Two screens on my wagon

At last I have two monitors again. Hurray. However... it seems that I have to plug the second one into the PC once I've launched Vegas, the editing software, or it won't open. I suspect that I need to adjust something somewhere.

From left to right the equipment you can see is:2 x disk duplicators, 1 disk printer with ordinary desktop printer on top, Left hand audio monitor, 2 x video monitors, Right hand audio monitor with small audio mixer in front of it and with 3 x 1TB hard drives and network hub and card reader on top, PC in white case with lit up ventilation fans. Out of shot there is the power amplifier for the audio monitors. Also on the desk are the camera battery charger and the camera power supply which I use when I am downloading video from the camera.

The PC is basically a high end gaming machine because it needs to have plenty of memory and high speed graphics cards, of which it has 2. This allows me to see the video playing back at full quality and without being jerky as it was on the old machine. Between the internal and external drives I have 6TB of memory (and a further 3TB as a back up). The 3TB of external drives are all pretty much full, HD video files are enormous but this should keep me going for a couple of years. The gaming origins of the PC explain the rather over the top appearance of the case and the lit up fans. It looks like Darth Vader's toaster.


 

Red engines mostly

Since my last waffle I've been out with the camera a few times and finally finished the Fred DVD and got it on sale.

Seems to be selling well so I hope that people enjoy it, we've started thinking about shooting dates for part 2 - The deviation years. Anyway a there are a few other things to get finished before then.

The Paddington DVDs finally turned up in time for the last weekend down there but they won't go off and they don't have anything which dates them to this year so I'm sure they will be useful for marketing give-aways for a good long while. I do wish I'd stuck to my guns for the cover picture but there we are, Mr Lewin is the boss.

 

The day after I went out in the snow to get the shots of the WHR that make up the short package in the previous post I went out again and went to some different locations so that the final edit in the year of the life DVD will be quite different and extended. One location I'd never gone to before was the far end of Plas y Nant halt platform that you can see in the picture above. Quite nice.

 

 

In the pictures above, lurking behind Moel-y-Gest is the freshly restored and painted Prince. While I was there they were setting the safety valves which was interesting to see and which will probably end up on the year 2013 disk. sadly the next day was my day off and this was when the 'old gent' had a test run so I didn't get to capture that.

 



The next day I was back at work and so I popped over to Minffordd Yard to see Princess arriving back on FR metals from London and Prince swapping places on the lorry for his trip to Acton this weekend, where he will be chuffing up and down at the London Transport Museum open day. Sadly I can't go down and shoot that, so I've sent the second unit. Chris Parry is going and he has a stills camera which can also take HD video and he promises to bring me back some footage.

The horse in the above picture which also appears in the video below is the equine star of the forthcoming Steam 150 event and is at Minffordd getting used to the clanking, hissing and grunting of the railway and its staff.

This is the video of the swapping of the locos.

My new PC is settling down and works very well, the new version of Vegas (Pro12) has a slight tendency to hang up and fall over rather too often but while it is running is great. I'm still running on one monitor which is a royal pain in the seating area but hopefully that should be solved tomorrow... we'll see.

Rain, snow, sunshine and IT

It may seem as though I've been asleep since I came back from Paddington but I haven't, well not all the time. I have been very busy getting the shops ready for the new season which has now started; among the usual ordering stock and so on we have had another new EPOS system installed (still not working properly) a new company IT server (think it's working) and I have a new super computer for editing and a new version of Sony Vegas (both of which have 'issues').

Any how, I have managed to get out with camera on both the FR and the WHR to capture early spring on the railway. I took a ride on the FR which you can see the fruits of here:

 

Yesterday I chased the WHR trains clocking up nearly sixty road miles. During this journey I videoed in the sunshine and in blizzards. 

 

First shot of the day, cow shit corner

Unfortunately I forgot to take the cameras raincoat with me so I improvised a snow coat with a Tesco bag for life and my Swiss Army Knife.

 

The snow really came down thick and fast while I was waiting at Cae'r Gors but by the time the train came it had nearly stopped and the sun came out.

Last shot of the day, Pant Farm crossing near Hendy

The results of my efforts can be seen here:

 

Travelling in space

Space, that is, if you count getting in a van and driving to London and back and then on a train and going to London and back!

Since my last post I've been to Cardiff to buy new stock for the shop for the forthcoming year and down to London twice to video the unloading and unveiling of Princess at Paddington. All very exciting but it means the paperwork pile was enormous when I finally got back to the office.

