I've put my paper and presentation slides that I used for the 7th International Symposium on-line on this site. Click on the link below:

symposium.html

There's also the three video examples I used in my presentation in high resolution mpeg (note that these files are between 11 and 25 Mbytes).

Enjoy!

Paul.

interessing i will check them out when i can

I'm sure you'll love the Italian finale ... it's even louder than this year's Panzera one

Paul.

Paul,

Excellent paper. Well written and very informative.

The best quote from your presentation was: "much more interesting set design techniques can be employed to use the space available and thus design the fireworks into that three-dimensional space."

In my opinion, this was the most important advantage of electrical firing systems. If you cannot expand your "canvas" and break free from the classic "straight-up-the-middle" style show, then what good is a well synchronized show?

Approximately how long was your presentation?

Sean

Hi Paul,
Please send me your personal E-Mail Address I Have Valencia Pictures for you.
David. pyromate@monad.net

Sean,

thanks for your kind words. My presentation lasted just under 30 minutes. I have a longer version of a similar presentation that I made to the New Hampshire Pyrotechnics Association on their Members' Night in March which had more information about the Montreal site but less about pyromusical design.

I'm glad you agree about my analysis of the expansion of space that electrical firing permits. It seems to me that this is not always taken advantage of.

Cheers,

Paul.

Paul i couldnt watch those videos, so i figured out that they were svcd why? i dont think many of us here can watch svcd format on media player, i dunno , but thats ok for me i was able to convert them in vcd, so i watched them
thx they were very refreshing, i want to read the presentation i have alot homeworks ill read it friday night, cant wait!
anyone who cant see the videos tell me ill send u in asf or mpg format

Paul another thing, can u tell me in what year these fireworks were?

Yes, the videos are in SVCD format, but many players can play that format now. I was able to play them OK in realplayer without any problems - the aspect ratio comes out correct if you set fullscreen view. Also, anyone using linux will find the xine displays them properly without any problems.

The dates are listed on the symposium.html page IPON 1998, Caballer 2000 and IPON 2000 (for the finale).

Paul.

i just tried it on realplay (realone) v. 2.0 and it didnt work, it said "Some of the streams in this movie are in an unsupported format."

but doesnt matter i barely download any svcd, if i ever download one i always convert it in vcd hehe

sorry i didnt see the dates,
see! i knew i saw Caballer 2000 and IPON 2000 displays, when i heard the music i got flashback, i used to watch the 2000 displays at La Ronde so i was sure i heard those musics, anyways that was very kewl!

First off, Paul, that was an excellent Italian finale! Thanks for posting it for downloading. I appreciate it!

Anyways, at first, like Enkil, I had some problems with some of my media players. Fortunately, like you said before, it does in fact work well in realplayer. I tried it on Quick Time Player program, but not much luck and it took quite a while for download, so I watched it on realplayer in full screen mode and saw a fantastic ending! Once again, thx.

One little question, is it possible for it to work in Quick Time Player application? It didn't work for me though.

I still got to read your report on the whole thing! Hopefully after I finish my load of homework!

Thanks again,

Trav.

It's not possible for me to convert the videos into QuickTime format. That's a special format that requires programs which cost $$ to make. I just captured the output of my VCR through my videocard - which allows the higher resolution S-VHS input to be used for capture. Problem is that it saves this as an mpeg2 file, not mpeg1 that most players use, though as you noticed, the latest realplayer works fine with this. From mpeg2 it is possible to make an SVCD - these have much better picture quality than VCDs, but only play for half the time. I might see if I can convert the files into divx format (mpeg4) - there are free players for this and I think even windows media player will work. The advantage of that is that the file size is much smaller - by around a factor of 4.

Cheers,

Paul.

yes u can convert them in divx, but ppl need to install the divx codec and it will play fine in windows media player

u can also convert it in mpeg1, i just did it and it reduces the size alot = saves brandwitdh hehe

theres also .rm format, which is prolly the best for the size and quality, but dont use that cuz when u convert in mpg the is audio out of sync

mpeg1 will have half the quality (picture of 320x240) compared to the mpeg2 (picture of 640x480) that I uploaded. But you're right, it will use less bandwidth. To make a .rm format file also requires software which costs $$ and the quality is quite low unless the bitrate is kept high - and then it's no better than divx or mpeg anyway. And now that I've uploaded the files, I don't feel like re-uploading them since it took quite a long time

Paul.

hehe

acctually, i have RealProducer, which is free, i got it with another program, i still have the setup if u want

the version is RealProducer Basic 8.5 version 8.5.0.200

Smoke>>> could u tell what version is ure Realplayer?

It's OK - I don't want to convert stuff into a format that might not work in the future or only on certain players. mpeg format has enough issues as it is

Paul.