good evening,

first, I do not consider this round 2, but rather Update 2.

The crocus' have broken through the native prairie grasslands, gives a couple weeks of bloom each spring. Went out to film yesterday, it started to get windy and rained!! Today we woke up with snow on the ground and it snowed all day!! If it kills the flowers that is it for the year, UGGggg. Not essential for what i am doing but it would be nice.

Next week, weather permitting we are heading a few hours SW to shoot.


Hope all is going well for everyone!!!

I think geir is right, this is kind of videography is a "Love Hate" relationship!

Why I'm doing this!
 

Hi folks!
Well, long time since I've been writing something here!
Deadline for second round of footage for the long-form is approaching and I got nothing!

Last week I spent 5 days and nights out for the capercaillie and black grouse mating game, an empty moore was the only thing I was able to record during these days! So I'm in a real bad mood right now!!!

But I've been into this game for too long, so I know that sh** happens from time to time and I will definitive make up an entry showing Ole-Arne and me strive in the moore during these days and nights. But please don't expect any masterpiece... ...think I have to rewrite my script a bit... ...hmmm... ...but there is a late spring, summer and fall coming... ...have to make up a plan D, or was it plan E...

Hi to all of you Long Formers :)

Sad to hear about you not finding the capercaillie and black grouse, PJ.
It's such an exciting game to watch.
Way up here on the north west coast, we have "the springtime og our life".
Well, maybe I'm overdoing by telling you so, but the leaves are at least green and in the gardens the flower is blooming, so just come on over Mat and do some gardening :)
The weather has been great for many days now, but on Saturday it started windy and today it also started raining.
Last week I took a trip to Runde and the Puffins was there allright :)
Thousands of them and I did see the Great Skua, too (my favorite).
On Saturday me and my youngest daughter (Elisabeth) made another trip to Runde, but this time the wind was to rough for any filming. Very sad, as the Puffins was struggling to make a landing :) It was quite amusing to watch, as they came in for landing like some torpedo missiles and then again, at the last seccond made a loop not to hit the ground.
I wish I could have capture it on tape, but sorry, the wind was too tough for my camera.
As my schedule is almost over booked because of my studies and work, I have to make a change in my plans for this Long Form contest. This change will be in how I "sew" together the whole story. Maybe the main story not will be about the seabirds or the puffins, but a travel through this part of Norway, showing the rich nature where the puffins and other seabirds will be a part of it all? Also I wish I was 2 person sometimes :) It's very hard to make certain takes and moves if you're filming yourself walking/talking etc.
Okidoki, I'll post a picture of a puffin at my feedback tread.

CU
Geir Inge

Per,


I thought I might share something that perhaps you know, perhaps not.

Various Grouse species that use a Lek to Drum up their mates do so at two different times of the year. In the Fall when the photo period is similar to that of spring you can often find them at their lek putting on a bit of a display.

so, if you can find the birds Lek you can get another chance at some footage.


Just a thought.


I know what its like to be out and get nothing, frustrating to say the least. After the snow on the blooming chorcus, I was pleased to see some survivors (perhaps late bloomers) yesterday. Now I am fighting gales. Kind of hard to fim macro when the plant is bashing around!!!

Considering building a wind barrier today!!!

Oh yea, last trek out in the blind the wind broke the inner graphite spars of my blind!!! Man, this year has been bad for wind!!!!!!!!!!

the Fun???!! Never Ends

Hi all:

Have a question for all of you experts out there. But first, sorry to hear about you not finding what you were after Per! You have the experience so you know this happens. I'm new at wildlife filming and I am starting to find out how Much this happens! For me, spying the Rocky Mountain Big Horn Sheep is my ultimate inspiration, and I spent 4 months in the park before I finally had good fortune to see them and catch them on film. I actually feel very fortunate that it only took 4 months. Talking with some rangers of the park, one said that it took them 6 years before seeing them! (As elusive as they are, still I don't think they must have been looking very hard ;-)).

Question for all of you. I have an MP3 music file for part of my entry. If you play it, it is a flawless recording but when it is processed with my movie, it isn't completely clean and has a slight skip here and there. It is the same using the MP3 or using it as a WAV file. These hiccups (there are only a few) are not random but occur in the same place every time. It's processed at the highest rates for audio recording.

Any suggestions?

Thanks everyone! Looking forward to seeing everyone's progress in a week!

Cat

Cat,

If you have a lot of video streams with a high data rate WAV file, sometimes your NLE can't keep up and it skips frames.

Have you tried exporting the video and see if it plays fine?

