"It'll probably turn out to be a very simple thing ..." or, One Man's Ascent into iDVD Hell

In all of written and recorded history, few pieces of music have risen above the commonplace and ascended into the pantheon of cultural favorites -- and of those, even fewer can be identified by only a few notes.

Such is the case with, for example, the introduction to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. At first instantly recognizable and yet still stirringly fresh and new, these four notes have symbolized the power and majesty of music, and even brought succor and comfort to the Allies during World War II, serving as the audible equivalent of "V for Victory."

And yet I'd like to nominate another piece that, though lacking in age and refinement, moves men's hearts, lifting them to sun-dappled autumn afternoons, the sweet smell of fresh-cut grass wafting across pastoral fields of green, as another sort of victory is fervently wished.

I speak, naturally, of "Heavy Action," by the famed British composer Johnny Pearson.

What's that, you say? You're not familiar with the song? Of course you are.

It Seemed Like A Good Idea At the Time
I was lucky enough to watch Super Bowl XLIII at the home of a client of mine. She had many people over, but reserved the big plasma HD room for "the adults." I was among them, biting my nails, cursing at referees until the glorious end ... and once it was over, my first thought: I've got to get that game off my DVR and onto some DVDs.

My second thought: It should be easy!

My third thought: I'll have it done by Tuesday!

And I finally did it. I am the proud owner of a two-disc set with the entire Super Bowl broadcast, sans commercials and the halftime show, with chapter markers and a cool opening menu.

What's that? You want to see the opening menu? You're in luck!

That music makes me cry.

What It Took
I don't want to get in trouble with my cable provider; nor am I looking for them to close this particular loophole. I'll just say this: it's a federal law that DVRs must have a port available for consumers to use to transfer data off the DVR. I think the common one used is FireWire. If you've got a Mac with FireWire 400 ports, you're halfway there. Google around to find the other pieces you'll need -- a FireWire cable and some software that is free, easy and readily available.

So I hooked my laptop to the DVR and pressed "Play" -- and the entire HD broadcast streamed to my laptop. The .m2t file ended up just a hair under 40 GB. I then used MPEG Streamclip to convert the .m2t file to something I could edit -- a 1280x720 QuickTime movie (encoded HDV 720p25, whatever that means) that topped out at 38 GB. From there I put the movie into my favorite near line editor, chopped out the commercials and was ready to go.

Except -- the 3.5 hour broadcast was too long to fit on a single layer DVD. Solution: get a spindle of dual layer DVDs. Which I did -- and my Mac spit out every single one of them. So I had to go back to my editor and make two files -- one for the first half, and one for the second half.

Then I tried to master the DVD using some professional-level software I have lying around. A big mistake, because I really have no clue what I'm doing with professional-level DVD mastering software. So I went to iDVD, which is Apple's gee-ain't-it-cute consumer DVD software. It hasn't been updated in years, because Apple's apparently realized that there are only several million DVD players in the world, and because it doesn't control the market on DVD players, it's only a matter of time before people throw them out the window and go with ... AppleTV boxes, I guess.

iDVD takes its time, and often crapped out five hours into the burn. Yes, I said "five hours into the burn," because each disc took around seven to complete. Each subsequent one took only 20 minutes, but there were crashes aplenty. By the time Sunday rolled around, I'd managed to burn a few copies of the disc.

The Horror ... The Horror
Remember when I said I'd have this done two days after the game? The Sunday mentioned above was two weeks after the game. It took me fourteen days to make about as many DVDs, during which time I had to change strategy a few times, reassess whether it would even work, and ignore that NFL.com is probably selling the damn thing on one disc for a lot less money than I'd have earned if I had a job -- and one that would let me spend two weeks wandering through my own personal "Heart of Darkness" adventure.

I'm not blaming Apple, because they make some pretty good software. iDVD is very slick and easy to use, and the editing and authoring software also comes from Cupertino. I shouldn't be allowed to know how to edit or build a DVD but thanks to Apple, I don't have to know everything. I just need to know enough to be dangerous.

I'm not blaming my cable provider, because they actually did a pretty cool thing -- they made it just hard enough to get shows off my DVR that piracy isn't running rampant, but not hard enough that a little elbow grease and a subscription to the Google can't teach you. It's not big corporations' jobs to make it easy ... it's nice when they make it not so hard, though.

No, I guess I'm forced to blame myself, because I had no earthly idea what I was doing. I distinctly remember thinking "Hey! It's 2009. This sort of thing ought to be possible by now."

Dangerous thoughts, because on projects like this, there are two ways you can go: a victory parade in Point State Park, or muttering "Rosebud" while your snowglobe crashes to the floor.

random thoughts on last night's game

all images courtesy si.com



Did the better team win? Most certainly.

