Rick Reifenstein

About a week ago I was asked by another department who was putting together an annual report if I could create a 1 to 2 minute video about my work with Microsoft Surface here at the University of Virginia. So I wrote up a script recorded a voice over and even included some of my own music. I shot the video myself on an inexpensive digital camera and included some still I shot. Since the subject was going to be a Microsoft product; I thought I would put the whole thing together using Microsoft Movie Maker versus iMovie (I hate the new one anyway). Movie Maker was decent enough to work in. It had all the editing and special FX tools you would expect. When I was done I exported it as a High Definition WMV. Here’s the kicker. The department putting the online annual report together asked for the file to be in H.264. Movie Maker only does WMV’s and Flash for YouTube. So I put the movie together in iMovie and saved it as an H.264. The iMove file was pixelated and the audio was full of spots

This week as been mostly dominated by computerizing in one form or another. My current projects are surrounding phase II of application development for the Microsoft Surface unit in the “Declaring Independence” exhibit at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collection Library at the University of Virginia. I've been writing code all week. I am also writing and producing a small video about the use of Surface at the University Library. I will also be providing the music. Speaking of music; music production has come to a halt since the studio computer has decided that it didn’t like one of its hard drives. This is at a time when I was all set to finish the latest compilation of music to send to Jingle Punks as well as start to assemble CD for release online through iTunes and other online distribution. That’s the way it goes sometimes. So this weekend will be a continuation of computerizing by reformatting hard drives and reloading software, as well as possible resurrection of my wi