The Importance of Failure - My Testimony

I have been working on a video for nine hours. I finally got it into a visible form. It is crap. It is better crap than when I started nine hours ago but it is still bad video.

I have joined the video equivalent of the Snafu Video Platoon. You name it, I've done it.


Let me explain. I bought a media player that has a wonky way of accepting videos. I went to look at the web site and there wasn't anything that could help.

There was the user forum but that was a wild west show with burnt out volunteers getting really testy about answering the same questions over and over. I eventually found some of the answers but I needed more.

I went to YouTube where teens had their applied solutions. I gotta tell you, there is a limit to how many "ums" and "whatevers" you can tolerate in a teenager produced tutorial video.

Also, I don't do warez or cracked software. Not healthy for my system or integrity.

So I see a great opportunity to put into practice what I have been studying. I could also make sense of a really bad corporate decision not to support their customers properly. Customers did complain but demonstrating why there is a problem and a solution is a great tool to have.

I knew I could do a better job. I had everything I need. I wrote a script, made screenshots and screen recordings. Followed the plan and ...

I got nothing. My ego is bruised. My rump is soar. Sigh. I don't have that tool yet.

This is what I have learned.

My Blue USB Snowflake Microphone is the bomb, as in I like it. True, it makes me sound like a 16 year old but, like you know, I have vocabulary. No really, I do like it because wearing headset mikes just did not work for me. The plosives were killing videos.

I need to sleep with the Camtasia manual because the Smart Focus feature is focusing on the wrong things. I don't know what I am doing to cause it to focus right when I want to focus left.

Make a decision on the size of the video and conform all media to that size and not try to force squares into rectangles and vice versa.

Software will booby trap you unless you prepare for more than one way to perform a task.

There is no shame is mixing static shots with video for clarity. That only took eight and a half hours to get in my head.

So yeah. I'm bummed. Back to the drawing board.

Failure is important but I don't have to like it.