Hanging out with the Fish

Today it was 43 degree

So we dragged the rib out last night and camped in the back of the troupe down the west coast of Exmouth. Then sun up we launched the RIB onto a 26-27 degree flat as ocean and went out with the EVO and Phenom.

Here is a little clip shot with the EVO @ 18 meters with the filter in. Settings were 50 shutter, AE kicked back to -2, and MWB. F stop was at f2. What you see is how it shot with some slow mo added in.

Also I cannot remember in over ten years living here how warm the water is now on the back of the reef. It even smelt like some coral spawn was already going off in some places inside the lagoon <_< ....Not suppose to happen till March?

Anyhow the Rakin Cod was a friendly chappy

1 meg

Nice fish action. How did you train the cod to do that? Can you try the same trick with a Tiger shark?

Merry X-mas & Happy New Year from a very cold Belgium. 43 degrees We managed to get 0 degrees C yesterday. But the water was a balmy 6 degrees.

Wags,

that was super cool. seemed like you knew it was going to happnen. was that a second take or was it totally coincidence?

shawn

No it was not a second take, just as it happened...we luv the Rankins as they are just like puppy dogs and always come out to check us out...especially if you have something in your BCD they can smell

We went out to shoot some Pototo Cods...but they were not there

Maybe the recreational lucky dip people (fisherman) got them, I still cannot believe the size of some of their cars and boats they bring up here to harras and kill the underwater local life with. And whats worse is they just do it for fun......

Man this sounds like everywhere else, folks reaking havoc on the environment either money or recreation....gotta love humans.

Very cool, Wags! Felt kinda bad for the little guy, though, becasue he must have been disappointed that his prize wasn't edible. I especially enjoyed the ambient laughter!

It concerns me about the warming. Saw a Scripps/Nat'l Geo TV show last night about warming issues affecting Antarctic penguins. Very depressing...

Mary Lynn

Cod was obviously trying to relieve you of that dodgy hat but missed.

Wags you must have all our warm water cuz it's piggin freezin over here.

Out friendly potato cod Freddy out at Silvertip Bank has vanished too. We all miss him. Must make a video homage to him some time.

Yep Kelly had a laugh.....

We will go out and check that spot again for the Cods soon...they may have just been away for the day.

We really do think there was some Coral Spawn inside the Lagoon as well.

Turtles nesting really high as well...maybe a big Cat 5 wind this year....

Wear the hat as we get burnt real easy us Dome Heads

You get cooked just getting in and out.

Mary also this down there as well...... The Ross Ice Shelf, an ice platform the size of France, could collapse quickly and trigger a rapid rise in sea levels up to five meters or more worldwide...it could force goverments to make change...

Hey Wags,

Using either compressor, iSquint, or Squeeze 4.5, what settings do you use to mantain size and resolution quality. I have been experimenting and learning a great deal on this topic over the last few weeks but have not come up with ideal settings and codecs as yet. H-264 seems to produce the best quality but the file size is still pretty large for a 5 min short. Any suggestions from you would be appreciated.

Steve B)

Hi Steve

I have compressor, but I only use it to fill tanks

I'll gather my settings/ways up and make a new post.

FLASH is best though for the net as it plays easy and everyone has it.

Hey Wags,

Which Flash codecs, settings and sizes do you use? Sorenson just sent me Sorenson 4.5 compression suite but so far they don't look all that hot.

Steve

I tried Sorenson and FLASH 8 encoder side by side and so did MARY.

Flash 8 puts out a better image we both thought.

On2Vp6 is great... 320/180 @ 400kbps or 640/360 @ 700/1000kbps

Thanks Wags, but I don't even see those settings in what I've got. Would it be a custom that you made? Here's a grab of what I have for you to look at.

Steve B)

Sorenson_Squeeze_4.5.tiff

Yep, Wags is right on about our recent side-by-side comparison tests of Sorenson and Flash 8 for On2VP6 encodes. Flash 8 just looked better, bit for bit. (Feel free to move this post if it's too off-topic....)

That said, I did do a very recent action vid for DiscoverOC on BMX bike riding and Flash 8 just kept giving me weird lines where there was a lot motion. (Haven't yet had this happen with underwater images and encodes.) So I went back to Sorenson and did a couple of encodes and that's what I eventually went with for this one video. But I also had to add a "lighten" filter to the encode because Sorenson flv encodes seem to come out really dark. I'll stick with Flash 8 for future vids where the client wants flv, but this was one situation where Sorenson came through well.

Mary Lynn