Did they win it the way I would have liked? Maybe, maybe not, depending on your stress tolerance.

But did the right team win? Hell yes.




"Steeler football is 60 minutes. It's never going to be pretty. Throw style points out the window. But these guys will fight to the end." – Mike Tomlin

And fight they did. I was not surprised by the success Arizona had in the second half, though, because it was pretty obvious that the underneath passes were the price the Steelers were willing to pay to stop Fitzgerald and Boldin from torching them. What did surprise me was the shoddy tackling from Polamalu and the rest of the secondary. I counted at least two, maybe three, times when Troy had a receiver lined up and totally whiffed on the tackle.

All week I was telling everyone who'd listen that the Cardinals could easily win the game, because the Steelers had emphasized pressure on the quarterback over insanely tight coverage on receivers. The plan seemed to be "If we knock out the quarterback's teeth, we'll dislocate receivers' jaws instead." That's not a bad strategy -- obviously -- but when you can't get to the QB enough, and you can't tackle the receivers ... well, that's a recipe to allow a team to stay in the game, or even win.




Having said that, I think the gentleman (ahem) whose lungs are collapsed here could have been the MVP had he not sucker-punched a blocker on that last Arizona punt. That was just classless, and it really devalued him in my eyes.

Does a 100 yard interception return for a touchdown -- the longest play in Super Bowl history -- negate it? Not really. It's a violent game, but throwing punches like that is really bush league.



That's just too weird for words.

football memories, part I

All you need to know about how insane Steelers Fever is back home ... they're adding a two-hour delay to Pittsburgh-area schools tomorrow morning.

To be honest, I'm not "from" Pittsburgh; I grew up about an hour west, in far eastern Ohio, right on the Ohio River, in a depressed area thatlong ago had its own identity but now has nothing of significance to which it can cling. It's always been Steelers Country, or at least since the mid 1970s ... the Steelers love is pretty strong, but it's just a degree less so than in Pittsburgh proper. So there won't be any two-hour delays in my old school district, but that doesn't mean students (and some teachers) won't be dragging tomorrow morning.

My first memories of Steelers' football go back to the third week of January 1980. My aunt Cindy had joined the Air Force, and the whole family took her to the Pittsburgh airport to see her off to boot camp. There were Steelers banners all over the place. It sure seems like we went dahntahn before we went to the airport, because I recall the tall buildings and the black and gold banners hanging from lamp posts and street signs.

(Later, as city fathers found fewer and fewer surfaces from which to exclaim the city's love of its fooball team, they graduated to dinosaur skeletons.)



So I remember celebrations after the Steelers beat the (then) Los Angeles Rams, and the loud cries for "One for the Thumb" that opened the 1980 regular season. What I don't remember is any of the years leading up to that season, which means that I totally missed the "glory years" of my favorite team. My first real football memory? Crying uncontrollably after church, on the last day of the 1980 season, because the Steelers didn't make the playoffs. But they have to play every team twice! They still have time! I was pissed. How could this happen? To me? To my team?

Dad patiently explained that not every team is played twice -- just the teams in the division. But I was royally pissed off. As I was a few years later, when they were destroyed by the Chargers in the first round of the playoffs. And the next year, when the Raiders -- the Raiders! -- knocked them out in the first round. And the next year, when they made it to the AFC Championship game but were vivisected by Dan Marino -- whom we had a chance to draft, but stuck with Mark Malone instead -- and the Dolphins.

I could go on -- 15 years of heartbreaks in the playoffs. The only "good" year was 1995, when they went to the Super Bowl and were two backbreaking Neil O'Donnell interceptions from defeating a very beatable Dallas Cowboys squad ...

My point: since I was able to understand football, the team I loved more than words could describe always managed to tease me with hints of its former glory, but in the end it let me down -- sometimes valiantly, sometimes with a Hindenburg-esque collapse ... but always and forever disappointing me.

In Part II: My love is vindicated!

football memories, part II

In late 2005, Amina and I found out that we'd be taking a trip to Maui. She made her president's club at her new job, which meant we'd be going to Hawaii with some of her coworkers. We found this out in early December; two weeks later, the Steelers won their final three games to nab a wild card playoff spot.

Problem: according to the itinerary, we'd be in a DC-10 on our way back home during the entirety of the Super Bowl.

Amina promised that, should the Steelers make it to Detroit, we'd stay a few extra days. I went along with it, because (1) it seemed like a good deal, and (2) there was almost no way that they'd make it that far. These were the Bill Cowher Steelers we were talking about. A first round exit was almost preordained.

But, as we all know, fortune shined on the 2005 Steelers. First was the win in Cincinnati, which to be honest was a far better team that year. It's never good to root for injuries, but Kimo von Oelhoffen injured Carson Palmer at the beginning of the game and the Bengals weren't really the same team. The Steelers went into Indianapolis -- because they were the wild card team, the Steelers had to play every game on the road -- as the underdogs ... but again, fate intervened. Ben's tackle on the fumble return deserves to go down in Steeler history, right next to the Immaculate Reception, and ...



