Honeymoon Part 2

Well, once again I've updated my blog to use Picasa Web Albums (a google service). This will allow me to upload a lot more and more often. Also, it allows you to see the full image size and has a slideshow function for a close to iPhoto feel.

So, without further ado, here is the Honeymoon Part 2 album that everyone has been pestering me to put up. Yes, I do love you all ; )

Honeymoon Part 2

The Kids

Kenny & Naomi

To download click here.

Thought I'd try some video editing in iMovie HD (if you're using Windows you don't know what you're missing). Unfortunately the only place I could find to upload the file and did most everything I wanted was Google Video. It can be downloaded but you have to use their lame player. I'm still on the hunt for a site that'll let users download the original .mov file for great quality ... Box.net would be great but this video is a tad bit bigger than their 10MB limit for freeloaders like me = ) if only I could get 5 friends to use it ... then they'd upgrade my account for free! Check it out. Pretty neat service and it's the box to your upper right.

What I did find was that our smugmug account allows mpg files to be uploaded. Unfortunately it has to be mpeg-1 which is grossly outdated (DVD's use mpeg2 and the web standard is now mpeg4). This means lower quality and larger sizes but at least you can download an actual file and play it in almost any player (the one good thing about mpeg-1). So this is a win for those of you who want to save home movies (Kirk and Shelly ... hint). Anyway, enjoy. It took a lot of time to figure this out.



For those interested (maybe Kevin):

Original source .mov videos (3) -> iMovie HD (to edit) -> exported .dv file (same as mini DV cameras)

Exported .dv file -> FFmpegX (to convert to .mpg video and .mp2 audio) -> FFmpegX to mux (to join) .mpg video & .mp2 audio together -> Final .mpg file with both video and audio

What took so long to figure out:
1) To get a working .mpg video (without audio) I had to use the .dv source file and use the mpeg1 ffmpeg encoder with a video size of 352x240. Originally I was trying to use the native video size of 320x240. What I found out was that in order for players to recognize mpeg-1 I HAD to use 352x240 (go figure). Once I switched the video size I immediately got a working video file. Unfortunately I didn't have any working audio in the mpeg1 file.

2) For some reason FFmpegX refused to export the .dv or edited .mov to .mpg with the audio intact. It would always separate the two and give me two files (which it still does). From what I understand it's suppose to automatically combine the two. So what I ended up doing was choosing every combination I could think of until I finally found out that it needs the .dv file as the source and if I put .mp2, 224 bitrate, 48,000Hz sampling rate it would finally give me a .mp2 file quicktime would accept and play. For some reason it wouldn't work with the .mov source file.

Happy New Year!

Well, 4th Quarter is finally over so no more 10-12 hour days for me thankfully!!! Surprisingly I didn't get sick until the week after Christmas of which I'm still trying to get over. In fact, right now it's 4:38 in the morning and I'm up because I can't sleep (stupid steroids). Anyway, it's sad that for the first time in 6 weeks I have finally gotten two days off in a row (three actually) and it took me getting sick to get that! Wow, what an end to last year I had. I honestly hope I never work that much ever again as it was exhausting and took away most of the family time I had.

I sincerely hope last year was a good one for all and that this year will be fruitful.