Tech-E

Rather than trying to explain what's going on ... we have turned our email correspondence into web pages.

If any part of this interests you, then you should join us. Just email capn@membrane.com.

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Capn' Writes to Willie

(Captain and Willie had been testing the internet for the transfer of video clips via email:)

Zee operlation vuz a success!!

The file unzipped, apparently fully intact, sound and all. Let's make movies!!!

What is your video library like? What is your hardware setup like?

I'll give you a ring ASAP. From the phone no. area code you gave me I assume you are in New Mexico, right? We are based in the Philadelphia area.

I'll be in touch, we will need to get a plan of attack in order.

Help Says, "Here's A Plan"

everyone,

please meet each other. after a long time coming, the "movie" is about to go into high gear.

2) who everyone is:

honey - star
sidd - technical supervisor / systems
dan - intern & associate producer in training
capn - logistics, technical & support
help - director & business management
Willie - technical supervisor / sight
bob - screen play

dan, capn, and willie should not hesitate to communicate all their efforts via email.

3) immediate tasks

sidd - advice on the best way to transfer and store data
dan - script, exploration of national archives, visual education
capn - editing of tech communications to web pages, exploration of national archives, visual education
help - promotion & funding
Willie - heading up the education on visual possibilities

IF ANYONE DOES NOT HAVE A COPY OF THE SOUNDTRACK DEMO, PLEASE SAY SO.

.... ACTION!

Sidd says,

1) we shuld make clips available in as many formats as possible ... quicktime,avi,fli .. u name it we should do it

2)single frame is nice idea

3)we can reduce the size of clips on the web by
a)reducing frame size (320 x200 pixels seems fair smaller is also done ) and
b) reducing frame per sec ... reducing fps below 15 will probably result in unacceptable quality.

4)we r going after isdn .. that will alleviate some of the problem .. but remember the vast majority of people are coming in over 28.8 or 14.4 modems ... that is the limiting factor.

5) we can also make clips availablein a variety of combos .. reduced frame size, reduced fps ....

6)mpeg, fli etc also have their own compression built in .. so zipping will not help much.

7) for some images , "fractal compression" is very effective, but has been found ineffective for most .. will investigate ..."

Willie jumps on it:

Formats are no problem .avi, .mov, etc. And I'll redo the test.zip at 160 x 120@10 fps. 50%. Also heres PanColr.tif, with the blue and green we would need.

Help Replies

sidd seemed to think we shouldn't go less then 15 fps

i guess this will be a good test.

also, can someone put together a little glossary for our web visitors ... like what an avi file is and how to get your browser to see video, etc ?

i want to make it so that someone can come to the site, and learn about helping us create (and help contribute.) for instance, should we put the blue screen tiff up for everyone to get off the web page? (70+M)

am i right in assuming that we can then blend animation and live action created on blue screen with footage from the national archieves as back ground?

Willie continues:

sidd is right about the 15 fps, 10 fps is a little jerky but not all that bad, for the internet it may be all right, but for a CD I'd do better. The PanColr.tif was for anyone who was not sure of the Pantone colors we are looking for. As far as a format, I'd go with a .mov. Macs have a simple player, which comes with thier operating system. PC's or windows have the media tool, which needs [MCI] quicktime for windows. There are a number of viewers available for both systems, or all systems on the internet as freeware. I may be wrong, but I believe that flattened .mov format would be more of a standard. New to this, but I think I would overlay the animation with national archieves into a file and then blend the live action with that file. I'm not sure of how your doing the animation is it computer generated ?

Also I don't have a copy of the sound track.

Help offers help:

I've placed a copy of fear.gif here. Anyone interested in morphing scarey-ness out of it, please mail capn'