08/18/2025 to 08/24/2025, Fill the Hill, Pat Keating *, ffmpeg

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08/18/2025 to 08/24/2025

Tuesday the 19th featured the 32nd annual Grand Rapids Marching Band Fill the Hill! It was partly cloudy and 77 degrees, perfect weather. Andrew was the front left drum major! They started with Crazy Train from the album Bizzard of Ozz, as a tribute to the late John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne . They then did a marching formation demonstration while keeping straight lines that included And-Of-8 one 22 and ½ inch step, forward and backward 8 counts (22 ½ inches each) 5 yards total with carry, Touch and Go, and The Snake with horns up. Everyone then got dressed in the official uniforms and performed “Between the Lines.”

Side note: I used QuickTime to export the .MOV file to 720p, then used Homebrew ffmpeg to convert it to H.264 codec. It reduced my iPhone video from ~39 MB to ~11 MB without losing much quality.

Thursday, we joined Pat, Kim, and Mia for a pontoon ride. Pat rented the pontoon from Your Boat Club Boat Rentals Pokegama — Grand Rapids, MN. The weather was nice and we enjoyed the ride which included a tour around the lake and Little Jay Gould.

Patrick

🔗 Links

Here is great artical I came accross while trying to learn ffmpeg - Know your videos: Inspecting & Transcoding with FFmpeg and Homebrew by Youngho Andrew Chaa. End of blog. Thank you for reading!