Hey Ethan... nice video!!

[Scottgman]

I realize this is OT, but I'm not sure if Ethan peruses the other forums.

Anyway, I was reading the Clicked blog on MSNBC (scroll down about a page) like I usually do and I see a link for "One song, 37 parts, one cellist." Sounds pretty cool. So I click the link and there's our favorite acoustics expert Ethan Winer (actually there were several of you... and what's with the halo on the cat?? LOL! ).

I really like the song-- it is very cool. It sounded great (I assume you recorded that in your studio?)!

Anyway, just wanted to share...

 

[SonicClang]

There was just a topic about this about a month ago.

We all agree with you. It's great.

 

[Ethan Winer]

Scott,

Thanks man!

Also, the version at YouTube is low-res and mono. There are links to hi-res stereo versions at my web site:

www.ethanwiner.com/rondo.html

--Ethan

 

[igorot]

Oh man... I'm not worthy .. I want my cello back! I abandoned that in high school after playing it for 5 years in elementary. Girls don't dig cellos at that time you know...

 

[frederic]

www.ethanwiner.com/rondo.html

Ethan,

Like, wow.

Aside from obvious musical talent, this is one astounding video. I thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so, I just burned it to a DVD and added it to my collection.

 

[Ethan Winer]

Frederic,

Thanks man!

Recently I made a widescreen version and also a 5.1 surround audio mix, with full broadcast quality. I'm working out a deal now with a DVD fulfillment house that will let me sell DVDs at cost. (I'm not interested in making money with it. I'm hoping they'll let me do this for $10 or less each.)

--Ethan

 

[SonicClang]

Could you upload an .iso image of the one with 5.1 surround? Then we could just download that and burn it ourselves. Save yourself the hassle of actually making them yourself.

 

[HapiCmpur]

Ethan, that's too much talent, creativity, knowledge, and skill for one individual to possess. By law, I think you have to share some of that with the rest of us.

Then again, I guess that's exactly what you've been doing in this forum.

Many thanks. Much admiration.

 

[Ethan Winer]

Clangs,

> Could you upload an .iso image of the one with 5.1 surround? <

I'd love to but I can't afford to pay for the bandwidth! When I first put this video on my web site I had four formats in both medium and high resolution. (The files are about 25 and 45 MB each, though disk space is not the problem.) I sent an email to a few dozen friends saying "Look what I did," and within a week the video was getting more than 100 views per day. As word spread further the downloads kept increasing, then someone posted a link at a popular "blogger" site and 9,000 people tried to view it in one day. There was so much traffic that my web host thought it was a DOS (Denial of Service) attack, and my site ended up being shut down for three days.

Unlike the 45 MB hi-res file on my site, the DVD version is 1.4 GB because there are four versions, plus animated menus, all at the highest resolution a DVD can accept. Now, if you are willing to host a 1.4 GB image that hundreds of people will download, I will be thrilled to let you do that.

--Ethan

 

[SonicClang]

I can ask my friend who runs my site if I could put it up there for a little while at least. I think he's got something like 10 gigs of bandwidth a month that he's paying for and right now my site is the only one taking up any of that, and it's not even scratching the surface. I wouldn't mind hosting a file for a little bit, but of course if the bandwidth gets out of hand I'd have to take it down.

 

[frederic]

Thanks man!

You're welcome, it's nice work.

Recently I made a widescreen version and also a 5.1 surround audio mix, with full broadcast quality. I'm working out a deal now with a DVD fulfillment house that will let me sell DVDs at cost. (I'm not interested in making money with it. I'm hoping they'll let me do this for $10 or less each.)

I really want that!

If you're not mass producing them, you can burn them on a DVD burner in your PC. DVD burners (IDE, internal) are about 100 bucks mail order, maybe 130 or so at staples, office max, comp usa, etc.

Usually they come with burning software... and once you "transcode" the video into a DVD image (which takes a while), burning duplicates is easy... just tell the software to burn off 10 copies, and after every burn you'll be asked to insert the next disc. I've done this for demos, trial runs, and some amatuer film stuff and for low production quantities it's not too painful.

If you want to make 200+ of them, or anticipate mass production yourself, know there are affordable solutions to this as well. I personally like the $1300 (new) Primera Bravo II DVD duplicator, it prints right on the DVD's and burns them, and however many blanks you stick on the "load" spindle, that's how many it makes. One, six, fifty. Run it overnight and ignore it until it beeps. To feed that beast, generic, printable blanks can be bought in quantity for about $65 with shipping for 200...

