Fri 22 Sep 2006
September 22, 2006 - More HDV Testing
Posted by Zach Glenwright under Backyard Bag Feeder Project, Birds, Chipmunks, Doves, Edited Feeds (HD), SquirrelsAnother sunny day yesterday gave me the opportunity to try more HDV shots… My favorite shot?
This one…

What?!
And of course, as I went to tilt up to fix the crop of the shot, the squirrel moved… Ah, well… A short video from some of the best of my test shots is below…
Backyard Feeder Project HDV Test, 9-21-06 [1:19m]:
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:36 am
Goodness what terrific quality, even when squished down for QT clips … outstanding. And you still have wildlife there, I’m pleased to see that, as you seemed to be so concerned that your subject matter was running out. I wish I had chipmunks, wrong place for them I guess.
I am looking forward to the fall, when the tree goes bare again, so that I can get some good still shots and maybe some decent video too. The tree in leaf is a lovely thing, but it does obscure the wildlife living up there and it does mess with the lighting very badly. I’m not going to get clips of this standard, of course, but hopefully when there is more even lighting during the day and more animals around due to the lack of natural food supplies, I will see if I can get a “project” going and see if I can give you a run for your money
Also do you have a bigger ‘full size’ image? Even if not, can I use the one you’ve linked to? I may have a good use for that one or a similar pose at the largest size available. Cheers.
September 23rd, 2006 at 7:40 am
Thanks! - the video is converted to 420×237 from it’s original size of 1920×1080 (1440×1080 actually, but once the software conforms it to a 16:9 ratio it comes out to 1920×1080) so it keeps a lot of the quality when it downconverts it to the smaller size… I was surprised also though to see how well QuickTime handled it! I thought it would make it artifact-laden beyond belief, but it kept it at a pretty good rate without losing much of the original picture. As far as chipmunks go, I have all kinds of video of them, and I shot more yesterday, so when I have a chance to edit some more together, I’ll post it… They’re very greedy - I taped one a few years ago that stuffed it’s face with 4 or 5 whole peanuts, and still tried to cram more into it’s cheeks…
Fall for me hasn’t been that much of a boon for wildlife, but I’ve ususally stopped taping in October or so in the past for the winter - it’ll be interesting to see what you get in the fall and winter months! As far as the “project” goes, I’m still thinking of doing a “making-of” kind of video, but between working all the time and (let’s face it, procrastinating :)) I haven’t even written a script for that yet, let alone tape anything, so I’ll probably just go back to Plan A for now and write a how-to page with dimensions and materials and such… HOPEFULLY coming soon… I have the dimensions, I just want to word it in a somewhat professional way, that’s why it was (and still is at this point) taking so long…
Something like the Numa Numa video?
Sure you can use the pic (as long as you credit me with the picture.) That picture is the full “full size” version - it’s a de-interlaced video frame from a 1920×1080 video image… I wish it could record larger than that, but jumping from 720×480 to 1920×1080 is a pretty significant step for video for now… I can send you a .tiff file with slightly less compression if you’d like. If the squirrel stood around a little longer (I think the entire movement of that position was about 10 frames), I could try averaging a few frames together to take some of the videoness out of the image - but the squirrel was in a hurry… Maybe I will try that also and see how it works out with a slight bit of movement.