Roy/SAC Intro Development

When I decided to pack my collections of scene art logos and pixel art fonts to make them public for others to download, I got the idea to create a nice little intro that comes with the packages. Following an ancient tradition in the scene, an intro does serve the purpose to announce the release and to relay greetings and messages to fellow sceners. The intro (or Cracktro), which is short for "Crack Intro") pre-dates the text NFO files by many years. In fact, NFO files are something that was developed pretty late in the game and was only extensively used for releases on the PC.

NFO files were pretty much a novelty on machines like the Commodore 64 and also not common for the use in releases on the Commodore Amiga. I created a NFO file and file_id.diz for my collections releases of course.

Anyhow, I created an Intro with the help of the OSDM (OldSkool Demo Maker) intro engine developed by the fellow German scener with the name Peace/Testaware and released my collections with that new intro of mine.

As always, I was not 100% happy with the results and started tweaking, changing and expanding things. Here are the results of that tweaking and one intermediate version that will probably never be used for a release ever. The current version will most likely be used for any update to the current packages or for some new collections (I have a lot more stuff floating around here than just logos and fonts hehe).

Current Version 4.5 of the Intro

Code: Peace/Testaware
Design, Graphics, Concept & Direction: Roy/SAC
Music: Mantronix/Razor 1911

• Watch on Vimeo
• Watch on YouTube
• Download Video Version in AVI Format (263 MB)
• Download Win32 Executable (370 KB)

Previous Versions of the Intro

The credits for the previous versions of the intro are slightly different. I used a different intro tune there.

Code: Peace/Testaware
Graphics, Design and Concept: Roy/SAC
Music: track "Cognition" by Jozz/TRSI

Version 1	Version 3
Watch on Vimeo Watch on YouTube Download Video in AVI Format (63 MB) Download Win32 Executables	Watch on Vimeo Watch on YouTube Download Video in AVI Format (54 MB) Download Win32 Executables
Note: You can always download the AVI version of the intro at VIMEO.com. Look to the lover right of the detail page for each of my videos there.

I thought it was a nice idea to include greetings to most of the guys that I knew and dealt with in the scene and still remember, so I started creating a list to collect all the handles of those folks and included them in the second scroller (the smaller copper-bars scroller at the bottom). Most folks are from Germany, especially Berlin, where I grew up, but it also includes some folks from other countries in Europe, Israel, Canada and the United States.

Long List of Personal Greeting (Alphabetically)

Ace , Acen , Ados , Akim , Alf/ACC , Alf/Melmac , Alien/Nostromo , Alphatron , Amblin , Amok , Angel Death , Antibody , Argon Factor , Asphyx , Axess , Bacchus , Bad Boy , Beatmaster , Ben Garrett/Defacto2 , Bionic , Black Spyrit , Blacklord , Blaster , Brian O Neil , Brockhaus , Bug Lord , Busy Bee , Buttcher (Berlin) , Bymn , Caihai , Camel Joe , Capone , CC Catch , CeeJay , Censored , Cercyon , Chester , chub DrUid , Coast , Cosmic , Count Zero (Berlin) , Crackfield , Creator of Hell , Crypton , Cyber Brain , Cyric/DOD , Cyz , DAC , Dalezy , Darkside , Datacrime , Deathbringer , Deathwalker , Deleter , Deryll , Dipswitch , Dr.Acid , Dr.Lazy , Dragnet , Dream Design , Dusty , Elvin , Elvin Knox , Elwood , Exterminator , Fan Fan Latulipe , Fatman , Feldmann , Ferrex , FFC , Firebird (Berlin) , Fli7e , Fox , Frank Borally , Frog , Fulcrum , Garfield , Gee , Giovanni , Glink , Goonie , Grap , Gregory , Grymmjack , Guiver/EXS , Gumbo , Hagman , Hetero , Iceman , Iceman/WOF , iD MUD , Idefix , Idiana , Intruder , Jagor , Jaset , Jason Scott/Textfiles.com , Jester Radics , Jkowall , Johnny Cyberpunk , Kaethe , KC Kid , Killer , Kobold , Kral , Krazy Nomad , Larry ILG , LBM , Leecher JTC , Lemming , Logic , Lord MX , Lord Scarlett/SixteenColors.net , LTD/BLH , Mach One , Mad Danger , Mad Mac , Madmax (Berlin) , Madmax/CPI , Magician , Magnum , Marky , Matador , Matt , Maverick , Max/DOM , McLoud , Mefis , Menion Leah , Mitfit , Monday , Monster , Mozart , Mr.Axxess , Mr.Diesel , Mr.Lightning , Mr.Mad/NRG , Mr.Mixx , Mr.Rox , Mr.Swapper , Mr.Twister , Neon , Neophyte , O-Dog , Oliver Stone , OSHO , Overdoze , Palladin , Paragon , Paso , Pennywize , Pilot , Pitbull/RZR , Pitty , Poldi , Proton , Psychofox , Puschel , Quickmix , Rad Man/ACID , Radiocity , Rainer/AFL , Rainer/SAC , Raiser , Ramses , Ranx , Ratso , Rave , Rescue 911 , Retaliator , Rhett Jones , Ripwave , Roach , Rowdy , Royal Knight , Salty , Sextronix , Shamen , Shockwave , Shot , Skin , Sky , Slash , SLE , Snoop , Snoopy , Sonic , Spacerat , Sparky , Speedlock , Spoon , Sporky , Squizzy , SSC , Starx , STB , Stone , Stonehedge , Stryker , Suicide , Svenzzon , Synec , Term , Termi , The Barrier , The Driver , The Outlaws , The Punisher , The Shark , The Syndicate , Thunder , Thunderhawk , Tic , Toast , Toony , Toth , Toxic Trancer , Trans/BF , Trinitron , Trixter , Tronics , Trouble , Twin! , Twinbit , Twister , UCI , Ufonaut , Ultimate , Ultimate Warrior , Uridius , Urmel , Vax , VFast , Vincent , Virago , Werner , Wessi , Whiteheat EXLC , Wilkins , Wing , Wizard , Xan , Xeek , Xerxes , XLR8OR , XOX , Z80 , Zerovision , Zippoid , Znake , Zyrix

