wonderful video and commentary. Wish we, or at least I, were with you. Keep up good work and God Speed!
THANKS, ROLAND!
–Keith
Phil on
May 6, 2007 11:55 am
Sometime, tell us about the video equipment. Was the departure from Hawaii done with a camcorder, or one of the built-in video cams? It appears that it is mounted high up, and that you can control it remotely. How do you do that? One time you mentioned that you replaced the camcorder with a different model. What did you get, and why did you need it. By the way, the video pictures are much clearer than I expected. thanks, and Happy Sailing!
PHIL,
The departure was filmed entirely by a remote controlled camera mounted on the front of our stack. I controlled the camera using toggle switches on the camera switch box in the pilot house. We then simultaneously ran the video images into our professional-quality HD Cannon shoulder-mount camera, and transferred the images on that camera’s tape to a Mac. From there we edited the video in IMovie, then stepped down the quality twice, in order to make it a more manageable file for transmission to the website via satellite. First we stepped it down in Quicktime, and then in Flash Encoder. The 2 1/2- minute video was originally about 90 MB. By the time we sent it, it was just 3.4 MB. Since each MB costs me about $15 to send, you can see it was a substantial savings.
We have had two small hand held camcorders. The first, a Sony, had a hard drive. We found it very difficult to work with for our purposes, although the picture quality was outstanding. I then purchased a Cannon camcorder — don’t have model in front of me, but it uses tape, not disc. We have found both of our Cannon’s — the big guy and the little guy — very easy to use.
If you check out our “Welcome to the Pilot House” video, you will see our use of two more permanent-location videos. We’ll be demonstrating the many other installed cameras aboard in the days ahead. We have some REALLY great angles, as you will see.
Thanks for your interest, and for joining us on The Global Adventure!
Well done, Keith! You’re really getting the hang of the video-ing, and the music was wonderful. Thank you!
Question: is there any way for me to enlarge the view of the videos on my PC screen? I didn’t see anything that would enable that, but I might not have been lookng in the right place.
The Marlin got away, but I’m sure you’ll catch some 30 pounders soon.
Stay safe, all of you.
Lesley
LESLEY,
I’m definately no expert, but I don’t think Flash Player let’s you expand the image; and even if it did, it is likely you would not be thrilled with the quality. Again I repeat, I am no expert. Perhaps a tech-head will read this exchange and enlighten us both!
LESLEY,
This just in from our website guru, Gary Verhoff: FYI – fullscreen is not an option – the videos are stepped down so much in both size and quality that enlarging them at all would make them quite blurry, with fullscreen being the worst. Have Lesley be on the lookout for the DVD documentary down the road!
wonderful video and commentary. Wish we, or at least I, were with you. Keep up good work and God Speed!
THANKS, ROLAND!
–Keith
Sometime, tell us about the video equipment. Was the departure from Hawaii done with a camcorder, or one of the built-in video cams? It appears that it is mounted high up, and that you can control it remotely. How do you do that? One time you mentioned that you replaced the camcorder with a different model. What did you get, and why did you need it. By the way, the video pictures are much clearer than I expected. thanks, and Happy Sailing!
PHIL,
The departure was filmed entirely by a remote controlled camera mounted on the front of our stack. I controlled the camera using toggle switches on the camera switch box in the pilot house. We then simultaneously ran the video images into our professional-quality HD Cannon shoulder-mount camera, and transferred the images on that camera’s tape to a Mac. From there we edited the video in IMovie, then stepped down the quality twice, in order to make it a more manageable file for transmission to the website via satellite. First we stepped it down in Quicktime, and then in Flash Encoder. The 2 1/2- minute video was originally about 90 MB. By the time we sent it, it was just 3.4 MB. Since each MB costs me about $15 to send, you can see it was a substantial savings.
We have had two small hand held camcorders. The first, a Sony, had a hard drive. We found it very difficult to work with for our purposes, although the picture quality was outstanding. I then purchased a Cannon camcorder — don’t have model in front of me, but it uses tape, not disc. We have found both of our Cannon’s — the big guy and the little guy — very easy to use.
If you check out our “Welcome to the Pilot House” video, you will see our use of two more permanent-location videos. We’ll be demonstrating the many other installed cameras aboard in the days ahead. We have some REALLY great angles, as you will see.
Thanks for your interest, and for joining us on The Global Adventure!
–Keith
Well done, Keith! You’re really getting the hang of the video-ing, and the music was wonderful. Thank you!
Question: is there any way for me to enlarge the view of the videos on my PC screen? I didn’t see anything that would enable that, but I might not have been lookng in the right place.
The Marlin got away, but I’m sure you’ll catch some 30 pounders soon.
Stay safe, all of you.
Lesley
LESLEY,
I’m definately no expert, but I don’t think Flash Player let’s you expand the image; and even if it did, it is likely you would not be thrilled with the quality. Again I repeat, I am no expert. Perhaps a tech-head will read this exchange and enlighten us both!
LESLEY,
This just in from our website guru, Gary Verhoff: FYI – fullscreen is not an option – the videos are stepped down so much in both size and quality that enlarging them at all would make them quite blurry, with fullscreen being the worst. Have Lesley be on the lookout for the DVD documentary down the road!
–Keith