Putting My Degree To Use

Today, one of the assistant teachers showed me a DVD he had made for the graduated 6th graders. The movie was just a slide show of photos, with music and special effects transitions.

I gave it a glance, said it was nice...and then he said he spent 6 hours on it. (At a Japanese pace, mind you. It would have taken a lesser man 12.)

"You did what?!"

The following is for media nerds only:

He had asked me before what I used for movie editing, and I said Final Cut. Editing video and audio files within Final Cut is cake, but when it comes to adding a picture, you have to stretch out the file to the amount of time you want it to be on the screen, and then add the transition effect and music afterwords by hand.

Yes you can make a slide show with Final Cut, but why would you want to? He did, and it took him 6 hours to add over a hundred photos.

I said, "Yuji, software is suppose to make things easier. If it's taking a long time, you're doing it wrong."

I then showed him how to make the same slide show movie using iPhoto.

Total time, including rendering: 5 minutes.

Poor guy.