One that got away: I didn’t get a picture of it, but a few months ago, coming into Milan’s Central Station, I saw a train engine on which someone had scrawled: “Sex is boring” (in English). Poor dear. Must be doing something wrong.
Some months ago I was invited to try Muvee AutoProducer software (and become an affiliate marketer – if you click on the banner at the bottom of this page and buy the software, I get a cut).
I didn’t have a lot of time to play with it then, and my first reaction was that this software, while cute, would be of limited interest to hard-core videobloggers – it just doesn’t give you enough control. Then, at CES, Jack Olmsted raved about it to me, and said it was far more flexible than I had realized. More recently, it came to mind when someone asked in the videoblogging group:
“I’ve got a large number of hour-long digital video tapes of my family sitting on the shelf.  I’d like to share key clips of these with my family and friends, but am turned off by the hassle of culling through each tape manually to find the most interesting clips (it seems that 80% of the time, the camera is just rolling and my kids aren’t doing anything too interesting to anyone else but me and my wife).  Is there an easy way to solve this online…?”
Online, I don’t think there is, but it occurred to me that Muvee might be a fun solution for him. So I decided to try it out again, and the Muvee lady graciously sent me a product key so I could try it at no charge.
The process (as explained in Muvee’s helpful startup window), is simple: select the video clips and/or photos and music you want to use, select an “editing style,” then select Make Muvee.
The first time around, this can be slow (especially with large videos) as Muvee analyzes all the material you’re using. But this analysis is only performed once, so you can make changes to your project and test it again very quickly.
Muvee is essentially designed to make music videos using your own video and/or photos; it assumes that you are going to add an audio soundtrack, probably a song. The two samples shown here illustrate this:
Test One – Our Smiling Cat
This Muvee includes about 10 clips from Ross’ digital still camera, plus a bit of video shot with my Canon digital video camera.
This one uses only still photos, with Muvee’s “personal” style.
The effects on still photos (zooming in or out, panning across) can be done automatically by Muvee. I didn’t like what it was doing by default, so I used Muvee’s magicSpot settings on most of the photos to control “camera movement”.
Muvee produces video in MPEG1, MPEG2, WMV, AVI, DivX, and MOV (Qucktime) formats. I used my usual Sorenson Squeeze software to compress it into FLV (Flash) format for viewing on this page, so don’t judge the quality of Muvee’s video output by what you see here.
My conclusion is still that Muvee won’t be appealing to videobloggers like myself who need a lot of editing control. But it’s a lot of fun for the casual user who wants to create personal videos to share with friends and family, quickly and easily.
I’ll be playing with it some more as I have time and will post the results here.
We hopped back on the tourist bus and rode to the other Gaudà house that we hadn’t yet seen, only to find a long line for it. So we rode the other bus line to Parc Guell, the “English-style” park that Gaudi’ had designed for his patrons, the Guells. We walked around there, photographing and filming, until we were hungry, then got back on the bus (rush hour – we had to wait in line and the first two buses were full before we could board, but they were running every 5-10 minutes) to go to another part of town in search of lunch.
We dismounted in Sarria’¡ and walked until we found, on a side street, a small restaurant full of local people – not a tourist in sight, and no one spoke English. But we managed to communicate well enough to obtain appetizers of fried artichokes (greasy, but yummy), followed by a cheeseburger with no bun (for Ross) and a small tuna steak (for me). Total cost: 20 euros.
Travel Tip: For a cheap, decent meal, follow your nose to where the local people are eating.
Back on the bus for a leisurely ride, with explanations of the sights we were seeing, until we got back to the university area and went to meet Enrico. I checked my email on his office computer while he sat outside on a bench helping Ross with her math homework, then we all headed back to Sant Cugat to pick up our luggage, and Enrico drove us to Gerona airport and our Ryanair flight back home. Nothing much to say about that except that, unusually in my experience with Ryanair, the flight was late. I had arranged a ride from my taxi driver friend Antonello since the flight, even when on time, gets in too late to catch the last train from Bergamo to Lecco. We also had to wait a while for the luggage – luggage delivery seems to always be slow in Italian airports, and I distinctly saw a man running along behind the luggage train with my suitcase in hand – I guess it had fallen off on the last curve (no breakables in it, fortunately). With one thing and another, it was 1 am by the time we got home and to bed. Getting up again at 6:45 for school and work was hard…
Unfortunately, the cold I had throughout the trip has developed into bronchitis. I worked the Thursday and Friday after our return, but will probably be home all this week, coughing, feverish, and not able to sleep properly… At least today (April 25th) is a national holiday and Friday I would have been working from home anyway due to a transport strike.
After the disappointment of lunch, for dinner Enrico had armed himself with recommendations from our friends. We had a hard time finding the place – the street number he had was somehow wrong, and after we finally found it we had to kill an hour and a half because they would not actually open for dinner til 9 pm. We went to a nearby wine bar, where we tried three different Spanish wines (by the glass), all of them excellent.
Travel Tip: Ask the locals (anyone NOT connected with the hospitality industry) where to eat.
La Provenza, when we finally got to eat there, turned out to be worth all the trouble. The cuisine was somewhere between Provence and Catalunya, so we had more foie gras in our various starters – mine was a crisp flatbread with grilled vegetables and foie gras. My main course was duck breast with a sweet wine sauce and a fig-stuffed raviolo. I also had dessert, but don’t at present remember what it was, nor what Enrico and Ross ate. We each had a starter and a main course, and shared a bottle of wine, for a total price of 110 euros. I highly recommend La Provenza.
We tottered home to Sant Cugat after midnight, so Ross and I slept in the next morning while Enrico went off to the university. We had coffee and doughnuts (“doh-noots,” as the lady pronounced them) at a coffee shop near the train station, then ran into trouble trying to buy train tickets. For cash, the ticket machine would only take coins, of which I didn’t have any. It “couldn’t connect to network” for my US bank card, rejected my Italian bank card as “unauthorized for this transaction” (I’d seen that the day before at several attempts to withdraw cash at ATMs as well), and for my Visa cards wanted a PIN code which I don’t have. We had to ask for change at a nearby bar before we could finally get tickets and board a train.
Travel Tip: Carry coins to use in the ticket machines of the Barcelona train/metro system.
Enrico left us to go back to the university for a meeting, and Ross and I struck out on foot for the Barri Gotico, seeing many beautiful buildings along the “Modernist Route”, including what is probably the world’s most beautiful Starbucks. We wandered for a while, eventually ending up back at another Bus Turistica stop. So we rode the bus to Casa Batlló, one of GaudÃ’s wonderful creations. The full collection of Ross’ photos is here.
music from Magnatune.com
We had agreed to meet Enrico in the evening at Sagrada Familia, the cathedral designed by Gaudà and still under construction – they expect to finish in another 25-30 years. Judging from the drawings in the museum underneath the church, I will actually like it less when it’s finished – a fat central spire towering over the others, topped by a clunky five-pointed cross, may finally push the design over the top. Still, what’s there now is wonderful, and I need to go back and look more closely at the myriad exterior details. The forest-like interior reminded me of some of the design in “The Lord of the Rings;” I wonder if some of the film designers’ inspiration came from Sagrada Familia.
