Winter is coming

This was filmed across two consecutive sub-zero days we had last January.

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/2891277[/vimeo]

A beauty! We have to make these bigger. Do you guys have a suggestion as for size? Do we want to go all the way to 750 wide?

I would go at least 640 wide. YouTube HD display is 854x480, which is really nice but probably not appropriate unless the photography forums were rendering in that vicinity.

I've made them 640 wide (and I'll tell Greg how to change that in an e-mail). Is this better? The change will affect all posts since it's a single-location database change, so we need to get it right (for some value of "right") or else it'll confuse people if the size keeps changing. Also we need to figure out aspect ratio -- HD is good but not all videos are guaranteed to be 16:9.

Dave,

This is wonderful. Excellent work.

Down the road, more and more of us will be doing videos in HD format. And your point about the YouTube HD display has merit. I think the Video Forum is different and management needs to consider the long haul. Where we will be in 12 months?

Now that Greg has agreed to create this Forum all I can think about is buying the Canon 1D Mark IV or buying the Canon 5D II (again) so that I can do some real quality stuff. So, I am thinking that I would want to display better quality video in HD.

For now, the VGA size works. It is a real improvement over the first shot we had at this.

Best regards,

Bill

nclements wrote:I've made them 640 wide (and I'll tell Greg how to change that in an e-mail). Is this better? The change will affect all posts since it's a single-location database change, so we need to get it right (for some value of "right") or else it'll confuse people if the size keeps changing. Also we need to figure out aspect ratio -- HD is good but not all videos are guaranteed to be 16:9.

Thinking down the road, is it possible for the user to have a choice, either VGA or HD?

Course, there is the issue of HD being larger than what the limits are in the other Forums. But, I think video is different.

Lots to consider. For now, this works really well.

Best regards,

Bill

Would it be possible to make a flexible aspect ratio? Stills aren't 16:9 so if we put together a video that doesn't have HD, then the images would be distorted.

That is some fantastic footage that is full of energy from the blowing snow. I like how the music complements the video too.

Flexible aspect ratio would be nice, but we don't have that much control. I can possibly allow for width and height to be set but (as you can see from the video in this topic) there will always be a chance of getting the black bars. Plus the chance for abuse (and the need for extra moderation) might be more than Greg wants to deal with at this point.

Based on my testing both Vimeo and YouTube account for aspect ratio. The only time that I've seen distortion is when the person creating the video did some strange editing (they stretched a 4:3 to a 16:9 instead of either cropping or masking). Most of that video was okay, just a couple of portions.

Of course, I don't have time to look through every single YouTube or Vimeo video so there could be other cases, but in my experience we'll get the black bars.

RWongPhoto wrote:Would it be possible to make a flexible aspect ratio? Stills aren't 16:9 so if we put together a video that doesn't have HD, then the images would be distorted.

When I want to do a still slide show, I crop all my photos to 16:9 and size each the same. So, when the YouTube video is run in HD it fits perfectly. Lots of extra work, but sometimes you have to do that to get stuff to look right.

Bill

Nicholas;

Would there be a way to allow for user input of the dimensions as needed with a horizontal limit that we could set (ie maybe 750 pixels) ?

With the current implementation, no, but I'm certain I can come up with a more flexible approach.

I think it might be a good idea to discuss this - give me a call and we'll talk about our options before this goes live.

How about specific tags for aspect ratios 16x9 and 4x3 (the two standards)?: [vimeo-hd], [vimeo-sd], [youtube-hd], [youtube-sd]

That would be easier to implement. And given that people on this site are more knowledgeable about aspect ratios and so forth, it shouldn't require any hand-holding to have people understand.

Nice and really great thanks for share it.

I like this information and really happy winter is coming.