Tag Archives: video

What an Unexpected Surprise

This weekend I was helping film videos of school down in Madison. Michael Sweet’s being was the biggest, and main one. We shot all of his stuff in the library. It was fun, but also long. We filmed from 4:30 into the night on Friday in the Library, and then more on Saturday for Sam at Ryan’s apartment. And since filming was happening on sunday too, and early in the mourning. I decided it would be helpful to stay in Madison to save time and gas money. So I stayed over at Sam and Kyle’s place. We finished up this weekend’s filming today (Sunday).

The original reason I was around was because I was supposed to be in all 3 movies in some way or another. And I thought my parts were going to be filmed. It turns out we did do some of my stuff for Sam’s video on Saturday. But that was it.

On friday I decided I would film the production of these films, Sam’s, Kyle’s, and mostly Michael’s. And they thought that was a cool idea, and over the weekend they became even more happy with the idea. So this means I have a video for class now: A documentary about the production of some of my classmates videos. I am not sure how much of a cohesive and interesting product I will be able to make out of it, but I will try my best. So far I have about 4 hours of footage from the 3 days. And will be getting at least 2 more hours, if not 4, from the rest of the shoots.

Oh Yeah, the Surprise…

I knew my parents had gotten me something. I knew this from talking to my mom on saturday about staying down in Madison. She mentioned they had gotten me something. I had no clue what it could be, and expected something like a new button-down shirt, or other clothing.

When I got home today from the 3rd day of shooting, I found a new Mattress in my bed with Kadie atop sleeping. Sweet, a new mattress. I can’t remember the last time I got a new one, and this one is soooo much nicer. I think I shall take a nap now. I did not sleep too well on Sam’s couch, twas too tall for it.

Mole Money, Mole Problems.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv1OYcPPDnc

This video here was an idea I had while listening to this song from the Best of Bootie 2006 mix cd on the way home from school. It is a collection of some of the best mash-ups of that year. The song in question is: ‘The Money Song (Hard-Fi vs. Red Hot Chili Peppers vs. Flying Lizards vs. Abba vs. Jay-Z)’ by team9.

At one point, mis-heard lyrics jumped into my head, and I could not get them out. And then the idea of illustrating these lyrics to make an amusing video followed. So, after about 8 hours of work, some of it late in the night. I present Mole Money, Mole problems.

Special thanks goes to Tony for help with the whore. She would look more like a ‘dirty old grandma’ without him.

How to Get a YouTube video onto Your Verizon Phone

Today in class I figured out how to Get a YouTube video on a Verizon Cell Phone for Sam. I thought I would create a little tutorial for him, and others and place it on my site. So here it is.

Requirements for this specific tutorial:

Part one
Get the video from YouTube.

  1. Using safari go to the page for the video you want.
    A screenshot of a YouTube page
  2. Open up the activity monitor in Safari. (Command-Option-A)
  3. Find the file in the list that is the biggest. This should be the only file that is over 1mb in the list.
    A screenshot of a YouTube page
  4. Hold down option and double click the link in the list. This will download the file to your default download location. It will be named “get_video”.
  5. Go into the Finder and rename the file to something ending in flv.
    A screenshot of a YouTube page

Part Two
Convert the file to a format you can use on your phone.

  1. Open the newly renamed .flv file in Quicktime Player.
    A screenshot of a YouTube page
  2. Using the timeline select 29 seconds of the video you want to use. (I say 29 since the limit is 30 seconds, and just 1 frame extra over that limit will cause it to be too long. Thus 29 seconds keeps you safe.
  3. Copy this selection (Command C)
  4. Create a new player from the file menu (Command-N) and paste (Command-V) the video into it. Go to the end of the video and verify that the time is indeed 29 seconds or less.
  5. Choose export from the file menu. (Command-E)
  6. From the Export format menu select “3G”. And then click options.
    A screenshot of a YouTube page
  7. Now you need to set up the specs for the video. I found that the default bit-rates and formats worked on the phone I was doing this with, so I recommend using those. I also found that the newest version of Quicktime updated the 3G capabilities and formats. So if you are using a version below 7.4 the dialogs might look a bit different than mine.
  8. Select ‘3GP’ or ‘3GPP (Mobile MP4)’ (depending on your quicktime version) from the File format menu at the top of the 3G Export Settings dialog. This should in both cases set all the default settings needed to export. Below I have a screenshot of the settings just incase.
    A screenshot of a YouTube page
  9. Click OK and then Click Save. Once finished encoding you should have a video file ready to send to the phone.

