I videoed the orchestra concert the other night and will be editing that down to DVD for Mr. McDonald and anyone who wants one, and editing another version (HS only) to send to Disney. Foolishly I didn’t record the brass ensemble because I was unprepared and being the first time I’ve used this new camcorder I didn’t know what kind of battery life I would have. Now I know better and being Christmas and all, now I have a spare battery. Depending on how long it takes me to edit everything down and get stuff uploaded, I might throw the video online for a bit as well.

The sooner I get all this wrapped up, the sooner I can spend time doing some Microsoft studying and Photoshop studying. As soon as I get everything together, I’ll have some announcements and bribes on or shortly after Jan 1.

While you’re pondering what to do this week, come support Mr. McDonald for the first concert of his ST career. The high school and middle school orchestras will perform at 7:30pm Wednesday night at the high school.

** Edit ** Video has been posted (5:20pm Monday). DivX and Windows Media were tested and are functional, ACCs “all years” function for Windows Media will include 2006 as well.

I’m still working on the other videos for the band site. Apparenty DivX doesn’t like how I dubbed things on my home DVD recorder and didn’t properly distinguish all the different titles on the disc. I’ve been able to recover all the individual pieces except for the Red Land show. Some things got split in weird places so it will still take me a few more days at least to edit everything and convert it all into the right formats and get them posted on the site. I’m not sure if I’ll have this done before the concert.

I’ve got some other options and I am working on separating all the individual bits of the videos so that I can edit everything properly and get it posted. This is going to take at least a few more days and it really depends on how much time I get in the evenings. I don’t have to go through quite as much trouble with the regular show DVDs so if that happens to come at some point I can have that posted within 24 hours without any problems.

As always, if you have anything you would like to submit for the sites, send it my way and I will return it promptly, just know that it takes me a while to edit everything once I duplicate

I don’t have anything from BVP yet, and I don’t know the band concert date, but in the past few years I haven’t had the DVD by that time (or I haven’t gotten it more than a few days in advance). As always, thanks for being patient and checking out the site. Hopefully I’ll have some updates soon, and I will announce my “bribery for content” deal later this week as well.

Best wishes to all with the upcoming musical tryouts, rehearsals and concerts!!! I’ll at least try to be there for the concert dates since I dunno what’s up with musical stuff. Musical updates in detail will probably start in late December once the full stage crew schedule is out. Oh, and thanks to black friday, I have video equipment now.

Photo work is in progress, I’m up to the show photos from ACCs and they are half done right now. I got a late start tonight due to an unexpected 12 hour day. I’m uploading what’s finished so I can add stuff to the site tomorrow. If things cooperate tomorrow I will be able to finish the show photos and get them uploaded and possibly posted.

I’m working with three different sources to get some additional photos and videos, and I will edit and post them as I get them. I should be ordering the ACCs DVDs this week, it usually takes a few weeks for me to get them, so be patient. I don’t order the instant ones at the show because I’ve had several come back with poor audio or video quality and I would rather have awards on there. That reminds me, I need to see about official videos from Ephrata and Chapters.

Finally, I saw many individuals and parents with cameras and camcorders at the shows and in the stands at the football games throughout the season. However, I haven’t had anyone want to give me anything to post on the site. The same goes for the musical, it’s pretty obvious when I am standing in the back of the house or the top of the stands. I encourage everyone to hunt through their collections and get in contact with me. If that doesn’t work, I might be nice enough to resort to bribery for a few months. One possibility is send me some photos, get entered into a drawing for one of a couple Best Buy gift cards, Visa/MC/Amex gift cards, ITunes gift cards, something like that. That’s money I really need to spend on getting bills paid and improving the sites, sponsoring other ST stuff, but we’ll see how good I’m feeling in a few weeks.