If you have any comments or feedback to the intros, let me know and post a comment below.

Thanks and Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

The First Demo That I Saw in my Life

This post falls into the category "old personal history of mine". I thought that write once more about how I experienced things, especially because I grew up behind the Iron Curtain in the former communist part of Germany, the DDR or GDR (German Democratic Republic).

People always ask me how it was like, so here is a story that describes one aspect of it, a very specific one though. Not everybody will be able to relate to it, but if you know what computer demos and crack intros are and interested to hear more about it, stick around.

Computer Tales from the Former East Germany

Back in 1987, two years before the Wall fell in Berlin, when my dad was allowed to take the Commodore 128D computer (with monitor and 9 needles printer) home to be able to use it for work there, I thought that this was the happiest moment in my life.

I always wanted to have a computer since I got exposed to one for the first time in either 1985 or 1986 (That first computer wasn't a Commodore, it was actually an Atari 800 XL with Datasette tape without any turbo load hardware tweak). There was no Internet and also no tech support to call, because that support did not extend to the area of the former East German state at that time.

The only thing to go on was the user handbook that came with the computer.

My dad gave me one empty floppy disc (remember, the C128D had a floppy drive build-in) for me to use, which was a awful nice thing to do for him, considering that it was incredibly hard to buy those in the former GDR. The black market price for one 5 1/4 inch double density floppy disk ranged between the equivalent of $100-$200.

First on my mind were of course computer games. I was 13, so what else would you expect. Well, I didn't know anybody else who had a C128D or C128 computer or heard of anybody who got one and the C128/D computers were different from the Commodore 64. You did not get the familiar blue screen with light blue borders and font when you booted the machine up.

So there were at first only two pieces of software that I could use. 1) The "Starwriter" software that my father used for work and 2) the build in C128 BASIC interpreter to run C128 BASIC code (which I did not have yet).

A text processor is fascinating for about a day or two and then gets awful boring so I decided to see if I could do something more interesting with that build in BASIC compiler. Luckily for me, the user manual contained the list plus a brief description of the available basic commands.

I thought to myself, If I don't have a game to run on the machine, then I will change that by writing my own. Well, it was a bit more complicated than I thought, but I made good progress to the point were I experimented with the advanced BASIC features such as Sprites and drawing functions.

In a stroke of luck, one of my class mates heard/read somewhere that the C128D is supposed to be 100% Commodore 64 compatible and that it could be switched to the C64 mode with the command "go64" (or was it "go c64"?!, something like that). I couldn't wait until school was over and my abilities to concentrate on what my teachers said was out the window that afternoon.

