Fradley canal staffordshire , England at DVinfo.net

John Estcourt · January 3rd, 2009, 03:53 AM

Hi Folks, travelled home to visit family for xmas and paid a visit to fradley junction.
The sun was a fantastic golden colour due to the early morning.
XH-A1 stock lens shot 25p.
cheers john

Rosewood By john estcourt On ExposureRoom

Richard Gooderick · January 3rd, 2009, 04:23 AM

Hi John
The camera work looks very nice although the actual video doesn't look very HD. Perhaps because it was full screen.
I've never used Exposure Room and the site doesn't seem to give a lot of information.
Do you know if it could be used to upload a 50 minute HD video and can you embed in another site?
I would use Vimeo but their Vimeo Plus service still isn't available outside the USA.

John Estcourt · January 3rd, 2009, 04:42 AM

Hi Richard, yep not sure about the compression settings im using for web as the hd version looks worse than the medium. that was the same for the last one i put on.
will have to look at it.
Thanks for the positive comments about camera work.
All the best John

ps I believe there is no maximum time limit on footage , the forum section on exposure room has some good tips...perhaps i should read them again to get the hd version looking better, im sure its just a bit rate issue.
cheers

Andy Wilkinson · January 3rd, 2009, 05:52 AM

Nice video John! I'd probably made it a little shorter on some of the clips but who am I to critique your work.

Regarding Richard's questions about long videos etc. well the longest 1280x720p video I've put on Exposure Room so far was nearly 23 minutes. It took a long time to upload despite my supposedly super fast ADSL line. I've not tried embedding that on my own video hosting website yet so I cannot answer if it will play as HD or not (but suspect not).

A few months ago I did embed some of my Vimeo ones on my own site but, as is well known, they will only play in low resolution as embeds, you have to click through to the Vimeo site to watch them in HD. That, and the fact that you give up all copyright ownership (and cannot use Vimeo or ER for some of the commercial work I do) basically drove my decision to build my own video hosting website where I was in total control of everything from appearance (no adverts or distracting items!), bit rates used for conversion, flash player settings etc...

The only other thing I will say is that out of the two (ER and Vimeo) I think the on screen appearance is generally better with ER but I get (ironically) far more exposure (i.e. hits) on Vimeo for the same videos. It seems with ER that once your thumbnail is a few pages in from the most recent then no one ever views your video again! (unless you link to it from elsewhere). I don't think my work is that bad!!!! However, with Vimeo I still get a trickle of hits on the "legacy videos" I've on there. Maybe the search function and channels is all a lot easier on Vimeo?, I don't know - and this is digressing anyway.

Good work John and I'm sure someone will let Richard know about the HD embed question regarding ER.

John Estcourt · January 3rd, 2009, 06:19 AM

Thanks Andy,I see your from the Cambridge area, used to live nearby years ago. its a lovely part of the world.
Im just re encoding the video again to see if I can improve it somewhat. It looks far nicer on blu ray and dvd. if I get the settings improved I will update it.
cheers john

Andy Wilkinson · January 3rd, 2009, 08:00 AM

OK, out of curiosity I went into Exposure Room and looked at that 23 minute HD Video of mine (Thurston OO). You can get all the embed tags listed for it (well at least I can as I guess only the author can see this) and it gives you many options for playing the video at various sizes with our without hyperlinked thumbnail on a HTML page. You appear to be able to choose to either play the video in-situ (i.e. on you own website) or on ER.

I think from memory I've seen an ER video embedded on Phil Bloom's website which plays in situ but I don't think it was playing in HD size. However, I think you get the ER watermark logo in the corner of their player.

Next time I update my own website (which I do every few days) I'll try this out and see how it looks - again just for curiosity as I'm now only really using my own website for my video work because of the reasons mentioned earlier. However, most of the time I don't put 1280x720p on my own site as my customers tend to find this too large/slow for playback.

Andy Wilkinson · January 3rd, 2009, 10:13 AM

Richard,

Just to update I tried this quickly and embedded a HD 1280 x 720p movie on one of my webpages using Rapidweaver on my MBP and it plays just fine in HD within my own website (using the ER Player). I'm viewing it using the Rapidweaver preview function on another computer right now.

I did not upload this test webpage to my actual website (as all I wanted to was see if it worked/don't have time to upload right now). Rest assured, if you want to embed a 1280 x 720p HD video on your own website (with ER's player, rather than your own configured Flash player) you indeed can. I notice you are using Vimeo right now for embedding - I think the ER player would look better for sure (but using your own Flash player would look best, IMHO). I use the JW Player (with a commercial license for it) and encode with Sorenson Squeeze for Flash Pro 5 or Compressor (for H.264).

