I thought I would be posting a video today, a video of the photo sequence of the heron flight photos that I’ve been posting over the past week.
That’s not going to happen.
In fact, I may not post any more videos, certainly none that require VoiceOvers. Medication’s that I take have the side effect of giving me dry mouth. Lozenges and mouthwash can help alleviate the problem. But they cannot eliminate the mouth clicks that show up in the audio of a VoiceOver recording.
In the first couple of videos I did, I did not notice the mouth clicks very much. But as I tried to do a VoiceOver for the heron flight video, mouth clicks became very audible. And now that I’ve heard them, I can’t unhear them.
A lot of folks have that issue. I’ve got it really bad. There are techniques to alleviate the problem and techniques to remove the clicks from the audio. I’ve tried to alleviate the problem with no luck. Removing the clicks from the audio would require several additional steps and very expensive software. It’s possible to remove clicks one at a time with some free software, but that would be an excruciating, time-consuming process.
I’m almost embarrassed to say how much time I have spent over the pass weeks and months trying to wrap my mind around the complexities of doing a professional-sounding and looking video. And I am thoroughly frustrated with my lack of progress. Although I knew it would be difficult, I had no idea how many hurdles I would have to overcome to make a good video.
And through it all, I just tried to ignore the fact that even listening to my own recorded voice over and over is tough on my sensitive ears, making my tinnitus worse. And every moment listening to a music track for a video is unpleasant, causing my ears to ache and to ring for hours afterward. Editing a video can require hours of listening to sounds that bother my ears.
This is more than I can handle.
Just to give you an idea of what I’ve been through, I spent almost a full day trying to figure out what the clicking sounds actually were. I have never experienced that, or I have just forgotten because it was so many years ago. I thought the problem had to do with the equipment or the software or the set up.
I tested different cabling, different microphones, different ways to connect my audio devices to my computer. Any of those things could be causing audio problems. It wasn’t until late Friday night that it dawned on me what the real problem was.
I figured it out by just recording the ambient sound in my room, with no voice sounds. Under those circumstances, no clicking sounds were present. I also made humming sounds without moving my mouth; no clicks. But as soon as I started speaking, the clicks began to appear in the audio.
After spending most of a day, I learned what any seasoned video producer or audio producer would have known immediately.
And that extraordinary, amateur effort represents my total learning path for video creation. That sort of frustrating effort has happened over and over again as I tried to understand different issues I was facing.
Although I have spent hour upon hour trying to learn this stuff, I also spent day upon day doing nothing, my psyche rebelling against the hellish effort I was putting myself through to learn how to do something that I might never fully grasp. When my brain becomes overloaded, it shuts down, leaving me with barely enough energy to watch television.
It ain’t worth it.
I have to admit that the young, bright brain I once had is no longer available to me. There was a time when I could learn how to do almost anything; at least I thought I could. I was filled with confidence. I tackled a lot of tough issues, mostly at work, and was always successful.
It hurts me to know I can’t do this. That potential failure has been gnawing at me for a while now. It has completely distracted me from working on my writing projects. It has caused me some anxiety.
And, it is causing me this embarrassment.
The reality is that I should’ve never attempted this. My tinnitus alone should’ve warned me off. It’s possible, even likely, that my dependence upon fanciful thoughts for personal entertainment and to alleviate worrying about the sorry state of my life overcame my judgment for this real world challenge.
I suppose it’s possible that I might still do some very short and simple videos. I’ll have to think about that. But my original video plans were far more complex.
I had envisioned lots of wildlife videos, similar to what I have already posted. And I also planned to create some talking-head political videos. But, I guess my most fanciful plans were to eventually do live streaming.
All of that from a person who does not like how he looks or how he sounds on video. It’s a crying shame that my current clearer thinking makes me look back and think I must’ve been an idiot to even consider making videos.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to give up on something. It’s accurate to say that I don’t remember having to give up on something … oh hell … I guess I do remember: in my 30s I gave up on marriage; in my 50s I gave up my career. There were good reasons for both failures, but neither of those failures reflected on my shrinking intellectual abilities, or my advancing age. In one instance, I was in a bad relationship; in the other, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from my time in Vietnam finally took its toll.
Given how those two failures affected me, I guess giving up on learning to do videos is not that big a deal. Hopefully, I can get my whining over with in this article and move on, and move back to the things I can actually do, like hiking and photography and writing.
Some good things did come from all this. Thinking that I was going to want to use Apple software for my videos, I bought an M2 MacBook Air laptop. That has proven to be a good decision. My old PC was slow and loud. The laptop is many times faster and perfectly silent. And it’s a laptop, something I have wanted for years, but could never justify the expense.
I learned that I don’t have to buy the fastest computer available when I upgrade. I tend to keep computers a long time, then upgrade to something really fast and powerful so that it will last me “a long time.” That practice has proven to be expensive upfront, though more easily justifiable over its useful life span.
The laptop was significantly less expensive than the Mac Studio I considered initially. And as it turns out, the Mac Studio would have been overkill, very expensive overkill, especially if video creation isn’t going to happen.
I will let this decision sink in for a while. It is possible that I might reconsider video creation in the future. But I don’t think so. Even if I were an expert, based on discussions from video creators online, the process, no matter how good you are at it, is incredibly time-consuming. I already knew that, but chose to ignore it because of what I thought it would give me, in the way of notoriety, and online interactions.
One thing I did learn about video creation is that it isn’t that much fun. When I am out there hiking, doing photography, or back at home writing … I am enjoying myself. Every part of those processes is enjoyable. Even writing this collection of whiny complaints has been enjoyable, especially as I reach these closing words.
So, if you thought you were going to see videos from me, that ain’t gonna happen. And I’m sure you understand.