Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Wildlife Viral Videos

Battle at Kruger

65 M views


Honey Badger

36 M views


Spiders on Drugs

29 M views


Cobra Vs. Mongoose

21 M views


Python Vs. Alligator

18 M views


Jaguar Vs Anaconda

16 M views


Great White Accident

16 M views


Lion Kill Giraffe

16 M views


Strange Japanese Sea Creatures

15 M views


Shark Vs Crocodile

14 M views


Mountain Biker gets taken out by BUCK

13 M views


Young Zebra Vs Lioness

12 M views


Crocodile Attack Elephant's/Slide show

12 M views


Horse Tramples Car

4 M views


Monday, January 23, 2012

Online Bird Games and Quizes

I've been exploring online game/quiz creator sites. Here's a couple of my first tries: Click to Mix and Solve

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Birds Gone Viral!

Here is a compilation of viral bird videos. Please feel free to make suggestions. I am sure there are lots I haven't seen.

Ducks blown off their feet by the wind

20 M views


Lovely Owl

10 M views


Funny bird

9.2 M views


Amazing! Bird sounds from the lyre bird

9 M views


Eagle Prey on Wolf

8.6 M views


Beatboxing Parrot

8.4 M views


Death Metal Rooster

7 M views


Baby Duck

5.5 M views


The newborn bird that fell from its nest

5.1 M views


Snowball - Our Dancing Cockatoo

5 M views


Chick Hatching

5 M views


Cookie the Little Penguin at the Cincinnati Zoo

4.7 M views


Victor is DEAD

4.4 M views


Seagull stole GoPro

3 M views


Baby Robin Hatching

2.7 M views


Crow roof tubing

2.5 M views


Bird Bullies Cat

1.7 M views


Pelican eats bird

1.6 M views


Amazing Bird Fishes like a Human

1.6 M views


Bird songs

1.6 M views


Rescued Baby Hummingbird

1.5 M views


Geese Surf Glenwood Wave

1.4 M views


Hand feeding Hummingbirds

1.3 M views


Evil Owl

1 M views


A cute confused bird going the wrong way

1 M views


Crazy ass goose

1 M views


playing ball...

1 M views


Bird Songs Quiz

1 M views


An eagle visits my cat

900 K views


Seagull Steals Golf Ball

500 K views


Goose attacks pro kayaker angler Drew Gregory

500 K views


Wild Cardinal singing (good sound)
400 K views


Falcon attack: peregrine divebombs flock

300 K views


Hawk vs Duck

250 K views


Woodpecker vs snake

240 K views


frontal courtship of a tragopan satyra

236 K views


Funny seagull

200 K views


Prairie Falcons

100 K views


Are all sparrows nice

88 K views


Murmuration

55 K views views



Rose-breasted Grosbeak

52 K views


The Feathered and the Furious (Real Angry birds)

3 K views


Thursday, December 15, 2011

Samsung HMX-Q10 HD Camera Package Kit Suggestion

This is a decent consumer camcorder, but if you need an entire HD kit for under $300...this has worked pretty well for me. I will post some video tests soon. But for now, here's some screen grabs of the kit (the prices for the camera have come down by about $30 since I created this):

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

QR code animal ID attempts

I learned about QR codes at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. If you want to learn the basics, I wrote an article for the Festival blog. Go to: http://jhwildlifefilm.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/qr-codes-101

I am currently working on an idea about tagging wild animals with QR codes. It would be amazing if the general public could help scientists keep track of individual animals. I did a test tonight on my not-so wild animals. And I am finding that if the codes are just a little blurry or distorted, they won't read. Here are three photos that I cropped and rotated the QR Code. Only one of them would read with the QR readers. I tried several, and http://zxing.org/w/decode.jspx is the only site that would read one of the below. Can you guess which one?

1.


2.


3.


Only number 1 would read. The other two won't read, even when I photoshop to fix the distortion and increase the contrast, sharpen, etc. Does anyone know of a QR reader that will work with slightly blurry/skewed images? Or has anyone had any luck fixing QR's with photoshop?

Friday, August 12, 2011

Alpha Channels and Chroma Keys

For all my test animations and test stop motions...I have been using the chroma keyer in Final Cut Pro. I use my video camera to shoot my toys in front of a green screen, then I use software I dial out the green. But, I think I can get a better key if I shoot with my still camera, then delete the green background using photoshop. It's easy to get rid of the green using the magic wand. Then you have an image with a transparent background. The trick is keeping that background transparent once you save it. The only way I knew how to do this was to make animated GIFs. These take a lot of processing power, and I gave up on that a long time ago. But I remembered something about alpha channels that might work. I am going to write it down here so I can come back if I forget. I feel like I re-invent the wheel every couple of years when it comes to some of the obscure tricks in photoshop.

The way you maintain a transparent background in Photoshop using alpha channels:
1. double click on your layer in the layer palette to unlock it
2. click the "channels" tab next to the layer tab
3. click on the "new channel" button at the bottom (this adds the alpha channel)
4. turn the eyeball on all the channel layers
5. do a "save as" and make sure the "alpha channels" button is checked
6. import into Final Cut Pro

It seems like there should be a more intuitive way to do this. I would love to hear if anyone has a simpler method.

Here's a frame grab of my alpha channel test. There is still a lot of green around the pigs, but I did not light this correctly. Once I shoot everything in the studio, there shouldn't be any green outline.

I also taught myself how to export flash movies with transparent backgrounds. To do this using Flash:
1. Have an animation ready and select "export" then "export movie"
2. Choose the save as a QuickTime format
3. Click Save
4. make sure the "Ignore stage color (generate alpha channel)" is checked
5. Click export
6. Import file into Final Cut Pro

Here's a test of this technique: