And He Blogs

Since I’ve had a blog, I haven’t ever used it to solicit pledges for the annual MS Ride that I do. However, this year is somewhat special in that it will be my 10th year of riding for Team BRUCE (Bikers Ride Until a Cure Exists). BRUCE is actually Bruce Lowery, who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1992. Bruce’s wife Pam works here at the University of Mary Washington, and she was at one time my boss in the early days of Instructional Technology on this campus. She recruited me back in 1999, and since Lance Armstrong narrowly beat me out to lead the new U.S. Postal Cycling Team , I told her I would love to do it.

Every year when spring comes and I really think of training seriously for the 2-day, 150 mile ride, I always struggle trying to balance the end of the semester, getting ready for Faculty Academy, and training for the two consecutive 75 mile rides. Then I think of Bruce, who struggles daily with his disease, and Pam, who struggles with him. We ride from Richmond, VA to Williamsburg, VA the first day, and then back again the next. Quite by accident I have established a streak of finishing first in Williamsburg for the last 8 years (I rode a mountain bike the first year - ouch). I consider it a challenge to not just ride, but to finish it as fast as I can and push my body for about 4 hours. I’ve ridden through a lot of weather - rain, heat, and even Tropical Storm Barry just last year. We ride because it’s a little bit of suffering to highlight the larger suffering that goes on daily with people with M.S.

So in honor of my 10th ride, I’d like to take advantage of my larger network and encourage you to help me raise finds for this year’s Virginia Credit Union Ride 2008 (formerly the “Virginia Dare”). Please visit my MS Participant page and click the Donate button. You can also throw me some good vibes on May 31 and June 1. Although I will ride in any weather that they tell me is safe to ride in, I prefer sunny and about 75-77 degrees. You can also check out some photos from Bruce’s Flickr photostream.

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I usually consider myself a video guy, as well as an audio and imaging guy too. You know a New Media Specialist. So a new document publishing service shouldn’t deserve much of my attention. Unless, of course, the system enables the use of video in documents. Well, enter Calameo into the conversation and you might see why I’m excited. First, what Calameo does is allow you to share documents online, just like Flickr for photos and YouTube for videos. You can upload Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, or the equivalent in Open Office documents. PDFs and text files are also allowed. You can make your documents public or private. Once you uploaded a few documents, your Calameo home page will have that familiar file sharing look to it (again, think Flickr or YouTube). From here you have lots of possibilities to share you documents. You can embed thumbnail versions in web pages or you can invite friends via email to view your documents. There’s even a direct publishing link to aggregation services like Delicious. An RSS feed of your publications is also available.

But now for the reason, I am excited. You can embed Flash (FLV) video within documents. You can also embed Flash animations or MP3s as well. However, with video you can create a flexible document that offers all of the advantages of an online document with a video component that helps the document come alive. Viewers can then print out the document (minus the video, of course) and have a hard copy of the how-to instructions, report, or term paper (to offer some examples).

The documents use Flash technology and the viewing of an online document gives a much better experience than a PDF in Adobe Acrobat. You can zoom in and get a more detailed view, and then the view follows your mouse around the screen. It’s a much more intuitive way to see a document online and much more of a pleasure. Videos embedded in pages can be played automatically, or started with a click of the play button (which can get somewhat obscured because the controls are a bit faint). The service is in beta, but you can sign up and get an account right away. As usual I blew by the terms of service so you may want to read them before you find out you are giving away the rights to your document. There is, however, a section to add a Creative Commons license to your publications. They seem to have thought of most everything. Much more play by yours truly is in store for this service, but I can see educators who might want to share documents in a more flexible way, taking advantage of this service.

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I’ve been reading and hearing a lot lately about new video products now that NAB is going on. NAB is the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas. I’m always interested in the new camcorders that get introduced. What is gaining in popularity are the h.264/MPEG4 AVC based solid-state memory card cameras. The format that they use is what is known as AVCHD. This relatively new MPEG4 format is being used in a wide variety of ways from DirectTV’s HD compression, to Blu-ray’s new HiDef disc technology, to cell phone video. The advantage of using h.264 (or any of those other names that get used) is that it results in a high quality picture in a smaller file size. For example a video using an MPEG2 format (as in a standard DVD) will require a file that is about twice the size of a file using h.264, at the same quality.