Part Three
Send the video to the phone.

  1. Head over to https://picture.vzw.com/ and click “Send a Message” over on the left.
    A screenshot of a YouTube page
  2. Click ‘Upload Media’ located at the bottom of the left column of the interface.
  3. Follow the dialogs to pick your exported video and upload it.
  4. Once uploaded drag the preview of your video over to the area on the right and enter any text you want to send along with it. Click Preview & send.
  5. On the next dialog you will enter the number of the phone you are sending to and an optional additional text message.
  6. Click send and it should send.

Part Four
The disclaimers and notes.

  • This might work for sending to other carriers phones. You would have to test to see. It might be verizon only. And if that is the case there might be other services out there that let you send 3GP videos to phones on those carriers.
  • This will work with other settings and 3g2 videos. Though this depends on the phone you are sending to some can’t play all file types, or bit-rates. So play with increasing the bit-rates and sizes and 3g formats to see what works and what don’t. Remember the Verizon site limits the file size to 3mb. So you might be able to get some clips looking really good. You never know. I just don’t have any phones handy to test with.
  • There are other ways to get the FLV from YouTube. The method shown here is just a quick and easy one all Mac users can do. KeepVid.com is another way to download the FLV.
  • There are other ways to encode to 3g other than Quicktime with Quicktime Pro. I don’t know them off hand, but this will work with those too as long as the produced 3g videos are of the proper specs.
  • Remember there are fees related to messages and data on phones. So don’t go crazy with this unless you know what your rates are, or the rates of the person receiving the video.

I hope this tutorial is found to be useful in some way. Apologies if something is unclear. Ask in the comments and I might be able to help.
Remember that Perian is the only way you can open the FLV in Quicktime, and it needs ‘.flv’ at the end of the file to open it.

Attack of the 30 Foot Salsa Jar

Here is another new video I made for Video Production today.

This time the objective was to create “an exciting movie trailer from very boring video footage.” And very boring it was. I think it turned out kind of ok. There are still things I wish I could have done to it, but due to time, and the fact I was using iMovie HD 6 I did not get to them.

The video was edited in iMovie HD 6. The music was made in Grageband, and the sound effects came from a website that escapes my memory right now. The title slides were made in Photoshop. All done between 4:30am and 7:30am. It is also a bit short too. It was sposto be at least 1 min long.

Phishing PSA

Here is a PSA I made for Video Production. The goal of the project was to make a 60 second spot that was a PSA advocating a call to action on a chosen subject. I picked phishing because I thought it was a new and fresh topic that would be unique, and I knew pretty much how to explain it. This also gave me a chance to work with Motion for the first time. Let me know if you learned anything from it in the comments of this post, or the video’s YouTube page.

Bat Hunting at 4:00am

I was reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince last night, and noticed my cat jumping around on the table. Then I noticed the bat… So I went and got my video camera…

Make sure you right click and do a save as to download these videos.
You will find your self waiting for the whole thing to load before being able to view it other wise.

Video: Bat Hunting Large – (Right Click; Save As)
Format: H.264/AAC (Quicktime 7) 640×356 Time: 3:49 File Size: 27.68mb

Video: Bat Hunting Small – (Right Click; Save As)
Format: H.264/AAC (Quicktime 7) 331×185 Time: 3:49 File Size: 7.06mb

Hosted by Archive.org & OurMedia.org, download speed may be slow, but it is free, and permanent.

Videos From: My Trip to Cedar Point

The Digital camera I had with me (my brother’s Kodak CX6230) was able to take small videos, and since I had a large memory card stuffed in it, I took some.

I then re-compressed them smaller, and have posted them here:

Videos Require Quicktime 6+ or equivalent mp4 player to play

Video: Lucky_Mart.mp4 1.59mb
Going into the gas station ‘Lucky Mart’

Video: wicked_twister.mp4 1.57mb
Tim and Mike riding ‘Wicked Twister’

Video: top_thrill_dragster.mp4 1.28mb
Top Thrill Dragster running

Video: paying_a_toll.mp4 1.62mb
Paying a toll

Video: paying_another_toll.mp4 1.60mb
Paying another toll, and the 2 we went thoguh that were computerized (ipass) when we did not have an ipass.

Video: though_chicago.mp4 1.68mb
Going past Chicago during rush hour

Video: traffic_at_night.mp4 1.44mb
Traffic at night on the way home