On a Clear Day

[Lin Evans]

A test of scrolling panorama. I'm especially interested in how smooth this is with marginal video cards - any feedback appreciated.....

Lin

http://www.learntoma...rangepanopc.zip (about 10 meg Windows PC zipped exe)

http://www.learntoma...angepanomac.zip (about 11 meg zipped mac native executable)

http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/demo/frontrangepanowidepc.zip (about 15 meg) For Wide Screen PC 16:9

http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/demo/frontrangepanowidemac.zip (about 15 meg) For Wide Screen Mac 16:9

[colin hill]

Hi Lin,

Very nice indeed. What a magnificent view.

Ran smoothly on my machine. Have 2 x Nvidia 8800GTX cards on a high end gaming machine.

Hope you get the results you desire.

Regards,

Colin

[Ken Cox]

LIN

SMOOTH AS Silk on the 256 ati all in wonder but very very slight jerkiness on the 64 mb all in wonder but the zoom of the ranch was more subtle than on the 256 -- actually better

am on skype if you want to discuss further

15:40 est

ken

[xahu34]

No problem with the animation (Nvidia 9600GT). Sky shows noticeable posterization. Hotel California may not be regarded as an appropriate music!? I would prefer another aspect ratio (16:10 or 16:9).

Regards,

Xaver

[smithrg]

Hi Lin,smooth as silk on my Gateway, and I have integrated graphics.

Thanks for sharing your mountains, Gayland.

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

Monitor: Dell 23 inch 1920X1080

Intel Core i3 530@ 2.93 GHz

Integrated HD graphics

Memory: 6 Gb

[Lin Evans]

Hi Colin,

Thanks for the feedback - with that configuration it "should" play smoothly - LOL

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin,

Very nice indeed. What a magnificent view.

Ran smoothly on my machine. Have 2 x Nvidia 8800GTX cards on a high end gaming machine.

Hope you get the results you desire.

Regards,

Colin

[Lin Evans]

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the feedback! I was concerned about lower video card memory so made the pano as small as possible to still get decent appearance. I'm not sure why the zoom was more subtle. It's always a mystery...

You might want to download again - I added the "little birdie" - LOL

Best regards,

Lin

LIN

SMOOTH AS Silk on the 256 ati all in wonder but very very slight jerkiness on the 64 mb all in wonder but the zoom of the ranch was more subtle than on the 256 -- actually better

am on skype if you want to discuss further

15:40 est

ken

[Lin Evans]

Thanks Xaver,

I would expect a 9600GT to do well with it. Sky posterization may be from jpg compression. I had to make the file pretty compressed to avoid lengthy downoads. The original file is over 100 megabytes.

The issue with aspect ratios is always going to be user specific. Those with wide screen displays will want 16:9 or 16:10 and those with 5:4, etc., will want the opposite. I made a couple wide screen demos for Mac and PC and posted links on original post. I used less compression so perhaps the posterization you see will be gone. I can't see it on either of my high res monitors so can only guess about it.

Music is always going to be controversial. I'm not certain if the word "appropriate" even applies here. Its simply a demo to determine the feasibility of scrolling a very wide pano with less than optimal video cards so it really doesn't matter about the background music. Actually, I like the one I used, but I'm always open to suggestions. What would you suggest?

Best regards,

Lin

No problem with the animation (Nvidia 9600GT). Sky shows noticeable posterization. Hotel California may not be regarded as an appropriate music!? I would prefer another aspect ratio (16:10 or 16:9).

Regards,

Xaver

[Lin Evans]

Thanks Gayland,

It's good to know that it can play smoothly on intergated graphics - at least on the one on a newer system with Windows 7.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin,smooth as silk on my Gateway, and I have integrated graphics.

Thanks for sharing your mountains, Gayland.

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

Monitor: Dell 23 inch 1920X1080

Intel Core i3 530@ 2.93 GHz

Integrated HD graphics

Memory: 6 Gb

[orizaba]

Hi Lin,

Your Wide Screen PC 16:9 on my XP SP3 ATI RADEON HD5770 1920x1080 monitor, run clean, smooth... and beautiful! STOP.

I only wonder how you did it? STOP.

Mountain's shadows are all left to right so... what kind of photo is it? From the moon? I should like to know. STOP.

Best regards,

Jose. STOP.

(Mick: you see? I did it again...! "Twitter style", I'm getting used...)

[Ken Cox]

Lin

put it out to the ws 37" panasonic - 16/9 version via svhs output -- perfect -- no pixelation anywhere - smooth and you mst have tuned the zoom cause it was smooth also -- the eagle did it's flyby while i was at the tv - looking for flaws - have to change my pants now

what are the buildings to the right of the house right near crest of the mountain - the house was on still on tv screen as ranchouse came on?

ken

[Lin Evans]

Hi Jose,

It's a multi-frame stitch of individual photos taken with on of my dSLR's. I live on the east side of the Rockies and in the winter the sunrise is from the south east so that casts shadows to the right of the peaks in the early morning. It's good to hear that it runs smoothly for you on the 5770 at 1920x1080. Unfortunately the only way I can test it at that resolution is on my 40' Samsung LED television. I made an MP4 and it ran fine on the Samsung with no apparent issues. I've got to get another monitor soon which works at 1920 x 1080. I sold my 2560 x1600 HP 30" HP monitor when I moved and need to find another so I can test higher resolution shows again.

