Flashlight testing, supplemental

I've got this huge pile of AA alkalines salvaged from the battery recycling at work. Honestly, dozens of them. Fully 1/3 of the batteries that go in there still have significant life left in them.

I separate into 3 piles and keep the first two:
- very good to apparently new
- still pretty good
- not that good to stone dead

I used to keep ones less good than that, they're still good enough to run lots of stuff, but it got to the point where the pickings were so good I had to start throwing something out.

Anyway, I took some "still pretty good" ones, the lowest ones I keep, and put them in the flashlight on my bike. I used it for two days as my headlight for my 40 minute commute. It lasted about 1.75 days; the last 2 miles of my commute I had to turn the main headlight back on.

At least it gives me a way to use these batteries up. Of course, if I use them all winter I'll wind up saving about 50 cents worth of electricity, so it's hardly worth my time, really.

Video editing software

To date the only video editing software that I've had that can generate DVDs has been what comes with Nero. It's OK but it's really a pain to use, and the version I own doesn't do HD.

I tried a few different ones over the weekend, and was stopped at square one every time; none of the "trial" versions allow importing of AVCHD streams. Even the pirated copy of Pinnacle Studio that I grabbed required after-the-install registration of the codec to do that (the free trials got to that point and said "the codec needs to be registered, and you can't do that with the free copy).

I guess it must be patent protected or something. It's a pain though that I really can't try out any software properly.

Anyway, I wound up buying a copy of Pinnacle Studio 12. I've got years and years worth of video, and I've never done much with it in part because it's such an incredible PITA to use the software I've had in the past.

I'd tried Pinnacle before, but just the free copy that comes with everything vaguely video-related, and it's been years. I was never impressed, it seemed very unstable.

However, the reviews say that it's now quite stable, and in fact several said that they preferred it to iMovie and Adobe Premiere (both of those were reviewers who had previously primarily used the other products). So I'm going to give it a shot anyway. And for the non-HD video that I messed with for a few minutes, it seemed intuitive enough and totally stable, and it's not overgrown with cutesy controls.

I also really like that I can save the project, output to DVD now, and output to Blu-ray later when I have that capability.

I actually ordered it from Amazon. I can't even remember the last time I bought software and got actual physical media in a box. It was 5 bucks cheaper than buying the download straight from Pinnacle, and the retail box comes with a free green screen, so what the heck.