Camera: Still Photos

The N85’s camera has become a substitute for our relatively bulky “real” digital camera. It performs well in high (bright sun) to adequate light. As previously stated, the photography style in which this phone shines is macro. Its optics will auto-focus at a very short distance, allowing photos such as the bug-and-flower picture below.

The primary weakness I have found is the quality of photographs in low light. The dual LED flash supplements dim ambient indoor light, but is not sufficient for a dark area. The resulting images are off-color and grainy. I am not sure whether the xenon flash on the Nokia N82 is significantly better in these situations. I don’t find this a major drawback, as available lighting is adequate most of the time I want a photograph taken. Below I have provided a few examples of lower-light photos.

Camera: Video

Video capabilities of the N85 are on par with our “real” 5 MP digital camera. Similar to still photograph performance, the camera does well in adequate light, but videos in poorly lit rooms are grainy. With the 8 GB of space standard on this phone, I don’t have to worry about keeping the videos short. The N85 allows me to capture candid moments with sufficient quality to post a video on YouTube. I doubt any other phone does it better, though you could certainly find newer digital cameras and obviously digital camcorders with better performance.

Other Features

Somewhat odd perhaps, but I will classify making phone calls under this category. I appreciate the N85 as a camera. As a phone it is sufficient but not exemplary. This may be remedied by eventually reading the instruction manual, but so far I have found no way to reach certain features, such as call logs or profiles (e.g. silent, airplane mode), without a number of click-throughs. It also has a tendency to not alert me to missed calls until far after the fact.

Second caveat is the screen. It is impressive indoors, but almost unusable outside in bright sun. This can make it difficult to take pictures outside, as it’s hard to verify they are in focus.

Final Thoughts

The N85 obviously does have weaknessess–lack of a touchscreen or full keyboard, internet browsing is difficult, plus those two mentioned above–but overall I am very happy with the phone. My primary motivation was to use it as a more convenient substitute for our traditional digital camera, and in this capacity I think it has exceeded my expectations.  However, if  texting, e-mail, or web browsing are important, the N85 may not be the best choice.

1. Establish a set of encoding, tagging, and album art rules and save it as a text file in your top directory. For example: (downloadable version: musiclibarystd_revb)
   

   ==Music Library Standard Revision A.04==
   5/31/2009
   Grant Pitel
   Adam Pitel–CODING–
   LAME 3.90.3 Quality: 220 kbps VBR / 44.1KHz / Joint Stereo–TAGGING–
   (Rule 1) 
             General Folder structure
                  <Genre>/<Artist>/<Album>
             Special Folder structures
                  <Soundtracks>/<Album>(Rule 2)
   File Naming
             All files must cohere the following format
                  <track number> – <artist> – <song title>
   Exceptions:
             Compilations
                  The artist who performs the song goes in the composer tag
                  In the artists tag enter “Various Artists” and rename the file such that coheres to the following
                  <track number> – <album> – <composer name> – <song title>
             Soundtracks
                  Sound track songs contain “Various Artists” in the artist field. 
   The file name should neglect this field as follows.
                  <track number> – <album> – <song title>(Rule 3)
   Albums with multiple CDs
                   The album tag should contain the CD number so it looks like the following
                   <album (CD #)>
                   Folder structure and file naming remain the same
    
   – IMAGES –
   (Rule 1) All album art needs to be embedded into the music file
   (Rule 2) Each album directory needs to contain an image of the album cover “folder.jpg”

2. Download all your music to a temporary holding directory. This directory will be for all your untagged music. The music will automatically be added to the correct file/folder as you’ll see next.
3. Use Mp3tag to tag, embed album art, and automatically organize the file structure according to the above rules. After tagging the album from Amazon, you can then use that Tag to rewrite the filename and folder structure. Using the above ruleset, the following format string is used in Mp3tag to go from Tag to Filename: “D:\Music\%genre%\%artist%\%album%\$num(%track%,2) – %artist% – %title%” See example video below:
   
4. Disable unnecessary tagging features in iTunes and Windows Media Player such as “Retrieve additional information from the internet” and copy library to a new directory.

Please feel free to share any of your music organization methods in the comments below.

