Alaska by Javelin.

[Keith Clements]

Please also read Lily's blog.
https://insearchofbigfootblog.wordpress.com/

Note you need to click on the picture for each section to read it.

She is also still updating so there are a lot more days to come.

[Keith Clements]

Roger, glad spell check corrected your spelling of annals

[Keith Clements]

H
Hi all, well today dawned a lovely sunny day for the 4 th of July! We had a bun and coffee at the local Starbucks( not a lot of choice for a reasonable coffee) and on our way 8.30 ish. We have just over 200 miles to go to complete the journey.
Yesterday was a steady drive just under 60 mph which is what we have been doing on most good roads, and with fuel and toilet stops, peeling off 50 miles an hour. The speed limit varies 55- 65 mph but as the Jav has a vibration about 65 we have kept under that. After leaving San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge , we passed huge market gardens each side of Hwy 101 for miles, all irrigated, and further south equally huge areas of grape vines for miles on slightly higher ground , rising from 600ft to 1000 ft but not much higher, today however will be different, much higher as we approach Los Angeles . The ground is quite parched now and the song "it never rains in California" takes on new meaning. The only trees are scrubby California oaks, an ever green which somehow survives in this part of the world and do give some green among the beige grass.
An interesting sight late yesterday was a huge aqueduct carrying a tremendous volume of water South for Los Angeles City water supply from the Colorado river area north. This apparently has been a bone of debate for many years in this state and highlights the fact of how important water is to this state in particular . I believe a recent court decision has changed the status quo and how it's implemented remains to be seen?! As most agriculture in this area is only happening by irrigation , it's a big deal, especially when you remember greater LA has some 24 million people to feed! 10.25am and 140 mls to go! A couple of big hills in the w ay tho. Water and oil pressure all good as it's still cool by LA standards.
Apologies, I got it wrong, no hills to go over, Hwy 101 is the old El Camino Real road from LA to San Francisco and follows the route of the very early Spanish churches along the way , marked every few miles by poles with a bell on top. Like a question mark.
The road follows the coast and goes around the big hills north of LA on the coast.
Well a dream run into Los Angeles, we've got here long before the locals and didn't slow down at all. Scott reckoned it was the first time he had travelled that freeway and not slowed down!! We arrived as our French Lady predicted we would( sat Nav).
Photos, washing, and something to eat!! Whoopee !! The ?Arctic circle and back in A Javelin!! Neil

[Keith Clements]

I have gathered together the images from our six tablets, cameras and phones and attempted to organise them. Not easy as each had a different time setting and two tracked time zone changes but not the others. Neil's Camera and I-pad were on NZ time and my camera was on UK time and Scott's camera was on LA time and my and Scott's phone tracked time zone but probably not at the same instant. What happens when you take a photo, cross a time zone and then take another photo, then sort the images by time taken so that you can choose the ones you prefer! If your system then sorts by days you find you have some images in the wrong days.

My next issue was finding software to do the editing as Microsoft Movie Maker only outputs in mp4 files not MTS files that my SONY HDR-PJ410 works with (and projects onto a screen in full HD). So I had to learn the editing capabilities of Sony 'Play Memories'. Added to that the upgrade to Windows 10 made my graphics card obsolete so I had to revert to Windows 7. Or at least for the first 4 days edit up to Three Forks. But then discovered that the output from Movie Maker was not good enough, so swapped back to Windows 10 and started learning Play Memories as I was able to stop it using the hardware acceleration of the graphics card.

So I am now adjusting all the time stamps on the 4000 plus photos and 700 movie clips in an attempt to merge the two into something that is worth watching. At the same time I discard some clips and images of the feet and rocks tat were taken by mistake.

Compressing a day into 5 minutes is a challenge especially when we did and saw so much. Even that means you end up with a 2.5 hour session for the 30 days.

I hope to also add titles and some maps, but fades and other professional editing will have to wait till I am retired ....

[Keith Clements]

Hit another issue in trying to produce the video, this time with video formats. My Sony provides high definition and stores in the TS (AVC) format. Whereas Picasa, which I was using to add titles and combine stills, only outputs in Windows Media Video format which is not HD. Also the video clips from my phone and Neil's iPad will need conversion. I have spent ages trying to find a converter from wmv to mts and get the sources exactly the same in format, namely video codec with same frame height, width and rate, audio CODEC with same bit and sampling rate. This proved a challenge so I revisited the editing software.

What's TS Format?

