Wednesday, October 20th, 2021
3:25 a.m. Green Guest House
Mae Sot, Thailand
Yesterday was another day devoted largely to technology. I found that I even have trouble thinking back and remembering whether I left this room at all. It took me a while to recall that I did go outside and why. The main reason I left the room was, however, also technology related. I decided to purchase two of the Andoer mini-ball heads I’ve been looking at. I like to mount my cameras on tripod ball heads as much as possible. Yet, the two ball heads I have now are both too large for the Pocket 2. They work well, of course, but they are far larger, heavier, and more robust than necessary. I think even my small Ulanzi ball head weighs more than the entire Pocket 2 camera. That’s kind of silly. And the combination of the GoPro Jaws Flex Clamp plus the necessary adapters plus the Ulanzi ball head becomes too large and heavy to make sense for use with the Pocket 2. The tiny and lightweight Andoer ball head might help mitigate that. They are not expensive either. I could only order them from a company in China, but they’re affordable at around 150 baht each. At that price, I decided to order two of them, and the order came to $9 US total. I thought I could use the extra ball head with a GoPro.
I place all these orders on Lazada, but I need to pay for them in cash at 7-Eleven, which is why I left my room and ventured out into the real world. Without that, I might not have left this room all day again.
One major task I faced was to re-organize my memory cards. I had developed a somewhat organized system back when I was using microSD cards with just the GoPro Hero 7 and Hero 9. I had a dedicated set of cards for each, and I had them labelled with appropriate names and sequential numbers so that I could keep them separate. And I kept them in plastic containers with matching names and numbers. But the addition of the Pocket 2 introduced chaos. I was grabbing whatever microSD card came up next in the rotation from whichever camera and often whichever one had some free space, and then sticking it into the Pocket 2. And I got very mixed up. When it came time to copy the files to my computer or phone or insert a fresh memory card, I got confused. I didn’t know what was going on anymore and which video clips were on which card. Before my trip to Kamphaeng Phet, I wanted to start fresh. I wanted to go through all of my memory cards and delete everything on them, reformat them, re-organize and re-label them, and put them into three sets, not just two: one unique set for each camera.
This took a surprisingly long time to accomplish, since I still had active video projects, and I needed to keep some video files and not others. And I had files from various cameras all mixed up together. And I keep making mistakes because I might overlook one of the GoPro files that gets numbered out of sequence because of the way GoPro numbers their large video files.
I finished the microSD cards, but I’m still not done. Now I have to do the same with my full-sized SD cards. I’m trying to do too many things with my Panasonic G85 and my Panasonic LX10, both of which use SD cards. I have to say that 80% of the problems I’m facing with memory cards stems from my decision to shoot in 4K. The cards I have are fine in the world of small 1080p video files. But in the world of 4K, they are woefully inadequate. I felt like I was living large with my collection of relatively expensive 64-GB Sandisk Extreme Pro memory cards. But they are a joke next to the behemoths that are 4K video files. Even 128-GB and 256-GB cards feel paltry. At a minimum, I should have a set of 512-GB cards for each camera, plus a 1-TB card for my phone and a 2-TB external drive for my laptop. THAT would be a good starting point. But buying all that would cost a small fortune. For now, I have to make do with what I have. And that means staying organized and routinely swapping cards and clearing out cards and deleting files as soon as I’m done with them.
I had plans to dive back into DaVinci Resolve yesterday, but I never got around to that. I spent the entire day working on videos on Kinemaster on my smartphone. Things got a bit crazy there for two reasons:
One, I shot a lot of video on my scooter trip from Tak back to Mae Sot. My day began with a leisurely breakfast, during which I set up a camera and talked about the hill tribe market I hoped to visit. And then I shot video as I rode out of Tak and then as I visited a water reservoir and rode down the small rural road. I babbled about random topics during that time. Then I shot more video as I rode down the main highway to the Doi Muser Market. I shot video at the market and at a nearby scenic lookout point. And I kept shooting video as I rode the rest of the way to Mae Sot.
The result is that if I wanted to use all of this video, I had no choice but to divide the experience in half and make at least two videos. And that was complicated to do since the day’s experiences were linked. But I did it, and I came up with what I thought was a clever solution. The first video contained my breakfast chat about the hill tribe market, a bit of the Relive video of my scooter ride to that market, and then my visit to the market. And I ended the video there, somewhat abruptly, I admit. I skipped right over everything in between and everything that came after. And my second video was going to contain all the other stuff. I’d just carve out and delete the hill tribe market visit from the middle.
