I’m here in Shanghai attending Sun Tech Days. This is a soup-to-nuts show, everything from the operating system up to Web Tier Orchestration. I am definitely playing the wild-eyed-crazy role in this production; my messages of radical openness and Web 2.0 inside-out information flows and doing not necessarily Java-based Web development are a little outside for this crowd, I think. But they have something we don’t have at most of our New World tech shows: a talent contest!
The prize was a lovely and only lightly Sun-branded black leather jacket. There were six entries (one was a pair, so seven contestants). These two came off so close in the crowd voting that they both won. (Warning, 20MB QuickTime).
They both got way more applause than I did.
Taken with the little Canon A710 IS. I really don’t understand video. When I asked iMovie to export this “for the Web”, I got a horrible flickery jaggedy image, way worse than YouTube. I fiddled the parameters but I don’t understand them and could only get it down this small. Back in 2004 I was getting good quality and packing 50+ seconds into only 8M. What’s changed?
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Kevin Marks (Oct 24 2007, at 02:18)
The iMovie presets haven't been touched in years. If you do an export 'for iPod' or 'for iPhone' you'll get a decent-looking mpeg4 file thats reasonably small.
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From: Daniel (Oct 24 2007, at 05:41)
Two things have changed. I'm willing to bet the CCD in your DV camera generates much less noise than the one in your A710.
Noise does not compress well.
Additionally, the first contestant is the sort of video they use to torture test video codecs. Large areas changing at stroboscopic speeds does horrible things to most video codecs, especially when compared to a video of your pet aquatic rock.
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From: Bob Aman (Oct 24 2007, at 09:22)
I have the exact same camera, been using it for kite aerial photography. I've just been leaving the video as AVI.
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From: Francois Dion (Oct 24 2007, at 11:16)
Tim,
At Sun Tech Days Atlanta (07), there was also a talent show and a leather jacket given away. I had assumed that was standard fare at Tech Days!
Now, if only one was allowed a laptop on the stage (or I'd settle for a pair of SL1200 and a mixer), that would be (TECH) days talent, instead of just (Tech Days) talent. :)
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