpoint graphics that the speaker used at the presentation. Many of you will know what Powerpoint is already, but for those who don't it's a Microsoft program to create graphic presentations on a video projector that can be seen behind the speaker as s/he speaks.
Sounds simple enough... export the graphics from Powerpoint and import into our video editing program [we use Adobe Premiere]. However... there is a small amount of information lost around the edge of a normal TV screen which is not lost when a presentation is projected onto a screen. This means that speakers often use the entire screen for text, some of which will be lost on the TV screen. So many of the graphics have to be re-worked for the video edit.
Alongside that problem there is also the problem of animations. We can export each graphic, but we cannot export the animations, so all the animations have to be re-created by hand in the video editing system. This often means that a single graphic will have to be exported a number of times with different stages of the animation and then put together as an animation afterwards.
The audio was recorded separately on the new Edirol R4 system, which worked exceedingly well, and part of the reason for using it was that we needed to record the audience reaction as well as the speaker. That means that we then have to mix the audio to go with the video. For those interested we use ProTools for that. ProTools is a pretty high end tool for mixing audio and it was a joy to do the audio for the seminar on it. Using tools that make the task easier also make it more enjoyable. We have so many struggles with equipment, having something that works easily is a real joy!
Now I've probably painted the picture that shows recording and editing a simple seminar is not as simple as it might sound at first. What made it more of a struggle is the problems we are having with the video editing system decribed in earlier blog entries. Still, it's progressing on slowly, despite having problems with the video editing system. Tomorrow I continue... hmmm... no I won't, my son arrives back from two months away and we will collect him from the airport in the morning.
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