Colours of WOMAD

[dorsetbay]

Colours of WOMAD is a show featuring photographs taken at the WOMAD world music festival at Charlton Park, Malmesbury, UK, set to music by one of the performers.

This is our first attempt at an AV using P2E. We've timed it to qualify for 3:21 competitions, so would appreciate comments and critique in relation to the 3:21 format as well as general comments.

Edit: To do it justice, I've now submitted the file to Beechbrook. In the meantime, here is a direct link to a zip file

http://www.dorsetbay.plus.com/avs/womad1/womad1.zip 3m21s 50 slides 1400 x 1050 60MB

The show is currently posted on youtube and is viewable full-screen at 'HD' (720p). The original format was 1400 by 1050px, so I'll upload to Beechbrook if that would be better.

Many thanks

Stephen & Helen

[David Porter]

Well, I really enjoyed that. I can't comment about the competition possibilites as that is not my thing but I liked the pace of the show which matched the music very well. I liked the variation of the transitions and the way you used the portrait images. The photography was first class. I think you could look again at the pan/zoom of the crowd shot as this did not work for me and I think putting the exe file on mediafire will probably get rid of some of the jerkiness in the Youtube presentation. Good luck with the comp and there are many on this forum who can advise on that.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

I agree with Mick on most of his points, where I disagree was the transitions, I thought because it was a contemporary subject you could have been a bit more adventurous with the transitions. The colours were stunning, what camera please? A litle video clip would enhance the show IMO providing the quality matches the stills. I thought the ending of the sound track was a little abrupt, a 5 second fade would have worked, suppose you were complying with the 321 rules. Did the pans judder on the exe before up loading to Youtube?

Good effort for a first attempt.

Yachtsman1.

[dorsetbay]

Well, I really enjoyed that. I can't comment about the competition possibilites as that is not my thing but I liked the pace of the show which matched the music very well. I liked the variation of the transitions and the way you used the portrait images. The photography was first class. I think you could look again at the pan/zoom of the crowd shot as this did not work for me and I think putting the exe file on mediafire will probably get rid of some of the jerkiness in the Youtube presentation. Good luck with the comp and there are many on this forum who can advise on that.

Hi Mick,

Thank you for your very positive feedback. We enjoyed producing it - particularly the challenge of presenting many portrait images in a landscape format!

There isn't any pan/zoom judder on my local PC so I guess thats down to Youtube.

To do it justice, I've now submitted the file to Beechbrook. In the meantime, here is a direct link to a zip file

http://www.dorsetbay.plus.com/avs/womad1/womad1.zip 3m21s 50 slides 1400 x 1050 60MB

Cheers

Stephen & Helen

[dorsetbay]

I agree with Mick on most of his points, where I disagree was the transitions, I thought because it was a contemporary subject you could have been a bit more adventurous with the transitions. The colours were stunning, what camera please? A litle video clip would enhance the show IMO providing the quality matches the stills. I thought the ending of the sound track was a little abrupt, a 5 second fade would have worked, suppose you were complying with the 321 rules. Did the pans judder on the exe before up loading to Youtube?

Good effort for a first attempt.

Yachtsman1.

Hi - Thank you for your constructive feedback. We had considered some variation in the transitions, but kept it simple on this occasion. The photos were taken over three years mostly with a Canon DSLRs (40D, 350D and 55D), with a few from compacts (Canon G9 and Panasonic FZ28) - so there is considerable variation in image quality and light. We selected only our best photos, with a focus on colour because of the title. A bit of post-processing (in CS3) was required to ensure a consistent quality in the images.

We agree about the ending - we made the fade-out rather too abrupt in an effort to comply with the 321 rules.

The video clip is a good idea and something we ought to try. We don't have source material of sufficient quality at the moment though. We're also considering adding some recorded festival sounds - applause, drumming etc.

The pan/zoom judder is down to Youtube. I've now submitted the file to Beechbrook. In the meantime, here is a direct link to a zip file

http://www.dorsetbay...mad1/womad1.zip 3m21s 50 slides 1400 x 1050 60MB

Many thanks

Stephen & Helen

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Stephen & Helen.

Further comments, the size of the show you have uploaded to Beechbrook 60MB is out of proportion to the content, ie length & number of slides, was the sound track WAV or MP3, converting to MP3 would improve the file size but I don't think that would improve the Youtube judder. What is the size of each slide in KB or MB, getting that size down may impove the judder on Youtube, did you upload to Youtube as MP4 or AVCHD?

Yachtsman1

[Gérard de Lux]

We agree about the ending - we made the fade-out rather too abrupt in an effort to comply with the 321 rules.

As far as I know, the only rule is that the show shall not exceed the duration of 3'21"; it can be shorter (I've seen on the competitors list for this year that there were sequences of less than 1 min) and you can use any audio or visual effects as long as you keep within that duration.

[edit]

The file size doesn' matter for the competition itself, and it's said on the rules that they accept images up to 1920x1080 as well as WAV sound.

[xahu34]

I like this show. In most cases (not in all) the transition points have been placed in good positions, they go well together with the music (in most of the productions presented in this forum this typically is not the case). You should learn to use the speed options for animations. Your animations seem to be linear, they start and stop abruptly (this will be an easy change). When providing a show here, you may give us manual control or the navigation bar. I think that I was not happy with the last slide, but I cannot jump to it, and I do not like to watch the whole show just for having a second look at it.

Regards,

Xaver