FlipHD

This is a movie from a Flip HD ($200.00 at Costco and it comes with a flexible mini tripod).

It's an amazing gadget!

And you can just plug it right into a PS3 and playback your high-def captures. In fact, most PCs can't really play back the FlipHD video very well, so playing back on a PS3 is a good idea.

Likewise, it was trivial to upload the video to YouTube, although the quality is reduced considerably on the way up.

What an amazing device. The only downside is that it's hard to hold really still.

Other than that ... amazing.

[By popular demand: the original mp4 video (10 megabytes).]

© 2005-2009 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Snow Particles

We're in the middle of a "blizzard". The wind gusts are pretty strong (40 mphs?) but it's not insane. Plus we still have power!

I shot this video an hour ago and uploaded it to YouTube. The original was in DV format and 100 megabytes! YouTube did a good job compressing it.

You'll notice the wind is having a hard time choosing what direction to blow. Kind of like a lot of politicians.



© 2005-2008 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Two Interactive Video Adventures

YouTube - The Time Machine: START HERE!

-- and --

http://www.survivetheoutbreak.com/

Check them out... if you dare... and you're not too busy since you're pretty much going to endure a lot of disappointment as you make wrong choice after wrong choice...

© 2005-2008 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Fantasmic!

[Updated to point to higher-res YouTube version.]

I made a Disney fan video back in 1992/1993. It's a home video of Disneyland's Fantasmic.

I shot it over a period of a year and a half. Editing it was hard - it was put together using home consumer VHS decks where you had to do a lot of tricky timing to get any kind of an edit at all. Basically you would roll one deck, let it get to 1 1/2 seconds before you wanted to edit, roll the second deck, and then hit the edit button and hope it was sync'd. The original source material was S-VHS but I edited it down to VHS. I finally have a gadget - the Plexor ConvertX - which does a good job of encoding video. Unfortunately I don't have a great VHS deck anymore (time marches on), so the encoding to DivX isn't perfect. There is a little bit of video sync weirdness. I'll try to fix that some day, maybe by borrowing a deck from someone.

I was lucky to get some video above the crowd from the Pirates Gallery Balcony, which I used as the master. Then I went back and got some great video from right up front. Then I went back a few more times and ran around filling in shots I was missing. I think it's the equivalent of a six camera shoot.

Of course, it was all hand-held, so it's not totally stable, but it's a lot more stable than most of the Disney fan video I've seen!

Watch it on YouTube:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4 (Finale - very cool)

I had a lot of fun editing it - although now 14 years later I wonder how I ever had the time. And of course it would be so much easier now to edit digitally on a PC.

One idea I had, after cutting all that together, was to work with Disney on a "Encyclopedia Fantasmica", which would be an interactive DVD that would let you click on any item in the show and then it would tell you about it - either where it came from, or the tech that was used to create it in the show, or whatever. I work in the games business but and I've even worked with Disney on some things but I never got around to 'pitching' my idea.

It would be cool if someone made it.

© 2006 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

YouTube - Biology High School Musical 4 / Nature Camp Rock 2 (micro note)

YouTube - Biology High School Musical 4 / Nature Camp Rock 2 (micro note)

This guy is the father of a kid my son plays D&D with. Who knew?

© 2005-2008 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Amazing videos shot with consumer grade HD video cameras - Boing Boing

Amazing videos shot with consumer grade HD video cameras - Boing Boing: "Amateurs are doing amazing things these days with consumer-grade high-def camcorders, especially Canon's HV30 MiniDV unit (which retails for about $800) and its predecessor, the HV20. [This] impressive clip is the work of a Memphis college student named Kyle Shields, who acquired a new audio library and wanted to test out some of the gunshot sounds."

Mega cool.
© 2005-2008 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

Japanese Subway Pushers

I've heard of this before but never seen it (it never happened around me when I was in Japan for a week):



(I found this on Dvorak Uncensored.)

© 2005-2008 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

LonelyGirl15

(Video: I Am the Very Model of a Popular YouTube Auteur, a LonelyGirl15 parody. This old embed no longer works.)

This is a fairly clever video making fun of LonelyGirl15.

I remember when LonelyGirl15 first came out I was suspicious because of the quality of the lighting. And then I think around episode fifteen LonelyGirl15 went swimming and the quality of her waterproof make-up just about sealed the deal for me - this was a professional production, and the make-up was at odds with her supposedly identity as a naive waif.

Bigfoot and Image Stabilization

NASA Image Stabilization

and

Shake, Rattle and Zoom: VISAR, the newest NASA spin-off, steadies our vision.

The second article says

Created through the efforts of a solar physicist and a meteorologist, VISAR is an example of how science that often seems distant or obscure ends up being used to solve familiar, everyday problems. Soon anyone will be able to use VISAR to turn out clearer, steadier videos. Thanks to VISAR, people subjected to watching someone's home movies may no longer have to wish they'd brought the Dramamine.

But so far I can't find a consumer version of this very handy tool. I think there are a lot of people that would be happy to have their home movies stabilized to this degree of quality.

(Check out the quicktime movie of how the bad zoom is removed.)

Along these lines is the stabilized GIF of Big Foot (click link for bigger picture). I believe this was stabilized by hand. There's more about it at Big Foot Encounters.