Now you’ve heard me blather on and on about that “other” MPEG4 codec known as DivX. It remains a popular format for online movies (legal, and well, not so legal), and a popular format that is include on many DVD players. Where it hasn’t caught fire is with web video, despite my excitement about it in the past. I had hopes of it being the Yang to Flash (FLV) video’s Ying, but it means a separate plugin to play DivX encoded video. Wouldn’t it be nice if a high quality format could be supported, along with Flash video, in one player/plugin.

Ever since last year, when Adobe announced the beta Flash player that supported not only FLV format, but also h.264, I had this “ideal” situation in the back of my mind. Now, as I’ve been working with video so much in the past few months, I’ve wished for a bit of consolidation. I was almost on to it when I discovered YouTube was encoding a high quality version (h.264) of their standard (FLV) video. I’ve also been wondering what format the “high quality” versions of the Great Lives videos would be, and what format would be used as the “archive” format. Finally, there was the question of how would I implement this on a website? The answer was right there. H.264!

The Jeroen Wijering Flash player is everywhere. Actually, it’s a media player, but it’s referred to as the FLV Media Player. Maybe that’s why it took me so long. It isn’t called the FLV/h.264 Media Player. So how easy was it to use? Well, thanks to Jeroen’s Setup Wizard, it was simple to do some testing. What source material to use, was the next question. How about the best looking video on the web, Apple’s Movie Trailers. I saved the trailers on my hard drive and then uploaded them back to my server, then I plugged the URL of the file into the Wizard. Wow! Gorgeous video! Alright, let’s get this into a blog post right away. So which plugin uses JW’s player? There are plenty including the WordTube and Anarchy plugins, but WordTube isn’t quite what I’m looking for because it is geared toward displaying a playlist of videos, and Anarchy uses the FLV Media Player, but not for h.264. It uses QuickTime. Don’t get me started on the crap that is QuickTime for Windows. No, the best choice for ease of use is the Viper’s Video Quicktags (VVQ). I made one modification to the Javascript code to give fullscreen capability and then produced a post using the FLV button. I filled in the URL to the h.264 video, supplied the width and height, and it was up and lookin’ good. Thanks to Jim Groom, VVQ is working in WordPress Multi-User, allowing anyone at umwblogs.org to take advantage of h.264.

The point here is that the h.264 video acts just like FLV. The file extension can end in .MOV or .MP4, as long as it is an h.264 encoded file, it will work in the FLV Media Player. I even did a test using Hi-Def content (another movie trailer). The file is 1280×544 pixels, weighing in at 85MB, but it does prove the concept. The whole scenario does require that you install the latest Flash Player plugins (version 9.0.115.0 or 9.0.124.0) on your system, but it’s available for PC, Mac, and Linux. Conceptually, if you have a beefy enough system, and a display to go along with it, you can watch videos that are 1920×1080 pixels. On other words, true 1080P HiDef. It’s a breakthrough that’s been around for a little while, but it holds great promise for having Home Theater quality video playing from a little old blog.

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Have I ever told you how fortunate I am (we are) to have a colleague like Gardner Campbell here at Mary Washington? There are many examples of sparks that have fired from my head after listening to a Gardner talk, or speech, or riff, or even watching him in a jam session. However, the one I witnessed tonight will be, I think, THE most memorable. People attending the Great Lives Lecture Series sponsored by the Department of History and American Studies witnessed a happening on April 8, 2008. At least I did. You would never expect Gardner to give an ordinary talk at a Great Lives event, as his lecture on Elvis in 2005 indicates. This was a unique example of “I went to a lecture and a concert broke out!”

He came with his “A” game tonight, as the “Gardner Campbell Dancers” (my name for them) started things off with a short Beatles Medley. Bill Crawley then introduced Gardner with the pride that we all feel in having him on this campus. Gardner, of course, took the stage and immediately showed us his self-effacing humor. He then began his talk. No, that’s such a meek word. He began his sermon, and I mean that in the most agnostic, and yet old tyme gospel hour way. He mocked the Apocalypse by imagining how the world would end, “Beatles Style.” Would it be “Here Comes the Sun”? The brief horn part before the chorus in “Penny Lane”? How about the ending piano chord from “A Day In the Life”? Or, just “THE chord” from the opening of “A Hard Days Night”? Where did that chord come from anyway?

