What a Difference a Couple of Years Makes!

Having reworked "The March of the Atlas Reefers" and being quite satisfied with the results, it was inevitable that I'd look at the other toy train videos that I've shot since getting the DVcam.   Sure enough, a lot of them were also captured at the wrong frame size (PAL vs. NTSC), so  I've recaptured them (correctly this time) and I've begun to edit them, encode them, and get them posted on the web site.  As I do each one, I note it on the Multimedia page so my web site visitors know that the files have changed.  Since more than 92% of my visitors now have broadband access (Google Analytics is a marvelous tool), I'm encoding them in all three formats (Real Media, Windows Media, and MPEG-4) at the full native frame size (720×480) with high video/audio quality settings.  While this makes for larger files than previously, with broadband they're still rather quick to stream and view and the enhanced clarity and quality is more than worth it.  Enjoy!   I also did an experiment, that I'll probably post, of capturing an old analog camcorder video using the DVcam (it can function as an A/D converter) and while the result is pretty good compared to the original, I think that for those oldest videos, I may just reshoot them using more modern equipment.