How do I post Alice Videos on YouTube?

Originally Posted by lanceA

It could be my eyes Dick, but even when I put my glasses on, the video appears to be somewhat blurred.

It could just be me though!! . . . or dirty eye glasses

Also, I have absolutely zero/zilch experience in working with video. I ordered Camtasia today so now I can begin my experience in this new area.

Thanks for the input.

I expect it to be somewhat blurred due to the fact that YouTube changes it from a Windows wmv format to a Flash format and also changes the size. In this case, it was enlarged from 320x240 to something larger. DrJim has suggested the possibility of starting with a 640x480 and letting YouTube reduce it as opposed to starting with a 320x240 and letting them enlarge it. I haven't had time to try that yet. I'm also trying to design an animation that is easy to run and experiment with, which hopefully will expose small improvements or degradations.

I'm searching for a recipe that will produce the best results on a routine basis without the requirement to spend a lot of time treating the publication of each sample video as a project in its own right. (I would like to be able to concentrate on programming instead of graphics arts.)

I haven't found that recipe published anywhere, and maybe there isn't one. However, I believe that I was able to experimentally improve the results from the first to the third video that I created and uploaded to YouTube by experimenting with various settings.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free programming tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm

Re: "I haven't found that recipe published anywhere"

Think the best is one you gave yourself:

Originally Posted by DickBaldwin

I now realize that serious thought needs to be given to the ultimate purpose when the Alice world is developed.

There is just too much variation in the end use of various graphics arts media to come up with a single set of guidelines. As a simple example, a typical "photorealistic" static Photoshop image will be an 11" x 14" graphic at 600 pixels per inch and with 24 bit color and an 8 bit alpha channel. Do the arithmetic - and then try to figure out how to do that in an animation unless you have a Pixar-level budget.

Also, serious graphics art design is a specialty that is at least as complicated as computer programming - and animation and game design are stand-alone specialties in their own rights.

You can do a lot within given limits - your third YouTube upload (IMO) was much improved from the first. If I were teaching Alice - with the goal of teaching introductory programming concepts - I would come up with a "reasonable" flow and format for displaying videos - and then let improvements evolve around that. But the class output isn't going to compete with Pixar/Disney or even a lot of the film school students postings on YouTube.

I have created three more videos and posted them on YouTube for those who may be interested in comparing them. All three videos were created by the same Panda3D program.

All three were captured using CamStudio. The Microsoft Video 1 compressor option was used to create a large AVI file in each case.

The last two videos were captured on a different computer than the first.

For the first video identified as A below, the size of the Panda3D output window was adjusted to 640x480 and CamStudio was set to capture a 640x480 region.

For the second and third videos identified as B and C below, the Panda3D output window was adjusted to 320x240 and CamStudio was set to capture a 320x240 region.

The YouTube URLs for the three videos are:

A. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3zFejKsEgo
B. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8OE58QcT6k
C. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeH80wuj--Q

Windows Movie Maker was used to add a title to the beginning of each video and to write an output WMV file using the output encoding options shown below. The size of each output WMV file that was uploaded to YouTube is also shown below.

A-Size = 18,712KB,
Encoding = Windows High-Quality Video (large, 640x480)

B-Size = 4,400KB,
Encoding = Windows High-Quality Video (small, 320x240)

C-Size = 1,594KB,
Encoding = Windows Video for broadband (512 kbps, 320x240)

As you can see, the size of the third video was less than one-tenth the size of the first video, and was only about one-third the size of the second video.

Paraphrasing an old TV show, your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to compare the visual quality of the three videos and to decide for yourself which of these three options is best considering both file size and visual quality.

By the way, the ground doesn't appear to be in focus in the original output from Panda3D. That loss of focus is not a result of capturing the output in a video and uploading it to YouTube. However, everything else in the picture was well-focused, crisp, and clean in the original Panda3D output window. In particular the artifacts that you see in the white fur areas were not in the original Panda3D output. Further, there was very little of that in the WMV files when they were played in their original size. Most of that was caused by the format conversion and size change that took place at YouTube.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free programming tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm

First impression (my brain self destructed after 30 sec - no great loss) was that the only major difference was in the titles - the first video was certainly sharper IMO - and the one difference may just be hitting the Nyquist limit trying to display that much information on 320 x 240 pixel screen. Certainly not enough difference (again IMO) to justify a 10X file size increase.

Hey guys i was interested in having my project posted on youtube but i still wasnt sure how this is my project

Originally Posted by Sky Captain

Hey guys i was interested in having my project posted on youtube but i still wasnt sure how this is my project

The best that I can do for you is my post on 04-18-2008, 08:40 PM as modified by the posts that follow that one.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free Scratch tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocHomeSchool.htm
Free Java/C#, etc. tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm

AHHHHHHHHHHHH! So confusing! >=/

okay i was in a hurray and trying to figure out how to do a "if something is within blank of something" method but yeah you need a program that will film your screen I recommend hyper cam it is a program that every one likes.