Santa In Your Pocket

Just for kicks, I decided to test out the Kringl app to see if I could provide evidence to my 5-year old daughter that Santa Claus really did visit our home and drop off a present for her on Christmas Eve. Basically the app lets you record a short video of your own home, and it superimposes a video of Santa so that it looks like Santa had actually visited your home. There is some general information on the Kringl web site about features and functions, but here are a few tips that you might not have learned from their official site:

• For best results, you should not hand-hold your device; rather, try to mount it on a tripod or at least stabilize it by putting one edge of your device against a fixed object (eg, a table or chair) to prevent camera shake
• While the app lets you choose the brightness of the Santa image that is superimposed on your video, a dimly lit room will most closely match the available lighting options
• If you choose to save videos to your iOS device, the resolution of the video will be 1280x720; while it is technically high definition, full HD (1920x1080) would have been nicer

I recorded several scenes and then used Final Cut Pro X to stitch them together and add a title and transitions. The final result is here. Happy holidays!

Lee Family 2014 Year In Review

Greetings! We hope you enjoy our annual Lee Family 2014 Year In Review.  For prior editions of our Year In Review newsletter, click here.  Also check out my YouTube channel.

Happy (holidays + new year)!

DIY Calendars on a Mac

Since we are in the last month of 2014, many of us may be looking for 2015 calendars either for personal use or to gift to a friend or family member.  While many companies allow you to upload your photos and customize your own calendars, there are do-it-yourself options that can save you a lot of money.  Additionally, given that many online calendar services have very clunky tools, the do-it-yourself options may also save you a lot of time.  In this post, I will discuss 2 different options for making your own calendar on a Mac and a budget (note the application of zeugma here).

Option #1: Calendar with Photos

Assuming that you bought your Mac within that last several years, you likely already have iPhoto installed.  If you don't, then you can probably find the installer on your backup/installation disc.  And if that option fails, then you should be able to download iPhoto from the App Store for free (or possibly for a small price, depending on which version of Mac OS X came with your Mac--I have not verified this recently, as Apple's policies may have changed and they may be offering free downloads for any version of Mac OS X).

Making photo calendars in iPhoto is very simple and intuitive, so at the risk of overstating the obvious, I'll briefly walk you through the process.  Start by making sure you have imported photos into your iPhoto library if you don't already have them stored there.  If importing photos exclusively for making a calendar (eg, you store your photo originals somewhere other than iPhoto), make sure you import at least 13 photos--that's one photo for each month, plus one for the front cover.  Import more photos if you want to put one on the back cover and/or if you want to insert multiple photos per month and/or if you want your calendar to have more than 12 months.

Once you have your photos imported, make sure they are all stored in the same event, select the event, and then select File > New Calendar.  That's really the hardest part.  From there, you enter a calendar wizard that guides you through selecting a theme, inserting national holidays and/or personal calendar events/birthdays, editing layouts, dragging and dropping photos onto existing layouts, etc. While Apple gives you an option to buy the calendar (they will print, bind, and ship to you), I prefer to print out my calendars on regular letter-sized paper using my laser printer, and I get great results.

If you prefer to print your calendar at your local print shop, just "print" your calendar to a PDF file.  All versions of Mac OS X have PDF technology (Quartz) built in, so you can select File > Print, and from the Print dialog box, select PDF > Save as PDF.  From there, copy your PDF file to a USB drive (or upload it to your local print shop if that's an option) and off you go.

Option #2: Calendar Only (No Photos)

Again, assuming that you bought your Mac within the last several years, you likely already have the Calendar or iCal application.  Simply launch Calendar (or iCal) and select File > Print.  From there, simply configure all the options you want such as View (eg, month, week, day), Paper (eg, US Letter), time range, etc. and print.  There you have it--a no-frills, no-cost (well, except for the minimal price of paper and ink/toner) calendar.

Cyber Monday

As we approach the end of the Thanksgiving weekend, just around the corner looms the Monday after Thanksgiving, otherwise known as Cyber Monday.  While Black Friday has traditionally been known as the unofficial start of the end-of-year holiday shopping season with retailers having their brick-and-mortar stores jam packed with ravenous shoppers looking for good deals, Cyber Monday is a term that marketers have used to describe the following Monday when people would resume shopping online using their computers at work.

