Handbrake and Grace FTW!
Handbrake and Grace FTW!
Nov 21–Warning: Long!–
Yesterday morning (Sunday) I had a nightmare scenario take place at church. We were scheduled to have a guest speaker (organization will remain nameless) speak to the congregation during the service in place of the sermon. Twenty minutes prior to the service I am in my office and the phone rings. I pick it up and it’s the guest speaker calling to say 1) she’s lost and can’t find the building and 2) asking whether I’m the tech guy and that she has a few videos she needs to show for her message. My stomach drops and I instantly remember how I’d truly considered staying in bed all day (have been dealing with a cold/laryngitis all week).
Ten minutes later she arrives (so now it’s about ten-til) and I’m handed a file folder full of DVDs and a manuscript with videos highlighted. Luckily for me, she wants three videos shown consecutively during one part and then two other videos shown consecutively a little later (so picture this, going through the menus on DVD discs trying to show one video after another while the whole congregation watches). My stomach takes a nosedive and I do a combination in my head between praying and swearing, unable to believe I’m supposed to make this work on ridiculously short-notice! I start thinking about what I can possibly do (remembering I am having serious issues with my main computer in my office and Windows has stopped recognizing all DVD drives) and suddenly it hits me, “try handbrake”. Handbrake is a nifty little program that rips DVDs. Most people use it for making copies of their purchased DVDs/Blu-Ray discs to play on a computer (or steal from Netflix) but I use it to occasionally rip conference DVDs for clients with it (a church might have a conference and send me ten DVDs from it that they want put on their website ASAP). The issue I have is I’m using ProPresenter on a four year old Mac laptop and I need the files to be properly optimized. I run to my office and go to the server remembering I have Handbrake installed there. I put a DVD in and am able to tell Handbrake I need a certain chapter and I see that it will rip to a M4V file – fantastic, that is a filetype compatible with ProPresenter and if the file isn’t too large, my computer should be able to handle it! I rip one and throw it on a thumb drive – take it upstairs and try it – BOOM! It works!
I quickly start ripping the rest and then discover one is not recognized — shoot, a bad disk! Unfortunately it’s after 10am now and the service has started — I run to the sanctuary and start running ProPresenter for the first couple songs – I know if I can get those first few songs done there’s a kid in the room who can run the rest, I just don’t want to leave the hard (and new) songs to him to manage. As I’m doing this, a lady in the congregation walks in and comes over to me – she hands me a CD and says, “I’m supposed to sing today, can you play track 4?” I take it (thinking, “why didn’t I get this earlier?”) and throw it in the CD player. Something tells me to check the output on the CD player — I look in the back and the audio cable is missing! I start digging around (in between song slide changes) and can’t find it anywhere. As sooon as the second song is done, I grab the kid and tell him to operate the comptuer – I grabbed a screwdriver and start taking apart the rack to get to where the audio input is for the CD player (converter box). I find it and discover there are no RCA jacks plugged in – Drat, I must’ve taken the CD player out and never returned them! I run to my office again, find a cord long enough and get the player plugged in. That frees me up to keep working on the DVD problem…
I proceed to run around the building trying the non-functioning DVD in multiple computers and DVD players trying to determine if the disk indeed is bad beyond salvage or not. Unable to get it working, I happen to mention the problem to my other tech guy and he offers to try it on his laptop — he puts it in his four year old Dell and the video starts playing (this is very odd, must be a pretty decent DVD reader in that laptop). Anyway, he cues it up and is able to play it with Windows Media Player. I get the rest of the videos (this is still happening during worship/announcements mind you) and am able to get it all set (crossing fingers and praying).
SOMEHOW, by the time the special musical number comes on everything seems to be set. And indeed, by the incomprehensible grace of God everything worked pretty well. I did manage to accidentally start the CD on track 1 but I had selected “4″ on the remote so that’s a separate issue. The videos all worked flawlessly during the sermon too! In fact, it went so well the rest of the family hardly believed me when they asked why I’d looked so stressed out all morning – they said it was seamless (expect for the missed CD track of course).
This is a really long post and I feel like I’m rambling but I really just wanted to express these thoughts and thank God for his help. It was really a stressful morning and I was completely exhausted by the end of the service, but at the end of it all, the service went on and the message was conveyed. Mission accomplished, thanks, Lord!