From then on it was a history of the Beatles driven by pure energy. The years 1962- 1970 passed by at a frenetic pace. I think Gardner took a breath in there somewhere. When it was all over, and it was over waaaayyy too soon, he took questions. He answered them like an excited kid who had all this information bottled up inside. It was apparent that each answer could go on as long as the original talk, but he exercised great restraint. I had no doubt going in that I would learn something new. The birth of the “drop T” Beatles logo was my little nugget. The audience that was in attendance seemed to be quite knowledgeable as well, but they were there as much to re-affirm their vows to this great band, more than 40 years on. After the final question was asked, “Are the Beatles still relevant?”, Gardner and crew gave us our answer. Gardner’s trippy, psychedelic shirt was donned for a rendition of “Hey Jude”, and soon the auditorium was filled to the gold UMW crest on the ceiling with choruses of “Na, na na na na na na, na na na na, Hey Jude!” Still relevant? I would say amen, and Amen!

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If you said blogging, you win a prize. At least in my warped mind. Flickr video only allows 90 seconds worth of whatever you’ve got. Looks like Darcy’s reaction was this:

My reaction is to wait and see. Maybe the 1 minute 30 limit will be like Twitter’s 140 character limit. Concise and yet thought provoking. More than a sound bite, but less than a diatribe. Say it in 90 clicks or don’t say it at all. It’s a new Flickr era!

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I AM a “New Breed”, baby!

Watch Now:

 Rush HD [0:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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I haven’t had a lot of time to watch much hockey this season. Honestly, if I can’t watch the games in high-definition, there’s even less motivation to watch. Also, the “real hockey season” (the playoffs) is fast approaching, and with the announcement of more HD channels from my local cable supplier, I will be taking in more games.

But this isn’t a post about Hi-Def TV, HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray (that fight is over!), or even hockey per se. It is about a well written post entitled Fighting words. As most of the serendipitous discoveries come from my connections to colleagues on Twitter, this is no exception. It’s another remarkable benefit of the Internet as community.

So, how I got to the post. First, a tweet from Jon Udell about finding good restaurants in his community. Next, I visited the page displaying downtown Keene N.H. dining options. Then I took a quick visit to the home page of this interesting project, and then to the photo page featuring pictures from some of the Keene residents. One picture caught my eye, a simple picture of two hockey players embroiled in fisticuffs, and it generated all kinds of complex emotions. Some of the emotions I felt were very personal. I only need to see a quarter of the Boston Bruins logo to have thousands of memories flood back of my earliest days watching hockey. Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, and Johnny Bucyk, were the gods I prayed to in the early 70’s. There were plenty of fights in those days too.

Other emotions I had were universally human, however. Two people fighting, both repulsive and thrilling. What were they fighting about? What was the cause? Was someone going to get hurt? Will there be blood? How much blood? Thankfully, the link behind the hockey photo went to Lorianne DiSabato’s blog post about a recent Bruin’s game she attended a couple days before St. Patrick’s Day.

Who needs green beer when you can watch an honest-to-goodness hockey fight?

Her post is as good an argument for keeping fighting in the game of hockey as I’ve ever seen, but that’s a minor argument. She goes on to compare the fights in hockey to the dust-up over recent controversial comments involving Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

You don’t have to agree with or even like [the] comments . . . though, you have to respect his right to make them.

People will argue whether there is any truth contained in the statements that Wright has made. No doubt that what Obama said is true, that they are divisive. So let’s go, everybody get it out of their system. Say what’s on your mind. I would argue that if Barack Obama wants to be president, he can’t defend Wright’s remarks, even if he believes even a little of what he said. He should however defend without reservation, Wright’s right to say those words. Let’s all then agree to disagree and get back to the game.

She ends her post with:

We all want to live in a society where we are judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our Zambonis, but still: without the ability to speak freely and even fight, how will we ever learn how to all get along?

How can you argue with a statement that combines the words of Martin Luther King Jr. with a reference to the machines that clean the ice surface at hockey games? That’s right, you can’t, and don’t even try or we’ll have to throw down! Thank you, Lorianne.