While online shopping may have spiked on Cyber Monday in previous years, I wonder if the same trends apply today.  The reason is that about a decade ago when the term "Cyber Monday" was coined, most homes were equipped with dial-up modems, if any at all, while their connections at work were significantly faster.  For example, does anyone remember their employers having ISDN lines (a whopping TWO sets of 56K modems in parallel) or DSL?  Nowadays, home broadband connections are commonplace, and even though I have a 50 Mbps connection, Speedtest.net gives my connection a "B" grade, stating that my connection is faster than only 68% of the United States:

Speeds in this range are more than sufficient to shop online.  Therefore, I hypothesize that while there may still be a surge in online shopping on Cyber Monday, it may be far less pronounced than in previous years since many online shoppers will have already done that from the comfort of their own homes over the Thanksgiving weekend.  Might we see a day when we will retire the term "Cyber Monday" from our vernacular, similar to "record player" and "rotary phone"?  Will we someday have to explain to our children (who will have broadband connections in their cars, watches, and eyeglasses) what "Cyber Monday" once meant?

December 18, 2015

There are many ways to categorize humans.  For example, we can categorize people by gender (e.g., male, female), race (e.g., White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian), age group (e.g., baby boomers, generation X/Y/Z), handedness (e.g., right, left, ambidextrous), eye color (e.g., brown, blue, green), and the list goes on.  While not widely known, we can also categorize people by whether or not they understand the significance of the date December 18, 2015.  Does this date have meaning for you?

Video Conversion with HandBrake

I recently wrote about My Digital Content Workflow, and in step 7 I describe how I had been using Xilisoft Video Converter to resize videos from 1080p ("full HD") to smaller sizes like 720p ("HD"). Given that a new version of HandBrake (0.10.0) was released just 2 days ago, I thought I'd give it another look. HandBrake is traditionally known for being used as a DVD ripping application, so I had never seriously considered it for video conversion, although it has had those capabilities for quite some time.  With release 0.10.0 comes several new encoding schemes which I'll probably never use, but it's nice to know that the developers are staying current with newer codecs like H.265 (even if it is still in early development at this stage).

For a vast majority of my needs, I will generally start with a preset and make further adjustments from there.  For example, the iPad present defaults to a 720p resolution, and I might just modify the bitrate to achieve a level of quality that is suitable for the contents of the video that I am converting. I find that a bitrate of 5000 kbps results in pretty good quality, especially for viewing on mobile devices and YouTube, although it is possible to get away with 3000 kbps or less if the video does not contain a lot of fast-moving images.

Overall I'm pleased with HandBrake as a video conversion tool, and given that it is free, it is hard to beat HandBrake in terms of value.  Furthermore, HandBrake is available for both Mac and Windows (and Ubuntu, if you're into that).  If you have any other recommendations for video conversion, I'd like to know!

Many Waze to Drive from A to B

If you've ever explored your options for turn-by-turn GPS navigation options on mobile devices, you've probably heard of Waze, a GPS application featuring community contributions such as alerts (e.g., for road hazards, accidents, or police) and community-editing features (e.g., maps and gas prices).  I really liked the concept of Waze since many of these features are not present in Apple Maps or Google Maps.  I'm not sure if Apple or Google have this feature, but one thing that pleasantly surprised me was the on-the-fly ETA change feature as depicted below.

However, as cool as all the Waze features are, for the last several months I've been getting a lot of Routing Server Timeout error messages:

I am not entirely certain, but I don't think they are due to poor cellular coverage since I've gotten these Routing Server Timeout messages while still being able to retrieve email (as a passenger, of course!), although I can't say that I've verified that in every instance.

In any case, I get these error messages about once every 2-3 times I try to use Waze.  That clearly violates the "Bad is Stronger than Good" 5-to-1 Rule and is enough to make me want to consider other options for turn-by-turn GPS apps on iOS.  Any recommendations?

