Saturday 18 July 2009

Same Narrowboat as Before, But!

Well I'm now going against all my previous criticisms of YouTube, not least due to the amount of music I've been downloading off there recently (hint: install the latest free Flash Player package - it includes a very good .FLV downloader, and a reliable DVD burner), but also because it's become an almost standard host site now for linked or embedded videos within blogs and discussion forums. As such this has tipped the balance back towards us, the sane majority!

So here again is my previous little video clip of a narrowboat having just left the Barton Aqueduct on the Bridgewater Canal. But this time it can be expanded to full screen, and the quality is also better - even though, so I've found, YouTube loses massive amounts of detail due to its excessively high compression.



'Must go out with the camera again and get some better video clips of some of the more decorative narrowboats I often see passing by through Monton Village here.

Edit: "FLASH Player" above should have been "REAL Player".

5 comments:

b said...

I'm a little hesitant when it comes to "Real" products. In the past i've watched my firewall catch/stop many reports that I never initiated. It's of course commonplace these days, most software once installed looks right away to report back to mother about the usage patterns of the most recent user.Regardless, forgive my blather, there is a point. You mention an flv dl utility. I'm wondering if yours is able to pull from Vimeo. Any response is more than appreciated. Btw, thanks for the introduction to the world of narrowboats, i'm always appreciative of an opportunity to expand my horizons.

Kevin 'In Salford' said...

Hi b,
Yes I also disable anything in software that provides any form of online feedback. It usually means trawling through the advanced options, but at least it's me who's in control and not the vendor.

I also block or restrict 'cookies', Java scripting, Active X plug-ins, pop-ups, display of adverts, etc. within my browser config, again so that it's me who's in control.

RealPlayer (the free plugin version) is needed to view streaming (flash) audio/video on the BBC website, along with many educational sites. I don't use it very often these days so it was a long time since I'd updated it. Much to my surprise this free version now includes several additional facilities.

I've not looked at Vimeo for a long time, so took a look earlier. (And I must take another look, it's moved on a lot with some very good content - in fact it's rather more 'me' than YouTube is!). Yes RealPlayer can indeed download the (flash) video content on there.

RealPlayer can be downloaded from
REAL.COM, and chose the Free version (currently 11).

B said...

Thanks Kevin, much appreciated. What i'm interested in is a nice little simple prog that allows you to strip the audio from the flv into an mp3.I have one that works superbly with youtube but haven't run across something similar for Vimeo.

Kevin 'In Salford' said...

I recently downloaded and checked out the 'Free Studio' package. The individual programs are simple, crude, but effective.

Using the video to mp3 converter in there I'm able to rip the sound from any flv file I've already downloaded to disk via RealPlayer, so it would also work with flv's downloaded from Vimeo.

'Free Studio' is available to download from:

http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/

and select the 'one installation for all programs' option.

You'll be impressed! And it's Free! Have fun!

B said...

Thanks, Kevin. I'll be checking them out later this evening.