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LA to Oregon at Mach 9
Kallahar writes "Last April I hooked up a video camera to my front bumper and drove from Los Angeles to Oregon. The video is finally done; it's sped up 95x which makes the trip a mere 6 minutes long. To do the recording I hooked up a VCR inside the car and recorded in real time, then captured the entire thing to the hard drive and changed the framerate of the avi. The camera and VCR only cost about $50 total, which makes for a fairly affordable hobby/art project."
Come on, that's like actively saying "I want my site to be fucked in the ass by the Slashdot Effect".
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Why no freakin' BitTorrent? That seems obvious, especially if you're the one who submits your site full of absurdly large videos to
(FYI, I'm getting 22k/s, on a link that usually gets about 25. Not too bad, now watch that server burn in about 5 minutes...)
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
You can find a torrent for the big video 2004Apr23_trip.torrent
It was going good...
..........'s wget makes. Damn lameness filter
0K (wget dots) 0% @ 372.78 KB/s
50K (wget dots) 0% @ 279.33 KB/s
100K (wget dots) 0% @ 271.74 KB/s
150K (wget dots) 0% @ 2.87 MB/s
200K (wget dots) 0% @ 1.95 MB/s
and then it fried....
34850K (wget dots) 50% @ 74.18 KB/s
34900K (wget dots) 50% @ 78.25 KB/s
34950K (wget dots) 51% @ 60.83 KB/s
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35050K (wget dots) 51% @ 46.64 KB/s
Slashdot effect in action people... I'll post a BitTorrent if it ever finishes
Ugh, had to do a find replace of all the
I also question his methods. There are quite a few options in VCRs for time-lapse captures, that take frames at a much-reduced rate.
When I did this five years ago, I merely stuck a webcam in the dash and ran a laptop off a power inverter. It was interesting, but you never saw me post it on Slashdot. It was also no work, since I set the capture interval and was able to dump it directly into a video. So basically we all know this guy is just stupid.
Hate to break it to you, but most of Elena's trip has now been definitively been proven to be a fake, specifically the part where she actually rides through Chernobyl on her bike. She (her husband? can't remember) also apparently re-arranged some kitsch to make a better shot.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Do not move the camera. Use a tripod. If you cant rig up a full size tripod in the passenger seat check best buy or similar stores for tiny desktop tripods. They work well when seated on the dash as long as you have something to keep them in place (duct tape).
Cut out moments in post when your vehicle is not moving. I forgot to do this once and my video came to a 3 second hault as I reached an intersection. Needless to say it distracted from the video greatly and was truly annoying. Just trim it out so that it looks like you ran the red light or something and the video will continue to flow. This tip also goes for bumps or swerves as they look terrible at high speed.
Do not add a blur effect in post production, or atleast not the ones that come with Vegas. They seriously distract from the video. If you need that light-speed look I suggest duplicating the video layer, moving the top one forward 2 or 3 frames and changing its opacity to 50%. This will create a cool effect especially when passing cars and changing lanes
If you are going to mount the camera inside the car (which I highly suggest) make sure:
A. Your windshield is clean
B. Its not raining. I did this once with the windshield wipers on and it looked horrible
C. Your state and county stickers are not in the picture. If the camera does move it will be much more noticable if there is a static image on the video.
If you are going to tape more than an hour of driving you may want to setup a laptop on an inverter hooked up to the camera with firewire set to take an image every X seconds. You can then drag all of these into your favoriate post video production software but in my experiences you dont get as smooth an image unless you overlap the images with opacity fades and by that time its become one helluva project
Tip for vegas: You can increase the velocity encelope up to 300% but thats not a whole lot. Do this alone with shortening the clip while holding down the CTRL key will allow for up to 12x the speed without the need to reencode.
If you need to speed up the video faster than what your post video production software can do you can always render the video no or low compression, import the now rendered video and do it again. lather, rinse, repeat.
And always:
Mix it to good techno if thats your cup of tea
I'm interested in hearing what other tips video enthusiast slashdoters have come up with. Please share.
As always I apologize for the bad spelling and horrible formatting, I'm rushing to get to sleep
BTW: This also works well for filming Ballroom Dancing. It looks hillarious and cool at the same time. Try overlaying multiple segments of the dance at different oppacities and adding a black and white or sepiatone filter and playing witht the white balance for a great ghostly look.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Mirror
For those that can't see the slashdotted site, our automatic mirrors have the page itself HERE. The backup site (listed on the page) still has the video available.
:)
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I did the same thing driving with only one sleep stop from Florida to California. It ended up being rather boring. Lots of night driving where you could only see tail lights and reflectors, and plenty of "Road Runner" desert country.
I shortened the whole 2500 mile drive down to 5 minutes, which was too much for most people to watch.