 

 

 

 

Back home I tried it and it did not work. What? That cannot be, my C128D was not one without that compatibility I told myself and tried it once more, using different variations of the command with different spellings until the screen flashed and the familiar blue C64 screen appeared with the text "**** COMMODORE 64 BASIC ****, 64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE, READY. followed by a blinking Cursor. Horay! Getting Software was now relatively easy. It only took a friend with a C64, his Datasette (nobody else who I knew had a floppy drive), cassettes with games and to figure out how to transfer a program from the cassette on to my floppy disk.

The first 3 things were relatively easy to get, 4 was a small hurdle I guess, but I did it and cannot remember how it worked, so it might not have been such a big challenge after all.  I think I was not able to transfer all games that I wanted, but I could be wrong, because maybe I was able to copy it, but not able to play it. You have to know that the C128D from my dad's work did not come with a game joystick (dough). There was also no way for me to get one elsewhere. I did not have the financial resources to buy one for East German Money (which would have cost probably 100 or 1000 times my monthly allowance) and as every other East German citizen, I was short on West German money (Valuta) as well. So... NO Joystick.

I remember playing Pole Position, Amidar (or Omidar), Hero, Little Computer People, some ugly Pinball game where I forgot the name and some other games that I cannot remember. There was a Submarine (U-Boot) game that my dad loved to play, but I cannot remember its name to find something like it on the PC for him. No, it was not a simulation game like Silent Service. It was an arcade game. If you got an idea what it could have been, let me know. I'd appreciate it.

Anyhow, I remember that I was not able to play on this computer my all-time favorite 8 bit computer game, which is International Karate (the original), bummer, but nothing is perfect, right?!

The First Demo that I Recognized as What It Was

A friend left me for a few days the datasette and a bunch of cassettes that I could check out what I want to copy on to my floppy, which suddenly became very small and somewhat limiting.

I did copy a program called "Shade", which did not serve any apparent purpose, but looked good and had a fabulous sound unlike anything that I heard before on any computer. It got lost and it took me over 20 years to find out exactly what that program was (It took me only about 10 years to find out what the music was and who created it).

The program was the  Demo/Intro called "Shade" by the group "Newlook" for the Commodore 64 (C64) from 1987

It uses the song "Shades" by Chris Huelsbeck (download MP3 version) which won the open music contest by the German computer magazine/software publisher Markt & Technik in 1986 and launched his career of becoming, next to other musicians such as Rob Hubbard, Ben Daglish or Martin Galway, one of the most popular and successful musician on the Commodore 64 Home Computer.

• Video capture with enhanced sound (39 MB) or watch video online at Vimeo.com
• Video capture with original sound (26 MB)

He created the sound tracks for the games R-Type and The Great Giana Sisters, which are also in the Top 100 popular sound tracks on the Commodore 64 ever (Top 100 by http://www.hvsc.c64.org/)

This was the first "Demo" that I got exposed to and recognized as such. It was an independent piece of software, all by itself, like any game or software application that I (or my dad) had at that time.

But compared to games or software applications does this program not serve any practical purpose or function other than to just look at it and enjoy it for what it is. The school of the company where my school sent its students to for the in East Germany mandatory "PA" (Produktive Arbeit), "ESP" (Einfuehrung in die Sozialistische Production) and "TZ" (Technisches Zeichnen) education (and also offered voluntary classes in Computer Sciences, where I got to learn the programming language BASIC for the East German home computers KC-85 1 and KC-87, which looked identical and I don't know what the difference was between them), got for themselves a Commodore 64 computer, which they only used in special occasions. At one of those occasions I brought a copy of this demo with me to show it to the teacher and to follow students, to demonstrate the capabilities of the machine, which was a difference like day and light, in graphics and sound, compared to the first versions of the East German KC computers.

I just started English classes so could not translate the scroller text. The English abilities of the teacher were obviously also limited, because not a single eye-bow was raised during the presentation of the show.

Reading the scroller today makes me smile, when I look back to this moment and what could have been the consequences, if the teacher would have been able to understand the text. :)

The good times were unfortunately much too short in my opinion. It only lasted for a few months when my dad had to take the computer back again to the office. Gosh, what I would have given for not loosing it... a leg, probably. I didn't need a leg to use the computer. Makes sense, right?! Aehm... well, maybe not and sacrificing a leg of mine would also not have helped to get the computer back :(.

