Clips at BirdCinema
 

After being alerted to this new site by Don DesJardin I posted a couple of videos there just to test things out. Very easy to use and it does a pretty good job of preserving the quality. The max size is about like youtube. I always use the screen resize button near the bottom right of the player screen. This will result in a smaller, but clearer video. Here's a link to a Green Heron: http://www.birdcinema.com/view_video...b52d302e718133. Hope this works. Thanks to Don for the heads-up. Also check out Dons excellent work while you are there.

Rick

Here's another; guillemots from Dublin Bay ...

http://www.birdcinema.com/view_video...47bc185a877a8b

Glad you guys are able to get your videos posted so others can easily view them. The site is fairly new, and it looks like they will continue to improve it. Don't be shy about offering comments about improvements and problems. One thing that I found, is that when you render 4:3 WMV files, go ahead and render them at at DVD quality (2XXXkbps), which will make the default size 640x480. When the site converts them, it will shrink to the screen and you will achive a better looking picture. Also, the site master is looking into the widescreen issue. If you post a widescreen clip, it will be cropped to 4:3, but if you use the resize button at the bottom, it will show an almost widescreen with the black bars top and bottom. They are working on this issue, and should have it corrected very soon.

Why do they do that stupid resize thing that YouTube does? Why not just show the 320X240 Flash file and let it look good?

I tried contacting BirdCinema about their Description section of the upload form. You are unable to enter a hyphen in the bird name. As the correct common name of many birds needs a hyphen, it appears that the site may have been designed by a non birder. On a Mac it is not possible to contact them as the "contact" button doesn't work.

When all the small bugs are sorted out, the site should be OK but IBC currently is the better site

Bob

Bob,
I already asked about that. Yes, it's a case of a non birders involved. This is who you should email.

David Garcia <garciada@uvsc.edu>

He is the one that contacted and invited me to post and is the Creative Director for the site. I managed to ignore the hyphen issue for now, and hope if enough people complain, they will fix both the (') and (-)issue, or perhaps not and it will be something we just live with. They seem to be very responsive to comments, and indicate that they care. I think, given enough time, things will improve.

Brendan, looks like you've got some interlace artifacts there, noticeable especially when they flap their wings.

I think you're right Ken. So, I've replaced first partridge clip with another which I think I have deinterlaced. Does it look any better? Less blotchy I think, but always room for improvement. I'll try doing the same with the guillemots.

On second thoughts Ken I'm beginning to learn that uploading large .avi files to Bird Cinema is not the way to go (even though it's possible to do so) and that's a lot of my problem, causing my 3 clips to be much degraded and it's not their fault at all.

Sorting me out, hopefully, is the man who has 83 brilliant videos uploaded there already, DonD, say no more ... for God's sake don't tell anyone or he'll surely drop me in it ..

Brendan,

Don't feel bad. It's a tough world these days. What with codecs, artifacts, bitrates, render settings... I plod through by trial and error (make that many errors).

The only solution is perserverance. And following a leader helps.

Rick.
Nice clip of the Green Heron.
It's a beautiful bird.
Yesterday I was on Runde filming some more of the puffins.
And Per Johan came visiting me from Oslo.
Never met him before - in person, just on the forum, he's a very nice guy.
Today we're visiting my homeplace (another small island on the mid coast of Norway). Maybe we'll shoot some scenes together and post to uwol forum :)
I hope to get some shots of the sea otter.

Geir Inge

Geir,

Knowing what you two can do individually...there's no telling what you might come up with together! Hope we get to see some of the footage here in the future.

Rick