Last October when Craig bought the MacBook Pro laptop for me he also bought a one year subscription for the Apple One to One program at the Apple store. I've been using Macs for years and at the time I did little with the computer other than using search engines, email, and Blogging. I knew how to use my image capture to get the pictures out of my point and shoot Canon, and could do basic Photoshop manipulation.
I used the One to One membership to go to a couple of basic introductory workshops, but never did anything beyond that.
But when we bought the Alfa, Craig also went out and bought a pretty nice camcorder. We used it to record several hours of our walk thru. Craig downloaded the video onto the laptop using iMovie. But it really needed to be edited, organized, and put onto a DVD for future reference.
Guess who got to do that! I bumbled my way thru some of the editing and then came to the decision that since I still had a few weeks left on my One to One membership I would go in and get some help.
I really like the Apple Store. There is so much energy and if you have an appointment or a product question there is a smart young person ready and willing to help you. They even speak English as their first language!
At my first session, a personal projects table, (That’s where for two hours, up to six people work on their own and an Apple person circulates to answers individual questions.)
The Apple guy helped me start the editing process and set up the iDVD file. But when I took it home, I made a real mess of it!
So I went back for the second personal projects session, and it was decided that the best thing to do was to trash the whole thing, go back to the raw video, and start over.
Again I took it home, and everything seemed to go much smoother. Until it came time to burn the DVD. I got a warning message that all was not right, so I booked and individual session. Just me and an Apple guy.
It turned out the warning was not a problem. I had chosen not to include some clips on the menu pages. I was working on the KISS principle. (Keep It Simple Stupid) Functional, not fancy.
For the rest of my hour he showed me a number of things I could do with the iMovie program. How to navigate and use shortcuts.
I did not really want a video camcorder. We have some really bad, boring home movies from the 70's.
But now that I have been introduced to iMovie, I think it might be a lot of fun to work with. The movies may still be boring, but I might have fun making them.
I have about three weeks left on my One to One membership. I can use it anywhere there is an Apple Store. I think I will renew it. I know I could muddle thru learning how to use iMovie, but I also know that if I made the effort to take advantage of the One on One training I will make much better videos. It could be a fun hobby and doesn’t take up any room!
Do you click on and watch videos in blogs?
