DOuG pRATt

10 Comments

• 1. jeanie beanie  |  September 30th, 2006 at 9:44 am

  OK, Molly’s hooked. Big Time. Had to play both previews over for her three times each. Oh, and when I said, “Gee, don’t know how to play the embedded video, Molly,” she said, “DUH, Mom, just click the PLAY button, again!” Sheesh! Guess it’s true what they say about kids and computers!

  She asks “What’s up with the tower? Who is that cute guy? This is SO COOL!” Is this the series you and Carol are watching? We don’t have Netflix, natch, but can it be ordered from Amazon.com?

• 2. tom  |  September 30th, 2006 at 11:16 am

  Bummer — wmv. Will have to try this on another computer. One with the w part of wmv. Yes, there *is* a MS MP for Mac, but they seem not to support it. Besides, Camino reports problems with the plugin. Funny, I thought for sure you’d be cross-platform compatible…

• 3. DogRat  |  September 30th, 2006 at 12:59 pm

  Well… it goes like this. Pinnacle Studio 10 (10.6, to be precise) is what I use to capture, edit and create the videos. The output format can be either MPEG, Real or WMV.

  Hey, that MPEG sure sounds nice, huh? There’s even MPEG-1, as well as MPEG-2. The latter is, of course, intended for DVD mastering. The former is intended for transfer to VHS. The lowest bit rate I can set for MPEG-1 is 1100 Kb/sec, and the very nice results seen in the WMV files are 450 Kbps.

  The MPEG-1 quality at 1100 Kbps is awful! It shouldn’t be, so I’m assuming Pinnacle is doing something wrong. And with MPEG-1 wide AVI captures are made narrow. I like having true 16:9 wide.

  There is an option to upgrade to MPEG-4, which supposedly offers an iPod video compatible mode. I don’t know how much that costs, but I’m thinking about trying it. But then I have to worry about who out there has MPEG-4 for Windows Media Player.

  Using the Real format limits the native size to 320×240, but, get Real — not! At least two of the people I know who might be looking at this site don’t have Real installed, and don’t want it. And it doesn’t do widescreen.

  What about MOV format for QuickTime? It’s not an option for what I have to work with right now.

  And that brings me to something I’ve been wondering about, an example of which can be seen by clicking here. I could upload everything to YouTube, which uses a Flash player. But there’s a loss of quality, and there’s no guarantee how long the video will stay there.

• 4. DogRat  |  September 30th, 2006 at 1:14 pm

  Don’t feel bad, Jean! As you know, you weren’t one of the two people who asked me, “how do I see the second video?” Taking advantage of the “Player problem? Click here” links is probably the easiest thing to do.

• 5. DogRat  |  September 30th, 2006 at 1:18 pm

  What’s been so surprising to me about the best of the Animé that I’ve seen, is for all of the fantastic, bizarre stuff it sometimes has, one thing comes through again, and again: the importance of people in one another’s lives. Somehow, this is conveyed in a way that transcends most American live-action movies.

• 6. DogRat  |  September 30th, 2006 at 1:32 pm

  This particular Animé title isn’t a series. You’re probably thinking of “Last Exile,” which we finished before the school year started. “Whisper of the Heart” is superb, and I greatly prefer it over the more fantastical stuff like “Spirited Away.” Most of these titles are “coming of age” stories, with a great deal of universal appeal.

• 7. jeanie beanie  |  September 30th, 2006 at 1:42 pm

  Thanks, Dougie! I’ll check those titles out. Molly’s series, “Fruits Baskets,” is also a “coming of age” story, heavy on the interpersonal relationships (all very innocent, except for some very minor kissing on the cheeks, pecks on the lips, lots of blushing, and lots of verbal bullying by the boyz to each other). I agree that the appeal of anime (Moly insists on call her series “Shojo anime” or “Manga” picky, picky) is that it isn’t the shallow tripe fed to kids on Nick or Disney teen shows. These kids have deeper, more complex issues than “Oh, GAWD, I have, like a PIMPLE, gasp, what AM I going to DO? Like, Josh will NEVER EVER look at me again!”

• 8. jeanie beanie  |  September 30th, 2006 at 1:43 pm

  P.S. Your whole reply to tom was Greek to me! HA! I’m hopeless.

• 9. DogRat  |  September 30th, 2006 at 1:51 pm

  Tom is an MIT grad, so don’t worry about it! The 2-disk deal from Netflix is what Marianne has gone with. Buying all of this stuff would cost a fortune. Anything that isn’t Hollywood’s latest hit, like Animé, is where Netflix really shows its value.

• 10. tom  |  September 30th, 2006 at 3:51 pm

  Just giving you a hard time, Doug — I’m not really a Mac bigot (yet). I would *assume* that there are more Windows machines with QuickTime than Macs with MediaPlayer, but then again, it’s probably a safer assumption that there are more Windows PC’s with MediaPlayer out there than anything else.

  Works fine here (Windows), and I did get the second video just by pressing play again. But I wouldn’t have guessed there was another one coming without the hint.

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