Last night I attended the fourth-grade spring concert at my sons' elementary school. It was the first such event that I've been to since we got a digital camcorder as a gift (thanks, Dad!), so I've been playing with iMovie this morning.
For family members and other folks affiliated with the school, I've made a "web-friendly" (meaning tiny and highly compressed) full-length QuickTime version of the movie . Click here to see it streamed (could be slow, depending on server load), or right-click and choose "save target to disk" here to download it directly to disk and play it locally--it's a 42MB file. (If you want the higher-quality, uncompressed version on DVD, let me know).
For those with less patience for home movies of kids, especially those you don't know, here's a small QuickTime clip of the kids playing their recorders and then singing a verse from a song called "Peace Must Be Our Goal."
Given the state of the world today, this song--sung by such innocents--touched me deeply. These kids are too young to be drafted, but they're more than halfway to that age. Will their world be more peaceful than ours? As a parent who doesn't ever want to send her sons off to war, I can only hope so.
Dr. L,
Nice touch with the multimedia! I understand that as a Mac user that Quicktime is an obvious choice for delivery of audio/video. Have you considered other options for delivery (.wmv, .swf, or .rm) for non Mac viewers? It is my understanding that Quicktime ranks pretty low in terms of preferred video viewers... your thoughts?
No mother wants to send her children to war. Thankfully, some children see the necessity and rise to the occasion (in the hopes that their own children will not have to do the same). Every generation hopes that their children will inherit a more peaceful world.
In response to Mr. Chenoweth's comment: [1] The Quicktime plugin is not exclusive to Mac, nor is the only option for Mac viewers. (And I'm sure he didn't mean to imply otherwise?) [2] I thought Quicktime was preferred over RealMedia, Windows Media, and (God forbid) Flash for less artifacting and greater losslessness when streaming?
Dan, what makes it more difficult for me as a parent these days is my personal belief that recent wars in which the US has been involved have been about ideology and money rather than safety and security of citizens.
As to the video format, iMovie certainly makes it easiest to export to QuickTime. I could, I suppose, do a conversion to realmedia, but I don't see any particular value to that. And I'm not sure there are utilities for creating wmf files on a Mac (though I know there are players).
I feel a bit like I may have stepped on someone���s toes with my question regarding a choice of multimedia delivery formats�Ķif your audience is primarily Mac (users), then certainly use a system that is native to the Mac (QuickTime). Our dilemma is that we have a split user/audience with 80% PC users and 20% Mac users. Oh, for a standard that would create peace within the ranks�Ķ
I was interested to see if any other options had been considered for both Mac and PC users (the answer is apparently ���no���)�Ķ certainly, asking PC user to download QuickTime for PC is a solution. Real Media is still around although declining in popularity. I am not quite sure I understand the ���God forbid��� comment regarding Flash�Ķ it continues to be one of the most downloaded options for multimedia viewing on the Internet (for Mac and PC users). And then, there is Windows Media Player 7.1 for Mac�Ķ.
This is in response to your previous entry about prayers for Marshall which has now been closed therefore I could not post to it. I know you have no idea who I am, but I was a friend of Erin & Leigh Ellen's mother's when she lived in Lewisburg Tennessee. I kept all three of the children for years when Marshall was just a toddler. By accident I found the article about the terrible indicent involving Marshall which eventually led me here. I would love to reconnect with the girls since I have now moved to the Birmingham area myself, and I'm desperate for news about Marshall's condition. Please, if you could put either of them or Marshall's mother in touch with me I'd greatly appreciate it.My email address is eacost@bellsouth.net. Thank you in advance and please know that your family is in my prayers.