The First Cracktro that I Recognized at Was It Was

I don't remember any Cracktros from the Atari 800 and would not bet any money on the question if there were any at that time (1985-1989). In 1987 Commodores popped up everywhere. The Atari 800 was a loner in my world in the years before and the only home computer that I heard of and knew.

I frequently was at home at Another friend who owned a Commodore 64 (do you see a pattern emerging here? hehe) . Anyhow, he had a lot of games from the start where I never found out from where he got them himself. Games were not sold in East Germany, nor any other piece of software for any computer from a capitalist country. Every software, with the exception of any software that might have come with the computer hardware package itself, was a pirated copy and there was nothing anybody could have done about it.

It was at his place during a normal computer gaming session, when I suddenly recognized my first crack intro by a pirate group as what it actually was, a program that did not came from the authors of the game itself, but somebody else who did something to the game that it was possible to do with it was every East German did without having a choice, making a copy of it for somebody else to use on his computer.

I don't know why I did not recognized them before, yeah, never having seen an original in my life ever, makes this task more complicated than you might think.

Also that there was rarely text at first then often in English, which I was just starting to learn made this recognition more complicated.

Anyhow. I have seen that crack intro already a hundred times or more before, but assumed it to be a part of the actual game. Which one was it? Okay, here it is...

It was the Crack Intro titled "Mini Putt" (Cracktro) by the release group Eagle Soft Incorporated (ESI) for the Commodore 64 (C64) from September 1987.

Credits for this intro marvel as far as I know them:

Code: don't know yet
Eagle Image by: Scorpio (Carol) of Eagle Soft
Music (two songs were used interchangeably)

1. Song "Future Knight" by Ben Daglish (download MP3 version)
2. Song "R1D1" by Antony Crowther (download MP3 version)

Video captures of the intro for download

• Video Capture with enhanced sound  (19 MB) - AVI/XVID/MP3 or watch video online at Vimeo.com
• Video Capture with original sound (4.5 MB) - AVI/XVID/MP3

You can download the Demo by Newlook and the ESI Cracktro for the Commodore 64 (D64 and PRG format), the original C64 tunes by Chris Huelsbeck, Ben Daglish and Antony Crowther in SID format and converted to MP3, plus some images, in one convenient ZIP archive (only 17.8 MB) from my Mediafire.com file sharing account here.

Download C64 Disks, Executables, SID Music files and MP3 version of them, of the demo and intro that I talked about in one ZIP archive: C64-CCU-ESIIntro-HuelsbeckShades-D64s-SIDs-MP3s.zip

I hope that you enjoyed my not so short story :)

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Copyright Complaint Notice Filings in the Scene? WTF?

It's not that I have already to deal with a lot of crap at the moment that something that just happened a few days ago has to come on top of all of it to "make my day" and "make my head shake in disbelief'".

It started with a big fat screen where you can see the snapshot of below, when I logged into one of my YouTube.com accounts. I was forced to acknowledge the message, before I could do anything else.

I was upset at first, because I thought that once more some idiot would claim something that is not his to begin with to cause trouble and inconvenience for YouTuber's, because they are full of themselves.

Dreyfus - Jarre - Oxygene & The Demoscene

Wouldn't be the first time. I still remember when in February 2008 a company with the name FRANCIS DREYFUS MUSIC came along and claimed the video recording of the PC/MS DOS demo called "Contrast" by the French demo group "Oxygene" from 1996 as their intellectual property that I was supposed to be infringing on. Well, Dreyfus did believe back then that any video with the word "Oxygene" in the title must be automatically infringing on the rights they hold for the music by the French musician Jean Michel Jarre with the same title.

Makes sense, doesn't it? Right ...

Anyhow, I did a Google search for the name of the somebody who claimed ownership of material used in some of my videos. Matt Swoboda, the plaintiff, turns out to be Matt James Swoboda, better known in the scene as "Smash" of Fairlight, Razor 1911, Beam, Insanity, Shadow and a few others.

Realtime Generation

The two video(s) in question used 12 and 45 seconds of a demo from 2008 by Andromeda Software Development (ASD) & Fairlight & Alcatraz, titled "Realtime Generation" (watch demo on Demoscene.tv), where "Smash" actually was one of the guys who created it, thus his claim was not so far fetched and absurd. I don't want to start debates about fair use and all this. I did use a fragment of the demo as back-drop for the intro of two of my amateurish videos with semi-professional background, but non-commercial use. In other words: I spent time on them and didn't receive a penny for it myself.

