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aksjdhfaksldf Project Four-Panel UpdateI am officially severely dissatisfied with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.It all started back when I got the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection and decided to try out Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 for my video editing. I had used Camtasia Studio 6 previously, and I felt as if it didn’t provide me with enough control over my projects.Ever since I started using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, I have been getting poor quality video results. I fiddled around with the rendering controls for hours on end and looked up many rendering guides online, but nothing seemed to work. Even when it rendered poor quality video, the file sizes were still much larger than the medium-quality videos rendered by Camtasia Studio 6.Yesterday, I took an hour-long video clip of myself working on developing new content for my website. I threw the raw file into Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and sped it up to over 2500% its regular speed, shrinking it down to two minutes. After rendering it, I noticed that the video was extremely poor quality and saw that it was still over 170 MB in size, even though it was only two minutes long and was 640 by 360 pixels in dimension.Ignoring the fact that the final product I just produced was complete garbage, I still went ahead and uploaded it to YouTube. The uploading process itself took over an hour because the file was so large (I have a basic 3.0 Mbps DSL connection), and after it finished uploading, it gave me an audio processing error: “We did not recognize the audio codec format for this file, but we will go ahead and try processing it anyway.” I recalled that the audio setting I picked was in MP3 format, but to make the YouTube processor happy, I decided to remove the audio entirely. Rerendering the project took another half an hour.After it was done rendering again, I reuploaded the new video to YouTube, which took another hour or so. Even without audio, I got the same exact error. Even more unexpectedly, the audio error seemed to have also corrupted the video as well, as the first few seconds flickered white and gray before showing the video.I was done with using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.I pondered going back to Camtasia Studio (which I had updated to Version 7 by now), but although Version 7 provided a lot more features, it still wasn’t good for advanced editing. The only thing I ever used Camtasia Studio 7 for was getting screen captures of, compiling clips of, and editing game video footage, which I did rarely anyway. I went hunting for new video editing software.Then I remembered some video editing software called Sony Vegas 7.0 that I used a long time ago. I remembered that I stopped using it because two days before the trial ended, the text insertion tool stopped working. I decided to go back to the Sony website and see if they had updated the software at all, and they did; I downloaded my free trial of Sony Vegas 9.0c.The first thing I tried was text insertion to make sure the same problem as last time didn’t recur, and it seemed to work fine. Then, I dragged some .MOV files from my camera into Sony Vegas 9.0c to play around with the software, and all I got were blank black screens. When I played back the raw .MOV files, I heard the sound but saw none of the video.Maybe video production and Adam Parkzer just weren’t meant to be together.Anyway, I went on Google and did a quick search to find out what was going wrong, and within a few minutes, I found out that the problem was with QuickTime 7.6.6 and the way it displayed .MOV files. I downgraded to QuickTime 7.6.5 and everything started working.Then I decided to try and remake the accelerated recording video that Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 failed to make, and noticed that I had deleted the original raw hour-long video file. The only thing I had was the poorly rendered version Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 had spit out earlier. I dragged the .MP4 file into Sony Vegas 9.0c and started editing, trying to use media effects to make it look clearer and crisper.When I rendered the new final product with Sony Vegas 9.0c, the file size went down to around 72 MB. When I uploaded the new final project, I no longer got the audio processing error, but just to continue to drive me crazy, the video was still corrupted somehow that the beginning of the video faded in from white instead of fading in from black.To put this into perspective, this happened throughout a span of a full day, starting from around midnight when I first started editing the video to around 11:50 PM when I posted this. I decided that I dealt with enough video editing software today to last me the rest of the week, so I kept the Sony Vegas 9.0c version of the accelerated recording on my YouTube account and gave up. Question of the DayToday’s question of the day is, “Are you ever going to update to Adobe Creative Suite 5 (CS5)?” Nobody actually asked me this question, so I asked it to myself because I wanted to elaborate on my rage against Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.When I got the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Master Collection, I intended to try out all the software and use it all to my advantage when doing stuff on my computer. After trying it out for a while, I realized that a lot of the software wasn’t really necessary. The only programs I used moderately frequently were Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Premiere, and sometimes Soundbooth. A clear substitute for Dreamweaver is the free Notepad++. If there are massive advantages to using Dreamweaver to write PHP, HTML, and CSS files, I have yet to find them, as I see Dreamweaver as an ordinary colorful text processor that takes a long time to start up. A clear substitue for Premiere, which I already explained above, is Sony Vegas 9.0c. Premiere tends to not work anyway, according to my experiences, and I already made the switch earlier today. I hardly ever use Soundbooth (although I may be using it a bit more once I get more deeply into Project Four-Panel), but for what I need, I’m sure that audio enhancement can be done with Audacity (which is free), and audio compiling can be done within Sony Vegas 9.0c. If I ever need something more advanced, people have told me about a program that has a name that sounds a lot like Fruity Pebbles, and apparently it’s one of the best audio editing programs available on the market.So as you can see by my desire to avoid using CS4 programs, I’m most likely not going to update my full set to CS5. However, I have always been satisfied with Adobe Photoshop, even though there are a lot of good free photo editing programs available. Something about Photoshop has always made it seem like the right program to use for everything, so I’m going to try out the free trial for Photoshop CS5, and eventually upgrade to the full version. The Daily Shoot Assignment of the DayAds promote removing wrinkles, but they often add character. Make a photo of something wrinkled, crinkled, or folded.
