Switch to Shotcut

Over Christmas I bought a laptop. At my day job, it's all Dells, mostly Latitudes, and because I'm so used to them, and they are business grade and thus pretty reliable, I used them at home too. But I don't buy them new, whoa, too expensive! So I buy all the computers in my household through online auctions. I watch and wait for a sublot of ex-company fleet Dell Latitudes, and then I bid on the best one(s). My experience has been that most people feel "safe" to buy one middle of the road but not many aim to bid on the best one. Well I "went crazy" and won the best one in the lot for $AUD508 (2024). It is a 12th gen i7 with 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, 15" touch screen and even has an MX550 graphics card - not that I play games on it...but maybe that will help with encoding video and audio. In comparison, there were quite a few 10th gen 17, 16GB RAM, 512 NVMe, only onboard graphics...and they went for around $400 each. To me the extra $100 is well spent!

I stuck with Windows 10, I'm just not ready for Windows 11 even though there are plenty of computers at my day job with it. Interestingly it was a painful install process, because the computer was too new (only 1.5 years old) and the old installer have any compatible internet connectivity drivers! I had to do some hackery to get it on the network to complete the installation. But now, wow, computer so fast! A Reaper audio render takes less than a third the time!

I'm not one to do an upgrade/sync settings, I am a start from scratch kinda guy every time. It makes the initial install take a bit longer, but you only put back on what you need. After several years with a computer you have quite often filled it with stuff you never use and all the drivers/stuff that came with it, slowing your system down. I will first put on my usual favourite software, but even then, I will look at upgrading or changing at the same time.

When it came to my usual video editing software, Power Director, I was still on version 16 which is from a long time ago. I looked up the latest version and I could get a perpetual license for around $AUD180 (2024) which I found a little steep. If they could have kept it under $100 I would have jumped in without thinking. Instead I looked around - one of the guys at work mentioned a video editor "Shotcut" which is an open source and free so I looked it up.

Now one of the issues I have with video editing software is that waaay back in the 90's I learnt "Ulead Studio" and understood its workflow quite well. When I later looked at Adobe and the other big players, the workflow was different and I never really got it. Power Director was the closest in operation to Ulead Studio, hence I went with that.

Shotcut seemed to be similarly built, the only thing the internet reviewers seemed to be saying about it was "steep learning curve". I decided to see how I would go on my latest video for YouTube.

Straight out the gate it had a very familiar style of operation. Because my videos are pretty straight forward, just text, fades, crop and resize, audio substitution, it should be easy. And it was! Armed with a chatbot to talk me through operation, I finished the video and maybe only spent an hour getting used to the different process and workflow. Some of it, particularly "Filters", is better than Power Director - it feels conceptually more like Reaper which I'm quite used to now. I really appreciated that.

As for steep learning curve, well, no. I found it easy to learn and navigate, only a few foreign concepts. I took notes while learning, so next video should be just as fast as if I was using my trusty old software.

I was slightly disappointed it was unable to use my fancy Nvidia graphics card, it was doing most things on the main CPU, but it was using a lot of cores so that's better than only using one. And with the new laptop it was fast enough, around 5-6 mins to render a 3 minute video. I can live with that. Especially at the price.

Thanks Shotcut devs, keep up the good work!

What's happening Jan 2025

I managed to record only one song over the Christmas break, but I made two versions, one with a drum track https://youtu.be/2NHKErdw0HQ, the other without https://youtu.be/QpbUkUUNzBE. I was reasonably happy with my play through - 3 takes, using the last take with a few fixes from the first take. When I listen to it I can hear where I'd gone off beat and then re-tracked back on, but it isn't too bad - practice with metronomes and drum tracks does actually work!

I wondered what the internet would think - I posted the drum track first and then without second, thinking that without is my normal syle and that would be my most recent video. The Algorithm however picked up the drum track version and boosted it and it got a lot more views. I noticed that the feedback from viewers seems to be "yeah, nah" (translation: I understand what you did there, I appreciate it, but, I prefer the other one.) Since I had made 5 drum tracks over Christmas, when I got back to work I played them for some people and it further reinforced it - nobody preferred the drum track. My drummer mate said "drums were okay" but "drum tracks are cheesy", another said "if you are going to play acoustic, leave the drum track behind.

So, slightly peturbed, I am still playing along with them to improve my tempo, but not as enthusiastic as I was.

In other news, all the parts for the bass guitar build came in, and construction began! It is currently at a stage where it is assembled, unpainted, with strings at tension, but no pickup. I'm a bit perplexed, the shape of the neck seems slightly wrong. right at the end of the fretboard it seems to slightly pop out, meaning I need to set the action higher than I want to prevent buzzing. I've done quite a few adjustments, I'm letting it settle, I definitely need to file down the nut, but I still can't quite work out what is going on with the end of the fretboard. The manufacturers did a great job on the last neck I had made, so I can't see them as having got it wrong?

We will see! I will finish it, I've put too much time and money into it to not to, but I will be disappointed if I can't get it how I want it!

Meanwhile, I put some new strings on the Esteve. They we very mellow and dull sounding on my last recording...

I will keep practising, next song to record in a couple of weeks is "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" and after that "Fly Like an Eagle".  I'm really looking forward to the latter, I'm very happy with my arrangement of that.

JAW