The full videos in question are available for viewing online and also for download in AVI video format at the following URLs below (in the case that you would like to make up your own mind about the use of the demo material).

Video 1: Download AVI (57 MB) - Watch Video on Facebook (requires FB account)
Video 2: Download AVI (72 MB) - Watch Video on Facebook

Anyhow, I do not intend to start a legal debate here, because that is not the reason why I blog this. My problem is the fact that a scener (Smash) filed an official copyright complaint against another scener, me, for something that could have been resolved quickly via a few emails, a phone or Skype call or chat instead. Since when did this become the means of communication in the scene? The time it took to prepare the official complaint was most likely more than the time it would have taken to check the background of the person behind the videos and to find the means to contact me. I did plaster the URLs to my web pages, including this one and all my other YouTube channels (including SACReleases) on the profile page of the YouTube account that hosted the videos in question (yeah, PAST TENSE is correct here, HOSTED).

Update/Addition: I just also recalled an incident at Dailymotion.com in January this year regarding the same material actually. There was a company called "Toei Animation" who claimed intellectual property ownership of one of the two videos. There was also no advanced email or anything, just a take down based on the claim by that company. I am unaware that anybody involved in the creation of the demo has any ties to that company and that they own anything of that demo. 

Team Mates or Hates?

Gosh, Smash and I were even in the same group once, Razor 1911. Both words in "team mate" seemed to have lost their meaning at one point from what it looks like.

Learn more about my past and present group allegiances here.

Misunderstandings?

I believe that I found Smash'es LinkedIn profile and contacted him via the LinkedIn mail system (asking first, if the Matt Swoboda from the UK, is "my" Matt, who I am trying to get in touch with. A Finish scener with the name "Mandibular Joint Dysfunction" also contacted me via Facebook regarding this issue. He did not refer to the actual source of his information for me to check and follow up on, but I asked him to clarify where he heard of this "misunderstanding" (I hope that this is what it is).

The problem with those complaints in YouTube is that they don't go away and that my one account is now in jeopardy of being suspended because of anything that might comes up. YouTube does not care, double check or listens to anybody than a lawyer who threatens with legal actions in writing. I know this from first hand experience, since I got myself already an account suspended once, because of some BS, which caused some major pain in the ass for me, hours and hours of work lost and the unpleasant experience of "talking to a hand" that completely ignores you.

So resolving this "misunderstanding" means for me also that the official copyright complaint (actually two, one for each of the two videos) will be retracted that YouTube will remove those from my account history. Here is how it looks right now. Not very pretty, isn't it.

Here is the video recording of my two little intros that started all this trouble

Backup Link to Video at Motionbox.com

As you can see, I did some modifications to the original video recording of the PC demo to make it suit my own purposes. Could I given credits? Sure I could have, but I didn't for several reasons. First, I didn't know who did what to be able to give accurate credits (I am still not sure about this part).

Furthermore, I only used tiny fragments of the demo and distorted it with effects and content that I created in front of the original video. The 2nd place demo at the party where Realtime Generation won 3rd place did a homage to some well know PC demos as well and also did not properly credited those, but everybody knew which demos were depicted.

I didn't give it another thought actually.

If you ask the question, how I would feel, if somebody would do the same with my art work, I'd say:
"No Problem"  and I actually made that one clear publicly in 2006 with clarifications added to it in 2008.

Update/Addition: I'd say something, if somebody would rip off my stuff and actively run around claiming that he did it. Not saying anything does not mean making a claim. If you want to know if somebody did something himself, entirely, partially or not at all, ask and see what the answer is.

If credits are "forgotten" and the creator asks for them, I would be the last to deny it to him. It usually boils always down to the question where and how to put them, without having the credits taking over the actual piece or destroy the setting where it is in. I added additional credits to stuff where I missed them myself and also asked others to add credits to their stuff, not always myself, but credits to other artists as well. 

Well, I hope that the the "Matt" at LinkedIn who I contacted is "my" "Smash" and that we will be able to sort things out. The LinkedIn profile says that he works at Sony now. Maybe he spent too much time "under some bad influence". Sony's approach to deal with copyright issues is not what I would call "consumer friendly" (I just say "root kit", do a Google search for "Sony root kit", if you don't know what I am referring to).

We will see. I will write another post, if something comes out of this.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

 Update June 9, 2009.