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The world of video sharing websites is changing rapidly. YouTube and its competitors are trying to distinguish themselves by constantly improving their services, so we should see great progress in terms of quality of video and features that these sites offer. My recent quest has been to find the best options for hosted screencasts. The makers of my screencasting tool of choice, Camtasia, offer a (pay) service to host the videos at a site called screencast.com. Here you can host the higher quality, and higher resolution (larger), SWF files that really make screencasts look their best. You also can host those high quality screencasts on your own hosting service, provided you have that little extra know how to get them up and streaming. There is an SWF version of the screencast represented in the above photo available.

The latest version of Camtasia also gives the option of outputting a blog-friendly version of the screencast that works well for embedding into a blog post. However, if you want to give your screencasts a wider audience, you may want to consider YouTube or other video sharing services. Here are a few things you should know about sharing your screencasts online.

The Secret High-Quality YouTube Hack

This really isn’t a secret any more, but YouTube is experimenting with higher quality videos. YouTube announced that it would offer higher quality versions of video, one reason being so that they can accommodate the Apple iPhone and Apple TV, which don’t play Flash video. The video format that is used is a variant of MPEG-4 known as h.264. Adobe recently upgraded their Flash player to play h.264 video in addition to Flash video (FLV). The h.264 versions of the video will give the Apple TV users a more TV friendly experience because it is higher resolution.

To see the higher quality version videos on YouTube you need to add an extra little bit of text to the URL of a YouTube video. Whatever the URL is, add &fmt=18 to the end of the URL. If that doesn’t work, you can try &fmt=6. To see the screencast represented by the photo above at high quality resolution, go to:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=O-W-3OIrJKg&fmt=18

Compare that with the low quality version that is located by using the traditional URL (without the &fmt=18):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=O-W-3OIrJKg

The obvious benefit to the high quality version is that the text is much sharper. The downside is that it will take longer to download to a user’s machine (it’s roughly twice the size). You also lose a bit of the “instant seeking” ability. With a standard YouTube video (the Flash version) you can start watching at any point by moving the play head to the position that you wish. You won’t be able to do that with the h.264 version until it downloads entirely to your computer.

You can click on the images below to compare side-by-side screenshots.

Other Video Sharing Sites

I experimented superficially with some other video sharing sites, and I can recommend two that give good quality encoding of screencasts. One is Blip.tv, which is my personal favorite video sharing/TV channel service. Blip.tv’s selling point, besides the myriad of options to publish, cross-post, distribute, advertise, etc., is that they use the higher quality On2 codec for Flash video. I can also customize a player to match a given blog, and maximize the window to fit in the space that a given WordPress theme provides.

The other site that impressed me was Vimeo. This is one of the first sites to offer HD Flash video, and while I didn’t try to upload the video at HD resolutions, the video quality is quite good at the standard setting. You also can view the video full screen and while the artifacts of compression are more noticeable, you get an acceptable quality video to watch. Blip.tv has the full screen capability as well, but I couldn’t get it to work when I embedded the video in a blog post. Lots more testing yet to do, but so far some cool things out there to report. More to come.

Here is the Blip.tv version:

Here is the Vimeo version:

Install Flickr Photo Gallery Plugin in UMWBlogs from Andy Rush on Vimeo.

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It has been this kind of day with machines that I am running Windows Vista on. One of the bugs/problems/annoyances is the strange behavior of copying files. Sometimes it takes too long for Vista to estimate the time it is going to take to copy a given file or files. Other times it’s estimates are wacky (see the above photo). The forth-coming service pack is supposed to improve this behavior. Let’s hope!

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Flickr photo by orangeacid

When I was a kid it was looking for TV shows that were “in living color”. Now finding shows that are in high definition (HD) are the golden ticket. One of my favorite websites, Engadget HD, posts about communities all across the country that are upgrading their cable service or adding more HD channels. Well, now more HD channels are coming to Fredericksburg, VA.

Here are the channels that will be added:

• CNN HD
• Versus/Golf HD
• TBS HD
• Food Network HD
• HGTV HD
• TLC HD
• Discovery HD
• History Channel HD
• Science Channel HD
• Animal Planet HD
• NHL Network HD
• Travel HD
• Cinemax HD (East)
• Comcast SportsNet HD

What this means to me is more hockey in HD with NHL Network and SportsNet. I can almost smell the Budweiser (US) or the Labatts (Canada) in the cool arena. Hopefully this also means cycling in HD on Versus, plus exotic locations, animals, home improvement, news, science, and food, all in wonderful HD. It’s getting harder and harder to tolerate standard definition (lifts nose into air).

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