The Hintertux video is online. YAY!

Click the image to go to the video page.

Please comment on the video page.

I used to have all my videos on my website as divx or xvid encoded AVI. This is a pain as you have to download the files to play them.

I found FlowPlayer and it works really well. I used to use flvtool to encode videos as flv files but it is not part of gentoo and I had to keep manually downloading and building it all the time to get the updates.

I recently found this article which shows how to use ffmpeg to encode videos as flv files.

ffmpeg -i video.avi -ar 22050 -ab 32 -f flv -s 320x256 video.flv

I then use the flv with FlowPlayer like this

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
    data="/include/FlowPlayer.swf"
    width="320"
    height="284"
    id="FlowPlayer1">
  <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
  <param name="movie" value="/include/FlowPlayer.swf" />
  <param name="quality" value="high" />
  <param name="scale" value="noScale" />
  <param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
  <param name="allowNetworking" value="all" />

  <param name="flashvars" value="config={
		autoPlay: false,
		loop: false,
		initialScale: 'scale',
		showLoopButton: false,
		showPlayListButtons: false,
		playList: [
			{ url: '/media/tux_07.flv' }
		]
		}" />
</object>

See Hintertux 2007 for an example.

Well, this is crazy. We are back from Hintertux and now its time to start processing the video. My new Helmet cam means that I have loads of footage. 57Gb of raw dv files.

I have started watching the clips and chopping them up into little clips in Cinelerra. Its really a very good application. In my opinion its better than most. The motion tracking and stabilisation is really good.

I did have one problem and it didn’t really like using the XVID AVI files which my helmet camera made so I converted all the files to raw DV files. I used ffmpeg to do this.

ffmpeg -i video.avi -target pal-dv video.dv

I’ve been processing for days already and I still haven’t processed half of the footage.

Well I suppose I could get more than a Rubiks Cube for my birthday.

I have been looking at getting a helmet cam for when I go snowboarding in Hintertux.

The good complete systems are quite expensive, around 800 Euros for a good one, then I need a helmet too, they cost around 40 Euros.

The Elmo SUV

Elmo SUV @ Vegaoptics

The VIO POV 1

VIO POV 1 @ Vegaoptics

I now wish I had bought a better camcorder when I did last year, then I could just get the helmet cam and connect it in, but my DCR-HC37 doesnt have audio or video input.

I think I’ll have to make do with my current camcorder this year, its not even 1 year old yet, at least I’ll have my Rubiks cube.