Two other things. I also just noticed that the ER embed tags seem to be present for ALL videos (not just one's own) - just to correct the statement that I made in an earlier post. Also, my 23 minute Thurston 00 DVD Extract file in 1280x720p is in fact only (publically) viewable on Vimeo (and my own website in less resolution) not on ER - just in case anyone goes looking for it!!! :-)

Hope all this helps!

Richard Gooderick · January 4th, 2009, 03:35 AM

Hi Andy

Many thanks for this information. It was nose to the grindstone until late last night trying to get a film finished so I have only just seen your posts (still a way to go and the title music hasn't arrived yet - the musician got flu).

We seem to have gone down similar paths ie Rapidweaver and the JW Player (it's not live on my site at the moment but I have a Rapidweaver test page using FLV, but not in HD).

Vimeo have been a let down with their promise two months ago that Vimeo Plus would be available soon outside of the US. This paid-for upgrade allows up to 2GB per week, no commercials and HD embedding.

I'm struggling to get the film finished. I was due to start the final edit two Mondays before Christmas when my hard disk began to fail! It wasn't clear what was wrong and I didn't get the computer working properly again until Boxing Day.

Did you look into Amazon S3 by any chance? This was suggested to me some time back in another thread on this forum. The original plan was to finish the film by Christmas and then sort out the technical issue and web site eg enabling donations to charity. So I'm way behind with all that.

I have been told that Vimeo is based upon S3. However if you go the S3 calculator:
JavaScript-based Amazon Web Services Simple Monthly Calculator
and enter 2gb data (my estimate for a 50 minute HD film) x 10,000 hits @ 2 gb each (ie they all watch the complete film) that works out at just over $ US 3,000. Surely Vimeo can't be subsidising their service to that extent.

This is a real calculation for me. Yachting World magazine hits the bookstalls on Thursday. Their readership is 50,000 (circulation is 30,000). The magazine contains a 300 word article on my film and there will be links from the YW website and from the editor's blog. I've really no idea how may readers may watch the film but I'm not charging anything and any money raised will go to charity so I can't sign an open cheque.

The whole venture is an experiment. I hope to get some PR out of it and possibly sell a DVD somewhere down the road, but I'm not holding my breath.

John, I hope I'm not highjacking the thread but this seems to be relevant ie how to deliver HD to an audience.

John Estcourt · January 4th, 2009, 04:56 AM

No problems at all, perfectly relevent chaps and interesting to everyone trying to get hd onto the web.
thanks john

Arnold Tersteeg · January 4th, 2009, 06:02 AM

Hallo John

Nice movie il like the colors, did you use a preset, some clips are a little bit to long but not to long.
Lucky you with such a subject to film.

Grt Arnold

Colin McDonald · January 4th, 2009, 07:17 AM

Happy New Year John,

Really enjoyed the canal footage - beautifully photographed.

Just me, but I would have preferred some ambient audio instead of or as well the music. I realise it might not have been possible - for all I know there could have been a motorway just out of shot or some noisy kids. A busy canal can have some quite unique sounds, and I think it's a shame not to hear them. Feel free to disagree :-)

John Estcourt · January 4th, 2009, 07:38 AM

Happy new year to you aswell Colin.
I listened to the ambiant and I didnt think It really added to the film much.
Perhaps if i had taken my sound equipment i could have recorded something more useful but i hadnt taken it with me, not even my shotgun so it was straight off the cameras mic wind noise and all.
You are probably right though, will look at that for the next one.
cheers and hope all is well.
John

Colin McDonald · January 4th, 2009, 07:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Estcourt

... so it was straight off the cameras mic wind noise and all.

I had that on Boxing Day too - it must have been the Brussels sprouts.

John Estcourt · January 4th, 2009, 07:57 AM

At least we got to the bottom of the problem.

Tom Sherwood · January 4th, 2009, 02:29 PM

Wow that looked amazing. Interesting subject and really well done. What preset did you use?