I did a web broadcast for most of the drive, losing my Internet connection while driving through most of the South West US. It picked back up in the few major cities that I passed through, and that's when I got all the voicemails on my phone saying "Hey, your feed broke!"
Most of the drive was rather quick. I got pulled over twice in Texas, where the cops were entertained to see a laptop in the passenger seat and a camera on the dash. Either of them asked why it was there, they just gave me a warning, and I went on my way. I really had the urge to tell the cops "My car can do almost 200mph, I'm doing 80mph, I want to go lots faster, there's nothing out here and no traffic!", but I held back to avoid an escort out of Texas.
I got stuck in traffic going through San Antonio, Texas, which looked wierd on the video. Scenery was flying by, suddenly you saw the same minivan I was stuck behind for several frames. You could also see every time I stopped for gas, which lasted for just a couple frames.
I made a run from LA to Salem Oregon and back, about a year ago. The drive took from Friday evening to Sunday morning. Again, it would have been a boring video. Most of Northern California was during the night, and Oregon was all under fog first thing in the morning when we arrived. I was in a rush, so we didn't get the laptop and camera set up for this one.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Actually the maximum speed in CA is 70.
I agree I-10 in Texas sucks. I got pulled over there once for going 79 in a 75. That's right, four miles over the limit. The cop never gave me a ticket nor did he ever intend to. They were just randomly pulling cars over to look for drugs. I guess my California plates looked suspicious in the middle of Bush country.
Not that I can really complain, since they didn't write a ticket or anything.
Rank Presidents by th
That's called "Time lapse photography", google for it, I'm sure there is plenty out there.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
..instead. It would be a more interesting route as you have to climb then descent the Great Dividing Range, and it's actually shorter than the Pacific Highway. Just a thought! Oh, and stop off in Armidale while you're at it and spend some tourist dollars ;-)
Actually, LA is a state, L.A. is a city. Then again, L.A. is more like a state of mind so maybe it was appropriate after all.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Incorrect. First off, the eye doesn't see in "frames per second". Second, 60 fps is well below the maximum frame rate our eyes can see (nobody has yet proven a maximum frame rate). For example, look at a CRT monitor at 60Hz and then one at 100Hz. I bet you can tell the difference (yes, Hz and fps are different, but they're similar enough for this discussion). If you can't, or won't admit that you can, you'll still know when you have crazy eye fatigue and neck muscle strain later. The same goes for flourescent lights at 60Hz.
People make the mistake of saying that the eye can only see X frames per second (where X is 24, 30, 60, or what have you), when they mean to say, "It only takes X frames per second for the eye to discern motion," where X decreases as effects such as motion blur are added to the source media. 24 frames per second of a video game like Quake sucks horribly, but 24 frames per second for a movie is acceptable because the film camera picks up motion blur. That's also ignoring the fact that video games are measured in average frames per second (your 24fps Quake game is going to slow down horribly when you get multiple meshes and particles going). It's also horribly evident that 24fps is not nearly enough when you watch long horizontal or vertical pans in movies.
Just because movies play at 24fps, or NTSC plays at 30fps (well, 29.xxx fps, and shown in half-frames for an effective 60Hz refresh rate), or PAL is at 25fps, or your LCD monitor happens to refresh at 60Hz doesn't mean that's all the eye can see. I'm also ignoring the more motion-receptive portions of your eye (peripheral vision), which you can play around with by looking at a CRT out of the corner of your eye. I bet you can even tell that a 100Hz CRT flickers by looking at it that way.
The MIT Stata Center page has a link to their time-lapse webcam which captured the whole thing being built... I watched it for a while but it really wasn't all that exciting. Maybe with some editing (like taking out the night-time parts) it would have been more interesting to watch, but then I guess it would lose some of the authenticity...
In the US, it's illegal to BE passed on the right. It is your duty to be as far right as possible (within reason). Too bad no one follows this rule, and you have to ride people's asses or just pass them on the right. Flash your lights at someone, and you're liable to get shot...
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
This programm was broadcasted at night, and was the best ever sleeping-drug I could imagine. Watching it after a busy day, it took only like 10 minutes before I fell in a deep sleep.
BTW you don't need a car and a VCR to create movies like this. If you live next to water where boats go by, or a busy road, or construction-works, it's very easy to create a timelapse-movie with only a webcam and webcam-software. Just make a pic every second, and use a tool to stitch all those pics to 1 movie afterwards. I did this a lot with cloudy skies, and it much fun to watch afterwards.
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
Michel Gondry, creator of some milestone music videos (Björk, The White Stripes, Chemical Brothers, Beck, Rolling Stones, etc.) actually did exactly this in one music video. The video was pretty sophisticated because he didn't just speed up the video: he adjusted it so that every explicit event (driving out of a tunnel, streetlights when car stops, rocky mountains showing up, etc.) is directly linked to the music. When you look at the video you first think that it is just a trip from east to west-coast in 5 minutes but then you actually realize that everything you see in the movie perfectly fits the music.
