http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/ Backpacking and Travel in Thailand and South East Asia Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:06:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-87060 sarah Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:29:44 +0000 http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-87060 That is amazing!!!!! That is amazing!!!!!

]]> http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-74177 Scuba Diving In Komodo, Indonesia · Thailand Backpacking: Travelhappy.info Tue, 11 Dec 2007 05:00:00 +0000 http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-74177 [...] - including my somewhat shaky video close encounter with them - have a look at my previous article Komodo Dragons: Up Close And Personal. There’s also my page on coming face to face with a deadly sea snake - which was nice - and [...] [...] - including my somewhat shaky video close encounter with them - have a look at my previous article Komodo Dragons: Up Close And Personal. There’s also my page on coming face to face with a deadly sea snake - which was nice - and [...]

]]> http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-72985 diego Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:00:32 +0000 http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-72985 tis was a great story i wonder if it is to danger to go to indonesia? tis was a great story i wonder if it is to danger to go to indonesia?

]]> http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-41853 Scuba Diving In the Komodo National Park · Thailand Backpacking: Travelhappy.info Sat, 23 Jun 2007 12:53:20 +0000 http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-41853 [...] previously wrote about getting a very up close and personal encounter with the Komodo Dragons here, complete with some very shaky video footage, and also a quick rundown of what I did in Bali, [...] [...] previously wrote about getting a very up close and personal encounter with the Komodo Dragons here, complete with some very shaky video footage, and also a quick rundown of what I did in Bali, [...]

]]> http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-28491 alyssa Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:04:41 +0000 http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-28491 its very iteresting to see a resembelence of dinosaurs so camodos are hellza cools and really interesting so whom ever is reading this pasa mea rasa its very iteresting to see a resembelence of dinosaurs so camodos are hellza cools and really interesting so whom ever is reading this pasa mea rasa

]]> http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-28489 alyssa Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:00:04 +0000 http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-28489 its really cool being able to see ome thing thats realating to dinosaurs so this is hellza cool its really cool being able to see ome thing thats realating to dinosaurs so this is hellza cool

]]> http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-14266 Scuba Diving In Bali, Indonesia · Thailand Backpacking: Travelhappy.info Fri, 26 Jan 2007 19:11:02 +0000 http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-14266 [...] I wrote a full report about the Liberty shipwreck and scuba diving in Bali on my dive blog Divehappy. As I was passing through Bali on my way to a diving liveaboard to Komodo (where we saw the Komodo Dragons), I sadly didn’t get a chance to properly explore the island above the water - I would love to see some of the spectacular Bali temples, like the Mother Temple , and also the cultural village of Ubud. [...] [...] I wrote a full report about the Liberty shipwreck and scuba diving in Bali on my dive blog Divehappy. As I was passing through Bali on my way to a diving liveaboard to Komodo (where we saw the Komodo Dragons), I sadly didn’t get a chance to properly explore the island above the water - I would love to see some of the spectacular Bali temples, like the Mother Temple , and also the cultural village of Ubud. [...]

