DVD Studio Pro Scripts

Hal

I have been authoring DVDs using DVD Studio Pro for quite a while now, and despite many other systems being available, I really find ‘DVDSP’ a joy to use. It is especially easy to use, and if you combine it with the power of a tool like DVD After Edit then you really can do just about all you need to do.

Of course, if gets a bit geeky… but hey! I like that!

So over the years I have been helping and advising others on how to use DVDSP, and I have collected together quite a range of scripts, tutorials and tips to help create DVDs. I have purchased ‘dvdstudiopro.co.uk‘ as a domain name and am currently working on making this a decent place to go and get help, download sample projects and tutorial files and also request specific scripts.

Writing scripts is becoming an increasingly important aspect of setting up DVD navigation. Yes… you *can* get by for years without touching the script editing, but you are missing a trick if you overlook this tool. I have written scripts for others on a commercial basis more times than I care to remember, and am always happy to undertake a project for a fee. Let me know if you’d like some help!

As soon as dvdstudiopro.co.uk is up and running, I’ll be back to let you know. Watch this space!

PHP import or export to CSV

Hal

This post seems to have been lost in the move from Drupal to WordPress, so here it is again:

A while ago now I was working on the designmyschool.net website and one of the functions we had to build was the ability for a user to upload accounts in bulk – typically the data would come form a school management system, which meant it would be best to use CSV file formats.

At the time I researched into what tools were available to help with this task, and found only one suitable for a novice PHP coder such as myself – Interakt’s ‘CSV Import/Export extension for Dreamweaver.

The trouble was that I didn’t fully understand it all back then and in truth probably still don’t. However, I have now had a chance to use the other Interakt extensions and really like the way they make complex tasks much, much easier.
Just my luck then… the CSV extension has been pulled! Adobe’s acquisition of Interakt bodes well in so many ways, but sadly it means I couldn’t purchase the extension to test it out. Instead of the wide range of extensions, Interakt are now bundling just one set into a single product – MXKollection. The other extensions may well appear in a future version of Dreamweaver, but there are no guarantees.
So I happened upon an Italian website called Felixone. A quick read through and a short email later I had requested a new extension gets built!
And here it is:
http://www.felixone.it/extensions/prod/mxiecsven.asp

I don’t yet know how this works, but it looks very, very good to me. For €28 it has to be worth a chance! I think I can now confidently complete that part of the admin tools for designmyschool… we do have the csv uploading working well, but we could use a csv download of the results. Sigh… it never ends…

Trophy Husbands

Hal

Well, it has been about ten years since I last did anything like this, but on Saturday 28th October I played in a band again!

Neil Herd (who was the tour manager for the BBC Blast tour) invited me to play drums with the Trophy Husbands at a wedding event near Northampton. I had the songs to learn about two weeks beforehand and loaded them on to my iPod, listening to them whenever I drove anywhere. We had one rehearsal in London (at The Premises in Hackney) on the Friday night and then it was all systems go for the gig.

The music was distinctly country and western, which is something I have never played before, but essentially it is pretty similar to 12 bar (in places). If not, it’s definitely a shuffle of some kind!

The biggest problem (apart from driving to Northampton) was the volume – everything seemed a lot quieter than I remember it when I was playing 10 years ago. It called for the use of Multi-rods instead of the usual 5B sticks, but what the hey… it felt good to be back behind my old drum kit once more!

The kit is an old Pearl Export series from about 1988 which has served me well for all this time. I bought a new stand from Allegro Music in Chelmsford (lovely people in there these days) and used this to hang a drum from instead of using the old Gibraltar rack system.

The kit layout was:

22″ Bass Drum, 12″ and 14″ toms (one high, one in the classic floor tom position), 14″ Brass piccolo snare, 20″ Paiste 2002 power ride, 17″ Paiste Crash, 10″ Zildjian splash, 14″ Paiste sound edge hi-hats. Small, but perfectly formed and eminently suitable for the music and the gig.

Would I do it again? Yes, certainly! I don’t think a regular spot in a band would go down too well with the family these days, but the occasional gig here and there, why the heck not?

Moving from Drupal to WordPress

Hal

After struggling for quite a while to get Drupal upgraded to a later version I simply gave up. Sad really, as I quite liked using Drupal.

However, with some help from Alex Blanc who found the necessary scripts, I migrated from Drupal to WordPress. It wasn’t pain free, but it was straightforward enough, thank goodness.

Now, as soon as I can get all of the user details into the WordPress database then all of you who had signed up to my Drupal site should also find yourselves signed up here. What I now need to do is move the files over that I was referencing, build a couple of pages to allow them to be downloaded and finally bring in the missing images…

Hopefully it will be done before Christmas 06!

BBC Blast in Birmingham

Hal

What an event! This was the last of the tour for this year, and it was a big one!

We were located in the middle of Birmingham, in Victoria Square. Since it was so ‘public’ there was a huge number of people visiting each day. As it happens, schools were reluctant to send children, but other institutions were more than willing!

We had a great time – best workshop for me was the stage make up one, where we had ten or so ‘tough’ cases who really didn’t want to learn about make up. Once we got to creating the blood and gore bullet wounds and knife injuries, we had them hooked! Fair play – most were very capable of applying the wax and some were very good… it was a real eye opener for me, and I hope for them as well.

Other workshops were all as good, really, with music, song development, dance, Flash animation and of course me running clay animation, short movies and photography sessions.

I worked out that over the course of the summer we have produced somewhere around 90 unique DVDs this summer, and duplicated seven times that! Phew!

So that is it for this year, BBC Blast on tour has gone back to Acton to be re-fitted, and we have to go over the events one by one to understand what went well, and what needs more thought for next time.

One thing is for sure – if I am fortunate enough to get asked, the answer is YES!! I WILL DO IT AGAIN!!