July 14 Day 493: Always Learning

I have been editing videos for the #TacomaMath workgroup of the STEAM Learning Network of Graduate Tacoma for 5 months. We released the first video on February 5, 2021 and with few exceptions, created a Math Around Town recording every week since.

I’ve learned a lot over these five months. I seem to learn something new with each production. I am not particularly sophisticated. I use the iMovie app on my iPad. It does not have all the capabilities of iMovie on a Mac but it mostly does what we need. When searching the internet for a technique (say, changing to a specific font in the captions,) I find it’s easy on the Mac version and imperfect workarounds exist for the iPad. This week’s problem ended up being just that except I had couldn’t find documentation of an imperfect workaround. I needed to figure it out and this blog post will become the documentation I was looking for.

Here was my dilemma. July 12-16, 2021 is National Summer Learning Week. #TacomaMath volunteered to produce content for today, Wednesday, focusing on math. The video footage was provided by several collaborators and the rough cut looked great. As I was coordinating with the audio track, I realized a little more footage was needed. I hopped in the car, went to the park, and found a beautiful family willing to help. I returned to editing and was satisfied with the final result except it appeared that a gray filter was applied to most of the video. I thought maybe I had accidentally added a filter and had no idea how to clear the dull gray.

I searched the internet and learned about filters on the iPad. But that wasn’t the solution. Surely someone would have come across this problem before. I could not have been the first person to have made this mistake. So I asked the internet for help.

Looking for help with iMovie on the iPad. While editing the 23rd episode of Math Around Town, suddenly more the half the video has a dull gray appearance. I don’t know what I did. Nor do I know how to get rid of it. Any experts out there know the answer? Help please. pic.twitter.com/6v1jQBgk9r
— Jennifer Quinn (@swirlgirl31415) July 13, 2021

I heard crickets.

I was prepared to release the dull version of the video because there were other projects that needed my attention in a timely fashion. But I just couldn’t let it go. So I contacted Apple Support for iMovie for iOS.

After answering a few questions online, it was recommended that I talk with a support person in real time. I typed in my cell number and they called me within 2 minutes. The first person I talked with asked me to try all the things I had already done but I was willing to do it all again. After 15 minutes she was out of ideas and called her boss, Greg.

Greg and I worked together for another 30 minutes. He remoted accessed my iPad and talked me through more possibilities—only some of which I had tried previously. I learned how to reinstall an app without losing the files associated with it. So that was cool.

I am a good problem solver. I mean, I do have a PhD in mathematics. And I know I do my best work when I have someone knowledgeable to bounce ideas against. Greg asked about the naming convention of my original files and that is when the pieces came together.

This was the first time I was using video footage from more than one contributor. Some of us have Apple phones and others have Android phones. In order to bring the Android footage into iMovie, I had to convert it from its original form to either *.mov or *.mp4. The encoding is different on the backend and somehow adding a *.mov file from an iPhone made all the Android footage gray (even though it had been converted to *.mov). Removing the iPhone footage returned the project to its original brightness.

So what was the final solution? I converted the iPhone footage to *.mp4. It may seem a little bit backwards but it worked. Whatever the encoding conflict between the source material, it was removed and everything was bright again.

I really like this week’s investigation of pendulums through swings sets. There are no answers provided. Only questions. I’m proud of the support that #TacomaMath provided to #SummerLearningWeek—not only through the Math Around Town Video but also through math chalk puzzles at south and east side Metro Parks locations.