So I started messing with this Colin Baumgartner thing last Tuesday. Heard some Twitter folks saying it could speed up my video renders, which sounded perfect ’cause my old laptop sounds like a jet engine whenever I export footage. Went to GitHub, searched for it – looked simple enough on the surface.
Getting Stuck Right Away
First issue hit when installing dependencies. Kept getting these cryptic errors saying “failure resolving tree” – no clue what that meant. Spent two hours Googling, trying different terminal commands like a monkey smashing keyboard keys. Finally realized I needed to update some system library that wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the docs. Classic.
Things that wasted my afternoon:
- Wrong Python version installed
- Forgot to set environment variables
- Permissions nonsense with my project folder
The “Aha” Moment
Around midnight I got the demo running finally. Tested it with some vacation clips from last summer. At first I thought it crashed because the progress bar froze at 87% for like twenty minutes. Almost pulled the plug when suddenly – bam! – it finished. Compared render times: my usual software took 12 minutes, Colin did it in under 4 minutes. Mind blown.
Ran more tests next morning:
- 4K footage? Worked but ate all my RAM
- Longer projects? Crashed after 2 hours
- Simple clips? Smooth as butter
Real-World Breakdown
Tried processing Tuesday’s livestream footage – total disaster. Colin kept choking on the audio track, spitting out garbled sound. Turns out it hates variable bitrate audio. Had to convert everything to constant bitrate first, which basically killed the time savings. Felt like winning a marathon only to trip at the finish line.
What’s weird though – my nephew came over while I was troubleshooting this mess. Kid took one look at the error logs and instantly spotted the audio mismatch. Meanwhile I’d been scratching my head for three hours. Sometimes fresh eyes see what experience blinds you to.
Truth is, tools like Colin work great until real life happens. They promise shortcuts but end up creating new headaches. Still gonna keep it around for small jobs though. Anything to spare my poor laptop’s fans.