If you want to make 200 copies @ 10 per, you're looking at $2000 right there... though I imagine they're supplying the DVD case and inserts as well. Something to consider.

I absolutely *loved* my Bravo II until my cat pissed in it

 

[Ethan Winer]

Clang,

> he's got something like 10 gigs of bandwidth a month <

Yep, that'll cover 7 downloads.

--Ethan

 

[Ethan Winer]

Frederic,

> If you're not mass producing them, you can burn them on a DVD burner in your PC. <

Well sure, that's what I do now.

> If you want to make 200+ of them, or anticipate mass production yourself, know there are affordable solutions to this as well. I personally like the $1300 (new) Primera Bravo II DVD duplicator <

It's not even that, because I can get DVD's duped locally for just a couple of bucks, and they'll even do a print-on label and paper insert. The real issue is I'm too busy to deal with a bunch of $10 transactions. It would also increase the fee I now pay the bank for my company's credit card charges, because it would lower the "average ticket" by a factor of 100 to 1 at least.

Again, I already have this in the works, and I'm just waiting to hear from the fulfillment place how much they'll charge me to copy, print, and mail each DVD, plus handle the credit card transaction.

--Ethan

 

[SonicClang]

Clang,

> he's got something like 10 gigs of bandwidth a month <

Yep, that'll cover 7 downloads.

--Ethan

Well now big is the file? It's only 6 minutes. You're not talking a full 4.7 gig iso file here. That might only be 100 megs.

 

[technominds]

Hey Ethan! Just wanted to know what you used as your green/blue screen as im looking into making one. Also, what camera you used to film it?

An idea for the downloading would be with a torrent? Just a thought!

Great video!

 

[Ethan Winer]

Clang,

> It's only 6 minutes. You're not talking a full 4.7 gig iso file here. That might only be 100 megs. <

I already have medium- and high-resolution versions you can downlaod from links on my site:

www.ethanwiner.com/rondo.html

These are about 25 and 45 MB respectively. But the original file is very high resolution broadcast quality, and weighs in at 1.4 GB for that 6.5 minutes. My DVD includes four versions for normal and widescreen, stereo and surround for each. In DVD Architect I chose the highest quality setting, which yields a total of 1.4 GB for all four files plus the animated menus etc. I think I listed that above. So you can already get a pretty high-res version now for free. It's just the full DVD-quality version that is impractical to post on a web site.

--Ethan

 

[Ethan Winer]

> Just wanted to know what you used as your green/blue screen as im looking into making one. Also, what camera you used to film it? <

I searched Google for Green Screen and found a supplier in LA that sold it. I paid about $80.

The Camera is a Sony I borrowed from a good friend. I don't know the model number but it's got three CCD elements and is higher quality than the cheap cameras. I think he paid about $2,500 three or four years ago. You can probably get something just as good now for less.

--Ethan

 

[SonicClang]

It was probably something like this. http://thecamerapros.com/prodetails.asp?prodid=282 I'm thinking about buying one of these for wedding vidoegraphy.

Green/blue screen doesn't turn out that great on a regular camcorder. Or at least it's much more difficult to get just right. You have to make sure you light the screen perfecly. With the 3 ccd chips, it picks up colors much better, which helps the chroma keyer in post.

 

[Ethan Winer]

> You have to make sure you light the screen perfecly. With the 3 ccd chips, it picks up colors much better, which helps the chroma keyer in post. <

I'm not an expert at all with this stuff, but I know you're correct about the green screen needing plenty of uniform lighting! That was my biggest problem, and on scenes in my video with a light background you can see green around the edges.

When I do my next video I'll get more lights and spread them around better. One saving feature is that Vegas lets you select a range of green shades to supress. When you use the "color picker" tool, instead of pointing at one pixel on the screen you can highlight a rectangular area. So when I set the Chroma Keyer plug-in I selected a rectangle that included as much variation as possible.

--Ethan

 

[SonicClang]

Right, that is a nice feature that I use often. But if the screen isn't uniform you're still going to start getting those weird looking spots here and there. Chosing a range of colors only does so much.

You can also use key frames if at any point the light, or shadows on the screen change.

The best thing to do is to get as bright green of a screen you can get and get as many lights as possible to make sure it's very bright. Your position in front of the screen was correct though. You want to be about 3 feet in front of it or so, so you're not casting any shadows on the screen, and so you're being lit from a different light source.

I think only people who have done the green screen stuff would even notice the imperfections in it. It's still a great video.