In the past I've made 360 degree panos in PTE but systems with less than optimal video cards had problem so I stopped using large panos for a while. A friend in Maine wanted to see the view from my street so I thought this might be a good time to test a rather wide pano. I thought by keeping the file size down a bit I might be able to get it to work with older video cards, but I wasn't sure since all of my systems these days are upgraded.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin,

Your Wide Screen PC 16:9 on my XP SP3 ATI RADEON HD5770 1920x1080 monitor, run clean, smooth... and beautiful! STOP.

I only wonder how you did it? STOP.

Mountain's shadows are all left to right so... what kind of photo is it? From the moon? I should like to know. STOP.

Best regards,

Jose. STOP.

(Mick: you see? I did it again...! "Twitter style", I'm getting used...)

[Lin Evans]

Hi Ken,

That's good news. I made an MP4 and played it on my Samsung and it came pretty good too, but I haven't tried svhs - not sure I have that output on my little laptop.

That's quite a "scream" isn't it? LOL, I did the same thing that most movie makers do, I substituted the cry of a Red Tailed Hawk instead of a Bald Eagle. Actually, Bald Eagles have a wimpy vocalization - not exciting at all. For years the movie people have used Red Tailed Hawk's vocalizations and most people think that's what eagles sound like, but they really are not impressive at all.

I'm not sure on the buildings - I'll have to see if I can drive over there and look. On a closeup of the pano in Photoshop, I noticed a for sale sign on the ranch. I don't think it shows in the pano but got cut off at the bottom. The images were made at 600mm so it's a good distance away to that point - maybe four miles or more.

Best regards,

Lin

Lin

put it out to the ws 37" panasonic - 16/9 version via svhs output -- perfect -- no pixelation anywhere - smooth and you mst have tuned the zoom cause it was smooth also -- the eagle did it's flyby while i was at the tv - looking for flaws - have to change my pants now

what are the buildings to the right of the house right near crest of the mountain - the house was on still on tv screen as ranchouse came on?

ken

[xahu34]

... Music is always going to be controversial. I'm not certain if the work "appropriate" even applies here. Its simply a demo to determine the feasibility of scrolling a very wide pano with less than optimal video cards so it really doesn't matter about the background music. Actually, I like the one I used, but I'm always open to suggestions ...

Lin,

It shouldn't be difficult to find some music that matches the mood, but in my eyes it is better to choose one that isn't well known. From the moment when the viewer recognizes "Oh, it's Hotel California", her/his mind will start to wander

BTW, I really prefer the wide-screen version.

Best regards,

Xaver

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Lin

Downloaded the show, watched it and was about to doze off & the eagle appeared I to thought the music distracting, Hotel California???? Did a quick search on Amazon under Colorado, 50k posibilities, Tried Colorado Guitar, that got it down to a reasonable number, then added Mountain & came up with http://www.amazon.co.uk/Somewhere-in-Colorado-Mountains/dp/B002IUUPXW/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1299151892&sr=1-9

For around a dollar you can download it.

The show ran smoothly & the eagle was fantastic, viewed at 5-4 small black lines top & bottom, are we going to get a how to?

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1.

[Ken Cox]

what about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_High

it is written about ASPEN COLORADO

over here we could all hum it

the rockies are also in California -- they are a quite large mountain range

as Lin said he liked it and the show was an experiment to test graphic boards not sound boards or people's music preferences !!!

ken

[Hubert]

Lin,

Runs smooth as silk too.

I dont know the reason, but on my screen I saw some strange colors (see snapshots).

Am I the only one with this problem ?

It may have something to do with the compression factor ?

Never had this problem with any other slidewhow ...

AMD athlon 64 x2 Ducal Core Processor 5200+

DDR-SDRAM

2048 MBytes

nVidia shipset

Acer P225HQL

TFT color LCD

Max resolution 1920x1080

Greetings,

Hubert

[Ken Cox]

Hubert

nothing amiss that i can see - as Lin said it with a large lens -600mm and the landscape colours /detail are kind of blended due to the distance -- 4 + miles from where he took picts

ken

[Bruss444]

Hello Lin, Greetings from Quarryville, PA. I know you wanted to know how this runs on the lower graphic card but my MAC 2.9 Quad single with the more powerful Radeon HD 4870 graphics card runs it fine and very smooth. Was this photographed in the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado? I have been there a couple of times and it is beautiful. Bill

[Lin Evans]

Hi Eric,

LOL - the Red Tailed Hawk vocalization will wake up the Devil himself. Yep, Hotel California - actually, I have thousands of other music selections I "could" have used, but thei one set the mood and had the proper length for the amount of scroll, etc. Thanks for the link though.