Apple iPhoto Face Detection

I typically use Apple iPhoto for the sole purpose of storing my favorite photos and albums so that they can be synchronized to my mobile devices (e.g., iPhone, iPad).  I think the face detection feature (Faces) generally works well, and there are some common and understandable situations in which it may incorrectly identify a person, for example:

• The person is not directly facing the camera (i.e., closer to a side profile)
• The facial expression is unusual (e.g., laughing hysterically, running, squinting)
• The person is wearing a hat

Today I was importing another album into iPhoto, and another obvious reason dawned upon me--the person's face is changing!  When I starting verifying the face detection, I noticed that it kept mistakenly guessing that my daughter was her older cousin, and I had to repeatedly correct the default face detection.  I assume that Faces learns facial patterns over time and that the more data you feed it, the better it performs.  However, my observations above would suggest that Faces is not tailored toward infants and small children who are growing quickly and whose facial dimensions that are included in the face detection algorithms are changing over time.

Since I am almost certain that the folks at Apple Inc. are checking my blog on a daily basis to do market research and to understand my personal needs, I will provide a suggestion for a product enhancement: build age progression algorithms into Faces.  The folks at Merrill Edge have done it in their online retirement planning application (http://faceretirement.merrilledge.com) so I bet the Apple version would produce similar if not superior results, and its user interface would be simple and elegant.  That is, iPhoto would simply allow a user to enter a birthday or age for each facial profile, and from there it would estimate the progression of facial features over time, checking against the EXIF data in each photo to calculate the age of each candidate face at the time the photo was taken, thereby improving face detection for everyone but most notably for small children.  No more overrides of default face detection for Digital Daddy--yeah!

I don't know if this can actually be reliably done, and I'm not sure how much value this would add to applications that use face detection, but it's interesting to think about.  Either way, it is amazing to see that my little girl is growing up, and I am glad that I have captured tens of thousands of photos of her, with countless more to come.  And now, it's time for me to get back to tagging faces.

Video Hosting - Dropbox, Vimeo, and YouTube

As I discussed in a previous post (My Digital Content Workflow), I often make short home movies. Typically I share them with my immediate friends and family by posting them to Dropbox and sending the download links via email. Recently I decided to explore other options for video hosting because (1) I am running out of storage space on Dropbox and (2) when playing videos from Dropbox through a web browser, there is a noticeable degradation in quality even with sufficiently fast internet connection speeds (53.8 Mbps download according to Speedtest.net). This led me to explore 2 other juggernauts in the video hosting business: Vimeo and YouTube.

Cost. A Basic Vimeo account is free, although users are limited to 500 MB per week of storage space, 1 HD video upload per week, and a daily limit of 10 video uploads. Vimeo Plus and Vimeo Pro accounts increases those limits. On the other hand, all YouTube accounts are free, with the only constraint being a 15-minute time limit on videos, and that limit can be removed if users undergo a simple account verification process (e.g., sending an authentication code to your phone via voice or text). YouTube 1, Vimeo 0.

Quality. On playback, both Vimeo and YouTube appear to deliver crisp and clean video quality as I would have expected for the resolutions in which the videos were played. While Vimeo allows you to view the video at the standard size or full screen, YouTube has those options plus a midsized "Theater mode" resolution. However, YouTube may from time to time embed advertisements into your videos--I have not yet seen this happen to any of my videos, but they clearly state in their policies that it is a possibility. I'd say playback quality is not significantly different between Vimeo and YouTube, so the score remains YouTube 1, Vimeo 0.

Quirks. As previously mentioned, the Vimeo Basic account imposes a curious limit of 1 HD video upload per week. While there may be times when I'd want to upload more than 1 HD video in a given week, I couldn't justify upgrading to the Plus or Pro versions just to increase that limit. YouTube, on the other hand, appears to employ an interesting song recognition algorithm to identify possible music copyright violations, and this has generated some false positive copyright violations. For example, 2 videos that I uploaded were automatically tagged as having possible copyright violations. One video was from a year end preschool recital where the children were singing "Up, Up, Up" by Susan Reed, and the other video was from a dance recital where the kids were performing to "Let It Go" by Idina Menzel from the Disney movie Frozen (I know, what a novel idea). Actually I was quite impressed that YouTube correctly identified these songs in my home movies given that there was background noise in each video. But then again, I think Shazam performs equally well in the presence of background noise so maybe I shouldn't have been so impressed.