Get info here: [info about all the clips]
There's a great DVD available too: [amazon]
Well it's confirmed: In over nine hours, he kept to the right for approximately 3 minutes of the trip.
Great geek; terrible driver: http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html
" In the US, it's illegal to BE passed on the right." You must live in a different US than I live in. In the US that I live in, we have these things called "passing lanes." These lanes can be on the right, or the left. In fact, they even teach this concept in "drivers education" about it being legal to pass as long as there is a clear and designated lane in which to do it...
~~ Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times. Thank You ~~
Here are the North Cicular videos; also a page of Sights of the North Circular with some historic information.
Unlike the OP, we used a webcam and stored our film directly on a laptop computer using some software called WinTLV (and a USB cable through the sunroof). We didn't do a lot of editing, though 5 seconds was snipped where we sat behind a milk lorry, and there is a join in the film where we stopped to wipe rain from the camera lens. Here are photos of filmmaking.
We discussed doing a similar video in central London but didn't get around to it. Perhaps a site hosting these videos from all around the world could be fun.
Enjoy!
Boo! That's nothing. Try taking the Lincoln Tunnel from NYC to NJ at morning rush hour. There is a center concrete divider, but the fun part is that the far left lane of the outbound (NYC-NJ) lanes are used as a inbound bus lane! No divider there. Imagine driving out of NY at 60mph, and driving straight on at busses at 60mph. That, my friend, is hair raising.
Nope. His wording makes it sound funny because he's stating things a little differently than the law does, but he's essentially correct for how the TX traffic laws are. I think it's reasonable of me to assume that other states (at least some of them) would be similar.
"Slower traffic keep right" is a legal obligation - so if you're going slower than someone and you don't yield to the right to allow them to pass on the left, you can be ticketted for it. The "passing lane" is always the leftmost - it is never explicitly designated to be anywhere else. On multi-lane freeways (I don't know if this starts at 3 or 4 lanes), the leftmost lane is considered a true "passing-only lane", which is to say that not only do you have an obligation to yield out of it for faster traffic - you have a legal obligation to not be in the lane to begin with unless you're in the act of passing someone else, or you're in an emergency (or you're a cop/ambulance/firetruck with the lights running). This rule breaks down in heavier traffic, never seen it enforced at those times, but I'm not sure if they actually wrote in an exception to the law for heavy/slow traffic.
11*43+456^2
Could be. In Portland we call it I-5; I've never heard it called Highway 5 before.
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Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I am schooled as a transportation planner. That being said, traffic laws vary from state to state, but in general, every state has laws against impeding traffic. While you are correct that driving over the speed limit is illegal, it is importatn to note that impeding the flow of traffic is also illegal. Even if someone is speeding, you are still required to yield well in advance to the overtaking vehicle.
Sorry bub, you're not allowed to play traffic cop in your mom's minivan.
Funny how local naming schemes evolve.
... The Five.
For years I-5 was the only significant interstate in the Portland area. And everyone calls it I-5. As the population has grown we have built more interstates:
I-205 runs from Tualatin through E. Portland and into Vancouver, WA. People just call it 205.
I-405 runs from W.Portland to 205 in E. Portland. Most people call it The Banfield.
I-84 runs from the I-405/I-205 junction in Portland thru eastern Oregon into Idaho and beyond. And it's commonly called I-84.
So the old-timers have always prefixed the "I" onto the number because they were the only Interstates in town and it has stuck.
Now, take LA and SF. They have so many interstates running through town that when talking with others about traffic routes the natural tendency is to strip syllables and give them names instead of numbers
Someone oughta write a book.
I'm not sure about other states but in California it is legal to flash your lights at a slow driver in the left lane. It's just not legal to flash your high beams because of that blinding, swerving, and crashing thing. It will also blind the car you are folowing, not just oncoming trafic, because of the rear view mirror. That's why when you are pulled over at night there is usually a bright white light on the crusers light bar shining into your car, and it helps them see you better.
--The best thing about working at home... Homebrew!
[...] but he's essentially correct for how the TX traffic laws are. I think it's reasonable of me to assume that other states (at least some of them) would be similar. "Slower traffic keep right" is a legal obligation [...]
This varies by state. Some states have no laws to that effect, some at the other end of the spectrum have laws that you cannot be in the leftmost lane on certain roadways unless you're passing, and some are somewhere in the middle.
More to the point, these rules are not enforced by police, and most drivers are not even aware of them.
Another factor compounding the problem is low speed limits - a person going 55mpg in a leftmost lane has all reason to believe that noone should have a right to pass him.