Dead video

This past Sunday, I shot a video all about the audio video sync issues I've had with Kdenlive and MLT. It was fun. Everyone laughed and cried. No one paid me. I'll never make any money off the video. But I'm not bitter. I just poor my heart and sole in these useless videos. My biggest fan is my Mom. Thanks Mom.

In the video I mentioned that I attempted to update my video driver in an effort to fix the timing issue. It doesn't make any sense that this would work to me really, but I'm desperate and someone said the issue went away after a video driver update. Well, turns out there was some unforeseen fallout from this effort that didn't rear its ugly head until Monday evening.

No sooner do I walk in the door after work than I mow the front yard while avoiding the cable that still has not been buried. That is another story. Then I rolled a dresser in the house. I should have videoed this. I borrowed a dolly from work. I flipped the dresser upside down on the dolly, because it wouldn't fit right side up. Then I was able to get it over the door jam, thread it through the cluttered house, and flip it back right side up in the bedroom where it went.

While waiting for a spot to be cleared for the dresser, I turned on my computer as you do. It came up in a strange video setting and had an error that complained about incompatible video settings. I attempted to reinstall the Ubuntu proprietary driver that is recommended by Ubuntu. Why would they bother if it didn't have some kind of advantage? This caused the system to completely fail on boot and X (the GUI for Linux) just bailed. I found myself at a command prompt.

At this point, I backed up a bunch of my data. I have two drives in that box. I had a plan to attempt to fix the video driver and then to reinstall the system. Either way, a backup is a good idea. By the time I properly destroyed my system, I won't be in the mood for backing it up before just wiping it and starting over. Get the impression I've been down this road a few times?

Fortunately, I still had the driver I downloaded on the system. I installed it again and this time I told it to attempt to modify my settings. Now, I have a running system that is back to the level of video output that I had before. Not great, but acceptable for daily use.

Things are not to a point I want. I have not tried it, but I bet the video sync issues still happen. I'm really glad I had my laptop setup because I was able to watch some videos and do my normal stress release (no, reading news and blogs and stuff) after work. I think this helped me stay focused while working on the computer and flipping the dresser in the back room. This fact makes me want to make sure I have a backup around that I don't mess with. The laptop sounds like a good candidate.

The bills didn't get paid. I didn't manage to weed whack or edge. The list of things that didn't get done is a mile long. One evening after work at a time.