Now the pressure is fully on !

most of you should have, by now received a set of revised uploading instructions via e-mail.

i am still missing ten e-mail addresses. send those in folks (see the first post in this thread....), you know who your are....if you don't get me your e-mail, you may miss out on contest updates.


the following is a re-post of the e-mail which i just sent out re: uploading update....


We have a few revisions to our original uploading instructions. Thanks to the
amazing Mat Thompson, our website now has its own uploader. Check it out at:

http://www.uwolchallenge.com/uploader.php

I'll release the password one week from today, on Jan. 15, which gives you a
full week to load your videos. Submissions will close and the uploader will be
locked midday on January 22.

*IMPORTANT - in addition to our other aspect ratio parameters (Video size is
limited to 320 x 240 (4:3 aspect ratio) or 428 x 240 (16:9 widescreen), we also
have a new file size parameter. Submissions cannot exceed 50MB in file size.

Good luck!

Ok. I now have about a minute and a half of footage from one day of shooting for the contest. It is entirely possible that I may actually get my entry in and not be placed on the wall of shame on my first attempt. No fieldwork today as the skies are full of snow in northeast Tennessee. Thanks to this contest, now every bird I see in flight has a one story ranch house flying along beneath it just to make sure it's legal. Hope everyone is having some luck.

Rick

It is entirely possible that I may actually get my entry in and not be placed on the wall of shame on my first attempt.

Rick


Remember, it's the "Shark Tank of Shame!"

I have not even staarted mine yet. I love pressure!

Mike

I have yet to shoot a single thing. Yesterday I charged my battery in hopes of shooting today. But it looks like there is going to be nothing but solid gray skys and some rain. Not to interesting.. It looks like there might be some sun coming out in the next few days. Unfortunately, its also going to be around 30 *F here. Not to fun... But hey, maybe I'll be able to slide my camera on a tripod over some ice, lol. Makes for a dolly shot!

I hope other people are having better luck!
~Gabriel

Lucky you, Rick.
Over here in Norway we haven't seen snow yet (where I live on the west coast). It's raining and stormy weather, but I'm shooting through my window on some little fellows, eating from my bird feeder in my back yard :-) Hopefully the weather will change soon, and then I think...
I wish you good luck in this challenge.

I took a snapshot of this Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla).
http://home.tussa.com/gibb/Foto/Munk1.JPG

Hope things improve for you guys soon. I know there isn't much you can do in stormy, wet weather. I took a chance yesterday. We had rain early and then clearing as a cold front blew in. I was a sight to see out on a little 12ft wide strip of land between two rivers trying to film vultures coming in to a roost in 30 mph gusts of wind. I was even laughing at myself. I did manage to get something though. Maybe with the time left I'll stay out of the "shark tank" of shame. Thanks for the reminder Mike. Here is a videograb of a vulture from yesterday:

http://webpages.charter.net/mtnsunfish/photos/blackvulturevideocap.jpg

Good luck folks.

Rick

Hope things improve for you guys soon. I know there isn't much you can do in stormy, wet weather. I took a chance yesterday. We had rain early and then clearing as a cold front blew in. I was a sight to see out on a little 12ft wide strip of land between two rivers trying to film vultures coming in to a roost in 30 mph gusts of wind. I was even laughing at myself. I did manage to get something though. Maybe with the time left I'll stay out of the "shark tank" of shame. Thanks for the reminder Mike. Here is a videograb of a vulture from yesterday:

http://webpages.charter.net/mtnsunfish/photos/blackvulturevideocap.jpg

Good luck folks.

Rick

yeah, from my painful experiences it's really hard to get a bird to do anything sensible (especially when the "rec" button is pressed)

I definitely don't have a problem with *quantity* of Raw footage.

However ...

Haven't seen this for several weeks but suddenly - there it was!
Manage to get some nice shoots tonight, not enough to complete the film, but luckily I'm on my way :-)

Hei Per Johan.
Nice picture and please send that yellow thing over to me :-)
By the way;
Today I posted a CD with 115 pdf-files of seabirds, located in my aeria.
I thought we might catch some of them on tape in february.

... Thanks to this contest, now every bird I see in flight has a one story ranch house flying along beneath it just to make sure it's legal ...

Rick

... a standard of "attention to detail" not seen since Napoleon.

Good for you, Rick.