Were you playing the wide screen version on your 5:4 monitor? If so, there will be black lines. Trying to decide who needs which is always a challenge. That's why I only made one version to start.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin

Downloaded the show, watched it and was about to doze off & the eagle appeared I to thought the music distracting, Hotel California???? Did a quick search on Amazon under Colorado, 50k posibilities, Tried Colorado Guitar, that got it down to a reasonable number, then added Mountain & came up with http://www.amazon.co...99151892&sr=1-9

For around a dollar you can download it.

The show ran smoothly & the eagle was fantastic, viewed at 5-4 small black lines top & bottom, are we going to get a how to?

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Hubert,

Actually, the colors are correct, that's pretty much how it looks at sunrise. The captures were made at daybreak and there was only a tiny amount of light and deep shadows. Only the snow on the higher elevations allow enough reflected light to see much in the way of detail. As the pano advances, the area to the far left where the ranch house appears is four to five miles from my lens. The tall peaks are all over 14,000 feet and they get sunlight first. As time passes (it take about 30 minutes) the sunlight gradually illuminates the lower elevations. Those tall peaks are 30-50 miles distant while the foreground especially on the left side is about 4 miles distant from the lens.

Best regards,

Lin

Lin,

Runs smooth as silk too.

I dont know the reason, but on my screen I saw some strange colors (see snapshots).

Am I the only one with this problem ?

It may have something to do with the compression factor ?

Never had this problem with any other slidewhow ...

AMD athlon 64 x2 Ducal Core Processor 5200+

DDR-SDRAM

2048 MBytes

nVidia shipset

Acer P225HQL

TFT color LCD

Max resolution 1920x1080

Greetings,

Hubert

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Lin

No it was the first show in the series of links which I assume is 4-3?

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1

[Lin Evans]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for checking it out. It was photographed from about 200 feet south of my front door. The area of mountains is commonly referred to around here as the Front Range. Rocky Mountain National Park lies toward the center and right as you see the mountain range on the scroll. It's about 30 miles nw of my viewpoint. The right side of mountain range is north and the left side is south and you are looking west.

Best regards,

Lin

Hello Lin, Greetings from Quarryville, PA. I know you wanted to know how this runs on the lower graphic card but my MAC 2.9 Quad single with the more powerful Radeon HD 4870 graphics card runs it fine and very smooth. Was this photographed in the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado? I have been there a couple of times and it is beautiful. Bill

[Lin Evans]

Hi Eric,

Yes, that one will fill the screen on a 4:3 and leave a little black on a 5:4. Too many different ratios available to cover them all unfortunately.

I have cameras which shoot 5:4, 4:3 and 16:9 but 35mm is actually 4:3 so most of my dSLR's shoot that aspect ratio. It would be great if the display manufacturers and the camera manufacturers were to standardize on "something" LOL.

As for the technicals - it's just a stitched panorama which is scrolled slowly. The animated eagle is an animated gif created from a video of a bald eagle flying. I'm working on a collection of animal and bird videos to convert to animated gifs. It's a long and tedious job to remove the backgrounds from each frame unless the bird or animal just "happens" to blue screen itself as birds sometimes do when flying against a clear blue sky. Otherwise it's a frame by frame background removal then a combining of frames to get the animated gif.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin

No it was the first show in the series of links which I assume is 4-3?

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1

[Lin Evans]

Just some of my "reasoning" for my choice of music and for the inclusion of the eagle and Red-tailed hawk vocalization for this demo:

First, I wanted music which began slowly to match the slow pan, smooth start of the very wide video. I also wanted the music to increase in tempo as the speed of the pan accelerated. This selection was perfect in that respect. Secondly, I wanted music which accelerated to an upbeat tempo as the slide pan progressed. The selection also fit that criterion. I needed a song which mirrored the length of the pan (over "7 minutes) without a break or repetition. "Check". Finally, I needed an audio frequency matching the scream of the Red-tailed hawk vocalization so that the scream could be frequency matched by the audio background music at the end of the scream. "Check."

When sound mixing for a video "production" is done right, the audience shouldn't be acutely aware of these factors, they should subtly incorporated so as to enhance the experience but not be obvious. Of course this was only a demo (not a "video production") to determine the suitability of panning a wide panoramic with lower spec video cards, but I do pay attention to these variables. If one watches with these factors in mind, I believe the reasoning may become more obvious.

By the way, for you naturalists out there: Red-tailed hawk vocalizations are commonly used by major movie producers with eagles rather than Eagle vocalization. This is done instead of using the rather "wimpy" Bald Eagle vocalization. Hey, nature designed them that way - LOL. Bald and Golden Eagles just don't have an exciting scream, but the Red-tailed Hawk's vocalization will bring up the hackles on the back of your neck.

Best regards,

Lin