Verdict. For the time being, I have chosen to upload my home movies to YouTube because the price is right and I am not currently constrained by any upload limits as far as I can tell. I am curious to find out what will happen to the videos that have been tagged for possible copyright violations. Will Susan Reed or Disney come after me and make me take down my videos? Time will tell.

DIY Hyperlapse on a Mac

It seems like hyperlapse videos are all the rage nowadays. Microsoft is planning to release a Windows app based on this article in PetaPixel, and Instagram recently released a mobile app called Hyperlapse.  Basically a hyperlapse video is a time lapse video with stabilization that was designed specifically for point of view videos (e.g., from handheld or mounted video cameras), the resultant output providing the viewer with the feeling that of "flying" through the video, even if there was excessive camera shake in the original footage.  Despite Instagram's Hyperlapse app being available on iOS for free, I preferred to capture video footage with my GoPro Hero 3+ rather than my iPhone 5 so that I could take advantage of the GoPro's higher resolution (up to 4K), faster frame rate (60 fps at 1080p), mounting options, and other features.  So here's what I did during a recent trip to Joshua Tree National Park...

1. Mounted GoPro Hero 3+ to vehicle hood using a suction mount
2. Set video recording mode to 1080p at 60 fps, narrow view
3. Wirelessly started/stopped video recording using GoPro iOS app from inside my vehicle
4. Imported video to Final Cut Pro X (version 10.1.2) as a 1920 x 1080, 59.94p project
5. Applied stabilization to video
6. Under the Modify menu item, set Retime option to 4x
7. Made other minor edits (e.g., title, transitions, fade)
8. Exported as 1080p60 video

The stabilization in Final Cut Pro probably does not yield as good a result as genuine hyperlapse technology since Final Cut Pro was intended to reduce shake as opposed to hyperlapse technology which calculates an optimal glide path and can even fill in "missing" pixels if the algorithm is designed to do so. Nevertheless, I found the above process to be a reasonable substitute for a true hyperlapse application since I made every effort to minimize camera shake in the original footage.

For sharing purposes, I've scaled down the video to 720p30, and it is accessible here.  While you should be able to view the video in a browser, you'll probably get better video quality if you download the video and play with with your default video player (I recommend VLC).  So there you have it, my very own do-it-yourself hyperlapse video on a Mac.

Monkey Business

You might have heard the recent story about the dispute between British photographer David Slater and Wikimedia where the copyright of a picture of a monkey has been called into question.  There are numerous stories written on this topic, but here is one story from NPR that sums it up: If A Monkey Takes A Photo, Who Owns The Copyright?  Basically a crested black macaque used David Slater's camera to take numerous selfies (one of which is published in the NPR story), and Wikimedia refused to recognize copyright status on those images, posting his images as open source material.  Despite David Slater arguing that in order for him to get the photos, he had to travel to Indonesia and set up the camera, the dispute went on.  Recently the United States Copyright Office issued a new Compendium of Copyright Office Practices which states in section 202.02b Human author:

The term "authorship" implies that, for a work to be copyrightable, it must owe its origin to a human being. Materials produced solely by nature, by plants, or by animals are not copyrightable.

I am not a lawyer, nor have I recently stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, but it appears to me that the dispute is really around authorship, where Wikimedia interprets the authorship of the photo to be the macaque which does not have legal standing, and therefore nobody technically "owns" the photos.

From what I've read, there are different accounts of the story.  On the one extreme, the situation was portrayed as the macaque grabbing David Slater's camera and taking hundreds of shots willy nilly, so Wikimedia argues that authorship was not attributed to a human being.  On the other extreme, David Slater asserts that he put himself in that specific situation to photograph the macaques, and he set up the camera, while the macaques simply pushed the shutter release.

