Message from Bob Burch:

Here is the video link for 2012.

I'm using a new video format with .mp4 - better quality, but I can't get the file to stream properly.

Viewers will have to wait for the whole file to download before it will play - buffering glitch, I guess.

But the file is a nice size for viewing area and much better quality.

http://www.burchcom.com/2012/

Thanks for the video!

The new format seems to be a bit too glitchy, after a few minutes into the show the video and sounds goes out of synch.

Vander

Vander,

I watched the video, sync seems perfect to me. Don't forget the shells are quite a long way from the audience for the 8s, 10s and 12s so there is the natural delay between seeing a burst and hearing it.

Paul

if you don't mind can you upload this video to YOUTUBE, I can't open this video

STL has a video on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0MiB8pQ5fo&feature=relmfu

Thanks for the posts everyone, I was able to download the first raw mp4 video using this link and it help with the playback using a local media player (vlc):

http://www.burchcom.com/2012/japan2012_qtp.mp4

why is the products not much bright??

why is the products not much bright??

The show contained a good quantity of kamuros, containing delicate gold stars, sometimes with a twinkling effect, and horsetails, which dump long-burning golden stars slightly upwards for them to fall in a horsetail pattern.

These effects are quite dim compared to color shells, so this might explain the dimness you observed.

I also set the exposure a little too dark on my own video, so combined with the effects described above, this made for a very dark video at times !

Unfortunately, this was almost the perfect exposure for the excellent color shells. I have developed a theory that you need 3 or 4 cameras to properly film a pyrotechnic display, and the Japanese entry proves my point somewhat...

For starters, if you don't want to alter the exposure on the same camera all the time, you need one set darker than the other to catch both the vivid color effects without overexposing and the golden ones without drowning them in the night sky due to insufficient sensitivity.

A medium setting between these two extremes will overexpose on the brighter shells and may not solve the problem of the kamuros and the horsetails being not bright enough.

STL

Many thanks to you both, STL and Bob, for providing us with these videos!

Trav.

For those who are interested, I am shooting my video on a Sony Cybershot that will even do 60 frames/sec. The problem with that is it's only possible in 16:9 letterbox and the end file is huge.

With the letter box format, the top of the field is cut off because I don't have a lens wide enough for the high shells. So if I use the 4:3 ratio for screen size, the format has to be mp4. Added to this is the nuisance that the camera will only do 2 GB at a run and then stops. So I have to shoot two files (start and stop) and then stitch them together later. But at least with the mp4 format, I get a bit more height in the visible field.

I could tilt up and down during the display, but I am too busy shooting stills with another camera, so it just has to run by itself.

My finished stitched file is a little over one GB so then I run it through another media converter to get the 264 standard, reducing the field to 1200x900 pixels. This results in a more managable 240 MB final file.

This final file is then run through a programme called QT Index Swapper which is supposed to make it play with my media player online. But for some reason it doesn't seem to work. So the best option is to download and save the file to your computer or wait for the player to download it and then it will begin automatically.