OT: Bali diving promo to share

NickHope wrote on 2/9/2008, 7:48 AM
I've posted a video from our scuba diving in Bali in September 2007 towards the top of my home page. The video is for the dive operator to show silently and looping on a TV on their stand at the London International Dive Show next month.

I would be interested in any comments on the video and whether it downloads/plays smoothly.

Shot with the Sony Z1 in Light and Motion Bluefin housing. Wide shots with their 80 degree port. Most of the macro with Century Optics +3.5 diopter behind flat port. L&M Sunray halogen lights on many shots.

Edited in Sony Vegas Pro 8.0b. The Flash .flv file is 500 kbps video, 128 kbps MP3 audio. I frameserved from Vegas to On2 Flix Pro and did a 2-pass encode and it took over an hour on my quad core! It's hosted on brightcove.com

I'll put a 960x540 version up on Stage6 when I'm happy with it.

Comments

Jeff_Smith wrote on 2/9/2008, 10:48 AM
No stuttering or buffering from my end. Easy to scrub back and forth. The default volume seemed a bit loud for me. Great stuff.

Jeff
busterkeaton wrote on 2/9/2008, 1:34 PM
Plays nice and smooth for me. For my taste I wanted to get to the underwater footage earlier. You start with a great shot of a diver in teal water and then cut back to the preparations for the trip. The shots on the surface don't grab me like the underwater stuff does. The underwater stuff is fabulous. Perhaps a few more underwater shots before returning to land. It gives the viewer a sense of what to expect.
farss wrote on 2/9/2008, 4:29 PM
Excellent footage but I have to agree with Buster, the 'story' at the beginning seems to jump backwards and forwards in time. However if this is going to play out as a loop that might be irrelevant.
One of the problems with the looping vid for expos is figuring out how long the average punter is likely to spend watching it and how long you've got to have something that sucks them in to keep watching.

Bob.
UlfLaursen wrote on 2/9/2008, 10:17 PM
Looks nice, Nick.

What do you need to put this on your homepage with the embeded player interface. The flash package from Adobe?

Thanks.

/Ulf
craftech wrote on 2/10/2008, 9:14 AM
Video looks good. Minimal stuttering on a 1GHZ PIII machine running W98SE. Flawlwss on Core 2 machine running XP Pro.

Audio track is annoying and monotonous.

In a looped video it is likely to drive people nuts who are in nearby booths and especially the guy running your booth. It would be more interesting with a variety of music and some "natural sounds" even if they are dubbed.
It also is a bit too loud, but that isn't the biggest issue IMO.

John
NickHope wrote on 2/13/2008, 7:30 AM
Thanks for all the feedback everyone. On reflection I find myself agreeing with a lot of it so I'll get on with a revised version. John, the DVD version will be silent... I wouldn't impose that music on them all day long. I just wanted some music for the online version. But I take your point.

>> What do you need to put this on your homepage with the embeded player interface. The flash package from Adobe? <<

Ulf, you can do it all with Brightcove's service at www.brightcove.com and the file is hosted by them too. You build the player in their online console. And their free publishpod does a very nice 2-pass flash video, but it only does 30fps. However you can make your own flv file offline and they will not re-encode it, so because my source footage is 25fps I used On2 Flix Pro to encode mine.