I have no objection to the US Copyright Office definition of human authorship.  I think the dispute lies in the interpretation of the origin of the photos--were they produced SOLELY by the animal, or did the human play some role?  I would argue that David Slater played a significant enough role that he could claim to be the author of the photographs.  To me, photography is more than just pressing a shutter release button.  Rather, it encompasses all the preparatory work including identification of one's subject and its environment, adjusting camera settings to produce the desired effects, interacting with the subject, composition, and numerous other things besides clicking a button.  I really don't know all the details of what happened, but based on what I've read, I believe that David Slater did enough to claim authorship and that he rightfully owns those photos.

It would be interesting to know how a judge would rule on some related scenarios:

• Someone sets up a motion-triggered camera to capture nighttime infrared images of the elusive snow leopard.  I would argue in favor of human authorship because the human set up the motion sensors for the purpose of capturing the photos.
• Someone mounts a camera on a tripod with the intention of having a monkey approach the camera and press the shutter release on its own.  This may be because the monkey does not smile when confronted by a human, but it will smile when humans are at a far enough distance away.  Again, I would argue in favor of human authorship because of intent to capture the image and all the preparatory work that went into image capture.  What the monkey does in this situation is the same as David Slater's situation--it presses the shutter release.  The only difference may reside in the photographer's intent.  Did David Slater intend for the macaques to take the selfies?  Could this information could be material to the case?

Another interesting consideration is whether anyone other than David Slater could actually know whether any individual exposure was taken by the macaque or by David Slater himself.  It appears that he has related a story in which the macaque grabbed the camera and started shooting selfies.  But what if the information was never publicized?  How could a viewer know whether the photo was taken while hand-held, tripod-mounted, motion-triggered, or in the mischievous hands of a black crested macaque?  One would have to assume copyright ownership resides with the human in possession of the original photos unless human authorship is brought into question.

In conclusion, I side with David Slater on this issue.  I believe that he had a significant enough influence on the situation such that the photos were not produced SOLELY by the animal.  It just feels wrong to conclude that David Slater does not own those photos.

What are your thoughts on this situation?  Don't everyone chime in all at once.

Page View Statistics

Since starting my blog on July 29, 2014, I have received a whopping 137 page views from across the globe, so clearly I am a man of international influence.  Here are Blogger statistics for page views by country, browser, and operating system:

Does anyone know what the heck "OS;FBSV" means under the browser category? Does that mean someone access the page via Facebook?  Digital Daddy in L.A. wants to know.

Running Apps

I've experimented with a variety of running apps for my iPhone in the last year, so I thought I'd briefly review my impressions of each one.  Despite me using the free versions of each of the running apps, they all had more features than I was interested in using, so I am only commenting on the features that I felt were pertinent to me.  I'm sure you can get a more comprehensive review of the features and functions of each app elsewhere.  Furthermore, I'm sure you could be doing something far more productive than reading this blog, but I digress.  Lastly, I assume that the iOS (Apple) and Android (Apple copycat) versions of these apps are identical in features and functions, but I have not verified so can't say so for sure.

Map My Run.  As with all the running apps that I reviewed, there is the ability to post results from each run to social media.  One interesting feature is Route Genius which suggests routes in your area, using your home as the start and finish.  Perhaps I would have explored this feature further, but I found the prominent ads to be too obtrusive, so I deleted the app after using it only 2 or 3 times.  Buh-bye!

RunKeeper.  This is a pretty good app as far as run tracking.  It reports the usual statistics like distance, time, total elevation gain, and calories burned.  While there are reminders to upgrade from Basic to Elite, I didn't find them overly obtrusive.  However, I was very disappointed to find that after I had wiped my phone (possibly the topic of another blog post) and reinstalled the app, my activity history had disappeared!  I could not retrieve my run details even after logging into my account.  Why did the app not store my data in the cloud?  All the time I spent pounding the pavement was forgotten by this naughty app.  Was there a bug?  Was it user error?  Either way, I no longer trusted the app with my data.  Given the plethora of other running apps, I saw no choice but to end my relationship with every last bit and byte of RunKeeper (or perhaps I should say RunLoser).  Poof.

