"I don't think you should ever go to nowhere."

That's one of the pearls generated during this, today's session of "Remapping DVD Button Navigation 101, 13BIT Style."

Meredith and I are wonking away on the incredibly strange interface for Encore. After I had burned a bunch of test DVDs, we discovered that there was a too-healthy dose of randomness when our buttons were activated from a remote control.

We have plowed into the program and are doing what we have to do. I kind of like the idiotic little GUI interface, but Meredith is grumbling. She's a command-based woman, after all, and I prefer idiotic little GUI's, which is what makes us a good team. See "Why it Takes 13BITs" for more on that subject.

"There are a lot of ways to fuck this up," she is saying, as we use the little pick-whip widget to remap the buttons. Does anybody out there in blogland appreciate the gravity of this? Only those other few, poor pathetic souls who have found themselves in the sorry position of having to author their own DVDs. *THEY* will appreciate our pain.

Actually, for all my kvetching, we really like to make DVDs.

Our new top-secret project has the code name of HH. NOT for Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, I might add.

"Better Than Criterion"

The original title for this post was to have been "What Is A Plot?", which is what Meredith was musing on as she read a quote from Socrates in our preparation for the next project, our equivalent of a trek up Mount Everest. As we gird for that monumental expedition, we are wrapping up the loose ends of our lives here on the planet of documentaries, meaning we are still finishing "Lumia" and getting ready to get it out to festivals.

Though we are still possibly going to make some changes, we are working on a DVD. In fact, that's been the last few days. We were really high on Adobe Encore, but after today's many crashes and general pixel-mapping wonkiness and kludgy interace issues, we may be ready to return to our first love - DVD Studio Pro. Only the future will tell the end of this tale. Meredith is now muttering "Oh man, this is ridiculous" as we endure another restart.

Anway, she was just testing a menu page and saying "This is better than Criterion" when I decided it was time for another progress report. I think it will soon be time for the Little Pie Company or Miracle Grill. Then I must pray for the Yankees.

Onward

FinalCutLumia8Sound

Tonight we are outputting a rough version of Lumia for authoring. Next step is to build the DVD. We are veryexcited.com
Tomorrow we will beginning spreading the seed or in layman's terms submitting to film festivals As I write this we are compressing frame 2816. By the time I am done writing this post we will be on frame 8000. Frames are fleeting.