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QuickTime for a Smoke

This is not a gif assignment.

qt_tools is a set of commandline tools for Mac that manipulate quicktime movies. One of the tools is qt_proofsheet:

QT_PROOFSHEET will take a QuickTime movie and render it out as individual frames in a grid. By default, it takes about 100 frames of your movie and fits it onto an 8.5 x 11 document, with timecode imprints.

from: qt_tools
By using different parameters you can make a strip of stills from a quicktime movie the one I am using here is 576 x 8208 pixels.
This is then animated with css. The qt-proofsheet adds the time stamp, you can minimise them but I found them useful is creating the animation.

For those interested, probably only a few, here is the code

The stills were grabbed from ‘Perchance to Dream’ an episode of the twilight zone.

I am afraid I am a bit sort of time so this post is a bit lacking in information, but this technique is an interesting take on the animated gif. The quality is fairly good and the file is 654kb.

Here is a more standard use of proofsheet:

Right-Click and open in new window to see at full size, this could be useful for analysing film.

DS106 Confusion

Create a ds106 radio bumper Now that we have a #ds106 radio up and running creating a 15 to 30 second bumper for the station.

This one is pretty simple. Short segment from Gnawa Diffusion‘s Frik Fashion.
I’ve enjoyed Gnawa Diffusion for a few years while hardly understanding a word of their lyrics (in Arabic, Tamazight, French and English). A fair metaphor for DS106.
Nothing fancy. Just the start of the track and a few words. A few minutes with GarageBand. I regularly do some quick edits of recorded audio and normally use audacity followed by Levitator for that but prefer GarageBand now for recording and simple ducking.

I got this picture from google

What is Creative Commons? | Flickr – Photo Sharing! by Enokson

I’ve been using Creative Commons media since I discovered the web 2 world. It makes perfect sense to me. I’ve just added the same license to this blog Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 UK: Scotland License as I use on my ‘real blog‘ I slap a straight Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike on my flickr photos.

I was annoyed when this one, cables, was used Is this theft?, not because I wanted money, but I just like the idea of sharing. That one broke the Noncommercial bit. I never did hear from them.

On the other hand, someone mailed me through flickr mail and asked if they could use this photo in a book, I was delighted. I got a book, but no cash crossed my hands.

As a primary teacher I always found it hard to teach attribution to young (say 10 year olds). Sometimes I though they had got it, but then thy would attribute photos that wee not marked as reusable. I recall one pupil, very pleased with a blog post who attributed: I got this picture from google.
At that point I decided there should be a wee kids license, this would allow youngster to attribute all the various license, CC, GLP etc as used under the wee kids, I don’t fully understand copyright but I am trying license.
Once I though I had the perfect chance to explain. I found that several My Space (remember that) sites were hot linking blog headers my pupils had made as backgrounds. I hoped to engender some indignation. On showing the class the response I got was COOL!
The other thing I did to try and help young pupils attribute was to make a variation of the flickr search sites. A flickr CC search toy. This you search for CC flickr photos, it gives you the embed code with attribution (unlike Flickr’s own, which just links. It also will produce a photo with the attribution stamped onto it. Hopefully making it much easier for primary pupils to find images and use them while helping attribute.

The Stamping option produces a photo like the one above, adding a strip of attribution to the bottom.
(The coding and design of A flickr CC search toy is pretty horrible, but I think it does what I wanted it to do.)

Keep Calm and Make a Gif

A new Assignment form Ben Rimes, ds106 Technical Difficulties | The Tech Savvy Educator worth 36 stars! My own effort took all of 3 minutes so an easy win;-) I started here: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON with the Keep Calm-o-matic and finished in fireworks, with a bit of noise.

Let’s face it, ds106 is a difficult ship to sail. Besides the shark-infested copyright waters and the mine filled seas of comment-apathy, it can be hard to keep the ds106 boat going forward all the time. So let’s honor the fact that the site will more than likely continue to endure growing pains, and provide some excellent “technical difficulty” signs/gifs/media that can be displayed the next time the site goes down….wait, it’s working now, right?

ds106 Technical Difficulties — MISSION: DS106
Finding time to do a few Assignments today as it has been raining fairly steadily.

After the Jump an animated version, suggested by Chad Sansing:

Continue reading “Keep Calm and Make a Gif”