What I’m ReadingA little while ago, I finished reading a book titled Deception Point by Dan Brown.
After finishing four of Dan Brown’s other books, I knew that this book was going to be a good read. Dan Brown has built an excellent reputation in my mind, and Deception Point only solidified his standpoint. Like his other books, Dan Brown wrote Deception Point as a thriller mystery, with multiple different conflicts occurring at the same time. The chapters switch back and forth from different scenes of the plot, putting equal emphasis on the importance of each of these events. This style of writing also helps the reader understand how the events occur chronologically.The main character in this book is Rachel Sexton, the daughter of a senator running to become the next president of the United States. As the novel begins, Sexton finds herself in the Artic Circle observing the extraction of a massive rock, supposedly identified as a meteorite from outer space. As NASA investigates the meteorite, they find that there are fossils embedded in the meteorite, proving that extraterrestrial life exists.Before the world has an opportunity to celebrate, Rachel Sexton and a few other civilian scientists discover some flaws with the meteorite, and begin to question its authenticity. As NASA’s discovery takes a sharp turn in the other direction, Sexton and her friends find their own lives in danger when they find out three mysterious individuals are out hunting for their lives.In addition to being a good read, this book comes with lots of factual information interlaced in a fictional storyline, making it educational as well as entertaining. All of the technologies described in the book are real and could be used today for the same purposes as they are used in the book.Also, this is an excellent book for the readers who don’t like finishing a book because they want the story to continue longer. When it seemed like the story was about to come to a conclusion, I checked how far I had gotten and noticed that I was only about half way through the book. With plenty of unexpected twists and turns creating new problems and magnifying old ones, this is a book that will definitely keep you alert and thinking. Question of the DayToday is a combination of various different questions I’m asked about my choice of drink: “What is your favorite thing to drink?”As a direct answer to the question, I would have to say my favorite thing to drink is either lemonade or Mountain Dew. No, it does not matter if the lemonade is yellow or pink.Some variations of the question are “this or that” questions: Coke or Pepsi? 7-Up or Sprite? Gatorade or Powerade? Honestly, although I will pick one or the other if I’m asked, I don’t really care what my two options are. I am one of those people that are able to taste distinct differences between similar products with different brand names (such as the comparisons mentioned above), but any drink is good, as long as it’s not bitter or alcoholic. Which leads me to the next two questions…… the first one being, “What is your favorite type of coffee?” If you’re expecting a normal Parkzer answer with sugar measured down to the last milligram and cream measured down to the last quarter ounce, you’re wrong. I hate coffee. Unless I’m stranded and dying on a desert with nothing else to drink, I always pass when offered coffee.The second is, “What’s your favorite alcoholic beverage?” First of all, I have to mention that in order to have a favorite of a particular item, one has to try various different types of the item in question and identify which type he or she favors most. Seeing as the legal drinking age in the United States of America is 21, and I have lived in the United States all my life, stating my favorite type of alcohol would essentially be a public announcement that I have broken the law. I have no desire to announce myself as a criminal on my own public blog, so the question remains unanswered.Either way, my theory is that drinking alcohol is the equivalent of committing suicide, just that it’s a lot slower than methods such as shooting yourself in the head or 
This picture will probably be pointlessly boring to everyone except for those little kids that always try to sneak into our office, but there really isn’t anything else for me to blog about. I’ve been the person on duty in our business a lot lately, and this is basically what I’m seeing for a majority of the day. Quote of the Day“I learned today that tennis rackets do not make good fly swatters.”Who would’ve thought. Question of the DayThis question is a recurring question that is generally asked by people that watch my YouTube videos: “Are you ever going to put your song covers back up?”For everyone left in the dark, at one point a long time ago, I used to have guitar covers of popular songs up on my YouTube channel on a separate playlist. (If you look now, you will notice that II have a main playlist named “Uploaded Videos” that displays by default, then have videos of a specific theme only visible in a separate playlist so it doesnât interfere with my main uploads.) The songs I covered were mostly requests and were songs by artists such as Taylor Swift, NeverShoutNever, and Sum 41. Shortly after uploading them, and after I was sure that at least the people that specifically requested