January 3rd, 2009, 03:53 AM	#1
John Estcourt Major Player Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Scotland, Ayr www.amour weddingvideos.co.uk Posts: 305	Fradley canal staffordshire , England Hi Folks, travelled home to visit family for xmas and paid a visit to fradley junction. The sun was a fantastic golden colour due to the early morning. XH-A1 stock lens shot 25p. cheers john Rosewood By john estcourt On ExposureRoom

January 3rd, 2009, 04:23 AM	#2
Richard Gooderick Major Player Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: London, UK Posts: 795	Hi John The camera work looks very nice although the actual video doesn't look very HD. Perhaps because it was full screen. I've never used Exposure Room and the site doesn't seem to give a lot of information. Do you know if it could be used to upload a 50 minute HD video and can you embed in another site? I would use Vimeo but their Vimeo Plus service still isn't available outside the USA. __________________ http://www.gooderick.com

January 3rd, 2009, 05:52 AM	#4
Andy Wilkinson Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Cambridge UK Posts: 2,853	Nice video John! I'd probably made it a little shorter on some of the clips but who am I to critique your work. Regarding Richard's questions about long videos etc. well the longest 1280x720p video I've put on Exposure Room so far was nearly 23 minutes. It took a long time to upload despite my supposedly super fast ADSL line. I've not tried embedding that on my own video hosting website yet so I cannot answer if it will play as HD or not (but suspect not). A few months ago I did embed some of my Vimeo ones on my own site but, as is well known, they will only play in low resolution as embeds, you have to click through to the Vimeo site to watch them in HD. That, and the fact that you give up all copyright ownership (and cannot use Vimeo or ER for some of the commercial work I do) basically drove my decision to build my own video hosting website where I was in total control of everything from appearance (no adverts or distracting items!), bit rates used for conversion, flash player settings etc... The only other thing I will say is that out of the two (ER and Vimeo) I think the on screen appearance is generally better with ER but I get (ironically) far more exposure (i.e. hits) on Vimeo for the same videos. It seems with ER that once your thumbnail is a few pages in from the most recent then no one ever views your video again! (unless you link to it from elsewhere). I don't think my work is that bad!!!! However, with Vimeo I still get a trickle of hits on the "legacy videos" I've on there. Maybe the search function and channels is all a lot easier on Vimeo?, I don't know - and this is digressing anyway. Good work John and I'm sure someone will let Richard know about the HD embed question regarding ER. __________________ Andy K Wilkinson - https://www.shootingimage.co.uk Cambridge (UK) Corporate Video Production

January 3rd, 2009, 08:00 AM	#6
Andy Wilkinson Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Cambridge UK Posts: 2,853	ER Embed tags OK, out of curiosity I went into Exposure Room and looked at that 23 minute HD Video of mine (Thurston OO). You can get all the embed tags listed for it (well at least I can as I guess only the author can see this) and it gives you many options for playing the video at various sizes with our without hyperlinked thumbnail on a HTML page. You appear to be able to choose to either play the video in-situ (i.e. on you own website) or on ER. I think from memory I've seen an ER video embedded on Phil Bloom's website which plays in situ but I don't think it was playing in HD size. However, I think you get the ER watermark logo in the corner of their player. Next time I update my own website (which I do every few days) I'll try this out and see how it looks - again just for curiosity as I'm now only really using my own website for my video work because of the reasons mentioned earlier. However, most of the time I don't put 1280x720p on my own site as my customers tend to find this too large/slow for playback. __________________ Andy K Wilkinson - https://www.shootingimage.co.uk Cambridge (UK) Corporate Video Production

January 3rd, 2009, 10:13 AM	#7
Andy Wilkinson Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Cambridge UK Posts: 2,853	Richard, Just to update I tried this quickly and embedded a HD 1280 x 720p movie on one of my webpages using Rapidweaver on my MBP and it plays just fine in HD within my own website (using the ER Player). I'm viewing it using the Rapidweaver preview function on another computer right now. I did not upload this test webpage to my actual website (as all I wanted to was see if it worked/don't have time to upload right now). Rest assured, if you want to embed a 1280 x 720p HD video on your own website (with ER's player, rather than your own configured Flash player) you indeed can. I notice you are using Vimeo right now for embedding - I think the ER player would look better for sure (but using your own Flash player would look best, IMHO). I use the JW Player (with a commercial license for it) and encode with Sorenson Squeeze for Flash Pro 5 or Compressor (for H.264). Two other things. I also just noticed that the ER embed tags seem to be present for ALL videos (not just one's own) - just to correct the statement that I made in an earlier post. Also, my 23 minute Thurston 00 DVD Extract file in 1280x720p is in fact only (publically) viewable on Vimeo (and my own website in less resolution) not on ER - just in case anyone goes looking for it!!! :-) Hope all this helps! __________________ Andy K Wilkinson - https://www.shootingimage.co.uk Cambridge (UK) Corporate Video Production

