I took the GoPro out last weekend. As with every motorcycle video I’ve taped, the audio is overwhelmed with wind and road noise. I can add music during editing, but it has to compete with the background noise that’s already there.
I had a Eureka moment when I discovered the audio level setting on the GoPro camera menu, but it turns out it’s just for the loudness of the beeps it makes to let you know which buttons you’re pushing when you’re doing it by feel.
Next I looked for ways to edit noise on videos once they’re taped, but the application and software links that come up on Google are vague about audio functions, which tells me they don’t have what I’m looking for. The GoPro program that came with the camera can’t do it. Neither can Quicktime, which came with my iMac. iMovie, which I just found on the iMac, might have such a function, but so far I haven’t been able to figure it out. For now, what you see above is what I get after editing my videos: wind and road noise mixed with music.
So if any of my excellent readers know of video editing software that’ll do what I’m looking for, please let me know in the comments.
Donna opened the front door an hour ago and Mister B bolted. After a frantic search I found him in the shiggy between our house and the neighbor’s to the north, a corridor through which coyotes, bobcats, and javelina traverse the neighborhood. It was clear he went there on purpose, probably in response to something he smelled. Note to self: be super careful about opening that front door when Mister B’s around.
While I was out chasing our runaway dog, I noticed a couple of things and went out later to take photos.
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I want to hold the first photo up in front of Mister B’s face and say “See?” I posted it on Facebook with the caption “Gee, someone’s doggie must have gotten loose,” and I’m just waiting for someone to tell me those are coyote tracks, because I have some very literal-minded friends who never understand when I’m joking, and of course I know those are coyote tracks because that’s why I took the photo, innit?
The second photo shows the shiggy where I found Mister B, the wildlife corridor between our house and the neighbor’s. If you look behind my left shoulder you’ll see a tall saguaro cactus hiding in the branches of a mesquite tree. When we moved into this house 21 years ago it came up to my chest. I’m standing five or six feet in front of it in the photo, so with foreshortening it may not be obvious to you that it’s almost 20 feet high now. There are three more saguaros on our property, though none as tall as this one. Even though ours aren’t visible from the road, we’re content with the secret knowledge that we have saguaro parity with our neighbors.
I watched part of the opening episode of The Orville on Hulu last night. The first thing I noticed was the poor fit of the actors’ clothing. The second thing was the blue makeup spread over the sheets when the main character found his wife in bed with an alien lover. And then, of course, the crew of the captain’s new command contained a host of aliens, all humanoid but with cheesy Spock-like facial prosthetics. The cheesiness has to be intentional, right?
I suspect the show’s creators were taking a tongue-in-cheek poke at Star Trek. Sort of like Galaxy Quest, but nowhere near as well-done. Maybe low production values are meant to be part of its charm, but I was put off and gave up after a few minutes. Excellent television science fiction like The Man in the High Castle and The Expanse have spoiled me.
This Epstein business is going to be interesting, and probably adds a new layer to the meaning behind Trump’s rage-tweets against New York’s attorney general earlier last week. Epstein was arrested yesterday evening and reaction instantly broke down along partisan lines, as reflected in this tweet, posted earlier today:
If Bill Clinton, when he was palling around with Jeffrey Epstein, did any of the things Trump’s said to have done when he was palling around with Epstein, of course he needs to go down. I have no problem with that. But I know the right, and if it turns out Trump really did rape a 13-year-old girl after a party at Epstein’s penthouse, they’re going to have to find, to paraphrase the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, a superior moral justification for boning children. It’ll be especially interesting to observe the mental gymnastics of the QAnon crowd, whose entire raison d’etre up to now has been the mass arrest and punishment of pedophiles.
Tell you what, give me GoPro audio problems any day. At least I’m not sweating whether or not a billionaire child sex trafficker is going to spill his guts and take me down with him!