Ok. Thanks to this contest, now every bird I see in flight has a one story ranch house flying along beneath it just to make sure it's legal.
Rick

that's pretty funny.

just to be clear. your entry will be judged in part on how your are working the theme in your own unique. this doesn't mean that ground shots are absolutely excluded. for example, if your bird flies to the ground, don't exclude the shot. just be sure that the overall entry is a reflection of the theme....

Hey everyone,
It appears we're still having some issues with the uploads.
If you're ready to upload shoot me an email and I'll create a private FTP username and directory for you and you can upload it via FTP then we can move it into the regular upload directory.

I know I may have to do this 42 times if we don;t figure out the auto uploader but it's worth it.

So, I only have like 4 users at a time I can create accounts for so I'll email you the info once you tell me you're ready to upload then when you have it uploaded let me know and I'll creat the accoount for the next people.

Pain in the rear but I really want to see this challenge succed!

Hi people

Let me first apologise for the situation with the uploader.....you would not begin to believe how much time and pain this has caused.

Rest assured we will get you all entered ... !

I am still working on uploader reliability and I will let you guys know when its 100%....

If anyone can give it a try and let me know what happens I'd be very greatful, it may help to get things sorted out.


Cheers
Mat

Ok, I'm stepping out for an hour or so. The light is good and I need to start work on my own film.
So I've given out a couple of ftp user names already. If there's any more of you drop me an email and I'll get you one as soon as I can.

Also, if you've uploaded via FTP, please try again using the uploader so we can figure that one out. It will make life easier for everyone.

Okey dokes, I'm off to film. Hope the light holds!!

I'm back. Seems that people are having issues trying to upload via FTP.
I have no clue how to upload with FTP via Windows as I only have Macs.

I use CyberDuck and once I log in, I just drag and drop.

I had one email saying they were denied permission. I know when I tried to access the directory via my web broweser it wouldn;t let me but I've never done that so I have no clue if I'm doing that right. :-)

Anyway, the accounts I've given out already are active and I've uploaded via FTP to all of them when I logged in as them and they all work.

Just got another email and it sounds like they were trying to use the FTP accounts to log in via the auto uploader that Mat has been slaving away at.
The username and passwords I'm giving out is to your own directory to upload via FTP.

The uploader and the FTP info I'm giving out are two different things.
Some people are having troubles with the auto uploader so we're creating direcories for them to upload via FTP and not via the auto uploader.

I'm back. Seems that people are having issues trying to upload via FTP.
I have no clue how to upload with FTP via Windows as I only have Macs.

Under Windows, you can access an FTP service through windows explorer, IE or most any other web browser, same with the Mac via a finder window or Safari, You can also go to the command prompt and type "ftp server.domain.com" without the quotes obviously and you will connect and be prompted for login info. Or you can just type ftp at the command prompt and it will prompt for a server or host name as well. Just like using unix/linux. You can also use the ftp client on OSX via the terminal or command window as OSX is essentially just BSD underneath all the pretty interface elements. If you use a Mac Finder window or a Windows Explorer window, you can just drag and drop there as well once connected.

I had one email saying they were denied permission. I know when I tried to access the directory via my web broweser it wouldn;t let me but I've never done that so I have no clue if I'm doing that right. :-)

Probably didn't specify username and password in the address line. In your browser just type "ftp://username:password@whatever.whatever.com" once again without quotes. In OSX if you do this with Safari, it will just pop up a Finder window... Windows has more options... You can also just open an explorer window and enter that as the path if you have the address bar turned on.

Kevin, PM or email me if you want some additional help with the FTP service and/or the uploader. I'm pretty busy, but can probably at least help with that... I should do something seeing how I haven't had a chance to even start shooting anything for this little challenge. Heh.

Jeff,
Give Mat who posted above a shout. He's the one that's been working his fingers to the bone trying to get our auto uploader to 100%.

Or Mat, give Jeff a shout to see if he can offer any assistance in figuring it all out. :)

The auto uploader worked fine for me for an approx 7M upload.

I did have a 47M version fail first. After about 30 mins of "uploading" it timed out -- although I was doing other stuff (Final Cut, uploading other stuff etc.)

Currently the best thing I can say about my entry is that it's "done"
Hopefully I will have a better effort ready for UWOL #2

Just a heads up. Our hosting service must be doing some maint. work on their servers as I can't log in as of 5:30AM Iowa time.

So, if you try and upload and have some issues, they should go away shortly.