Babyshambles

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Babysitting. A task that rarely involves actual babies, and sometimes no sitting at all.

Two little girls - D (aged three or is it four), and J (aged six or is it sixteen). D squealed with delight when I arrived and demanded that we throw pillows at each other. J arrived later, completely ignored me and made straight for a plate of food - which she also ignored after three bites.

They happily watched a Scooby Doo DVD, before deciding what they really wanted was ice cream - with sausages. I spooned out some ice cream which, after some arguments over who should get the bowl with the flower patterns, was much appreciated. I had the flower bowl.

Then J wants to put sugar on hers. Well, why not. And now D wants sugar too. And J wants chocolate so she raids the fridge, dropping several kinds of cheese on the floor before giving up. Then D wants jam on her ice cream so they have a contest to see who can put the most jam in their ice cream before they taste it and never touch the bowls again.

Good thing I'd hidden the chocolate.

D suddenly runs past saying she needs to go to the wee wee. A minute later she plaintively calls for help - she needs some new clothes because hers are all wet. I eventually find some new clothes, which she adamantly refuses to wear because they're pink and silly.

They build a tent of blankets and duvets and sit happily watching Scooby Doo again. I settle down for a read of Bill Bryson, but am soon interrupted by a half-hour stereophonic request for cooked sausages, but with ketchup instead of ice cream.

Okay, okay. I put some sausages under the grill, together with a pastie for me - which promptly goes black and smoking. The young ladies appreciate the two sausages each, but get upset when there isn't enough ketchup for a third helping.

D decides she wanted to go to sleep. But then decides bouncing and shouting on the bed was much more fun than lying on it. We have a pillow fight. She needs the wee wee again, but will only do it with the light off. Then it's back to the TV for Scooby Doo's third outing of the night.

I settle down with Bill Bryson just as the mummies arrive back. D puts some clothes on without fuss and I'm told I didn't need to give them food at all.

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I've worked out what TV is for.

Or rather, I've worked out the only worthwhile purpose it can serve nowadays. It's there to be scratched.

You capture streams of video as it's broadcast onto your hard drive, then view them and keep the ones that look useful. You compose a backing track on your laptop, and edit the video (with sound) to go with it. The result is magic.

Dull film clips become scintillating pop videos, faintly silly documentaries become witty commentaries, Old songs become new soundscapes. and just occasionally a politician tells the truth.

It's not a new idea. For as long as there's been enough moving pictures for some to be disposable, people have chopped it up into something that isn't. In fact, I suppose there's been art made from trash for as long as there's been artists and detritus.

Anyway, I'd like to have a go at it. So I've set a PC to randomly record ten minutes at a time from random channels. Once I've got enough to fill a DVD-R, I'll let it mature for a few months while coming up with some music, and then see what sounds and images I can collage together over it.

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If you're making videos specifically to go on YouTube, be aware that YouTube recodes all videos it receives to fifteen frames per second. If your original is at the standard US 30fps, that's not so bad because it effectively just chops out every second frame - though it's not that good because...it chops out half your frames.

If your original is in the UK 25fps standard, or the US and UK 24fps standard for movies, then things get a little complicated, and the final form may be a bit jerky.

But of course, if the intended final destination is YouTube, you only need your original to be 15fps, and 320x240 pixels. Smaller files, faster uploads, and fewer recode problems.

Now. If like me you want to fit your images to music, with edit points falling squarely on beats, and if like me you plan on making your own music to do this with, and if like me you get a perverse pleasure from adapting your methods to the oddities of your technology...in other words if you're me...you'll want to arrange the tempo of your music so each bar takes up an exact number of video frames.

Still with me? Well, nevermind. If the frames-per-second of the video divides into the beats-per-second (=BPM/60) of the music without a remainder, then you can edit exactly on the beat. So, here's a list of BPMs that are integral to 15fps. The number in parentheses is the number of frames per beat.

60 (15)
75 (12)
90 (10)
100 (9)
150 (6)
180 (5)
225 (4)
300 (3)

If you're working at 30fps, it looks like this:

60 (30)
72 (25)
75 (24)
90 (20)
100 (18)
120 (15)
150 (12)
180 (10)
200 (9)
225 (8)
300 (6)

At 25fps:

60 (25)
75 (20)
100 (15)
125 (12)
150 (10)
250 (6)
300 (5)

And at 24fps:
60 (24)
72 (20)
80 (18)
90 (16)
96 (15)
120 (12)
144 (10)
160 (9)
180 (8)
240 (6)
288 (5)

If you've read this far, you're probably me. So, hello Kapitano, now you know the tempos to use if you're being kind to video editors. Like yourself.

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