Cleaning Video Noise From Home Video
We recently celebrated my dad’s 65th birthday with a nice dinner party. I had brought my camcorder with me for the purpose of shooting some video that I would download to my computer, burn to DVD and distribute to family. When I downloaded the video from the camcorder I was less than enthusiastic about the picture quality. There was a whole lot of noise in the picture and it was very hard to watch on a TV (after I put it on a DVD).
With the help of a friend I found a great filter called NeatVideo. NeatVideo is a plugin that filters out video noise. There are versions for Adobe Premiere, Adobe AfterAffects, Sony Vegas and
VirtualDub. The fact that it worked with VirtualDub is what got me to use it. I’m doing this with no budget and want to spend as little money as possible on it. Spending $50 on NeatVideo is barely acceptable but the price tag on video editing software is definitely not. Since VirtualDub is free (and I’ve used it many time before) it made spending the $50 on Neat Video a lot easier.
The results of NeatVideo were outstanding. If you want to see something similar to what I was dealing with check out the second sample on their examples page.
Comments to this post
Illegal Immigration Is Called Illegal For A Reason
Illegal immigrants nationwide protested yesterday that they should be granted citizenship. I feel bad for those who have come here to better their lives and give their families a better life. But what they are saying is “I know we broke your laws to get into the country but we demand you change your laws to let us stay”. I’m sorry but there is a process to these things. I agree there there should be a path to gain your citizenship (even for illegals) but don’t expect anything to be handed to you on a silver platter. You came here illegally so now you have to pay the consequences.
Comments to this post
Should Imus Be Fired?
A lot has been made about Don Imus’s insensitive comments about the Rutgers womens basketball team. On his morning radio show last week Imus referred to the players as “Nappy headed hoes”. Over the last couple of days Imus has lost many sponsors and his television simulcast deal with MSNBC. Many groups are calling for him to lose his job over the comments.
While I don’t support the comments that Imus made I have to question how firing him would make things any better. If his comments were racist then what message are we actually sending to our children about making racist comments in public? We’re teaching them that making such comments publicly can cost them their livelihood. Fair enough but is that going to help us stem racism? I don’t think so. In fact it could make racism even more of a problem.
Here’s an example from my own life experience. Several years ago I was working a job when a new employee was hired. I am Jewish. The new employee was black. The new employee was unfamiliar with the neighborhood our office was in and was in need of a bank. He asked the person in the cube next to mine where he could find a bank in the area. The reply was ‘I don’t know but ask the guy in the next cube’. The new employee responded ‘I should have known to ask the Jew where the bank was’. When he asked me where he could find a bank I told him that I had overheard his comment and asked him what he meant by it. We talked about it for a few minutes before I helped him get the information he needed. I considered the issue dead and went about my business. The next day my manager told me that he heard what happened, fired the new employee and apologized to me on behalf of the company. I told the manager that termination wasn’t necessary as a pattern of racist behavior had not been established but was flattered nonetheless that the company sought to protect an employee from such insensitive behavior.
I always wondered what damage that firing may have done to this person’s state of mind and racial ideas. Did he realize that he had said something insensitive? Did he learn that his way of thinking was wrong? Did the experience reinforce the racial stereotypes he may have had in his mind already? Did it motivate any racism he may have had? (Please note that I have never accused this person of being racist and am not doing so now.) Was he thinking ‘I hate that damn Jew that got me fired’? I don’t know how he took it and what he did with it but the possibility that this may have made a non-racist into a racist remains.
I’m not saying that firing Imus would make him feel worse toward black people than he may already feel. (Note that I’m not accusing him of being a racist nor am I saying he is not a racist.) Nor am I saying that his firing would push others to become racist. But it certainly won’t teach our children that racism is wrong. That is something that a child learns from those who are around them and not from talk show hosts or those who protest against them.
Comments to this post
RIP Larry “Bud” Melman
I was saddened to read in this morning’s New York Post that Calvert DeForest has died. DeForest played cranky but lovable old man Larry “Bud” Melman in sketches on Late Night with David Letterman on NBC and moved with Letterman to CBS’s Late Show. He was 85 years old. Funny but I thought he was 85 back in 1982.
Comments to this post
onAirNow Widget Now Available
I’ve written before about a plugin called onAirNow. It’s a WordPress plugin that displays information about the song you are currently listening to on your computer into you blog.
In my time using onAirNow I’ve had an opportunity to communicate with it’s writer and develop some of my own functionality to add to the plugin. The writer has integrated many of my suggestions in previous releases of the plugin. But one that has not yet been released is widget functionality.
In the comments of the post I linked to above I mentioned that I developed widget functionality for onAirNow and have since had several requests to release my widget. I kept waiting on it in case a new version of onAirNow would be released with the functionality built in but that version has not been released yet so I figured I’d share the widget with anyone who wants it. For more information and to download the widget click here.
Comments to this post