Strava.  This app used to be called Strava Run until they recently combined their running and cycling apps into one.  In addition to tracking the usual run details, I like the way this app presents a detailed elevation map, mile-by-mile splits, and I also like how you can type a name/description for each of your runs (e.g., "Friday afternoon, running away from rabid fans who had mistaken me for Jeremy Lin").  There are messages to upgrade to a Premium account, but they are not too obtrusive.  Of the apps that I reviewed, I believe (someone please correct me if I'm mistaken) that Strava was the first to introduce auto-pause and also the first to allow you to define Privacy Zones so you can hide the exact location of your home, office, concubine residences, or other locations.  It also stores data in the cloud, so your data is safe even if you need to delete the app or wipe your phone.  Solid performance all around, no major downsides, definitely a keeper.

Nike+ Running.  Run details, check.  Social media postings, check.  Auto-pause, check.  Compete with friends, check.  Cloud storage, check.  Unique to this app is that for each run it automatically tags weather conditions based on your GPS coordinates, and you can also document how you felt (unstoppable, awesome, so-so, tired, or injured), where you ran (beach, road, trail, or track), and which shoes you wore (if you are really into your shoes--I am not).  I had expected this app to heavily promote Nike products, but I felt that they handled it well by putting all of their promotional materials in a menu option called "Shop Nike" which stays out of your way unless you purposely navigate to it.  Of course the Nike swoosh is displayed on many screens, but I felt that the interface was presented in a way that respected my desire to not be bombarded by marketing propaganda.  Another solid performer with no major downers, also a keeper.

And the winner is... none.  After several months, I deleted all of the running apps from my phone.  Why?  First, the social media stuff got old pretty quickly.  I realized that nobody really cared about my run logs but me.  Sure, some people congratulated me on Facebook and gave me encouragement to keep running at first, but then there was silence.  Were they tired of the same old posts?  Was I sounding boastful?  Nixed.  Second, the GPS is power-hungry!  I've started runs with 40% battery life, only to have the battery die by the time I completed my run, and I don't typically run for more than 6-7 miles at a time which could take 70-90 minutes or sometimes a bit more, depending on where I run and how many stops I make along the way (e.g., picking up my daughter from school, pushing her in the jogging stroller to her swim lessons).  Having to constantly recharge my phone was a nuisance.  Finally, I sustained some injuries which resulted in me running a lot less, so I wasn't using the apps regularly.

I hope this helps people who are evaluating running apps for the first time or people who are thinking of switching to a different one.  What are your favorite running apps and why?

Lee Family Year In Review Newsletters

Some of you may have seen the current or prior editions of our Lee Family Year In Review Newsletters. I used to host them on a website which came as part of my Earthlink DSL account. Recently I switched internet service providers to Time Warner Cable, and while my connection speed is now 5x faster for about the same price (or less, if you count the fact that we were able to cancel our home phone service after ditching DSL), I no longer have a web hosting option. I felt that it was a rather minor tradeoff because even though I can no longer present the newsletters in a web page with cutesy family photos, tessellating backgrounds, and cheesy MIDI music, I can at least share the PDF files of the newsletters on Dropbox. Here's a link to all of our Lee Family Year In Review Newsletters, dating back to our inaugural edition in 2005 when Karen and I got married. As far as I recall, I've used Apple Pages to create every newsletter and have been fairly satisfied with it. Does anyone have recommendations for web hosting solutions? Are there any free ones out there?

My Digital Content Workflow

I am sometimes asked about my digital photography and videography workflow. Do I shoot in RAW? How do I backup my files? What apps do I use to process them? Which photo sharing sites do I use? How can I fit so many photos on my phone and still have room for apps and other stuff? I'm an amateur hobbyist, and while I'll describe what works for me, obviously your mileage may vary. I'd also welcome feedback and suggestions below, as I could be persuaded to change my workflow. First things first, here's my current hardware configuration:

• Canon EOS Rebel T4i DSLR with various EF and EF-S lenses
• Canon Vixia HFM301 camcorder
• GoPro Hero 3+
• Apple iPhone 5
• Apple iMac, 27-inch, Late 2012, 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, 3 TB fusion drive
• Seagate FreeAgent 1.5 TB external hard drive
• Western Digital My Book Essential 3 TB external hard drive (x2)

OK, now onto my actual workflow...

