Well it’s already 3 Months into 2005 and some things are on target and other things haven’t even been thought of...

2005 Filming has started but its been slow due to miserable weather, just plain dull, but I suppose the arrival of the new High Definition Camera will make up for it.

The 2004 version of the video was previewed at the ‘Both Sides 2008 Conference’, and from that a whole host of other events  events are now taking place, with a promise of a trip to China in June. So  things are perking up.

The initial idea for 2005 was just to film more footage in High-Def, and not to worry about editing it till 2006 at the earliest, but things change fast

 I had to test the computers ability to handle the new HD video files. to see if its up to the job (AMD Athlon 64Bit), the recommended setup is a ‘dual xeon’ but the AMD can just about do it, but you could hardly call it fast.

I have produced some rough edit tests. to experiment with Codec’s, test render times, etc.

there is also a choice of playback methods but i have opted for PC based viewing using windows media 9, I think the results of this method give amazing results in a very small file size.

By accident the first test was set at the wrong setting, which had the result of making the video file really small, the 7 minute file was squashed into a 15 MB file. The material in the video isn’t anything special, just another day on the river, but its amazing how you can see birds far off in the distance, I can even see people walking on the other side of the River. There is just so much more information in the picture your eyes can look all over the image and really take it all in.

I can’t wait to film more interesting ,material !!

The second test has more interesting footage taken on the Mersey Ferry, this 16 minute piece is a very rough edit and their vibration from the boat , on top of the high winds, makes the footage unusable, but good for the test process. I took the original 3 GB file and used a higher quality compression on it, the file is now 50 MB in size

You can view the HD Clips in here:

With the 2004 material I had to alter the footage to make it more interesting, and do a lot of editing and mixing to get the different looks to the piece

es, but I am hoping that I won’t have to do the same with the new material. I wanted to let the footage speak for itself, simply as a High Definition Video Moving Photography Postcard. But it all depends on what there is to film.

If I want to do any Time-lapse, it suddenly becomes a lot trickier, as the software i have to use doesn’t allow time-lapse, the whole tape would have to be brought into the computer and speeded up. and as i said its slow and would eat the hard drive space. so hopefully the images & the events should make the difference, with the ability to increase the computer power later.

For the future it is becoming clear that more computer power and a Realtime hardware assisted editing solution is required. and as it helps to keep this camera as steady as possible, I think a Steadicam will prove invaluable, and maybe then I can be happy?

One thing is for sure, as this technology seems to becoming of age, with the ability to deliver high quality video to virtually anyone, the need to focus on the Path/ Direction, if i am to become more of a slave to this technology, with even more time spent behind sluggish computers,

The dream is of a stress less environment, noiseless form the computers, and an ergonomically controlled working environment fast and efficient as to spend as little time at the computer screen as possible and more time out searching/filming and (living)

Who knows if I will ever get to make a film, its kind of difficult when you’ve spent the most part of your life as a sort of video recluse, to figure out how it will ever happen, with so many things that never get done or said, maybe i will just have to be content with the films that come into my head when I sleep.

First off I really need to get working on the old footage for showing on the BBC Big Screen, I really should have this done by May or before... but that’s not good enough when you plan for January