Free To Be.

Annoying problem, weird solution. Help from Bob.

Photo courtesy of Cobalt Capital Okay, so I was going to post about something else but now since this really annoying problem that I've been trying to solve just got fixed I thought I would write about it! I've explained my problem to six different people already so I should be pretty good at describing it right now. I was trying to capture video into my computer through Final Cut Pro. And Final Cut Pro saw that there was a camera attached through the firewire port but didn't want to admit that it was there and actually capture the video I wanted! And Final Cut Express didn't work either.. (I had both on my computer). So I decided to uninstall both Express and Pro. Then I reinstalled Pro. Still didn't work! Went to the Apple store.. My mom and I walked up to the "Genius bar" (ok.. I don't mean to be mean but what a stupid name!) and asked them to help me with a problem with Final Cut Pro; big mistake! The guy said "oh no! We only do technical stuff, go over to "The Studio" (another stupid name) and they'll help you out since they're the creative ones (since of course their shirts says "Creative" on them)." But of course.. this wasn't a problem with me not knowing how to USE Final Cut, it's a problem with being not ABLE to use it! So we went to "The Studio" area and got some helpful guys (2) and they troubleshooted for awhile... got a little farther and narrowed down some things since iMovie worked and my camera worked on another computer so we knew it wasn't a problem with my camera and that my computer couldn't capture video (it just couldn't capture into Pro). Since my mom and I had to leave we set up an appointment for later so we could come back. We went back to the store and went to the Genius bar again... the SAME guy was there and I told him my problem and I made sure to say this is a TECHNICAL problem!! He of course didn't know anything about Final Cut and neither did the other so-called Genius.. (umm if they're geniuses they should know everything, right?) so he had us go to the "Guru" of Final Cut Pro (yes, he did say guru..) over at The Studio area... This guy was really helpful as well and showed us how to get into the underlying UNIX in my laptop and check my hard drive and everything... but still nothing seemed to work. So we decided that I would uninstall Pro, reinstall Express since I KNEW that Express had worked with the capturing (since I had never actually tried capturing with Pro yet). As you can tell, I was very annoyed that nothing was working.. and while I was talking to my brother on the phone I asked him if he had any ideas.. now this is the part where I don't totally remember because it was very late and I was very tired.. but I think my brother was searching on google and actually found a couple things that could help. Now, I need to ask him, but I think he may have found the thing that I found a little later that solved the problem.. What I found was in the discussions part of the support part of the Apple website. I typed in 'camera not seen' in the Final Cut Pro part of the discussion forums. And I found that lots of other people were having this problem as well!! And guess what, someone had a solution!! So I followed the directions from this guy and then... Pro worked!!! The problem somehow had to do with updating to Tiger (Mac OS 10.4) which updated Quicktime. And don't ask me how or why, but somehow Quicktime is related to capturing video into Pro and Express (but obviously not iMovie because that was working). So, I found my solution!! And not from the 4 guys at Apple, not from my friend who knows a whole lot about Final Cut Pro, I found my solution from some guy named Bob who I have never met before and probably will never run into because I have no idea where he lives. Now, why don't these guys at Apple know anything about this? And why is there this big problem that isn't fixed?? Tiger or Quicktime or whatever messed this up shouldn't have been given to the public since all the glitches obviously weren't fixed.. Yesterday my mom said something like, "hey, it's 2006, shouldn't all of these problems with computers be solved by now?" And she definitely knows problems with computers since she's been using computers for a looooong time and used and created parts of the internet. What I'm really interested with this and why I'm posting it on my blog is that why didn't the guys at Apple go straight to this discussion forum on THEIR support website? Why didn't I go straight to the web? My brother did go straight to the web and started finding so much information about how to fix my problem. And as I was talking on the phone with him I just automatically started surfing for ways to fix my problem as well. But I actually didn't think FIRST to go to the internet, I thought of getting help from the Apple people and from people I know. Maybe I should have remembered that maybe none of the people physically close to me know the solution, but maybe someone somewhere else in the world would know. This guy Bob who helped me find my solution is a person somewhere in the world. And if I think of the world as my community (and the internet as a way to reach my community) then Bob is someone who I can get help from. Now, I wouldn't want to invite my whole community (the world) to my house for my birthday party, but I would want to ask my whole community for advice about a computer problem since someone in the world would have to have had this problem as well. I guess this is all about mindset and what we think of as our community and who we think we can ask for help or advice. I was just thinking of when I was doing an exercise to help determine what I wanted to have my Girl Scout Gold Award project be about. One of the questions in this exercise was, "what do you think your community is?" This was a pretty weird question. My family? My school? My city? I wanted to include my friend in Germany and my family in Pennsylvania and Michigan so none of the groups that came to my mind really fit. Then I thought, well if I want to include all of these people I know all over the world, why not say the world is my community? So, that's what I put. And obviously, my community is definitely in my Gold Award project with youth from South Africa, Germany, Chicago, and California. I like how this fits together with how some people automatically go to their friends, their parents, or the internet for help or to learn something. I wonder if other people my age (16) or my brother's age (22) automatically go to the internet if they have a problem. Maybe this is something that should be added to what a digital native is. I think someone who always thinks of the internet as a major tool to helping and learning is definitely a digital native. These posts that I've been typing have definitely gone around and around and touched on many different topics, but I think the ideas and topics I'm bringing up are connected, I just need to make sure the connections can be seen!

posted by Cassie @ 3/11/2006 12:23:00 PM