Wow, thanks a lot! That’s very generous of you. How would I upload it?
I’ve just saved a 50MB version which turned out really nice, it seems DivX starts to shine at higher bitrates. I used 780. I also managed to resize it to 320 wide and crop off those bands at the top and bottom to make it truely widescreen…I’m very proud of myself. I also tried it playing full screen and from a distance (1-2m back) it looks quite nice.
What file sizes should I save the movie as? I want to make a few available (Muniac-style).
All this compression business is finally starting to work!
Wow Andrew that was amazing!
You should seriously consider making your own movie (like an actualy movie like Universe or something)…because that was some awesome editing.
Of course awesome riding as well, I felt you could kind of see how your riding has progressed, from some clips taken earlier in the year to those more recent ones you could tell how your style has improved so much.
And those rails…insane! Well done, an awesome movie!
Thanks Pete. I figured I’ll just make one of these little movies every now and then instead of a DVD. I enjoy it more this way and it’s available to anyone who wants it too. Thanks to Matthew, I’ve almost finished uploading a 50MB version to his server which is much nicer resolution and quality.
That’s truely Kris Holm-esque riding (maybe this isn’t the first time I’ve started a reply to one of your videos with these words?), you’re doing really well with the editing aswell.
So have you essentially cropped the footage from 4:3 to 16:9 (cut off the top and bottom to make it seem wider)?
How were you hoping to achieve “true” 16:9?
What sort of camera were you using?
You probably know all this but I think that unless you have a wide-angle capable camera or else a wide-angle lens adaptor then regardless of the editing software you use, you’re going to be stuck with “fake” 16x9… meaning that you either have to crop the top and bottom (losing valuable CCD resolution) or else stretch the footage out wide which makes it look, stretched.
No, I don’t have a wide-angle lens or anything like that. The reason I use 16:9 is I really like the way it frames the shots.
When I saved the movie with Vegas Movie Studio it saved it as 4:3 with bands at the top and bottom, but for this 50MB version that will be avaiable very soon I cropped off the top and bottom (the black stripes) to make it 720x432 or something like that.
Andrew…you’re a fantastic example of an inspiring rider and person. I’m constantly amazed by the depth of knowledge, creativity and personality you convey in your videos and posts. Thank you. Just great. I’m showing this to all my friends (non-uni-ers) and they think it’s amazing too. You just inspired a room full of kids to try unicycling! (I’m having a little BBQ party tonight).
Yay! Watching the two videos side by side is amazing. I’m really glad you got the divx working for you. Now the video finally does your riding justice.
Wow! That’s quite something. You can ride a unicycle over thing many people couldn’t walk or jump over. I think may favorite part was the rail riding section. Good work!
John,
I was really impressed by the DivX compression…and all you get with the trial version is that little “DivX” logo bottom right for a few seconds…or will they have dumped a whole lot of spyware on my computer? If they have it hasn’t been picked up by Ad-aware or Spybot. Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch?
Seager,
I’m glad too, thanks a lot for your help.
PopeSamXVI,
They may not be similar lines but you’ve most likely got a whole bunch of fantastic trials lines you haven’t yet spotted. I spot new ones every day…trials lines are everywhere, in every country.
jsm and Tim,
Cheers.
Now once I get my super-dooper upgraded muni up and running with all the improvements I’ll have to start making some mini muni movies. Hmmm, I’ll have to get practising first I think. Believe it or not muni still remains my favourite style of riding.
The free version of DivX available here does not have all of the compression features of the DivX Pro product. With the free version you’re effectively getting the compression features available in the old version of DivX 3 or DivX 4 (the previous version of DviX).
I’ve got the paid for version of DivX Pro. You get better compression with the Pro version. They say the improvement is about 30% in compression.
There used to be an adware supported version of DivX Pro. It seems they may have discontinued that (at least I don’t see that version in their download area). I don’t know if the trial versions are ad supported or not.
I actually prefer the compression used for WMV. It looks better to me at lower bitrates. DivX gets all blocky at lower bitrates. WMV gets blurry. The blurry effect looks better than the blocky effect.
As far as compression goes, DivX 5 Pro and WMV 9 are about equal in how small you can get a file. WMV 9 is going to be better than the free version of DivX 5.
DivX is nice with programs like VirtualDub that work with AVI files. VirtualDub and many other free tools can’t do WMV. In those cases DivX is a popular choice.
The DivX logo display is actually a configurable option. Go to the DivX Decoder Configuration. There will be an option to disable the logo (at least there is in the Pro version).
On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 19:11:54 -0600, “andrew_carter” wrote:
>So is DivX only good for the higher bitrates? How
>high will I have to go for an almost lossless-looking movie? Should I
>be playing around with anything other than bitrate?
DivX works well also for low bitrates, you can go ridicilously low and
still have something watchable. I forgot what it’s called but you
should do the compression in several rounds. In the first round, the
codec just analyses the video and makes ‘notes’ to direct the variable
bitrate for the second round which is the actual compression. That
saves quite a lot of bytes without sacrificing quality. There are more
things to play with. Also the LAME mp3 codec has a few options to play
with. Of course with many bit-saving options (e.g. mono sound) you pay
in quality.
Andrew the movie is absolutely great!! When you yourself comment to a
video you almost always mention something you like especially (which
is nice). I’m however not able to reciprocate because I can’t make a
choice…
Klaas Bil - Newsgroup Addict
It’s impossible to get old when you ride a unicycle - John (what’s in a name) Childs
We just got a Kodak Easyshare camera and I tried uploading a 30 sec. video and it came in .MOV form. So I can only watch it on quicktime and can’t edit it on Windows Movie Maker. Also Divx won’t play so i’m assu,ing it can’t edit it either. How does one change the file extension? Sorry bout the threadjack. Great video Andrew, I thought I saw all your mini’s but some of that seemed new.
I also tried it playing full screen and from a distance (1-2m back) it looks quite nice.
Wow! That’s quite something. You can ride a unicycle over thing many people couldn’t walk or jump over. I think may favorite part was the rail riding section. Good work!