There's a reason this is one my most-viewed posts on Flickr. "Idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off" -- couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

The Steelers went to Denver. This was it -- win this game and I get two extra days in Maui. But that wasn't on my mind. All I could think was How will Cowher screw this one up? Because, you see, I'd been tempered to expect failure. There was no. way. in. hell. the Steelers would win this game.

And Ben came out and, with laser-like accuracy, took the Broncos' defense apart in the first half. I was downstairs, watching the game, and Amina was upstairs, doing whatever it is that women do when football games are on. She was in the bedroom at halftime and just turned on the TV to catch the score.

"Sweetie! Looks like we're staying an extra" --

"SHUT UP!" I screamed with more emotion than I'd expected I could muster. "DO NOT JINX THIS! THE GAME IS NOT OVER!"

That's how paranoid I was, and still am, about Steelers games. We were not going to talk about staying extra days because the Steelers had not won the game yet because there was still time for Cowher to screw things up and we were not going to tempt fate by assuming the game was over when there were still two quarters to play.

The Steelers hung on to win; it was a classic Cowher game, where a second half lead was nursed by conservative play calling, and the secondary failed just enough to make it seem like Denver could win, but in the end, the Steelers were celebrating at midfield.

Here we go ... Steelers ... here we go.

football memories, part III

Maui was amazing. I'd never been before, and Amina and I were looking for legitimate jobs we could do while living in Lahaina, because neither of us wanted to leave. And for me -- well, think about it: I was in paradise for a week, all expenses paid, and the end of the trip was a Super Bowl in which my favorite team was going to play.

I was a nervous wreck.

That's the kind of fan I am ... or had been conditioned to be, thanks to 25 years of failure and disapointment and heartache. I'm in paradise? Girls in bikinis, great seafood, sandy beaches and perfect weather? SOMETHING WILL GO WRONG.

On Super Bowl Sunday, most of Amina's colleagues had gone back to the mainland. There were a few stragglers, refusing to admit that their real lives were nestled in a frozen wasteland of snow and road salt. We were one of them, but I almost would rather have been back in my living room, free to bite my nails and swear and throw pillows and spank Fletcher whenever I was super angry ... I'm not the easiest person to get along with during a game.

But Amina's CEO was one of the stragglers, and he implored us all to join him at a little beachside bar/restaurant for the game. We couldn't say no -- he was the man whose signature was printed by a computer on all the checks -- but my wish was to order room service and quietly panic all by myself.

Why? I knew I was going to cry. I just knew it. It wasn't going to be a small sniffle, either -- it was going to be a full-on waterworks if the Steelers won. And I didn't need to have the executive team see Amina's husband act like a teenage girl.

Well, we went to the bar and gathered around a table and watched the game on a small screen high above us. I don't remember what I ate or drank, though I was careful not to drink much alcohol -- if I was going to get all emotional, a few beers would only make me more into that "I love you man" man. And I didn't want that to happen.

I don't remember much about the game, to be honest. I had to watch it on DVR when I got home, because I was a wreck the whole four hours. But I do remember getting up to leave the table when Cowher got his Gatorade dunk, because ... well, there must have been some pollen or smoke or sand that got into both of my eyes at the same time.

I'd lived to see my team win the Super Bowl.



And so here we are, the day of Super Bowl XLIII, and I'm not terribly nervous. I've lived to see my team win, so while I'm excited for the prospect of what lies ahead, I'm not in a panic or biting my nails or anything like that. The game will be what it will be.

But if they win, it's because I didn't wear a single Steelers logo on my body the day of the game. Others may claim their mojo sways outcomes, but I know the truth. It's all about me -- unless the Steelers lose, in which case I'll blame everyone and everything else.

"the terrible towel was poised to strike. and boy, did he strike."

it's not kosher

It's a sad, sad day for Steelers fans across the world, as Myron Cope has passed away. I was able to secure a recording of his reaction to reaching the Pearly Gates.

Pretty much all of my memories about Steelers football revolve around Myron and Jack Fleming broadcasting on AM radio on Sunday afternoons. To many of us, Myron and Jack are second only to John Facenda as the voice of the NFL. Even today I get goosebumps hearing snippets of their play by play. Myron was one of a kind, and Steelers broadcasts have never been as good as they were back in the day.

Was this prophetic? (I'm guessing that was immediately after yet Neil O'Donnell interception. Or Kordell. Or Tommy Maddox. Or ...)

I would say he probably died face down in a Primanti Bros. sandwich, with a cold Iron City beside him.

Yoi, indeed.

The sound files can be found here