TS, known as Transport Stream, is a container format for MPEG, used most frequently in broadcast systems such as DVB, ATSC and IPTV. For random access in digital video cameras, recorders and players, the format is modified by adding a 4-byte timecode (TC) to standard 188-byte packets, which resulted in a 192-byte packet. This is what is informally called M2TS stream. JVC called it TOD (possibly an abbreviation for "Transport stream on disc") when used in HDD-based camcorders like GZ-HD7, the file extension is .tod. In Blu-ray Disc, the file extension is .m2ts. And in AVCHD camcorder, it is .mts.

Many applications are unfamiliar with how to decode it, since it has a very different multiplexing format than the more conventional MPEG container known as Program Stream, which is used on DVDs, and what is produced by many encoder cards.

The Play Memories software that came with the camera allows editing such as deleting (trimming) unwanted bits and combining of videos provided they are in the same format and then outputs these in the same format. The software does allow conversion to mp4 format (which is more common) but some definition is lost. Just found out how the software does allows adding of titles, and I can create what is called a time lapse video made up of still pictures. So am now experimenting with that.

[Keith Clements]

I went away for a couple of days to see friends who asked to see the video of the trip. Yes honestly!
So my camera, which has a projector built in, composed the show with a press of a button from all the unedited stills and video it had taken and we sat down to watch. This was the first time I had seen the content. The full HD was a little compromised because it was projected onto an off-white embossed wallpaper wall and the sound was through the camera's micro speakers but we managed to sit through 2.5 hours and then the next evening another 2 hrs. Finally finished it off the next day after skipping about half and hour of the ferry engine room. So that was just the content from one camera on one micro SD card no bigger than a postage stamp! Technology is amazing.
What it did was give me an idea of the content to put into the edited cut and where some gaps need to be filled using content from the other cameras.
The viewing also showed how a few stills emphasise parts of the experience. This camera also has the ability to take 9Mp stills whilst videoing in HD. The only downside is that the finger movement needed to press the button moves the camera when on telephoto upsetting the video. Considerable editing would be required to produce a recording with no shake and good transitions with a sound track.....Perhaps I will make a first cut and polish it up later.

[Keith Clements]

After much battling with technology the video of the first two days of the trip has been completed.
I have saved as an mp4 file in high definition resolution (1920 x 1080) at 29 frames per second.
I would be interested in any comments as I have another 30 days to do.
Note the file is 192 MB so may take a while to download on slow links.

Please click this link

Alaska By Jowett Days 00 and 01.

The video should start playing but best to click on the screen and expand to full screen using the corner box in the bottom right of the toolbar.

Let me know what you think.

By the way, I decided to go back to using Microsoft Movie Maker on Windows 7 for the editing and just needed to find the right CODEC to add to it so that the MTS files could be decoded. A friendly soul on Google pointed me towards Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate.

Movie Maker allows easy import of all the media including a sound track and narration. So you might have to put up with my voice and my choice of soundtrack! I try not to overlay the video soundtrack as I know you all like to hear the sound of a Jowett.

I might be able to do the editing on Windows 10 once my new graphics card arrives as the current one will not handle DirectX 12.

All 8 processors in the Intel-i7 and three drives (one pair in RAID 0 striped mode) are gainfully employed converting to the mp4 output of the edit. To create the movie from the trimmed clips and soundtrack it takes about twice as long as duration of the movie. I am hoping the new graphics card and a new solid state drive might speed up this process.

[PJGD]

Keith,

It all worked fine for me on a Mac. Looks like a fine time was had by all!

Philip

[Alf Heseltine]

Keith

The video worked well with laptop (Windows 10) wired rather than over wi fi.
Some info on the car would be good, preparation, any special mods etc. Did the car perform
as expected in the heat, oil pressure, water temp, etc,
Look forward to the completed video.

Alf.

[Forumadmin]

Took delivery of a new Graphics card (MSI Geforce GTX960) since Windows 10 did not like my old one. This has 1024 cores (processors) in it which halved the movie generation time on Windows. Windows 10 gives a further 20% increase so now have switched to using Movie Maker on Windows 10.

I also bought a Solid State Drive that should add a further speed increase but I have not rearranged where the OS, original and work files are located as I need to do some benchmarking and tuning to see what works best. As I posted on Facebook, I was amazed how they packed 256,000,000,000x8 bits of memory in a package 100x20x2mm considering when I started at Texas instruments in 1969 we managed about 1 bit in a package 30x10x5mm. Moore's Law

What I need now is some time to do the editing.