(1) Shoot.  For any given event, I generally shoot and save photos and videos in the highest possible resolution. For photos, I set my DSLR to the maximum resolution and save files in both JPG and RAW format. I don't really care much about the quality of the JPG, it's the RAW files that are important to me, more on these 2 topics later.  For videos, I generally record at the highest resolution which for current entry-level camcorder technology is 1920x1080, but 2.7K and 4K are becoming more popular. I will take videos at 1920x1080 for most purposes, but if I anticipate needing to crop or perform heavy image stabilization in post-processing, I may shoot in 2.7K and 4K. In terms of frame rate, 30 fps is generally sufficient for most settings, but if possible then I may decide to shoot in 60 fps if there is fast-moving action and of course if that frame rate is available on the device at the resolution I'm shooting.

(2) Transfer. The first thing I do after shooting an event is to transfer content from my RAM cards and devices to my computer. If I've shot using multiple devices, I'll dump the contents into several folders on my iMac's internal hard drive, applying the following naming convention: yyyy-mm-dd event_description (source/format). I'll create a separate folder for each unique source/format, for example:

2014-04-01 Barack Obama's VIP Birthday Bash - White House (AVCHD)
2014-04-01 Barack Obama's VIP Birthday Bash - White House (CR2)
2014-04-01 Barack Obama's VIP Birthday Bash - White House (JPG)
2014-04-01 Barack Obama's VIP Birthday Bash - White House (GoPro)
2014-04-01 Barack Obama's VIP Birthday Bash - White House (iPhone)

The AVCHD format would contain videos from my Canon camcorder, where I'd transfer the entire AVCHD folder and its subfolders, all the way down to the .MTS files and their accompanying metadata files. The CR2 format is for Canon RAW files, and the JPG folder would be for in-camera JPG files. In this example, I might have taken some photos and videos with my GoPro Hero 3+, and maybe I took some photos with my iPhone using the panoramic setting. So you get the idea, all content is separated into different folders and named accordingly.

(3) Backup. Before I do anything else, I make backup copies like a madman. I immediately copy all of my exciting new content from my internal hard drive (let's call this HD1) onto my Seagate 1.5 TB external hard drive (HD2) for redundancy. This is an external hard drive that I have plugged into my iMac and leave on all the time, and the intent is to serve as a temporary backup to my internal hard drive. I also have 2 additional Western Digital external hard drives (HD3 and HD4) that I use exclusively to backup photo and video content, and the intent is to serve as a long-term backup. I do not always immediately backup my content from HD1 to HD3 and HD4 but rather perform this step every 1-2 months--this is mostly because I don't have enough USB slots on my iMac to have all these peripherals plugged in simultaneously and also because I don't find it necessary to keep HD3 and HD4 powered on all the time anyway. So to summarize, I will always have copies on at least HD1 and HD2 for short-term backups and eventually all of my content ends up on HD3 and HD4 for long-term backups. As time goes by, I may selectively delete content from HD1 and/or HD2 to free up space, provided that the content has already been backed up on HD3 and HD4. At any point in time, I will have a minimum of 2 copies of my content and possibly up to 4 copies for more recent content. Only after I have backed up my content, I will erase images off of their original storage media.

(4) Review. For photos, most of what I shoot is not worthwhile to post-process, so I review then quickly with a slideshow application. Currently I prefer Phoenix Slides because it is free and does what I need it to do in a quick and simple way: let me browse through each photo in full-screen mode and show me the filename. I review the in-camera JPG photos and write down the photos that I would like to either include in a home movie or share with others via email, social media, etc. For videos, I review using VLC which is also free and plays just about any video format. While reviewing, I write down the clips that I intend to process and/or share.

