MEMORY. (15/11/14)

We are just in from a walk along the Tweed. It wasn’t foggy enough to be interesting but too foggy to be pleasant. I even breathed on the lens to try and enhance the fog but over did it; more a pant than a gentle breath. On the way back I got a paper but haven’t opened it yet as it usually sets me into ranting mode. The front page was enough. Did you know that our leaders have paid to have colourful autumn leaves hand picked from the trees around Westminster Palace? Is it the start of April? No I suspect they have nothing better to do. I wonder who the tree surgeons are employed by? I can invent daft things but it takes a responsible government to dream up surreal scenarios that aren’t even entertaining. I know I’m verging on the ridiculous. I wonder what their excuse is? Lots of questions but no answers.

After the newsagents, I called in the greengrocers and then the butchers. I have lambs kidneys for today and a venison haggis with redcurrants for tomorrow. I’ll try anything once. I came out of Miller the butcher and noticed a bit of light in the antique shop next door.

    The window dresser didn’t look from the outside but at least there was light.

We set off back to the van the dogs had a wonderful time as the children were football training on Gibson Park. Chaos. I was in a bit of a dream or would have got them on the lead before they joined in. It is a couple of years since Molly interrupted a rugby match in Durham. Fortunately today, as then, folk thought it amusing. Moll is very good at running fast with a football. Alf just wants to talk to children. I eventually got them tethered and on we went.

I mentioned FUSION the other day and I recognise that few if any of my readers will be interested. I bet a pound to a shilling that if you click the link then the young people there will not disappoint. There is some gorgeous totty. For the ladies there are young men. MiddleSex folk will be ecstatic, gender benders take your pick. The editing suite they are in is to die for and is of course a composite. Compositing is hard as it tries to please all of the people all of the time and can end up surreal. Much like Dithery and his leaf picking , badger shooting, hoodie hugging. Silly man.

I spent six hours playing yesterday and today will construct something simple in Blender 3D and import it into Fusion. Fusion is a compositor and can draw 3D as Blender can, I draw faster in Blender both have Node editors, Fusion only has Nodes which I am just getting to grips with. Nodes are an alien concept but ten years ago so where layers. The beauty of node editing is that you can just click on them and they tell you what you have done. No more naming stuff. The problem is that you run out of screen space. Same with multiple layers on video. I’ll persevere. I’ll keep scrolling about and when I get fed up I’ll render and start on the next bit.

Most digital photo editors can composite but Fusion was at least the same price as Adobe AfterEffects. It’s now free since BlackMagic purchased Eyeon.

Like all this software one has to learn it. Some programmes are better at some bits and others quicker at different tasks. All require vast amounts of memory, my brain lacks memory even for quick renders or recalls.

For those that don’t know, when working in 3D you pick your camera view and can pan, rotate and zoom, when you settle on what you want you render to get a 2D view. That is all render means.

If you want to incorporate a still image you are compositing but to do it with a normal snap you have to UV Map. This just takes a picture and renders it backwards as you are working on XYZ axes then they call X - U and Y – V it pretty much ignores Z but calls it W. Buggers are programme developers. The algorithm will keep Z or W if you use a displacement map as a mask to give humps and bumps. It is brilliant but can give 50% grey bits. Bump is different as is jitter. It is harder than trying to score is working it out.

Fusion seems to work better in real time but it is still slow. I’ll ask PcSpecialists for a quote for a better graphics card and see if they can drop a bit more RAM into my laptop. I’m on 16GB of RAM and a 2GB graphics card but it only writes at 660MB. I thought this sort of thing would see me out.

I have an acquaintance who uses 4K video cameras, given another 1K then large stills printed would be as good as the Canon 5D II. Individual file sizes run into TBs. It’s great for flexibility in editing. One has to have the hardware to to deal with all the information.

I can upgrade my computer but I think it may be my memory that also needs a boost. I’ll ask the NHS. See if they do brain upgrades. If they are thinking of it then they can practise on those daft buggers in Westminster who think it is sensible to handpick dead leaves.

Have fun.