Of HUMPING and BJ's

Happy HUMP day everyone….

It’s WEDNESDAY….half way to the weekend…

I myself have been stuck in electronics hell.

See I have a small little problem…I obsess – yes imagine that I obsess

But I don’t obsess over things like a clean house or if my kids’ hair is brushed…Nope

I get a little idea in my head and then I have to obsess over it until it becomes me.

My latest obsession – Camcorders – I shat you not – Camcorders – For some reason it got into my head about how great it would be to film TW and PWG and make DVD’s to send to family and friends. After all I have a brand-new computer that I made sure had two DVD drives, including a DVD burner…(yet somehow I failed to make sure it had a firewire – oh well)

Six years ago we received a very nice camcorder from my parents – me being the obsessed freak I am just naturally assumed it was some piece of outdated junk by now without even looking at it and so the obsession began.

I now know almost EVERYTHING there is to know about Camcorders – MiniDV, MiniDVD, HDD, Hybrid, CCD, DV in, DVD dubbing, Hi8, Sony, Panasonic, JVC, analong, digital, optical zoom, image stabilization, etc.. – you name it I could probably hold a fairly decent conversation with a techie about the pros and cons of various formats and brands of camcorders…

I stumbled across www.camcorderinfo.com – which if you are looking for a camcorder is the place to start – they also have a message board for viewing – I signed up and had to wait a day before I could post my 101 million questions…so while I was waiting to post I figured I better give these techies the full array of what I currently have.

So I dug out my old camcorder and learned I HAVE a MINIDV {smack myself on the head} – all be it an older model without a few bells and whistles…but still it is a MiniDV….so I should be able to make a DVD of it – right???

Ummm yeah – so then my focus switched from camcorders to obsessing how to get the MINIDV tapes to DVD’s….oh great yet another obsession…

I can now hold a decent conversation about DVD burners and converters too…

So after LOTS of researching I decided that maybe the best way to go would be to get a DVD recorder/VCR rather than a stand alone DVD recorder – it would serve a two fold purpose – add yet another piece of electronics to my house and the fact I could burn old VHS tapes to DVD and hook up my camcorder to burn DVD’s…

In talking with my father yesterday and running down everything I have been obsessing over in the past few days – he told me “well wouldn’t you want to edit it so you don’t have the boring parts”….ahhhh that is what FAST FORWARD is for old man…so then I started obsessing about someway to upload my tapes onto my computer – edit them and then burn them to a DVD (and yes I have so much time in my schedule in which to do this – but I digress – that apparently is an offshoot of my obsession problem)

However my current camcorder has a problem – it has three ways in which to output the video – Composite cables, S cable and a DV cable (Basically Firewire) – If I had actually known something about computers when I was busy building my Dell I would have added a firewire slot – but I am an idiot so I have a bajillion USB ports but no firewire/DV ports…Apparently I can ADD a Firewire to my computer??? But that is an obsession left for another day…

On my way home from work yesterday I decided to swing into BJ’s (oh all you smutty-minded people who though the BJ’s in my title referred to something else…I like you :) ) and look over their selection of DVD recorder/VCR combos…

Upon looking at the DVD’s I turn around and run smack into a box…a box called – well I can’t think of what it is called cause it is sitting at home right now and I am not– but in it’s basic sense it is a box that allows you to plug either an S cable or a composite cable in one side and the other side has a USB port for your computer – UREKA….it was $40 so I bought it – I figured if I am out – I am only out $40…grab a pack of DVD-RW and on my way – Upon checkout it spit me out a huge receipt – on which was a rebate form for $20 for the little box thingy…SCORE…now I’ll only be out $20 if the sucker doesn’t work…

So of course I get home and have to rip into it RIGHT NOW (another side effect of Obsession) and try and get everything hooked up and loaded…wellllllll the software SUCKS…simply sucks…I actually got video to my computer….but somehow the Audio has gone poof….using Roxio MyDVD (came with my computer) I was able to upload video (still no audio) and burn it to a DVD-RW and play it back on my computer…

This morning I got on-line to try and figure out about this little contraption I bought and found it has a 1 STAR rating on Amazon.com – the basic gist is that the software sucks and the company sucks…there was a 5 start rating for the device itself from one person – he stated that he used different software and it worked great. I did find out that the company was bought by another company (after most of the reviews were written) that has a fairly decent reputation…and I found their technical support (turns out I am not the only one with Audio problems) – so I go back to the drawing board armed with technical print-outs…if I can get the Audio to work this little contraption might make me very happy….and for $20 a bargain to boot.

I still think for the long run a DVD recorder/VCR is in my future…after all who doesn’t want to see an hour of PWG and TW running aimlessly on a soccer field?