macdavid pro

Thought-provoking.

We wonder as the sum of all our knowledge and memories is uploaded, converted into bits, tagged and indexed, are we sacrificing what makes us human, or evolving what it means to be human? All we know is that we are here now. And though it was us who made it, it is the internet that is remaking us.

Credits:
Jordan Clarke: Vancouver based designer specializing in motion design and video production.
Jorge Feres: Motion design and animator.
Adam Saint

Art, Cool Videos, Design, Geek, Video Editing Adam Saint, after effects, info-graphic, internet, Jordan Clarke, Jorge Feres, Lin Ling Xu, vfs, vimeo

Here is an awesome short film called Semblance. It was filmed by Mathieu Poget, who also did the sound design and color. And I gotta say that I really like the color grading.

Cool Videos, Film, Video Editing mathieu poget, reza productions

I know this video isn’t all that happy and what not, but I was true to my feelings on the day I recorded this video. It was the day after Christmas and I felt like being at the beach to just think. While I was there I figured I’d capture some stuff and say hi.

So…Hi!

Music by Kaer Trouz

Video Editing 2009, beach, belated, christmas, florida, happy, macdavidpro, Viddytweet

The video card in my MacBook Pro died, and I mean dead! But it wasn’t due to anything out of the ordinary on my behalf. Although, I have been doing a great deal of video editing.

On Tuesday at 3:36am, after spending the whole night editing a lot of video footage and doing a little graphic animation, I finally resigned to take myself to bed. I shut down my laptop as usual and placed it in its carrying case. Later that same morning at about 7:40am I arrived to work and set my computer out and turned it on (black screen). My adrenaline kicks in and my heart literally goes from 0 to 60 in all of a few seconds, so to speak. All I could think was, “Work goshdarnit, work!!” as if shouting, “Don’t you die on me!” Anyway, I put my ear to the machine and could hear it functioning and booting as usual.

In a panic I rushed to a co-worker’s classroom to borrow a dongle to see if maybe my laptop got confused and didn’t come out of the secondary display mode or something–it didn’t work. Neither my laptop screen nor the secondary display showed an image or any sign of illumination. I flew, or so it seemed, to see an on-site technician and he concluded that my video card may have gone kaput. “Kaput” echoed in my mind and I imagined an Apple Genius saying…

Back in my classroom, I plug an ethernet cable into my MacBook and my MacBook Pro and opened Screen Sharing to see if the rest of the computer is, in fact, okay, and it was.

Fast-forward to that evening and I’m on the internet feverishly typing all kinds of combinations of search terms: Black screen, gpu, macbook pro, external display, snow leopard, firmware, you name it. When I was about to quit my searching and give up on finding any other possible fix that didn’t bring me to believe my video card died, I came across this in my final search:

MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues
Last Modified: May 29, 2009
Article: TS2377

In July 2008, NVIDIA publicly acknowledged a higher than normal failure rate for some of their graphics processors due to a packaging defect. At that same time, NVIDIA assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected. However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within three years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty.

What to look for:

• Distorted or scrambled video on the computer screen
• No video on the computer screen (or external display) even though the computer is on

Specific products affected:

• MacBook Pro 15-inch and 17-inch models with NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processors
• MacBook Pro (17-Inch, 2.4GHz)
• MacBook Pro (15-Inch, 2.4/2.2GHz)
• MacBook Pro (Early 2008)

These computers were manufactured between approximately May 2007 and September 2008

One can only imagine that I literally leapt for joy after reading through this article, especially since I have no Apple Protection Plan and my laptop is well beyond it’s 1-year warranty.

I called Apple support, in spite of not having complimentary phone support, and confirmed the authority of the article. Yes, it is an official apple.com article, but I had to be sure. I spoke with two people, the second of which patiently and kindly asked very pertinent questions about my computer’s technical symptoms and agreed that it meets the criteria of the article. A box is being mailed to me and if all my detective work is confirmed, it will be fixed, FREE-OF-CHARGE!

But even after all this I wasn’t absolutely sure that my MacBook Pro is suffering from the symptoms outlined in the article above. So I made sure to look up my computer’s specific make and generation to see if it does have the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M graphics processor. It in fact falls into the category of MacBook Pros that were shipped with the faulty NVIDIA graphics processor. But more importantly, I went back into the Screen Sharing application through my MacBook to try to launch Final Cut, and a window immediately popped up saying to some effect–I can’t remember–that I need to have a video card or processor of some sort to run Final Cut.

For now I am calm and somewhat relieved, but still anxious.

So stay tuned and I’ll keep you updated on what is up with this whole repair and it’s process. *crossing fingers*

Stay synced!

Apple, Tech, Video Editing Apple, faulty, geforce 8600m, genius, macbook pro, NVIDIA, snow leopard, ts2377, warranty

Today I get my braces off! Yaaaaaay *Kermit the Frog style*

But in other news…

I bought a copy of Green Day’s new album. I haven’t listened to it all the way through yet, but what I’ve heard so far is nice and reminiscent of their previous “rock opera,” American Idiot. There are, of course, political overtones that seems to permeate the album. I guess that’s ok. But like I said, I haven’t listened to it all the way through and will probably change my current remarks afterward.

Yesterday evening, I took a nice trip to two different BestBuy stores to get a new hard drive. The drive that I use to store and edit video is filled and so I desperately needed a new one. I also have to use my current one as a scratch disk because my MacBook Pro doesn’t have enough room to handle being a scratch disk.

So I started out with this SimpleTech “prodrive” and it didn’t work–at least that’s what I thought at first. It was later (next paragraph) that I learned that in order to format it to work on a Mac, I would have to sort of reset the partition to Mac OS X Journaled (GAIN). It took me an hour to get it right and was like “Duuuuuh! David, you’ve done this before. Why didn’t I remember this before?”

Anyway, I took the hard drive back telling the customer service folks at the second BestBuy that it doesn’t work. It was with the second hard drive, a terabyte sized Western Digital, that I learned how to get it all right. The good part is that I saved $5.30 because the Western Digital hard drive costs less than the prodrive. Soooo, happy ending. And scene!

Music, Tech, Video Editing 21st century breakdown, braces, green day, MeToday, orthodontist, simpletech, teeth, western digital

Here are two short films that were directed by the awesomely talented and inspiring Ted Chung.

Check out one more of his videos after you view the ones below titled, “On Time.”

A Thousand Words

Mike’s

Cool Videos, Film, Video Editing a thousand words, chanda dancy, Film, independent, mike's, on time, ted chung, ucla, video, vimeo