]]> http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-14257 How To Put Your Camera Video Clips On YouTube · Thailand Backpacking: Travelhappy.info Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:45:44 +0000 http://travelhappy.info/indonesia/komodo-dragons-up-close-and-personal/#comment-14257 [...] I shoot quite a lot of video clips on my digital camera when I’m travelling. I love taking photos, but sometimes a quick 30 second video clip can capture a situation even better, and provides both great memories and a better way to show off some of the things you’ve seen on holiday. Given the way video has become so prevalent on the Web in the last 18 months, I wanted to start incorporating video clips into my webpages to go with my articles on the Komodo Dragons of Indonesia, the crazy busy streets of Hanoi, Vietnam and the amazing colours of cuttlefish underwater while scuba diving in Bali. The obvious answer was to use YouTube.com, the hugely popular video sharing service. Not only would it save me the bandwidth of putting the video files on my own website, the clips would also act as a way of inviting more people to come and visit Travelhappy. Uploading a video to YouTube is easy, so I won’t go through that here. The crucial bit, however, is getting the video ready to upload to YouTube in the first place. My Canon digital camera shoots video in AVI format and I’m guessing that’s the norm for most digital cameras. These produce good resolution video clips which are also big files - around 100 Megabytes for 30 seconds or so. YouTube doesn’t like the .AVI format and won’t accept clips over 100 megabytes. The answer is to compress the video to reduce its file size and change its format. This is easily done with the free open source program Dr DivX. Before you compress the clip, you might also want to edit it by chopping off any sections so that your clip gets straight to the point for your audience on YouTube. There is a great shareware program from Boilsoft called AVI/MPEG/RM/WMV Splitter that let’s you do limited cuts to video for free. It’s easy to understand and use too. Chopping out extraneous bits of your clip also helps reduce the file size. Once that’s done, it’s time to compress it. Dr DivX has a very simple interface. Choose the file you want to compress, select the settings you want and hit the encode button. I’ve found that High Theatre/Extreme Quality produce the best results for me, but you may want to pay around with the settings some more. Dr DivX crunches a 100 MB AVI clip to around 5 MB on average. YouTube likes the DivX format too, so once you’ve run your clip through Dr DivX, you’re ready to upload it to YouTube. Be aware that compressing a clip and then uploading it to YouTube is going to make the clip lose quite a bit of its picture quality. YouTube uses a Flash player to ensure it works in all web browsers which degrades the quality further. This usually isn’t a problem, but if you have something delicate or subtle - like the colour changes of the cuttlefish clip I mentioned earlier - it can degrade it quite severely. However, don’t get too precious about it. I uploaded the Bali Cuttlefish clip with some misgivings about its quality, and it’s still been viewed 400 times in the space of the last month and got a couple of ego swelling comments. People will put up with so-so quality if there’s something interesting to see. However, if you think it warrants it, you can upload the original DivX clip to Stage6.com, DivX’s own answer to YouTube. This houses clips in all their uncompressed glory, and you can embed them in your own webpages YouTube-style as well, by visiting this DivX webpage embedder generator. The only problem with embedding DivX video files in your webpages is that a) they take a long time to load as they are much bigger files than typically found on YouTube and b) unlike YouTube, DivX requires certain files installed on the viewer’s computer to see them. Therefore, it seems wise to offer the user a choice - upload the clip in YouTube and put a link to the higher res, longer download DivX version on Stage6.com too, if you think it warrants the extra effort for you and the user. In conclusion, it’s a pretty easy process to prepare your digital camera video clips for YouTube when you’ve got the right bits of software to do it. It took me a while to figure out all the right steps to editing and compressing my videos though, so I hope this is useful. If you have better suggestions of how to make digital camera video clips ready for YouTube, do let me know in the comments. Related articles you might find useful:“Bus Uncle” Hong Kong Video Huge Internet HitSony Ericsson 750i review: the perfect travel phone?Komodo Dragons: Up Close And PersonalBuying Cameras In TokyoHotelReservations.com Review [...] [...] I shoot quite a lot of video clips on my digital camera when I’m travelling. I love taking photos, but sometimes a quick 30 second video clip can capture a situation even better, and provides both great memories and a better way to show off some of the things you’ve seen on holiday. Given the way video has become so prevalent on the Web in the last 18 months, I wanted to start incorporating video clips into my webpages to go with my articles on the Komodo Dragons of Indonesia, the crazy busy streets of Hanoi, Vietnam and the amazing colours of cuttlefish underwater while scuba diving in Bali. The obvious answer was to use YouTube.com, the hugely popular video sharing service. Not only would it save me the bandwidth of putting the video files on my own website, the clips would also act as a way of inviting more people to come and visit Travelhappy. Uploading a video to YouTube is easy, so I won’t go through that here. The crucial bit, however, is getting the video ready to upload to YouTube in the first place. My Canon digital camera shoots video in AVI format and I’m guessing that’s the norm for most digital cameras. These produce good resolution video clips which are also big files - around 100 Megabytes for 30 seconds or so. YouTube doesn’t like the .AVI format and won’t accept clips over 100 megabytes. The answer is to compress the video to reduce its file size and change its format. This is easily done with the free open source program Dr DivX. Before you compress the clip, you might also want to edit it by chopping off any sections so that your clip gets straight to the point for your audience on YouTube. There is a great shareware program from Boilsoft called AVI/MPEG/RM/WMV Splitter that let’s you do limited cuts to video for free. It’s easy to understand and use too. Chopping out extraneous bits of your clip also helps reduce the file size. Once that’s done, it’s time to compress it. Dr DivX has a very simple interface. Choose the file you want to compress, select the settings you want and hit the encode button. I’ve found that High Theatre/Extreme Quality produce the best results for me, but you may want to pay around with the settings some more. Dr DivX crunches a 100 MB AVI clip to around 5 MB on average. YouTube likes the DivX format too, so once you’ve run your clip through Dr DivX, you’re ready to upload it to YouTube. Be aware that compressing a clip and then uploading it to YouTube is going to make the clip lose quite a bit of its picture quality. YouTube uses a Flash player to ensure it works in all web browsers which degrades the quality further. This usually isn’t a problem, but if you have something delicate or subtle - like the colour changes of the cuttlefish clip I mentioned earlier - it can degrade it quite severely. However, don’t get too precious about it. I uploaded the Bali Cuttlefish clip with some misgivings about its quality, and it’s still been viewed 400 times in the space of the last month and got a couple of ego swelling comments. People will put up with so-so quality if there’s something interesting to see. However, if you think it warrants it, you can upload the original DivX clip to Stage6.com, DivX’s own answer to YouTube. This houses clips in all their uncompressed glory, and you can embed them in your own webpages YouTube-style as well, by visiting this DivX webpage embedder generator. The only problem with embedding DivX video files in your webpages is that a) they take a long time to load as they are much bigger files than typically found on YouTube and b) unlike YouTube, DivX requires certain files installed on the viewer’s computer to see them. Therefore, it seems wise to offer the user a choice - upload the clip in YouTube and put a link to the higher res, longer download DivX version on Stage6.com too, if you think it warrants the extra effort for you and the user. In conclusion, it’s a pretty easy process to prepare your digital camera video clips for YouTube when you’ve got the right bits of software to do it. It took me a while to figure out all the right steps to editing and compressing my videos though, so I hope this is useful. If you have better suggestions of how to make digital camera video clips ready for YouTube, do let me know in the comments. Related articles you might find useful:“Bus Uncle” Hong Kong Video Huge Internet HitSony Ericsson 750i review: the perfect travel phone?Komodo Dragons: Up Close And PersonalBuying Cameras In TokyoHotelReservations.com Review [...]

]]>