Impressions:

The first thing you’ll notice, these glasses are extremely light compared to your standard pint glass; roughly half the weight. They use a much thinner glass and as such, are much more fragile. I would not recommend putting these glasses in the dishwasher. Another neat thing you’ll notice is that the inside layer of glass does not touch the outside layer except at the top. This characteristic makes your drink look like it’s suspended in air–pretty neat. The lack of condensation is also a nice side-effect of this construction. Given that I’m doing this experiment in the middle of winter, I don’t think condensation will be too noticeable on any glass. Finally, having the double-wall construction means your hand won’t get cold (or hot) from your beverage and vice-versa.

Initial conditions and Procedure:

• Glass 1: Luigi Bormioli Duo double-wall drinking glass
• Glass 2: Triumph Brewing Company pint glass
• Beer: Yuengling Traditional Lager (…it’s cheap)
• Beer chilled in fridge for 16 hours. Beer chilled an additional 25 minutes in the freezer prior to measurements to increase the temperature range.
• Both beer glasses stored at the same temperature.
• Ambient room temperature kept at 71 F +/- 2 F.
• Equivalent amounts of beer poured into each glass and left for 75 minutes
• Temperature probe placed at roughly the same spot in each glass, not touching the side.
• Beer temperature measured every 20 seconds for 75 minutes: 225 total data points each
• Beer consumed — for purely scientific reasons

Collecting Data:

Results:

For some strange reason, the starting temperatures were about 2 degrees off. The figure below shows temperature versus time for the standard glass, in red, and the double wall glass, in blue. I also plotted a linear trendline with its corresponding equation on the plot. The temperature change for the double wall glass was significantly less than that of the standard glass.

Conclusion:

Based on the results above, the double wall glass provided approximately 30% better insulation than the standard drinking glass. The bottom line: after 75 minutes of collecting data, the beer in the double wall glass was much more enjoyable, again, from a purely scientific point of view.

This year, our major’s video remade and tailored classic TV Show themes songs to Electrical Engineering. The songs included: Happy Days, The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, Cheers, and Knight Rider. There was a lot of creative talent involved, as reflected in the film’s quality. As a result, the Electrical Engineers not only won 1st place for the video, but also brought home the golden hammer by winning 1st place in the whole competition. Most of the entries from this year are available here. Below is the Electrical Engineers’ submission for Engineering Week 2008.

1. Choosing Your Subject

   This part is fairly subjective. For stop-motion films, just about any subject can be entertaining in stop-motion, but in limited quantities. Harping on the same location or subject for a long period of time will bore the viewer. I consider the jerkiness of stop-motion is best suited for fast paced themes. For instance, in “Passing By,” rather than dwell on the train for an extended period of time, I have it interspersed throughout the film. You’ll be able to get a better feel for this when you get to the editing stage.

2. Taking the Photo

   Your camera should be set to continuous (burst fire) mode, which depending on your camera and storage card speed, can offer 1.5 to 5 frames per second. Make sure you set your camera to manual exposure at a consistent exposure level. Nothing is more distracting than having the exposure change from one frame to next, a couple times a second. This may also entail avoiding natural light if you’re shooting multiple scenes indoors, as the change in daylight will seem amplified.

   If you wish to make your film in widescreen and your camera does not support it, don’t worry, the photo can always be cropped later—simply keep this in mind when you take the photo. I set the camera’s resolution to maximum possible, so if I wanted to do some cropping, the final image could still reach my target resolution of 1920 x 1080.

3. Editing the Photos

   This is the most crucial step to making your stop-motion look professional. Every single frame in “Passing By” was heavily edited before importing into the NLE. While this may seem like a daunting task, batch processing in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom makes it a breeze. Since each scene has approximately the same levels and lighting, each scene could be batch processed as a whole. I applied the desired settings to one photo from a scene, and then copied the settings to the rest of the photos in the scene. The process was repeated for each scene in the film. Below is a demonstration on how I batch processed the photos from the NYC scene.

   
   Lightroom Batch Processing Demonstration (Click for High-Resolution Video)

4. Importing into a Non-Linear Editor (NLE)

   This step is really going to depend on what NLE you use; I used Sony Vegas Pro 8. Before I even had a song picked out, I imported all the photos into Vegas. Then I pre-rendered all the footage (at very high video quality) with no audio, and then re-imported it back into Vegas. I did this simply because my computer played a rendered video better than thousands of pictures in the timeline. From this continuous video file, I created a bunch of sub-clips for each scene. Subdividing each scene into its own clip allowed me to put the scenes in any order and trim them as needed.

