if you’re traveling to the northeast of cambodia, you might find yourself trying to find a direct route between the major towns of rattanakiri and mondulkiri: ban lung and sen monorom, respectively.
as you’ll read in the travel guidebooks, there’s no direct bus connection, only a nightmarish road, and a very bumpy, expensive road. however, road conditions have greatly improved, and it’s not necessarily as difficult to organize as it once was.
here’s what we did: [more...]
GoPro Studio is a great piece of video editing software, especially for two reasons: firstly, it’s straight-forward and easy to use, and secondly, it’s available for free.
GoPro Studio (formerly: Cineform Studio) is compatible with “GoPro, Canon, Nikon and other constant frame rate H.264 mp4 and .mov formats”, but what can you do if you’d like to edit videos from other cameras?
you can use MPEG Streamclip 1.2 to quickly convert any video into a format that can be imported directly into GoPro Studio.
here’s how: [more...]
just one cigarette started a forest fire in absam this morning, which quickly spread to an area of about 3 hectares.
at night the scene looks both scary and beautiful: entire hillsides are glowing bright red. every few minutes, presumably when a new tree has fully caught fire, flames rise up several meters in the air, so that even from several kilometers away you can clearly see them with the naked eye.
fire fighters, the military, and even private helicopter operators have tried all day to contain the fire using six helicopters, but the dry weather and wind have made these efforts difficult. rain is expected on saturday.
the good news is that, as far as i know, no houses or settlement are in danger.
news articles in german:
hdr version after the break: [more...]
in a recent blog post, i detailled the results of my search for a viable construction time lapse camera. the short version: the TLC200 Pro by Brinno sounded like the best option considering viewing angle, long-term usability and pricing.
the camera and some accessories were delivered recently, and i found the answers to some of my original questions. in this article, you’ll find a short review and my initial experience with brinno’s “pro” time lapse camera.
for future outdoor use, my order also included the ATH120 weather resistant housing and AWM100 wall mount.
i’ve been searching for an affordable standalone time-lapse solution to document the upcoming construction of a house. since there isn’t much hands-on information around, i thought i’d share the results of my extensive market research (which has taken up far too much time).
firstly, here are the camera features i was looking for:
the camera is going to be mounted on the neighbour’s house, and the distance/height situation requires a horizontal field of view of at least 110 degrees – hence the wide-angle requirement. wifi is available on site, as is a relatively protected camera position under the roof. the construction phase with most outside changes is estimated at several months, so i’m aiming for an interval between 10 and 30 minutes. [more...]
the tiny plant below is a stone plant seedling (aizoaceae), growing in the harsh conditions of the “knersvlakte” quartz gravel landscape in north-eastern south africa. the seedling has only formed its first pair of cotyledons, which are already completely covered in epidermal bladder cells:
bladder cells are modified trichomes (hair-like structures) common in the stone plant family (aizoaceae), which are used to remove salt from the plant system.
to give you a better sense of scale, here’s the same view plus my index finger tip: [more...]
gopro studio software is a simple, straight-forward and free video stitching software.
in short, it’s awesome. however, in a recent video project i experienced two distinct problems: whenever i saved, closed and reopened a project, the opening title (video track) was reset to standard values (content, formatting, length), and titles (title tracks) were shifted a few seconds to the right.
here’s a quick overview of what causes these problems, and what you can do to stop them from happening.
the problem: titles in the title tracks (resulting in overlay text) are aligned perfectly with their respective video clips. after saving the project, closing gopro studio, and re-opening it, these titles are shifted to the right in the timeline, i.e. they are delayed and appear later in the video. this can happen at the beginning of the video, somewhere in the middle, or near the end. however, it always continues to the end of the video.
