Now that we're finally back in the slightly more technologically-advanced world of the Development Zone (aka home), I was finally able to upload my movie-producing debut to YouTube. I think the results are okay, considering that it’s a first-time effort.

Video processing is clearly SLOW work! My Mac is only a couple of years old, and it still took the greater part of an hour to convert the iMovie file to mp4 format, and then a whopping 8 hours to upload to YouTube! Granted, our internet speed isn't that great, but wow! Editing the movie, by contrast, was lickety-split! Even though this was literally the first movie I’ve ever edited together, the whole editing process took maybe four or five hours. Now that I’ve got some experience, I could probably knock it off in half that. In other words, it took considerably less time to create the video, than it did to upload it to YouTube. So much for the computer being faster than the human brain!

This is pretty obviously my first-ever video, or at least my first since high school. You can see some pretty awful camera work, especially in the early part of the fireworks display. Still, it's pretty amazing what you can do with an iPhone and a Mac these days. The last time I edited video, it meant endless winding and rewinding of VHS tapes, and the timing was always just a little off. I think to make a video about this long in high school, my buddy Rob Tracinski and I spent two or three entire DAYS editing, from dawn till dusk. Granted, that was with 1985 technology.

I noticed after uploading to YouTube that I'd left off the first musical credit. It was a song called Stars, from George Winston's Autumn album. (Also of mid-80s vintage, coincidentally.)

Anyway, this should give you some idea of what Chinese New Year is like in a farm village in Northeastern China.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eK4gE5Xin4