More Ethernet
No pics this time around, but this weekend, I ran 3 more ethernet runs. 2 upstairs (one for the wireless AP, one for the upstairs switch which feeds the other rooms....yes I wanted separate runs for each) and 1 to a downstairs closet where the downstairs AP is as well as a print server (in case I want to print from the couch :)).
I got lucky that my upstairs office is just over my computer rack in the garage. I was able to run the upstairs runs, just along the wall through the floor and conceal the runs underneath the carpet in the office. Just as the others, everything is concealed, so it looks pretty good.
With all the new runs, I also transitioned over to the GigE switch in the garage which means no more ethernet run through the living room or any exposed ethernet anywhere. Just one more step to getting everything in order.
Also as a follow-up to Friday night's post, in case anyone wondered what goes in to making a slideshow, here is the rough timeline:
-3 months to -6 months: Start putting candidate music in a text file (two of the songs from the A&B mix were jotted down back in May or June) for the next slideshow
-2 to -2.5 weeks: Start reviewing pictures (literally one at a time) taken since last slideshow. Mark candidate pictures with a specific tag, will be again triaged later.
-1.5 to -2 weeks: Photoshop, crop, and triage pictures one by one
-1 week: Listen carefully to all candidate songs from music text file, consider additional music (Foo Fighters was a new decision not in the file). While listening to each song denote key times in the song in the text file for help in cropping later. Also determine relative order of music at this time as well. Usually start with low to medium energy, build to high energy, and end on low to medium energy. (of course sometimes the music does not always cooperate....hence two sound tracks this time)
-6 days: determine picture order create Windows Movie Maker file with pictures in order and sound properly mixed and cropped
-5 days: Individually review each file and apply movement effects (ease in, ease out, etc). There are usually between 70 and 120 pictures.
-4 days: work on timing. Each transition (70 to 120) is timed within about .03 seconds to be on beat with the soundtrack (That is the maximum accuracy of movie maker).
-2 days: Render movie in movie maker
-1 day: Re-encode rendered movie into web friendly format using windows media encoder
Note that some of these steps take between 4 and 10 hours each, as such sometimes the timeline takes longer if I am busy doing something else. Additionally, this time took longer since the "-4 days" step had to be repeated for each slideshow. Additionally, the last few slideshows, I have been creating 1080p versions. These take a few hours to render in movie maker, and then 4-5 hours RE-rendering (from 1440x1080 to 1920x1080) since movie maker stores the 1080p video as anamorphic widescreen for some reason, which does not cooperate well in windows. This meant the last 10 hours or so was just spent on rendering the 1080p version (in addition to the several hours already spent rendering the web version). This time around, I actually had 4 machines running media encoder at once though each working on some specific task. But in general, without that, they would have to run in serial.
Anyways, hope you enjoy them, despite all the work, its pretty fun in the end, though I think if anything, they are just so that years later, I have a fun and creative way to look back into the past.
J.P.
