Budget panoramas or virtual tours

August 22nd, 2006

360vt_sm.jpgI received a request to do some panoramas from a customer and after learning the equipment was very expensive and my customer did not have enough work to justify purchasing the equipment it was dropped. But a month or two later I thought I could beat the system and produce the panoramas by hand and end up with a better looking product for those looking for that kind of service. Most panoramas I had viewed appear warped and in my opinion they sucked canal water because the high price being charged for these warped images was wrong. This reminded me of the 3D camera days… “This camera is going to be the future”, yeh right! So I set out to make a better finished product for a reasonable price and I did exactly that.

On the first panorama I made I used a DV video camera, Adobe Premiere, and Adobe Photoshop. My second panoramas were made with a $129 digital camera and Photoshop. Photoshop is not necessary, just about any graphics software can be used. To replace the proprietary software that displays those warped panoramas on a website I scowered the net and found many solutions, I chose PTViewer, a java applet. This is just to show everyone you don’t need to pay the exorbitant prices to enjoy your craft, there is always more than one way to skin a rabbit.

You can view the budget virtual tours I created and judge for yourself if they are acceptable.


itunes- A Flagship Apple Digital Product

August 16th, 2006

iTunes is a proprietary digital media player application, launched by Apple Computer , for playing and organizing digital music and video files. Of course, iTunes is in a different league from Mail. You could almost argue that it is Apple’s single most important piece of software after OS X, its flagship digital product.

iTunes is the easiest way to organize, share and listen to music on your computer. Find new favorites. Manage your growing library. Enjoy the best friend an iPod ever had.

Importing your existing music is merely a matter of inserting a CD, while the iTunes Music Store offers something for everyone. Buy songs and albums by your favorite musicians. Download exclusive tracks — from artists such as Eminem and Franz Ferdinand — you won’t find anywhere else. Or jumpstart your digital music collection with iTunes Essentials organized by mood, artist or theme.

iTunes is the software hub that makes the iPod such a successful device. And since it was made available for Windows as well as Mac OS X, iTunes has become the first piece of Apple software many people ever see. As such, it acts as a representative, a means for Apple to show off its wares to potential new customers.

What’s more, iTunes does so many things. From its beginnings as a humble audio player, iTunes has now become a central point for downloading and enjoying all manner of multimedia content. Podcasts, music videos, online radio, TV shows, and audio books have all got a place in the iTunes Sources bar.

iTunes is also a store. For many people, the iTunes Music Store is the first thing they try out when using iTunes for the first time

Automated Option: If you’re someone who likes to sleep in the same room as your Mac, then it makes sense to use it as a sophisticated alarm clock. Better yet, fix it so that iTunes wakes you up with your favorite songs each morning. AlarmThingy should do the trick.

In OS X, iTunes comes with a decent stack of Automator actions (including several designed for use with iPods) you might like to play around with.

Explore Your Music: One of my favorite add-ons for iTunes is Clutter, a free, open source app that lets you look at your music collection the old-fashioned way: by seeing the sleeves. Clutter gives you the chance to put music CDs anywhere you like on your Desktop. You can drag them into whatever patterns or piles you like. To play an album, double-click the sleeve. It’s nice.

Sharing: You probably know that libraries and play lists within iTunes can be shared over a network. Anyone else on the network can listen to the music directly from your Mac. With hardware extras like Airport Express, you can use AirTunes to distribute shared music to audio-video devices too. It’s all very simple to set up.

It is always your one-stop music shop , the iTunes Music Store now features music videos and TV shows to buy and own forever. So while you browse more than 3 million songs, 35,000 podcasts and more than 16,000 audiobooks, you can also preview and download that classic ’80s video or the latest episode of “The Office.”

Welcome to our Apple Computer & Parts Section.

http://www.applepart.com/

http://www.idigitals.com/

Watch everything from the comfort of your Mac or PC, as many times as you like. iTunes makes growing your digital music and video collection fast, easy and legal.

Here you’ll find all the various used Apple computer models that are currently available, as well as our inventory on Apple computer parts. Here you find how your apple computer safe from virsus and spam.They have offered to systems that need the update, and give the latest versions that have incorporated the Security Update.

The internet is the best place to buy cheap computer parts and take it secure. Due to increase in demand for many parts in many suppliers find it profitable to sell their products online. The online dealers have their websites, which offer information on the various types of Mac parts available for purchase. Go to http://www.applepart.com/, a leading online resource for buying Apple Parts. Applepart.com is the online catalog for Apple Parts . Author: Harry Johnson For Listing visit http://www.applepart.com/ (A leading online resource for buying Apple Parts ) . You can also vist our other site http://www.idigitals.com/ which is a Custom Built Pro Workstations offering the latest in Computer Technology


Digital Video - way back when

August 14th, 2006

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One of my hobbies is audio and video effects. I use a DPS “Perception” Digital Disk Recorder with over 2.5 hours of Component Video Storage.On the audio side I use a Mackie 1202VLZ with a 96 kHz LynxOne Studio audio card. If ya got time check out the following 250Kbps video streams. You’ll also find other streams throughout the web site.

Best damn indie karate movie you’ll ever see!

camera.gif   He is a Spy?

 

camera.gif   Below: Cool commercial produced for a school project:


I produced this Sound Blaster commercial for a community college project. Budget=$0.00. The 30sec commercial was shot with a Panasonic 456 and run through VidTech Scanlock on an Amiga 2000 for a composite effect and then finished on a 486 (that’s right, a PC 486) with a PAR (Personal Animation Recorder) by DPS (Digital Processing Systems) using Razor Pro editing software. Oh, yeh, that was in 1994 Digital Video on 486. The teacher absolutely did not get it, but the class screamed, yelled, and clapped. Effective? I’d say yes.
P.S. I know, thats not even a Sound Blaster Card, just something from my junk pile.

These are some of the software packages I currently use… and own: Adobe After Effects, Premiere, Video Action Pro, Razor Pro, Transjammer, Imagine 3D, Lightwave 3D, Animation Master, Scala Multimedia, Acid Pro, Crystal 3D Impact Pro and Macromedias Director.

I’ve built a few Digital Video Workstations and Video Servers for myself and other people including Discreet Logic’s edit* systems, Pinnacles Targa 2000 and 3000 systems, Matrox DigiSuite systems, DPS systems, including SDI and 1394 systems. The high performance SCSI arrays used are by Rorke Data and Medea. Many, many Seagate Cheetahs. Most of these systems sported dual Zeon processors and dual monitor setups. In the near future I will be talking about these systems along with my very first very cool video server I built, ya… it’s a PC too!