As you might have been aware, if you have been following my tedious posts on the the unbelievably frustrating experiences I have been having with technology. Little short of demonic possession or gremlins can explain the string of technical problems that have beset me in getting both my camera and edit PC working properly. The good news is that I think I am finally out of the woods so the video and photo updates will be coming thick and fast over from now on.
It appears I killed my Canon kit zoom by forgetting to disengage AF before using the big follow-focus wheel on my rig. As a reult, I had a 3-figure bill for servicing the AF side on the body. As the lens was beyond economical repair, I bought a Sigma 17-70mm to give me better focal length and low light performance. It turned out that also had an AF issue as it was hunting and mis-focusing in low light. Fortunately, it is under warranty and it is now in for repair. Meanwhile, I can get by quite nicely using my prime lenses and, as it works fine in manual focus, the old kit lens.
The footage from Tuesday’s live SHIBARI.TV session by Nina and Maya, which I shot using an old Vivitar 28mm 2.8, will be up later today. Whilst it required more agility than using a zoom, the results are very nice. I think the only real mistake we made was mixed colour temperatures in the lighting which caused a much warmer tinge when the coolest light was obstructed by walking in front of it. Hopefully, only the nerds will notice and the rest of you will be far too distracted by the action. The vibrator scene is a classic! I won’t spoil it but it did crack me up.
If I had had any idea of how much hassle the problems with my edit machine would become, I would have bought a new machine back in June. Unfortunately, rather like renovating old houses, one job only uncovered another. The first indication was the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) when exporting video. It was at this stage I called upon the assistance of a very techie friend who even does stuff to PCs and big amps with soldering irons. It was he who diagnosed this issue together with various other problems, over the course of a week or two, like the sound of a dying drive, barely adequate PSU and cooling. So, an upgraded processor, motherboard, a new drive, extra fan and better PSU were ordered as the news came in. Once assembled, we were unable to get both screens up with full resolution.After trying many cards, I called Asus who advised me to RMA the board. My supplier had no more in stock so gave a refund. Sod’s Law determined that the only replacements available anywhere were 50% dearer than I paid, so I bit the bullet and forked out for the next version up.
Due to the unavailability of my techie, due to, amongst other things, serious back problems, I then had the daunting task of fitting it. This was what I had paid him to avoid in the first place as I am aware of the level of my own technical imcompetence. That said, the poor guy has probably earned less per hour than an third world child labourer, given the running around the incessant problems have caused him. Charitably, he puts it down to “a learning experience”. Meanwhile, we discovered that my old card, which tested perfectly on another system, would be a bottleneck in an otherwise very quick system. Yep, you guessed it, I came to the conclusion that a new graphics card would be needed. Thus, a Nvidia GTX 760 became an inevitability. Of course, now PS2 outputs are obsolete and my video outputs are DVI, I needed a new keyboard/monitor switch as well.
Eventually, I finally managed to get it running but absolutley nothing seemed to go as smoothly as it should. After more more reinstallations of massive graphics drivers and software than I care to mention, I was still not getting full res on both screens. In total frustration, I did a clean Windows install to no avail. Many hours of Googling revealed that this problem could be down to a monitor forgetting what its capabilities are and Windows just gives it a generic ID which is not up to its full spec. In the course of this, I have acquired arcane knowledge on the inner workings of monitors that I didn’t even know that I didn’t want to know about. The resolution of this saga is that a new monitor, which arrived yesterday, proved that this was indeed what had happened. In spite of having the legendary patience of Job, I can’t express how many hours of seething, near homicidal rage this simple problem has caused.
The end result is all that’s left of the old system is a rack of drives, the case, keyboad and mouse! At present, I retain one of the old monitors as well and await repair of the other which just scraped in on warranty. Guess what? The existing screen looks dull and in no way matches the new one. So, now what? Replace the other monitor? It is easy to be wise in hindsight but, had I anticipated a fraction of this hassle or length of time to resolve, I would have bought a complete system outright. Good lord, it even drove me to browse Apple Macs online! If it had not been for the massive amount of legacy material and the time I have invested in getting to grips with PC based editing, I might have cracked. It was touch and go whether the whole lot ended up on eBay 🙂
I won’t be so naive as to imagine it will all be plain sailing from here but we are back in production and the end is in sight.