This week, Facebook opted everyone into a new feature they call Places. It allows you to easily post to your wall where you are. It also allows others to post that they saw you at a particular location. I’m recommending you Opt-Out of this feature and I have created this webpage to show you how. If you’re wondering why this is a bad idea, check out this PleaseRobMe website.
I’ve been struggling to find the best settings to use to save my edited videos. My video camera takes 1280×720 HD footage and I edit with Sony Vegas. There are many formats to choose from and I want a balance of low disk usage and high quality. I found this post and the settings recommend appear to be work well. After selecting Sony AVC I select the “Internet 16:9 HD 30p template and verify the settings as described (except Audio format is ACC).
File>Render As>
Save as type “Sony AVC”
Click “Custom”
Project Tab:
Video Rendering Quality: Best
Video Tab:
Format: AVC
Frame Size: Custom
Width: 1280 Height: 720
“Uncheck” Allow source to adjust frame size
Profile: Main
Entropy Encoding: CABAC“Uncheck” Allow source to adjust frame rate
Field Order: None (Progressive)
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0000
Bitrate (bps): I recommend anywhere from 4,000,000 to 6,000,000 for Vimeo. Only go below for longer videos.Audio Tab:
Format: AVC
Sample Rate: 48,000 Hz
Bit Rate: 128,000System Tab:
Format: MP4RESULT: quality indistinguishable from the original. and if you wanna push it even further, add a ‘light shrapening’ effect to your footage, and the outcome will be EVEN BETTER than your original MTS file quality.
SIZE you ask? between 45 to 60% of the original MTS size.
The output format is the perfectly universal and usable MP4.
I bought a new HD video camera this summer to replace my Canon DV that was dieing a slow death. I LOVE the Sanyo camera I got and the bundle that included a nice case, a 1g memory card, an EXTRA battery, and a HDMI cable, all for under $200. $180 to be exact. I ordered it from Best Buy online. Fry’s had it but it was over $200. The camera shoots 1280×720 30fps. That’s the introductory size of HD, most camera’s now offer 1280 x 1080. I’m happy with 1280×720 and it will help with file sizes of the video. The camera has a nice 3″ LCD screen and 30x OPTICAL zoom! It also has a photo taking mode.
Here is some sample footage that shows you the powerful 30x zoom:
Salt *****. 3.7.4. I LOVED this movie. Took all 3 kids this afternoon for Cassidy’s birthday. I’ve never been a HUGE fan of Angelina Jolie but I really liked her in this movie. The movie is an action packed thriller with a good plot. The action is over the top just like every action flick now a days. There was no gratuitous graphic violence. Very little bad language. And no sex. Goes to show you can make a terrific action movie without that stuff. I thought it had a great ending and I can’t remember ever thinking before a movie was over that I couldn’t wait for the sequel.
Tubing on Lake Travis
Played InkLink with my kids last night. Still one of the best free online games EVER. There is not a whole lot of activity, which is just fine with us because we are happy to have a private room to play in. You can find it at shockwave.com. It’s basically online Pictionary
* This is a duplicate post originally posted here. Google has an issue with that site for some reason and I don’t know that they won’t take it down one day.
There are many folks out there with digital cameras but with little understanding of what they have and what do with the photos they have taken. This post will attempt to help those that want to send one or more photos to a friend.
If you remember when you were shopping for a camera the buzzword was MegaPixels. You were offered 2, 3, 6, 8 or more “megapixel” cameras. The more the better, you were told. Below is a chart of what the megapixels really give you:
| Type of image | Minimum resolution needed | Number of megapixels needed |
|---|---|---|
| Web image | 640 x 480 | 1-megapixel cameras* & up |
| 4″ x 6″ print | 2048 x 1536 | 3-megapixel cameras* & up |
| 8″ x 10″ | 3072 x 2048 | 6-megapixel cameras & up |
| 16″ x 20″ | 3264 x 2448 | 8-megapixel cameras & up |
What this means is that if you plan to print your photos, and depending on the size of the prints you plan to print, you should be using a 3-6 megapixel camera. Now just because you CAN doesn’t mean you SHOULD take high-resolution pictures. Each camera has the option to take photos at a lower resolution than the highest that it supports. So regardless of what megapixel your camera is, if you only plan to take pictures that you can view on your computer, email, put on the web somewhere, or mail your friends, then you should set the camera to take lower-resolution photos. 1024 x 768 or something close to this, is a good size.
The larger the resolution, the bigger the file. Nobody should be mailing around photos that are bigger than 500k each, otherwise you are wasting bandwidth, and eating up valuable space on your PC, SD cards, or wherever you are storing your photos. Often less than 100k per photo will suffice, and if printing, anything greater than a 2 or 3 Megapixel is overkill, unless you plan to print VERY LARGE prints.
Now if space isn’t an issue, and you think “Well, I don’t KNOW which shots I plan to print so I want the option of printing or not printing”, then that’s ok too. Shoot at a high-resolution. But when it comes time to SEND the photos somewhere, do the receiver a favor and scale them down before sending. Sending friends and family 6 megabyte files for each photo is not very friendly.
Resizing Photos
There are many different ways to scale down photos and you may already have a few programs installed on your computer that can do the job. I’ll mention just a few that I recommend.
If you are running Windows XP, try installing the Image Resizer Power Toy. Once installed you open up Windows Explorer, find your photos, right click on them and resize to another size.
A free program which also integrates into Windows Explorer allowing you to right click an image you want to resize, is VSO Image Resizer.
Finally, you can change how you email photos. Instead of starting an email message and attaching a file to it, use a program like Picassa to manage your photos, then select one or more photos, hit the email button and Picassa will give you the option of resizing the photo and will automatically start the editor with the resized files attached! Couldn’t be easier. iPhoto on the Mac works similarly.
There are many other ways to resize your photos, just Google “free image resize” and you’ll find many more choices.
For the daring, FTP your files!
If you have a lot of photos to send and the receiver is a propeller head like me and you are a bit daring, you might dust off your propeller hat and try the following workflow. It actually isn’t that hard and once setup it is incredibly easy!
Download a free FTP program like Filezilla, or for Mac CyberDuck. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It’s an old tried and true technology for moving files from one computer on the Internet to another.
The recipient must have their own website, or be setup to allow FTP access and you must know the address, username and password to connect. Once connected you simply drag and drop from your computer to the FTP program’s window and it will transfer your files to the destination computer. This is the best way to copy many large files to another computer or to a website. As a matter of fact FTP is often the technique used to update websites.
Update Nov 2, 2010: Minus Photo Sharing Service looks nice
Some footage of Kristen’s last games playing LTYA Rookie National League. She played up with the 4th graders as a 3rd grader.