I put in a ton of work on the Doi Muser Market video first. And then I decided to refresh my brain by doing a rough cut of the second video. But I discovered that the Rode Wireless Go microphone had disconnected from the GoPro. This happens often, and I generally catch the problem by doing a series of test videos throughout the day. Whenever I change the battery or memory card, I have to do a quick video test each time to make sure the microphone is connected. But I guess I neglected to do that this time, because I had a solid forty minutes of GoPro video with nothing but wind noise. The GoPro was recording audio with its built-in mics, not with the Rode, and when the camera is on a scooter, that doesn’t work. All you get is wind noise.
And that meant that I had far less material for the second video than I thought. So maybe I didn’t have to make two separate videos. And I decided to reverse course and put the whole day into just one video. And that meant redoing all of it from the beginning. When I make these decisions, I always think I can just quickly whip through the task and make the changes. But it always ends up taking far longer than one would expect. Video editing is a giant time-consuming beast. It’s insatiable when it comes to time. It will consume your entire life if you let it.
And then, because I am an insane person, I added another element. This element is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. The thing is that I can’t stop thinking like an English teacher and English editor. And as I edit my own videos, I keep noticing English idioms and useful phrasal verbs that, if I were making an English-teaching video, I’d focus on and teach. And I started to keep a list of random expressions that I heard myself say on the video. I ended up with a list of fourteen of them, and I decided to include them in the video in a limited way. I made a title card right at the beginning of the video, and I inserted a list of these fourteen expressions. And at the top of the card, I wrote a short note simply saying that if you were a student of English watching this video, you might want to pay attention to the video and listen for these expressions. And at the end of the video, I inserted a kind of review card on which I listed the expressions again along with the sentence that I used them in.
This was another idea that was supposed to be just a random thought. It was supposed to be a throwaway task that would require two minutes to implement. But, as with anything to do with video editing, it took up much more time than I expected. And that is where the bulk of my day went – editing just this one video. I’m still far from finished with it. I have to review it today and make sure there aren’t any mistakes and I didn’t leave anything out. And then I have to export it and upload it and do all the rest.
I do like this idea of adding an English-teaching element to my videos. As I said, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. It would be a nice way to add value to my videos, especially since a number of my viewers are from countries where English is a second language. And I do get comments from viewers saying that my videos are useful for them as a tool to practice English. They appreciate my slow and clear manner of speaking. And for non-native speakers of English, I don’t think these simple English-teaching title cards would be annoying. They’re just on the screen for a few seconds and then they’re gone. They can safely ignore them. My idea is that anyone that might want to take a close look at the list of phrases can pause the video or even take a screenshot.
I’ve even had random thoughts of creating a separate English-teaching YouTube channel, even a companion channel to the regular vlog where I teach the English that I use in the vlog videos. The only reason I haven’t done it already is the simple fact that I haven’t had the time. But I was thinking that it’s even possible that an English-teaching channel would suit me better than a typical vlog/travel channel. A person can still be a vagabond while making English-teaching videos. In fact, they would be easier than regular vlog videos.
In this case, I could even make an experimental video in which I discuss these fourteen expressions and put that video on some kind of Planet Doug English-teaching channel. However, I know that such a video could easily spiral out of control and become far too long and complex. I could take just one of those expressions and talk about it for a long time. But perhaps I could keep it tight and more like a simple practice video: just say the expression a few times, give a VERY brief definition, and then read a sample sentence or two. Do that for each expression and that’s it. But I know from my experience with this channel that there is no such thing as a simple video that can be created and posted easily and quickly. EVERY video is a time-devouring demon that wants to eat your soul.
And with that cheery thought, what video shall I be working on today? I have to finish this Tak to Mae Sot scooter trip video. And I definitely want to be on the road on Thursday morning (tomorrow morning). So I want to devote most of today to getting ready and organized. I need to focus on getting ready for this trip and put the video stuff on the backburner. I’m already days and days behind in terms of when I thought I would be leaving for this trip. In fact, this whole trip was revolving around the date that I thought my vaccine certificate would be ready. And that date was originally this Friday. For all I know, it is ready already. Perhaps I should drop by the hospital today and check. For myself, I’d like to do that. I just wouldn’t want to give the impression that I’m being impatient and hassling the poor clerks at the hospital. But if the certificate is ready, it would be nice to have it with me on this trip just in case I need it.