green.tv is the first broadband TV channel dedicated to environmental issues. It launched at the beginning of April with the backing of the United Nations Environment Programme.
The site had 250,000 hits in the first week of being online.
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‘Democracy Player is a new kind of browser for watching videos– grab webpages with video and video RSS feeds (including podcasts, video blogs, and BitTorrent feeds), and watch them full screen, one after the other. It’s free and open source.’
I’ve tried this kind of software before. But yesterday, when I installed Democracy Player, for the first time I really saw where this is all going. I think due to the neat way it presents the channels.
More importantly, I’ve actually been using it to find and watch videos. The full screen video quality is smooth. There is a bit of a slow down on the PC when you are downloading several videos (hope they can tweak that).
My favourite channel so far is Media Rights. It makes me want to get out and make videos about the things I care about.
I recommend ‘Fast and Reliable’ about a cycle courier (with a difference). I was touched by this film. Meanwhile ‘Battleground Minnesota’ also made me sit up, as the star Chris (also known as ‘Hip-hop activist Shakademic’) looks very like another (but different) Chris from Minnesota whom I know.
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At 9pm on Good Friday, BBC 3 will broadcast ‘Manchester Passion‘ live from the city centre. It’s a ‘contemporary retelling of the last hours of Jesus life told through the music of Manchester’.
I’m not exactly a big fan of religion (or Manchester pop bands), but you have to admire the BBC for taking a chance with something different like this and that alone makes it worth supporting. It’s being made by the same people as FlashMob the Opera — which I enjoyed.
Hopefully I’ll be there shooting some video to put up here next weekend.
More info on the Manchester City Council website.
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A quick video about working through the night…
It’s day three of Videobloggingweek2006.
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UPDATE (October 2008): this video has ‘retired’ into the archives. I’ve left the production notes below.
Story links:
Rocketboom
Videobloggingweek2006
Last Thursday evening we were standing in an underpass next to the motorway, during a thunderstorm, filming for this. That was just the start… We had a load of fun and there are some very amusing out-takes.
EDITING
The editing took a l-o-n-g time. Even though I’m quite organised, it’s still not enough. I ended up rendering the same effects several times as I made a couple of different versions (and needlessly so, as the effects were unchanged). It can take hours to produce a minute of special effects. So, I need to rethink my workflow: work on the effects separately and then include those prerendered versions on the main timeline in Vegas Video.
HUFFYUV CODEC
I use the free HuffyUV video codec to render archive versions of finished productions to store on disc. The video is uncompressed but HuffyUV gives a smaller file size.
That way I avoid DV compression artifacts on graphics and effects. So, I could also use HuffyUV to render the effects and then drop them into the timeline. Finally, I make DV, MPG2 and online versions from the HuffyUV master.There’s more information about the various tools I use on my favourite software page.
Though overall I’m really delighted with the Sony camcorder, its performance in low-light isn’t too hot. We used my old Canon Hi8 for the shots walking towards the subway and the colour balance and brightness are much better than from the Sony under the same conditions.
We shot a lot of different stuff last week. I have three other things ‘in the can’ to edit, not including the out-takes.
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In this video Peter tries to cheer me up as I wait for an engineer to come and fix my central heating, which is dribbling hot water onto the walkway…
After we had the genuine spur-of-the-moment shots of him dancing, we wondered what else could we add…
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I like it when we brainstorm and videos develop in this way. There’s a funny behind-the-scenes out-take too, which I’ll put up in the next few days.
TRIVIA
‘Jollywood’ was the nickname of Mancunian Films, which had its studios on Dickinson Road in Rusholme in the 1940’s.
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This afternoon I went to Bolton to meet a friend to discuss business. We went into Rhode Island Coffee, in Knowsley Street. We bought a latte and a cappuccino (total cost around £5) and sat at a table near the window, where we looked through a document together.
The staff behind the counter were friendly enough. But were rather too keen on clearing everything away from the tables immediately a plate or cup was empty. We finished our drinks and, soon after, a short bossy woman dressed in black, who seemed to be some kind of ‘floor walker’, asked us to vacate the table so other people could sit there.
I visit coffee shops almost every day and I don’t remember this happening to me ever before. I am not the kind of person who buys one coffee and makes it last several hours.
Even my friend, who is the easiest-going person I know, was fuming about it. He was also embarrassed, as it was my first visit to Bolton in twenty years and he was showing me around.
I said to the woman that I had never been asked to leave a table in a cafe so quickly and that we were probably going to order another coffee. She just said ‘thank you’ and had already sat other people at our table.
This is sheer rudeness and there is no excuse for it. To top it all, I then had the embarrassment of going back to the same shop later to meet two other people, as we had agreed on that location. Before I arrived, they had also noticed this woman’s behaviour and said, if they had known what had happened earlier, they would have met me somewhere else.
I understand that Rhode Island Coffee has its head office in Warrington. My friend remarked that they seem to have adopted the appearance of the American coffee shops but not the same standards of customer service.
In all, the Rhode Island Coffee chain lost four customers today. If you want to relax with a coffee, I recommend you find somewhere else too.
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Mother’s Day is next Sunday, 26 March. But, according to the British charity Save the Children, nine million African children have lost their mum to AIDS…
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