January 3rd, 2009, 04:42 AM	#3
John Estcourt Major Player Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Scotland, Ayr www.amour weddingvideos.co.uk Posts: 305	Hi Richard, yep not sure about the compression settings im using for web as the hd version looks worse than the medium. that was the same for the last one i put on. will have to look at it. Thanks for the positive comments about camera work. All the best John ps I believe there is no maximum time limit on footage , the forum section on exposure room has some good tips...perhaps i should read them again to get the hd version looking better, im sure its just a bit rate issue. cheers

January 3rd, 2009, 06:19 AM	#5
John Estcourt Major Player Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Scotland, Ayr www.amour weddingvideos.co.uk Posts: 305	Thanks Andy,I see your from the Cambridge area, used to live nearby years ago. its a lovely part of the world. Im just re encoding the video again to see if I can improve it somewhat. It looks far nicer on blu ray and dvd. if I get the settings improved I will update it. cheers john

January 4th, 2009, 03:35 AM	#8
Richard Gooderick Major Player Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: London, UK Posts: 795	Hi Andy Many thanks for this information. It was nose to the grindstone until late last night trying to get a film finished so I have only just seen your posts (still a way to go and the title music hasn't arrived yet - the musician got flu). We seem to have gone down similar paths ie Rapidweaver and the JW Player (it's not live on my site at the moment but I have a Rapidweaver test page using FLV, but not in HD). Vimeo have been a let down with their promise two months ago that Vimeo Plus would be available soon outside of the US. This paid-for upgrade allows up to 2GB per week, no commercials and HD embedding. I'm struggling to get the film finished. I was due to start the final edit two Mondays before Christmas when my hard disk began to fail! It wasn't clear what was wrong and I didn't get the computer working properly again until Boxing Day. Did you look into Amazon S3 by any chance? This was suggested to me some time back in another thread on this forum. The original plan was to finish the film by Christmas and then sort out the technical issue and web site eg enabling donations to charity. So I'm way behind with all that. I have been told that Vimeo is based upon S3. However if you go the S3 calculator: JavaScript-based Amazon Web Services Simple Monthly Calculator and enter 2gb data (my estimate for a 50 minute HD film) x 10,000 hits @ 2 gb each (ie they all watch the complete film) that works out at just over $ US 3,000. Surely Vimeo can't be subsidising their service to that extent. This is a real calculation for me. Yachting World magazine hits the bookstalls on Thursday. Their readership is 50,000 (circulation is 30,000). The magazine contains a 300 word article on my film and there will be links from the YW website and from the editor's blog. I've really no idea how may readers may watch the film but I'm not charging anything and any money raised will go to charity so I can't sign an open cheque. The whole venture is an experiment. I hope to get some PR out of it and possibly sell a DVD somewhere down the road, but I'm not holding my breath. John, I hope I'm not highjacking the thread but this seems to be relevant ie how to deliver HD to an audience. __________________ http://www.gooderick.com

January 4th, 2009, 04:56 AM	#9
John Estcourt Major Player Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Scotland, Ayr www.amour weddingvideos.co.uk Posts: 305	No problems at all, perfectly relevent chaps and interesting to everyone trying to get hd onto the web. thanks john

January 4th, 2009, 06:02 AM	#10
Arnold Tersteeg New Boot Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Landgraaf Nederland Posts: 23	Hallo John Nice movie il like the colors, did you use a preset, some clips are a little bit to long but not to long. Lucky you with such a subject to film. Grt Arnold __________________ Canon XH-a1 user & Edius NX Canopus

January 4th, 2009, 07:17 AM	#11
Colin McDonald Trustee Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Glasgow, Scotland Posts: 1,546	Happy New Year John, Really enjoyed the canal footage - beautifully photographed. Just me, but I would have preferred some ambient audio instead of or as well the music. I realise it might not have been possible - for all I know there could have been a motorway just out of shot or some noisy kids. A busy canal can have some quite unique sounds, and I think it's a shame not to hear them. Feel free to disagree :-)

January 4th, 2009, 07:38 AM	#12
John Estcourt Major Player Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Scotland, Ayr www.amour weddingvideos.co.uk Posts: 305	Happy new year to you aswell Colin. I listened to the ambiant and I didnt think It really added to the film much. Perhaps if i had taken my sound equipment i could have recorded something more useful but i hadnt taken it with me, not even my shotgun so it was straight off the cameras mic wind noise and all. You are probably right though, will look at that for the next one. cheers and hope all is well. John

January 4th, 2009, 07:57 AM	#14
John Estcourt Major Player Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Scotland, Ayr www.amour weddingvideos.co.uk Posts: 305	At least we got to the bottom of the problem.

January 4th, 2009, 02:29 PM	#15
Tom Sherwood Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 83	Wow that looked amazing. Interesting subject and really well done. What preset did you use?