My last computer would do that since it only had a single 1.67GHz chip. In order to get smooth playback I would have it skip frames. But once I exported the movie, it played fine with no problem.

If you're still having problems try reducing the data rate.

Good luck on your project. I haven't shot a thing for phase two yet!

Hi Kevin:

Thanks much for the advice. I'm still having the same problem, which is a bit baffling. I thought you had solved the problem by suggesting to Down-sample instead of keeping the data rate really high because I noticed that the data rate for the audio I was using was at 44.100 KHz and I was processing it higher. But no matter how low I go, it still hiccups in the same places in the exported movie file. If I play the mp3 file through itunes on my Mac, it plays fine. An interesting note. The hiccups occur in two places, and both times the music is playing the same notes for it repeats at the end.

I'll keep experimenting and let you know if I stumble across anything.

Thanks much!

Cat

You're doing this on a Mac? Convert it to AIFF instead of WAV and see how it does.

Ahh, now that's smart! I'll remember that! I'll convert to an aiff for the Mac. Thanks, Kevin. That's why they pay you the big bucks. I didn't think of it because I haven't run across the problem before with wav files, but mp3's seem to be a different story.

For some reason, I re-exported the mp3 as a wav and tried it again, and it seemed to like this. So for now, I'm re-processing with the wav instead of the mp3. But what you say makes sense, and I'll stick with the aiff files on the Mac from now on.

Now what's this? You have all of that amazing footage from Africa and haven't started yet for the long form submissions starting tomorrow? And you're in the short form round as well? For shame, Kevin! You act like you actually have a real job with film or something ;-).

Don't think for a minute I heave a sigh of relief hearing you admit this. You tend to blow things out of the park once you turn your mind to it! Looking forward to seeing what you "throw" together.

Cat

Yes Cat I agree.... Kevin's work inspires me. I too have "nothing" new for this round, but have ideas how to cobble something together by the deadline..I am excited because end of this month I get to go "home" to Glacier Park and spend a few days with the archivist.

Chris

Cat, just confirming what Kevin says. I had to convert a MP3 to AIFF before it was useable on my FCP-timeline. Think I did the conversion in QuickTime Player (Pro-version), File, Export..., then choose Sound to AIFF in the Export to-field!
In fact this was the Wilhelm Tell soundtrack, which I used in my Norwegian Wood entry (DVC/UWOL Charity Challenge).

Cat,

Yeah, I'm in the short form too. Going to try and get out today and try to get some filming for that.

Not looking too promising on the long form. :)

Hi All,

With the increase in projects over the last few weeks coupled with everything else we have in production, it is not a reality to keep my long form project alive at present.

I wish you all the best of luck.

If any of you need something feel free to contact.

And remember HAVE FUN.

It seems like nothing in the last six months has gone to plan, and UWOL long form is no exception.

Plan A - to film five-minute segments each month for a "year-in-the-life-of" type video seemed achievable at the time, but fell victim to lack of time (especially during the short daylight hours of winter and early spring)

Plan B - modify plan A to do ten-minute segments each season - but even that has failed due to lack of time.

Plan C - came to me yesterday when I took the camera to work with me in hope of producing something for the UWOL 13. The conditions weren't right for what I had in mind, but I thought I could start another project for the long-form. So I took some 20 minutes-worth of clips.

Today I went through the clips with MPEGstreamclip (back to the old computer for this as it doesn't seem to want to run on the new one - something to do with Vista 64?), discarded the obvious failures and wobbly bits - the strong winds yesterday weren't helping with keeping the equipment steady. That left me with some 10 minutes to clean-up and trim down in Premiere elements - on the laptop as I was fed up of the old desk-top crashing. Except that PE4 stopped working - it has apparently imported the clips, but won't let me do anything else. I will get version 7 for the new desktop - but I don't have time to organise it right now, as I have to go back to work in half an hour.

So, sad to say, I'm now out of the running on this.

Next video objective - to keep out of the shark tank for UWOL 13!!

The rest of you - remember rule #11

Good Morning,


Just rendering a few minutes of footage for part three of my long form.

Im in the short form and was thinking about shooting some today, well its blowing and snowing out there!! Ugggg!

Well, I still haven't shot anything for my long form. BUT, something fell into my lap that is PERFECT for me.
So, I begged Meryem for a bit of an extension so I could get this one in the can.

I can incorporate some of the footage from the first round of my original idea into this one.

So, if I can get this interview in the next couple days I think I'll have a project that I can really get into.

Waiting to hear back to see if we're a go or not.