(5) Post-process. This step applies primarily to my photos. Assuming that I have content worthy of post-processing, I typically perform RAW conversions using Adobe Photoshop which brings up the Adobe Camera RAW dialog box. Typically I first apply lens profile corrections which I value most for correction of barrel distortion, especially at wider focal lengths. Then I often apply noise reduction, especially for photos shot in low light (high ISO) conditions. Depending on the lighting conditions, I often make adjustments to exposure, color temperature, highlights, shadows, and tone curves. I repeat this process for each photo. Some people ask me why I don't use RAW workflow apps like Apple Aperture or Adobe Lightroom. In short, because I don't usually shoot studio photos with constant lighting conditions, I apply different settings to every RAW conversion and don't find Aperture or Lightroom to be that helpful. I also rarely if ever go back to old RAW libraries so don't need a place to store all prior settings. I a control-freakish way, I actually prefer managing my files in the Mac OS X Finder and backing them up manually as described in steps 2 and 3 above. Another factor is that I don't like being app-dependent for my photo workflow management. Case in point, Apple recently announced plans to retire Aperture and migrate to a new Photos app which is under development. As I understand it, Aperture users will eventually need to migrate their photo libraries if they move their workflows to a new app, but I'm immune to this because I manage my files manually. Obviously this makes sense for me as a hobbyist, but I can see why professional photographers would find a lot of value in Aperture, Lightroom, and other tools. Perhaps I'll write more about RAW conversions in a separate post someday.

(6) Make Movies. For "significant" events like my daughter's birthday parties, school performances, family vacations, and trips to theme parks, I make home movies which typically run anywhere from 30 seconds to more than 10 minutes in duration, depending on the amount of photo and video footage I have. I perform almost all of my video editing in Apple Final Cut Pro X at 1920x1080 (full HD) resolution and 30 fps. If I have 60 fps video footage, then I might step up my entire home video to 60 fps. I usually add a title, transitions, and a fade at the end. For photo slideshows, I try to add a soundtrack and actually find this to be the hardest part of making home movies. Perhaps I'll write more about my video editing process in a separate post someday. After my video is complete, I export the video in its original full HD resolution for viewing on large computer monitors, our 60" HDTV, and for archival purposes.

(7) Share. Depending on the intended use case, I may share my photos and videos through a variety of channels. Generally speaking, I share "high resolution" files when I think the recipients may want to print or archive the content, and I share "low resolution" files when I prefer recipients to only view the content. For "high resolution" sharing, if I have less than 20 MB of content to share with a limited number of recipients, I might simply email the contents. For larger sizes, I typically post photos to Picasa Web Albums and post videos to my Dropbox account for viewing and downloading. For "low resolution" sharing, I reduce photo dimensions to 1600 or 1200 pixels along the longest border, typically using Photoshop which can batch process photos. I shrink videos down to 1280x720 (technically still HD) or 960x540 (preserving the original 16:9 aspect ratio and thus avoiding letterboxing or pillarboxing) or smaller. For this video conversion process, I use Xilisoft Video Converter since it has some useful presets and is easy to use. From there, I might post to Facebook or sync with my mobile devices. Regarding mobile device synchronization, since I've bought into the Apple iOS ecosystem, I dump the low-resolution photos and videos into iPhoto and iTunes respectively so I can sync them with my iPhone and iPad. As compared with people who shoot and store photos and videos with their iPhones, I have only my "greatest hits" on my mobile devices, and rather than storing 8 MP images on my phone, I have much smaller images that take up a fraction of the space so am able to store much more content.

Well, there you have it. I know that the above workflow is far more complicated than the average user workflow (e.g., shoot, share, and maybe backup), but I tend to obsess about the quality of my content and am happy to pay the workflow premium to get that quality. While many folks live in a mostly mobile computing environment where screen sizes tend to be small even for tablets, I still value large displays like desktop monitors and HDTVs where I can show content in higher resolution to bring out details. After all, I have to live up to my Digital Daddy moniker! What do you think about my workflow? Please feel free to leave comments below.

Hello World

Me: physician by training, health informatics practitioner by profession, 24/7/365.25 geek with (usually) tolerant wife and daughter.

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