Video « The Tech Nut

Yup…after more than 2 weeks of toil and getting shouted at by Ankur, the video of Code Wars 2007 was showcased at the end of the 2 day event. Now…don’t expect me to write too much about my own club’s event. Let others do that. First off I suggest that you let my video load up, while you read the rest of my post.

I put my entire heart and soul into this video, spending lots of time learning 3D effects in Adobe AfterEffects, trying to better last year’s video. So I decided to go in for 3D. We kept a template ready, so that I’d just have to reshape and resize stuff to make the video ready.

But, as the popular saying goes…thing’s are not always what they seem to be.

On the first day of CW, I sent off Rachit and Waris (my teammates) to get footage. Thing was that we could not get the Handycam on the second day, coz’ the guy who had got it on the first day had a minor altercation with him Mom about it. Then, we had a MAJOR SCREWUP on day one. Thing is that, getting videos from a DVD handycamis not exactly a very zippy affair. Thing is that, the handycam will record the videos in no particular format, so, things will be just spread all around the disc, and accessing is a big pain in the stepper motor.

We did NOT manage to get all the videos off the handycam in time. So, we had it arranged that Amritanshu would give the videos to Ankur, who lived near his house, on a pendrive. Also, there was another twist in the story. Bani ma’am our computer HOD, forced Karthick and I to participate in the Quiz and Crossword, and threatened us with dire consequences if we didn’t win. And guess what…we qualified for both.

This meant that on the second day, not only did I have to finish the video but also go for the Quiz and Crossword Finals. Too much stress for me to handle. But hey, I pulled it off. Here’s what happened:

Reached at 7:30 and set up the PC.
Ankur gave me the footage at around 8.
Started putting in the footage, all the video done by 9:30.
I went for the Crossword Finals. And came first. Although we weren’t actually competing, and the first prize went to the next best team. I SWEAR there were no leaks to us.
Came back to find that my team was busy working on another video which we didn’t even include in the final video. Had to put in all the remaining pics. Did that. It also started rendering the final video.
I went for the quiz and came second there
Came back to find that the render had failed due to lack of available disk space. Had to start all over again. Yeesh, my legs went shaky. I though that it wouldn’t render in time.
It rendered once. I found some mistakes which I had to correct. Corrected those, and rendered again. There was some problem with MP4 – MP4 conversion, and it started flickering every now and then. Had to render again in MP2 format, and all was well. Phew. The period from 1-2:30 was really stressful for me.

But I’m happy I pulled it off. Arjun didn’t mind the ending at all, as I had hoped. The teachers (read only HOD) got a bit angry about the non-inclusion of footage of teachers, but other than that, no probs at all.

Other than that, I can’t tell you much about CW, coz’ I was too busy. Hehe.
PS – I finished uploading the video at 7:42 PM.