5. Editing

   This step is also fairly subjective. If you plan to use music, you should choose your song prior to editing. Choosing your song beforehand will allow you to edit based on natural divisions in the song (i.e. to the song’s beat). In “Passing By,” the first scene establishes a particularly length coordinated with the song. If you tap your foot, it’s about eight beats. Each subsequent scene is the same or a multiple of the first clip’s length, for example, the first train scene is sixteen beats. This allows you to maintain a desired consistency in throughout the film. Experimentation is key, try different songs, different orders, etc. until you get a feel for the direction you want.

6. Rendering

   I rendered the project at 1920 x 1080 progressive at 15 Mbit/s using the H.264 codec, as it’s pretty much the standard for HD video. I rendered the audio using PCM uncompressed, as I was had a FLAC source.

Click here for the results. Hope this is a good starting point for many of you. Reply with your results or some comments/questions.

Since the beginning of Summer into early Fall, I’ve been compiling photos shot continuously during travel on numerous modes of transportation. All the photos were batch processed in Adobe Lightroom before being imported into NLE software. All the photos were taken on a high resolution digital camera versus my standard DV cam, allowing me to create the film in 1080p (my first HD project). The above video is HD conversion to Flash hosted by Vimeo at 720p. Since with stop motion there is significant change from one frame to another, much of the quality is lost in the compression to Flash. Unfortunately, embeddeding in HD is not available from Vimeo, but the film is available for download prior to compression via this link at the bottom right of the page. You can also view it in compressed HD on the same page (for best results, watch in full screen with scaling turned off).

Locations include the following (in no particular order):

• New York City (near Columbia University dorms)
• World Trade Center site via Path train
• Flemington, NJ
• NJ Transit between Bridgewater, NJ and NY Penn Station
• Newark Airport
• Chicago O’Hare International Airport
• Chesapeake Bay Bridge

Stay tuned for an article explaining how the images were processed and compiled.

This year, we did a play off of Beauty and the Geek, where the geeks were actually competing FOR the beauty, rather than with. This was my first experience with green screening; I was pretty happy with the results. Each of the ge485ek characters were written from the heart. Big thanks to everyone who was involved in this project. With all that being said, below is the video entry for the Electrical Engineers.

I played a few clips when I visited Vimeo’s site and thought the video looked great compared to YouTube.  I signed up for an account and immediately noticed a major setback: 30 MB upload limit per week.  I thought, “this is crap,” and uploaded one video and moved on.  Unless you’re uploading 2 minutes clips, the 30 MB limit might as well have been 5 MB for all I’m concerned. 

This past Thursday, they increased the weekly limit to 250 MB.  That’s pretty impressive.  YouTube doesn’t limit your weekly limit, but they only allow for 100 MB per video.  And while Vimeo uses Flash compression like YouTube, the video and audio are a lot less compressed.  Vimeo is clearly geared toward hosting personal video projects as they remove any copyright material.  From just about every video I’ve seen, the community appears to be pretty skillful at filmmaking as well, a far cry from the annoying 12-year olds that have populated YouTube.  One thing I don’t like however, is the ability for people to download your original clip.  Hopefully, they’ll do away with that “feature” soon.  I’ve uploaded the same video to both Vimeo and YouTube so you can compare the difference in compression for yourselves.  (Sidenote: To embed Vimeo clips in Wordpress, you have to uncheck “Use the visual rich editor when writing” from the ‘Users’ configuration page and then just paste the code in the post editor that Vimeo provides)

Vimeo

YouTube
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV55V2V5sCg[/video]

UPDATE (10/24/07): Vimeo now supports HD video (1280 x 720) with a 500MB per week cap.  In addition, they’ve bumped up the resolution of non-HD video from 460 to 506 (horizontal) pixels, and the bitrate from 400 kb/s to 500 kb/s.  What separates their HD service from something like Divx’s Stage6, is that it runs using Flash player, so no software installation is required beyond flash.  Even my 4-year old laptop was able to render the HD videos in full-screen–very impressive.  The new HD service is currently being subsidized by Canon for the rest of 2007, with talks of it becoming a premium service afterwards.  Check out some HD videos in the Vimeo HD Channel.

[video]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3035632072290106467[/video]