The Network Rail people at paddington were very helpful and seemed pleased to have us there even though we caused a bit of a stir dragging the 'old girl' over the concourse with a Landrover winch. The worst thing about the whole expedition was the temperature of the place; it was freezing. My feet still haven't warmed up properly!

 

The first time I went down in the van with Chris Parry and we took loads of goodies with us but the second trip I went by train with the unveiling team. I only stayed for one night the second time and came back by train in the afternoon... which was very slow as some overhead line had come down in the morning so everything was buggered up all day. Chester to bangor was a nightmare, I bet there is more space on Indian Railways trains. I didn't make it into the carriage but was stuck in the vestibule with drunk builders and loud mobile phone users; I really don't know how people put up with it on a daily basis. Urgh.

 



Between the 'get in' and the 'show' on St David's Day I had a couple of days off so I decided to strip out my studio and re arrange it as I haven't been happy with the ergonomics of it. Finally got it all plugged in and working again, now I just need some time to make some muisc.

Anyway back to sunny Londinium I went for the great ceremonial unveiling. Everything went off very well and the main lady of the day looked stunning, her new paintwork shining in the lights on the stand.

 

 

Here is the video of the whole trip. It has been a bit of an epic to get it made because my new computer has arrived and it nearly works... more about that another time once it completely works.

 

Time travelling

I've been working on finishing the 'Fred' DVD but circumstances have conspired for that not to happen just yet. Firstly the PC I use to edit on is rather long in the tooth and I have also run out of storage for new video footage. I'm not an expert on the technicalities of computers but I know that I have three external drives of 1 terra byte each and they are now full tot he brim. All is not lost as the new all singing and dancing mega PC is on order and should be with me in the next week or so. It should allow me to work faster and easier... famous last words.

Secondly, I was supposed to go out and shoot some last shots of things Fred mentions to add into the film but the weather was awful, there was no loco available and my driver went sick... I went home and lit a fire to sulk beside.

Anyhow, that was yesterday. Today I took the camera for a ride on the FR and experimented with the time lapse facility. You can see the results of this here:

It shot half a second every 30 seconds. I'll try another trip on another day with a different rate, it makes for a very quick but slightly odd video.

Fred and the Princess

I've been a busy bunny this week of my time knocking the'Fred' DVD into anearly final shape. I've got all the archive pictures I need as Fred found some slides with a couple of faces which he mentions, Norman Bond scanned them for me at double quick speed and they help tell the story. Also I've been making sure that the audio levels are as even and audible as possible, there are a couple of shots which have quite a bit of wind blasting noise on them which I've flitered out but it also weakens Fred's voice which is quite low, in the end it's a compromise between the distarcting wind noise and not making Fred sound too odd. At half term I'm hoping to get a trip up the line to shoot a few last shots to illustrate what Fred is saying and then it is finished. Hopefully my new whizz bang PC will be here by then so I can actually render the project because at the moment it overwhelms my current machine and crashes it so I haven't seen it on disk yet.

'Evie' Roberts and Will Jones

It's been a week for finishing things off as I've also (hopefully) finished the WHR postcard. I finally stopped fiddling with the music at mix 6, I'm pretty happy with the balance and the sounds. Now I need to get Clare Britton and Paul Lewin to say it's ok to go ahead and get 10,000 of them made... gulp. This is why it has to be right.

This is a screen grab of the menu page

 

Also this week the sun came out! Yes! The sun came out! It came out at just the right moment too as it was the morning we were going to get pictures of the shiny new paintwork which Boston Lodge's answer to Michaelangelo, Glenn, has applied to Princess. The loco looked stunning and you can see her in the video I made.

Princess comes out

 

 

 

I've also been  out and about on The Cob recording the comings and goings out there, yesterday I got some nice shots of the man doing the track welding which was quite spectacular. I'll add this footage to whatever I get in the next couple of weeks to make the next progress report... watch this space.



Points and new toys

I've finally finished making a package on the progress at Harbour Station which you will see below and the new disk printer has arrived.

 

I've had a quick play with it and it seems to be much better quality than the old one but the best thing about it is that I can print 100 disks in one batch without loading each disk individually by hand, as with the old machine. It has a robot arm which picks up a blank disk, puts it in the printer tray and then picks it up and puts it in the output tray, lovely. It wasn't cheap but will earn its keep very quickly once the season gets under way.



It was a bit wet

 

On the day the new points were delivered by road from where they had been in store in Minffordd yard the wind blew, the rain fell and the temperature didn't get above zero. Brrr.

 

 

Anyway, here is the video which starts in early in the year and comes up to date.