I have created the Star field following Douglas' tutorial and is perefect...for TV viewing...That is, there is a big difference in the brightness you get on a TV screen vs. a computer screen: what apprears dark on a pc may be fine on a tv and viceversa...

So if your starfield is designed for computer screening, you should consider making the "stars" bigger, making the vid lighter or whatever...

Hope this helps...!

I always wonder why moving starfields are so popular with SF movies. I guess we can blame StarTrek and Star Wars. If the idea is you're traveling faster than light, the ususal pretext, then the light from the stars you're moving rapidly towards wouldn't be visible, since whatever spacecraft you were in would be moving faster and the light from the stars you susposedly were approaching, so it would never reach your eyes. What's even more funny is as you move through the star field and the stars move towards you in the "Z" direction, they never seem to grow in size.

>>>since whatever spacecraft you were in would be moving faster and the light from the stars you susposedly were approaching, so it would never reach your eyes.

that doesn't sound quite right. seems more like the light from the stars *behind* you would never reach your eyes, so if you looked at the rear view mirror, you'd see nothing. but you would still see anything you were moving towards. anything in that 180 degree hemisphere in front of you would reach your eyes, depending on how much faster than light you were moving. the faster you go, the fewer degrees of coverage you would have, until you were moving so fast that you could only see something directly in front of you.

but then, the light has been shining from the stars for millions of years, so the beam is just waiting for your retina to meet it. whether you sit still or move towards it, you're going to meet it and see it. accellerating to a speed faster than light might produce a visual result similar to the classic hyperspace effect. I'm not sure.

I've never seen a scientific explanation for the classic hyperspace effect. of course, a lot of weird stuff happens when you travel that fast. your realm of time becomes so out of step with your surroundings, becoming much slower relative to the outside, I'm not sure what it would look like.

>>>What's even more funny is as you move through the star field and the stars move towards you in the "Z" direction, they never seem to grow in size.

they are moving past you from such a great distance that the growth is too small to perceive. most stars are several light years apart, so it is easy to move on a straight line and never get close enough to one to see it grow in size. the closest star to us aside from the sun is about 4 light years. it looks like a pin size dot just like all the rest, only a little brighter.

btw - anything like starfields, rippling water, the shadows cast by leafy trees moving in the wind, or the leafy trees themselves for that matter, will compress like crap. too many pixels changing at once. you can do it, but it probably won't look great. be prepared to throw a lot of bits at the problem.

For me the facination with stars began when I was 8 or 9. Growing up in East LA in the 60's, I obviously saw them in the sky, but it wasn't until a family vacation to Pueblo, Colorado that I realized that there were SO MANY of them and that the milky way really existed. I guess the smog in LA was really bad back then because I remember being completly blown away. My folks thought I was a nut.

Anyway, I just found out from the producer of the project that they cut the scene that needed the stars. Oh well, I'd still like to learn how to compress the file down to vcd or web format because I think it's a neat effect.

-franco

Thanks guys for the tips and other thoughts re "Starfields". Turns out PDB is right. I copied the file to DV tape, played it on the TV and voila - the stars returned. Find many useful tips on this forum - keep up the good work.
Regards, Grizzly Ike