I just got back from my latest trip to the desert. It’s hot. The highest official high temperature while I was out there was 113ºF (45ºC) although I informally measured over that each day. The coolest it got was 84ºF (28.9ºC). Re-radiation from the rocks was intense. There’s nothing moving except at night. By 7:30 AM the heat shimmer is noticeable. I don’t think any of the footage I shot will be useable. If this heat wave doesn’t break soon I may have to rethink my project. I guess this may be my comeuppance for getting so much work done early this year while many of us were waiting for snow to melt! Think of Per Johan’s round two difficulties with the Capercaillie, only instead of sitting in the blind think of sitting in the oven…

Back home it’s a relatively cool 102º.

Mike,
Talk about extremes. I just got back from shooting in Alaska, where the winds were steady, the rain was constant, and I had to wear thermal underwear. Better than the heat, though.

Good morning,

Well, every place, season and situation offers challenges to be sure.

We have had cool temperatures wind as usual but actually some semi still days!!!

I have been getting some footage for part one of my long form, everything is about two to three weeks behind time frame wise.

I wil be asssembling footage the next two weeks, also have also have initial stages shooting in the next few weeks.

Here is a couple snap shots of our subject, code named "Chip"


Dale

How you doing
 

I was wondering how you all are coming along with your features!! The end is not that far off!!!

Was previewing footage, important stuff, only to find a bug landed on my lens and I never noticed it concentrating on my subject!!! It stands out now!!! mzy hzve to use a bit of it anyway>

Know a way to take the bug out???

That bugs me too.
 

Ouch Dale! I did a video about a birding contest that had interviews in a salt marsh and I had the same problem. Mosquitoes landed on the lens during the interviews and I didn’t detect it until I got home. In one case the background was static so I was able to deinterlace and export the clip as stills. In Photoshop I replaced the bug on each frame with background from the last clean frame and then re-imported as video. It worked pretty well. In another instance the background was a crowd of moving people. I found a shirt that was very similar to the one that the talent was wearing and shot a close-up of my own arm in that shirt and pretending to swat a mosquito. Once the bug landed on the lens I cut away to that shot and when I cut back it was gone. Ugly but it “worked”.

A question looking ahead to the end
 

As I recall, UWOL entries can be posted to sites that accept big files, for viewing, but the judging has always been done with the actual UWOL upload. Will that be the case with the Long Form? I can't imaging squeezing a 30-60 minute entry into 180 MB. The rules are a little unclear on this point.

We have not instituted a file size limit on the finished long-form pieces yet - at the time the rules were instituted, we had no idea how many players (and therefore how much bandwidth...) would be required, so it has been a little tough to anticipate. We probably won't make a final determination on this until we approach the final shake-out after the October round and have a few model compressions upon which to base the decision.

Hope this helps...

Here is a new one for me!!!


all my footage, irreplacable of course, from my spring shoot the audio and video are out of sinc!!!!!!

what would cause that??


always something!!!!!

People get ready!
 

Who's still playing? Can't wait to see how the long form marathon is taking shape...

Reminder that your deadline for round 3 footage is next week!

I finally figured it out
 

I may be the only stupid one out there, it's taken me three years to figure this out. In case anyone else has problems squeezing their movies into the UWOL file size, using a one-pass export instead of two-pass makes all the difference. It cuts the file size in half...duhhh.

Well, I´m still in. I´m finishing the entry today. But this round is just to "stay alive" for me!
I´ve been doing mostly a talking head piece, with some footage from earlier uwol, just to keep interest for what I´m talking about!

This summer has been too hectic both for me and Ole Arne. He has been traveling much in his day time work, so we actually haven´t meet for a couple of months now!

So I believe that it´s going to be much hard work during this fall, to get a piece finished in the end. But as we all say, when it´s getting hot - first of all have fun (Rule #11) :-)

Well, i will certainly try to get something put together for this round, however, like Per Johan, it will be a "stay alive" submission. I have been really busy with my day job lately, & have been living away for work. That has meant i haven't been out filming at all in the last couple of months & haven't had a chance to edit anything, so i am running a bit behind where i would have liked to have been at this point in time. I still need some particular footage to make my end film work the way i would like, so hopefully i can get that footage, if not, i'm not sure how it will all work out. I do have an interview set up with a government biologist, so hopefully i will nail that, & that will add a lot to my story.
Good luck to everyone still in the game.
Bryce

Hi Meryem.
I am still in the LF.
Like the others I'm struggling a bit to get something finished for this 3rd round.
Also my exams keep me busy :(
Still, I will try to mix something together, just so I can keep my head over water :)
I have seen your ULF 3 video Steve at EXroom and it was great. I think our films a very much alike, so I have to try to make mine a bit different :)
I am also planning an interview with the leader (prrsident) of Birdlife Norway (The Norwegian Ornithological Society).

