Tuesday, April 17, 2012

A valuable lesson learned!


Today is Tax Day but the lesson learned had absolutely nothing to do with taxes!

Randy and I went to the air show at Davis Monthan AFB on Sunday, courtesy of our friend Laura. She’s a member of the DM50 (doesn’t matter exactly what that is, suffice it to say the members take very good care of our servicemen and their families) so we had front row seats for the show which this year featured the USAF Thunderbirds. And the weather was fantastically great: clear blue sky, about 70F (22C), and a slight breeze blowing. (Saturday’s show was cold and rainy!) Good chance to practice using my video camera! And I got some awesome shots.

You know there is a “But…” coming up.

But, after I imported all the MTS files into Windows Live Movie Maker and saved the project, I thought I had done everything I needed to, so I broke my cardinal rule of digital photography—you KNOW where this is going!—and didn’t back up the MTS files before I formatted the SD card. Well, WLMM doesn’t save the MTS files when it makes a “project,” (a .wlmp file).  Who knew? I certainly thought WLMM would have backed up everything it needed to make the .wlmp project file. It didn’t.

About five hours later and $39 poorer, I was able to resurrect most of the files (I used Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery, by the way and no, I have no ties to them). The resurrected video clips aren’t as good as the originals because many of the original 30-40 second clips were broken up into 6-7 second clips by the recovery process, but at least much was salvaged, so now I can do what I was planning on doing, practicing making a video.

That’s for tomorrow, however! Meanwhile, here are a few of the stills of the Thunderbirds that Randy got with my Nikon as well as a few others that I took when I wasn’t trying to use the camcorder.

Sky Divers
Known colloquially as the Pregnant Guppy. Doesn't look like it could get off the ground, does it?!
Notice the one larger canopy? That's the one that can carry two! Would I love that? You betcha!!

Thunderbird formation take-off

So beautiful!

Heading over the top upside down

Arrowhead formation


What a beautiful airplane!

Don't hiccup!

Very difficult five-ship formation

Four-ship diamond formation

All six Thunderbirds in close (!) formation

The Thunderbird finale, the Starburst



Helicopter refueling
Helicopter rescue in spite of mucho swirling dust!


Randy and our generous host, Laura

5 comments:

  1. Amazing photos Pam. You are certainly well versed in this stuff..might be looking for advice as we go around the world :)..Steve

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  2. I'm glad you were able to recover your videos. I had an issue where I moved my project to another folder away from the original files and found the whole video was red Xs. Had to put the project back in the same folder with the original videos, then save it as a movie, post it on YouTube, then move them again. Gave me a bit of heart palpitations, too, until it was complete.

    And it looks like Dad's wearing the hat that Darlene and Todd gave him in Vegas! :-)

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  3. Excellent photos! Thanks!!

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  4. Thanks for sharing...brave pilots I say !
    kay

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  5. Wow... Nice pictures and a great journey.
    i wish i could have a such amazing experience in future.

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