Tag: video
365 Adventures in 2011: Day 23 – And the Dream posts continue
The past few days have been all about the Disney Dream cruise ship for me. Other than recording today’s Inside the Magic podcast, I spent the day organizing and uploading photos. The items below are my arsenal of press tools to help caption many of the photos and provide other information and media. The small cruise ship is a USB drive with my AquaDuck video, the Admiral Donald is also a USB drive, and it and the rest of the folder are packed with press releases, images, videos, and other materials picked up on the ship. It’s all quite helpful, at least to jog my memory of a very busy two days.
New simple and fast YouTube interface being tested
I was sent a YouTube video link tonight and when I pulled up the page in FireFox to watch it, I noticed that the entire YouTube experience had changed to a much more lightweight, user-friendly, and FAST interface.
Here’s a look:
(Click to enlarge)
Fueled by Ajax, clicking any link on the video page resulted in instant gratification. If you want to see more videos from the user who posted the one you’re watching, a quick drop-down menu is available (seen in the screenshot above). Searching for a new video shrinks the video you’re watching on the left side, displaying the search results instantly on the right, like so:
(Click to enlarge)
There’s also the addition of Like/Dislike (thumbs up / thumbs down) buttons.
I wondered if the interface change was global, so I pulled up the same video I was watching in Safari and got the old, standard YouTube UI. I’m not sure why FireFox is giving me the new interface, but I’d like to keep it.
TweetSummer Nightastic at Walt Disney World to bring the Electrical Parade back to Main Street and more
I remember the last time I saw the Main Street Electrical Parade actually ON Main Street at the Magic Kingdom. It was announced that on April 1, 2001, the popular nighttime Disney parade would be finishing its run at Walt Disney World.
Now, at the time, I didn’t realize that Disney parades hopped coasts and came and went every few years. I wasn’t frequenting Disney fan web sites to find out all the latest news as I do today. And there were no podcasts to deliver the news either. So I was under the impression that when Disney was giving the Electrical Parade a farewell, they meant for good.
I made sure to not miss it, so I made one last trip to the Magic Kingdom to see it before it went away. This was before I moved to Orlando, so it was a great vacation and a chance to see my favorite parade one last time.
Of course, since then, I have seen the Electrical Parade at Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim many times, but it’s just not the same as seeing it on Main Street. So I was thrilled to hear the announcement last night at the “What’s New, What’s Next” media presentation that the Main Street Electrical Parade would, indeed, be returning to Orlando and will be shown nightly on Main Street throughout the summer of 2010.
In addition, Disney announced that an all-new fireworks show would be performed each night throughout the summer, as part of their new Walt Disney World Summer Nightastic, a name borrowed from last summer’s event at Disneyland in California. Disney also hinted at new effects and enhancements being added to the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, one of my favorite rides.
Here’s a video of the announcement and an interview with Walt Disney World Marketing Director Carrie Matson:
While at the media presentation, I also had a chance to speak with Walt Disney Imagineer Diego Parras about the now-ongoing Fantasyland expansion at the Magic Kingdom:
There’s plenty of excitement to be found at the Magic Kingdom in the coming months/years and I can only imagine that this is all part of Disney’s plan to drive at least *some* attention away from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opening in a couple of months at the Universal Orlando Resort. I doubt any Potter fans will pass up the Wizarding World to see the Electrical Parade and a new fireworks show, but they will almost certainly now add a visit to the Magic Kingdom into their vacation plans.
TweetFacebook Adds Live Streaming via Ustream partnership
From techcrunch.com:
Facebook is launching a new “Live Stream Box” feature which allows for Facebook Pages to offer their own live video and chat area. And Ustream will be the first to take advantage of it with Ustream on Facebook, a new service to provide live video support to select Facebook users.
[…]
Apparently, how this will work is that on Facebook Pages there will now be a way to add a “Live” tab, which will house things such as the Ustream on Facebook feature. Previously, beyond the Jonas Brothers, Facebook has tested this with CNN and the NBA All-Star game. Here’s what Facebook has to say:
Today, Facebook is launching the Facebook Live Stream Box as a feature that any website owner or developer can use to enable Facebook users to connect, share, and post updates in real-time as they witness an event online. Websites can run the Live Stream Box next to live streaming videos of concerts, speeches, sporting events, webcasts, TV shows, presentations, or webinars. Sites can also run the Live Stream Box in multi-player games, or with any other experience where many people are visiting a website at the same time.
Now we just need an Apple-approved iPhone app that allows broadcasting via Ustream and Facebook will be overrun with live streaming video.
TweetTUESDAY TECH: Elgato Turbo264 and Turbo264HD
I do a lot of video compression. A LOT. My computer probably spends more time compressing videos than not and it’s probably in need of a break. Unfortunately, there isn’t much break time to give it when some videos take upwards of 7 hours to compress. However, my hopes are high that a certain gadget will relieve some of the strain on my CPU…
Elgato Turbo264 and Turbo264HD
I was listening to the Daily Giz Wiz podcast yesterday, as I often do, and heard host Leo Laporte finally discuss a gadget that I am actually considering purchasing. However, even after reading a ton of online reviews, I’m not sure if it works as well as I’d like it to. Hopefully someone reading this can tell me.
The Elgato Turbo264 and Turbo264HD appear to be nothing more than USB keys – but evidently they pack some powerful processing power inside. When encoding videos to the popular H.264 flavor of the MP4 video format, these devices kick in and speed up the process, cutting down compressing times by at least half. I’ve even read reports of videos that formerly took several hours to compress taking only 20-30 minutes with the Elgato devices installed. That’s one of those claims that I find hard to believe, but hope it’s true.
Both devices are for Mac OX and the Turbo264HD only runs on Intel-based Macs, supporting widescreen resolutions up to 1280×720 (it supports 4×3 resolutions as well but I’m not interested in those). The original Turbo264 only runs on PowerPC-based Macs but doesn’t support HD resolutions, as it maxes out at 960×540.
I do compress a good amount of 720p content for Orlando Attractions Magazine, but do most of my work on my iMac G5, which has a PowerPC chip. Generally, I am only in a rush to compress 640×360 video to get online (usually onto YouTube), so it seems like the cheaper Turbo264 would be the right option for me. But then there’s that part of me that’s telling me to just buy a new Intel-based computer and get the Turbo264HD for around $100 more.
So if anyone out there has either variation of this device, comment and let me know if it really works as well as some say it does. If so, I may just buy the cheaper one right away and hold out on the other until I have more of a reason to upgrade my main machine.
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