Geir Inge

Meryem- To keep with the new “theme”, I’m still in but I’m also having more troubles with this round. It’s mostly because I left the editing so late. I was under the weather a few days and I find that when I’m ill I make very poor editing choices. I’ll have something done but it won’t be as polished as I had hoped. The desert has been very hot but they’re not experiencing the drought we are here at home, so- I’m scheduled to be off for the field again next week with a very long shot list. Fingers crossed.

I'm actually firing on most cylinders! Overall narrative isn't quite cracked yet but some great stories and creatures coming together. When's the exact deadline again? Still got a bit of editing to do!!!

Cheers!

Are we still required to post entries as .mov files? I am able to produce beautifully small, glitch-free files using Windows Media, but when I export files of any size into Quicktime, even using H.264 the megabytes are always in the hundreds. I just took a 30 MB Windows file of my entry and converted it to Quicktime. It became 378 MB. There has to be a better way.

Well, with some generous dispensation from Meryem I am in. I won't be back home to my computer to start editing until Monday, but will have SOMETHING up next week.

(Went on a boat trip up the the "Gates of the Mountains" today, with the pages from the Lewis and Clark Diaries of their journey thru there fresh in my mind. I could do a short piece on that... but of course that's not remotely my subject... and I will save that for some other time).

Chris Swanberg

OK, then.
I think I passed my medical test at school last Friday :)
So now it's full speed ahead trying to make my ULF something worth looking at.
I have a lots of tapes from different locations, and now I'm focusing on the intro story.

Just a question to you uwolers out there. To my intro I need shots of brown bear and Lynx. Is it much too wrong to use shots taken in a Zoo? I will of caurse give information about this in my film, in the end text, but there's no chance for me to get clips of wild bears or Lynx around where I live. I did visit a Zoo earlier this summer and intend to use it, so what do you think? The use of the clips will be as if the animals where in the wild and not in a Zoo.

By the way, tomorrow morning I'm off to a place where I hopefully will be able to catch some European Pine Marten (Martes martes), on tape.
If so, I'll post a picture of it in my feedback tread.
I will try to comment the rest of the films on Sunday.

Geir Inge

Geir Inge,
I believe that this will be OK, as long as you mention it in your piece that this is captured species. Maybe Meryem could chime in to comment this?

Anyway, good luck in capture footage of the Pine Martens. Our paths will cross here, as I will be in the same area in about 14 days from now!

Geir,


Actually, many, many wildlife and outdoors films shoot tamed, zoo or collection animals and they make no referance to them.

I do not think it really makes a difference but I personally would not make the bulk of my footage around them.

Thank you both for responding Dale and PJ.
Well I most agreed, but it isn't that I want to build a story around the bear and lynx. In my intro I will tell why I got interested in wildlife and nature. Amongst others because of a famous norwegian writer called Mikkjel Foenhus, writing novelles where the animals do have the main roll. So I will use a clip or two from a bear and a lynx when I tell about his influence on me. The main story in my ULF video is still about the wild coast of Mid West Norway.
Now it's 23 pm over here and I'm going straight to bed, up early tomorrow, around 5.30 am for my Pine Marten shots :)

Geir Inge

one solution may be to borrow this footage - maybe per or kevin or one of the other players has a bear or lynx that they would lend, for a credit. it's ok with me if you have a shot or two from someone else, as long as you attribute it properly. a zoo is ok with me, too, it would not be my first choice, and there is a whole discussion about the ethics of wildlife shooting that we could engage, but I think for a placeholder, at least, this would be ok.

i am anticipating that even those of you who finish contest this will have another 2-6 months past the contest of polish work to do, anyway...when you start make longer films, you can re-work them and re-work them so many different ways.

Hi Geir:

I certainly know that Per had the master footage of bear in his "Pond of Bears" UWOL entry. But if that footage isn't available for whatever reason, I have a young black bear in this latest entry you are welcome to. If you go to 17 min 05 sec you can see the angle and distance it was shot at and if that might work for you.

Cheers,

Cat

Thank you for responding to my question about Zoo animals.
Well, I haven't desided yet what to do.
But I might use my Lynx and Brown bear clips (just a few seconds), or perhaps I'll use my shots of the Pine Marten, from todays shooting :)

Geir Inge