© 2001-2009 George Schreyer
Created Feb 2, 2001
Last Updated January 19, 2002
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Lately I've been playing with Internet video. As can be seen from the results, I've got a lot of learning to do. However, I'm posting a few videos here some of them the size of a postage stamp. The older ones were done before the days of widespread broadband and I was trying to accommodate views with slow connections. The quality, and size, of the videos has increased over time as I moved from one kind of video capture to another.
This started when I purchased a very inexpensiveXLR8 USB video digitizer for my Macintosh so that I could digitize the analog video that I had recorded from an X-10 Remote Video Camera using the method shown at my X-10 Video Tips page. The camera radio link is not completely solid which results in dropouts in the video. This is somewhat annoying while watching the analog video, but the digitizer gets all confused by the dropouts and makes them much worse as it looses video lock and has to take some time to recover. I suppose that over time, I'll figure out how to make the digitizer more tolerant of loss of a valid video signal or even better, figure out how to get a cleaner video in the first place.
Video can get really large and must be heavily compressed to be suitable for internet use. Straight digitized video at 320 x 240 pixel resolution runs about 150 Mbyte/minute. After being compressed with a Sorenson filter in a postage stamp sized window at 15 fps and having the audio digitized at 8 kHz monaural (the audio track isn't very interesting anyway) it gets down to about 1.5 MByte/minute.
Video from the IPTrains on board TrainVision video system can be pretty large depending on the frame rate and image size. These can run 25 to 50 Mbytes/min. High resolution video from a camcorder can run even more depending on the depth of compression used.
The table below indexes the video that I've done so far. Each video will open in a new window.
| Location | Title | Video Source | Size MByte |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GIRR Mtn Div | A Pass Around Inner and Outer Lines of the GIRR Mountain Division | X-10 | 2.3 | Some dropouts, but it's watchable |
| A Pass Around Upper Line of the GIRR Mountain Division | 3.3 | Again, some dropouts, but it's watchable | ||
| A Pass Outer and Inner Loops of the GIRR Mountain Division | TrainVision | 17.6 | The low frame rate (4 fps) is caused by the slow computer the video was captured with. The dropouts (pauses) are due to the wireless link. The access point is 2 floors up and does not have diversity reception. | |
| A Pass Around Upper Line of the GIRR Mountain Division | 18.8 | |||
| A Pass Outer and Inner Loops of the GIRR Mountain Division | Sony DCR TRV33 | 53.9 | If you want good quality video WITH sound, then driving a camcorder around on a flatcar is the way to go. However, it's not real time. You can't sit inside and watch the action when it's too hot or cold or buggy to stay outside. | |
| A Pass Around Upper Line of the GIRR Mountain Division | 68.3 | |||
| GIRR | A Pass Around the GIRR | X-10 | 2.0 | The 2nd pass, a couple of dropouts but better |
| A loop around the GIRR | TrainVision | 48.1 | Reference video for the TrainVision system. 320x240 at 12 fps, WiFi dongle mounted horizontally. Some dropouts as indicated by pauses in the video. | |
| Another loop around the GIRR | 46.1 | Similar to the one above but with a different mounting for the TrainVision WiFi dongle, fewer dropouts | ||
| Yet Another Loop around the GIRR | 17.3 | Reduced image size in an attempt to improve the frame rate | ||
| A Higher Resolution Trip Around the GIRR | 76.3 | 640x480 but only at 10 fps | ||
| A loop around the GIRR At Night | 12.3 | Loop runs the other way from a different starting point. Except for the LED headlight on the snow plow and some lights in the house, it is totally dark. | ||
| A loop around the GIRR In Deep Twilight | 24.5 | Same direction as the last one but from yet another starting point. Deep twilight, not completely dark but nearly so. Headlight and camera have been tweaked so that they look a little downward at track. The run is a little slower as the snowplow as being pushed by a Shay. | ||
| A Night Run with the Building Illumination On | 14.7 | Fully dark outside but with the town illuminated with buiding interior lights. | ||
| Another Night Run with the Building Illumination On | 17 | Running in the other direction from a different starting point. Results in a little different view of the illuminated town. | ||
| Another GIRR Loop with Video from a Camcorder on a flatcar | Sony DCR TRV-33 | 113.5 | Processed in iMovie, 640x480 |
The TrainVision videos have no sound. The movie files are stored in Apple's QuickTime video format. The larger movies are encoded as h.264. If your computer can't handle QuickTime or h.264 now, you can get it for most versions of Windows or the MacOS at:
© 2001-2009 George Schreyer
Created Feb 2, 2001
Last Updated January 19, 2002