Videos, finally.

So, Penny is over six months old, yet we've never shared videos of her on our blog. There is a reason for this. No, we are not ashamed of her! And no, it's not because we don't have a video camera (we do). It's because our video camera is ridiculous. Let me expound. So, we have a Apple computer and we have a Canon video camera.

Wait, let me back up. When we were engaged, we bought a Sony DV video camera. We loved that camera, and used it quite a bit for a few years. Well, right after Penny was born, the Sony decided to go haywire and die. So, we needed to buy a new one to document the lil one. After dragging my feet, then looking around, we settled on the Canon FS11. I read several expert reviews and a couple user reviews, and it seemed like a good one. We weren't ready to get an HD camera, since they're expensive, and changing by the day, but we wanted something decent. I felt that this one was a good middle ground camera—we'll be able to use it for a few years till we're ready for HD.

Great, right? Wrong. I suppose I should have read more user reviews. The camera itself is nice. It's compact, pretty easy to use and seemed to take quality videos. So what was the problem, you ask? I couldn't get the videos onto my computer. Awesome. For some reason, the camera films in some weird format that my Mac didn't recognize, nor did I have any software to convert it. The camera came with software, but of course it only works on Windows computers. So I did a bunch of reading online.

To try and make a long story not quite so long, I basically found that, to convert the files, I needed to buy the new version of iMovie, which also meant that I needed to get the new operating system, Leopard top run it. Great. Of course I had been wanting to get Leopard, but I was going to wait a little while to take the plunge, but now our hands were forced.

What bugs me the most is that everything else I've ever plugged into my Mac has worked without a hitch. Most of the time you don't have to even use the software that comes with the device. It'll just work. But this camera was the only one that didn't. How can Canon design something so narrow that it ignores all the people with a Mac that's more than one year old? It's lame.

Canon, you get a demerit.

Anyway, I got it to work. Yeah! And now that I've put all of you to sleep, here is a clip of Penny giggling at a ball. This was taken in Arizona when Mel was there visiting family.

I get a kick out of it everytime I watch it. Hope you do too.