So What happened ?

Hi friends. I would think you would want to know exactly what's been happening since my last communication on this blog. Here's the skinny on what's up. On approximately November 25th, 2009, my external FireWire 800 Raid 0 1 TB media drive died ! So what ? Well, I had an entire year and a half's Episode 2 edit on this drive, so when it went, then so did all of my precious post production work with it ! I tried desperately to get the information back but was unable to do so. :-( You might ask why I didn't have a protected backup of my media drive ? The answer is simple - The amount of data I had was too large to backup properly, unless i spent a considerable amount of spare cash on such a solution. (In retrospect I wish I had !) Since the end of November I have been re-configuring my entire system. With the assistance of our web site developer, Jon Warmington, I have been building a whole new video editing system matrix. I have had to cobble together a series of old computer parts I had sitting around my home office, together with parts my friend Jon had lying around. I have spent untold hours building, re-building, and testing the new system out. I have also added a rather advanced Enterprise backup solution to this new multi-media setup, which will allow me to backup literally Terabytes of audio and video data.

The sad part of all of this is I must start all over again from scratch to re-edit the entire episode 2 ! Fortunately for all concerned, I lost the edit, but *NOT* the original camera footage ! Thank God ! :-) Half of Ep 2 was recorded on HDV cassette, while the other half was shot on a clip based external Hard Drive Recording Technology called, " a FireStore drive."

So everything has stopped. Everything ! Until I get my new system up and running with suitable capture, storage, and enterprise backup of all editing work and video files, there is no possibility to continue. This PC system catastrophe cost me untold hours, days, weeks, and last, but not least - *Months* of very hard editing and visual effects work. Also, there has been the usual financial implications injected into the equation of this setback.

Words can never impart the degree of difficulty which has hit this production. Everything which could have gone wrong, has in fact gone wrong with episode two's production. I am greatly disillusioned with just about everything connected with this endeavour to this point, but I'm too stubborn to give up ! So this misery stumbles forward into yet another New Year, with no end in sight. I can't give you any ETA as to when Episode Two will be ready for its debut night. Ep 2 will be ready when its ready. Stay tuned for more news, as there will be more news, and you have my personal commitment that Episode Two will be completed.

MJ