(Talk about thinking outside the box ...)

Immersive Video

Use the mouse to look around while the video is playing. Very nice.

Seven year old plays Total Annihilation

He's so cute!

© 2008 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.

I Dare You

I dare you to watch this Dennis Kucinich video and actually listen to him instead of staring at his wife while her hair blows in the wind. (I confess I read about this in Vanity Fair magazine.)



Go on - I dare you.

© 2007 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

$14 Steadycam The Poor Mans Steadicam

$14 Steadycam The Poor Mans Steadicam

I've been watching a lot of amateur video from the Disney parks recently and most of it is appalling. Nobody knows how to hold the camera still! I admit, with small modern cameras, that it is pretty hard to do. My ancient Super-VHS camera was so big I had to carry it on my shoulder (you remember those things). They were not overly portable but they helped you hold the camera still!

Anywho, the Steadycam is a cheap device that will help you keepy your camera moves clean and smooth.

Unfortunately, Disney might not let you bring it into the park, because of the giant counter-weight.

But here's an idea. Rent a stroller and hook your camera to it. Or buy a mono-pod. They are cheap and super-easy to use and collapse into a very portable size. Even if you just leave the mono-pod attached to your camera while you move your videos will be smoother.

Or ... buy a tripod! You can leave the tripod connected to the camera but collapsed. This will also give you some extra weight that will help you smooth out your camera moves.

Here's the simplest idea. Quick walking with the camera on! You can't do it with this little cameras. What you do instead is stop moving, shoot a few seconds of video, walk further, stop moving and shoot some more, stop shooting, walk to a new place, shoot some more, and so on. Your video will look 1000% better with nice happy edits instead of jerky walking motion.

There is a guy named TJ at the Window To The Magic podcast who does a great job on his "Disneyland Update" video podcasts. Watch those to learn how to do it.

Please, Disney videographers, learn to hold the camera still!

Johnny Depp / Captain Jack Sparrow

HD Videos - MOUSEGEEKS.COM-Forums

Speaking of Disney fan videos, here's a site where they are posting hi-def videos. These are pretty good on the Disney fan scale!

The Pirates one is particularly good, in spite of long sequences of nearly black video. If you've heard the buzz about the great new Johny Depp / Captain Jack Sparrow Audioanimatric, and want to see it, then this is the video to watch.

The motion of the "AA" is really great! The big breakthrough in AA motion has been to have "muscles" on both sides of the joints. This allows one muscle to move a bone very quickly in one direction, and then the second muscle is used to stop the motion.

The same technology is used in the giant Yeti at Expedition Everest. I've seen videos of that ride, but none of them have had a good capture of this giant AA.

One Minute Movie

One Minute Movies Winner

This is a short (well, one minute!) film about eggs that are about to be eaten.

This is something that couldn't have been done before digital media. I guess it could have been done as a film school assignment, but not as something with this kind of reach.

Griptonite's Next Game

Pirate Babys Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 - Google Video: "Paul Robertson's Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 is a masterpiece ... all » animation based on the graphic look and feel of platform handhelds. A kind of machinima recursion; where animations inspired by games have inspired animations."

Light Sabre

I continue to rethink the nature of this site. Most likely I will fork off (that's Unix talk) several sister-sites. I am getting pissed enough I might even start writing about politics!

In the meantime, this is a great Star Wars fan video:

Your Father's Light Sabre

© 2006 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.

Apple Hard Disk Based Camcorder

TIME.com: Stevie's Little Wonder -- Sep. 19, 2005 -- Page 1

Apple's stock price has almost quintupled over the past two years, revenues have doubled during that time, and Jobs is sitting on a war chest of $8 billion. He has a company with an almost freakishly diverse skill set--computer hardware, operating systems, applications, consumer electronics, Internet services. Will Jobs try to leverage Apple's dominance in the digital-music space to get its PC line back in the running? Or is the iPod the first in a full suite of Apple-flavored, network-enabled media appliances--TV, digital camera, camcorder, digital video recorder, video-game player?

Is Apple going to become the new Sony? After all, Sony become the ultra-cool 'Sony' that we know and love with the Walkman. The iPod could be the launching pad for a huge range of digital consumer products. I especially like the idea of an ultra-cool Apple camcorder. Think how cool it would be - and of course it would work seamlessly with the Mac. And set a new standard. Yes, I like that idea.

I have a Sony camcorder. It's almost really cool. It takes 2 megapixel stills - nice. It takes 30 fps full-frame progressive movies. It can take movies in widescreen. It has bluetooth - except the bluetooth doesn't work with anything. It has a web browser and a picture upload system - except it is too hard to work. It's got a really cool touch panel interface - pretty good, except too many menus to search up and down for the function I want.

I imagine if Apple had designed this thing. Wow. Everything would work and be simple.

Yes, I like the idea of an Apple camcorder.

Door of the Future - SlashDot

The 'Door of the Future' (from SlashDot).

Pretty cool. It looks to me like it makes a mistake at the end, but since the video is in Japanese, I can't tell. Hideki - what does that guy say at the end?

Biggest Rainbow EVAR

Click on the thumbnail for a 1.2 megabyte mpeg movie.


© 2005 Stephen Clarke-Willson - All Rights Reserved.