the videos saw the videos, I deleted them from my channel entirely. What I did not know was that people were sharing the link to my videos and telling each other to watch them (and probably telling each other to laugh at how bad I was too). When people suddenly started seeing an error message telling them that the videos have been deleted by the uploader, they came to me asking questions.The main reason I deleted the videos was because I thought the videos were poor quality. The microphone on my camera isnât very good, and at the time of uploading, I had not dubbed over sound from a better microphone, let alone record just the audio on a better microphone at the same time as filming myself. In order to save myself from further public humiliation, I decided to remove the videos temporarily until I got enough time and motivation to rerecord them with better technology.So as a direct answer to the question, yes, I am going to put my song covers back up eventually. Depending on circumstances, it could be very soon or it could be months away. So you donât have to keep checking back on my YouTube channel, I suggest you create an account if you donât already have one and subscribe to my channel. 
I found it again earlier today, so I decided to try it.One spray in my mouth and I thought my tongue was going to shrivel up.The liquid candy was so sweet that it tasted bitter.I have no clue why or how this candy is one of our best selling products. 
What I’m Reading
I have to bring the unfortunate news today that for the first time this summer, I gave up on reading a book.Believe it or not, I have never read a single book written by Stephen King before. I heard that Bag of Bones was a book that would leave a lasting impression in my mind, so I thought that it would be a good book to start with. Apparently, that was a mistake.The first thing that made me unhappy with the book was the extremely small text and the extremely large pages (yes, I’m serious). Even at my insanely-fast reading speed, I think it took around three minutes to finish reading a single page.After getting through roughly fifty pages of the book, where the main background of the plot was introduced and a majority of the main characters and their histories were established, I became bored with the storyline.I guess I wasn’t feeling very patient on the day I read this (which was a few days ago), so I put the book down, never got a chance to get back to it, and returned it with the remainder of my books to the library and checked out some other ones.Keep in mind, though, that I have a tendancy to dislike books that a lot of other people thought were incredible. The most recent occurrence of this prior to Bag of Bones was when I read a book about an African boy that went to war and did a project on it for my World Literature class. I emphasized how boring and pointless the book was, but my instructor and other classmates that had read the book all said that it was an excellent book.Don’t let my input discourage you from reading this book, because I’m sure it gets better eventually, or else Stephen King wouldn’t be such a famous author. I’ll end up going back and reading another one of Stephen King’s books in the future, but for now, I still have a lot of other books left to read that were recommended to me by my friends based on my interests and personality. Question of the DayThis question was submitted to me anonymously approximately a month ago on my Formspring account, and I thought it was an interesting question that seems to be a simple Yes or No question, but reveals something about an individual’s personality and their view on social status. I thought it was worthy enough of being featured as the question of the day for today, so here it is: “Would you give a homeless man CPR if they were dying on the side of the road?”If I was asked that question ten to fifteen years ago, I would probably immediately say “of course not.” My childhood was when I struggled for independence, not helping anyone and not accepting help from anyone; this primarily rooted from my mom caring too excessively for me.But as I got older, even though my mom’s care was still excessive and still annoying, I came to a conclusion that for all the positive energy that I expel into the environment, I receive an equal amount of positive energy in return. With that being said, I guess helping a homeless man would be a positive act, so it would be the better thing to do.A lot of people say that if I’m selfish enough to only help someone else because I expect positive things to happen to me in the future, I should take a look at 
Okay, maybe not that type of discussion where one person is yelling at you the whole time. But we all love sharing our opinions.I’m going to integrate the new Question of the Day feature that I introduced yesterday to kick off today’s blog post. Question of the DayThis question is a recurring question that comes from a variety of different people that used to read my original blog, titled Five Minutes in My Head, hosted on Blogger. The question is, “Now that you switched to the second version of Five Minutes in My Head and no longer use Blogger or WordPress, why is it that we can no longer comment on your blog posts?”First of all, my readers were able to comment on my blog posts back when I used 