Somebody pointed me via a comment here at my blog, to the original Pouet.net forum thread where it all started (the one "Mandibular" mentioned in his FB message). I joined the discussion there and addressed more comments than I probably should have, but then it wouldn't be me I guess. Anyhow, the discussion seems to have shifted to over there. It's already three pages long, but I hope that this will not scare you off from checking it out anyway. I hope that in all the BS that also seems to be part of the discussion there actually a resolution will be found that makes everybody happy again.

p.s. Also a message by Smaash (misspelled) turned up. It was sent via the contact form at Cumbrowski.com about one day before the videos were already taken down by YouTube. The message was unfortunately sorted away with all those messages about "link exchanges'", "web development in India proposals" etc.  and I didn't get a chance to look at it in time (yeah, my main computer is still broken, I got a new main board, but now miss a power connector for the GFX card fan to the mother board. I was already checking at RadioShack and other stores, including a PC repair shop to get such stupid connector that fits, but nobody has this. I found something online, got that one shipped as well... and guess what, wrong size! Gosh, how many versions of a three pin cooler fan to mother board connector are there?

Gateway still gives a crap. I hope that they will be out of business soon too. Bastards. 

Update June 18, 2009

I had some extensive email communication going with Smash and tried to elaborate the reasons for my rage and what I saw as the biggest problem with his actions. I thought that I made it already clear enough that I also admit that I made mistakes too.  In case that it was not clear for somebody yet, here some quotes from my emails to Matt.

I admit my own mistake. It taught me the lesson that whatever you put anywhere online, publicly or or not public and not protected, will be out there for anybody to find, if you only look hard enough for it. In this case my experiments of the creation of a short video introduction (there are more of those by the way, nothing I would be particular be proud of, but once they are out there, there is nothing I could do about them now). It was used for something small and semi personal to get some feedback and along the way learn how to do things better (testing is one of the key elements in marketing that you cannot ignore or neglect, no studies in the world can replace actual tests) .

Where there was the discussion about it, I provided honest information about the source of the material and included references and credits. Then it was "over" and I moved on. However, the "pilot" or "test" did not disappear how it usually does in the offline world. If it happens online, it's there virtually forever. I did not think about that somebody would even care about those experiments from yesterday, and certainly did not assume that somebody would have any issue with them.

My biggest mistake was to forget that it can look for somebody else completely different and all brand new, because that person just got exposed to it now and stuff in the digital world does not age or decay. It's there, brand new, like on the day it was created. I also did not include ALL details related to every bit of the content, which gave room for miss-interpretations.

Matt understood the issue and said that he will try to retract the complaint at YouTube.com. That was 6 days ago on Friday June 12, 2009, but today Thursday, June 18, 2009 does it still show in my YouTube account the complaint and that my account is not in good standing.

I provided him with a lot of material regarding the copyright issue on the Internet, including some very bad examples where it is clear that the system is completely messed up and a harm to society in general. I hope that he now also understands my rage about the way he acted on the problem.

He is surely not a large corporation like Sony and just an individual like, but he unfortunately acted like a big corporation and used by extension another big corporation (Google) to get things his way. I believe that he was not aware that the corporate system in place today is truly against individuals and often creates significant collateral damage and overall more harm than good.

I also asked him for his advice regarding Pouet.net. I am still undecided, if I should post once more to apologize to the folks who I gave credits for comments that they did not make or if I should just let it be the way it is. My error was pretty obvious (afterwards) and I also was consistent with it, so folks should have been able to figure it out. I did not get a response regarding that from Mark as well. It is kind of odd, because he usually responded within less than 24 hours to my emails, until Friday.

I will send him another email about this blog update. The matter is still not completely resolved, because the main issue for me is still there and that is the note in my YouTube account. :(

VNV Nation Box Set – Reformation 01

I received today the Reformation 01 box set (limited edition) by my favorite band “VNV Nation” that I pre-ordered at Amazon.com, who still sells it for only $21.xx dollars. (This is not my first exclusive post about VNV Nation. You can check out the other ones to learn more about VNV here and here.)

The limited edition of the Reformation 01 box set by VNV Nation is a real bargain. For little more than the price of a regular album CD you get 2 CD's and a video DVD with 8 tracks recorded at live concerts in Europe (mostly Hamburg, Germany).

Backup Link to Video on Vimeo
Download this video in AVI format in High Definition (1280x720, 81 MB)

Video Notes and Credits: The video above was edited by me and includes snippets from the DVD  that is part of the Reformation 01 box set. It also uses various images that are not part of the box set and video snippets from the viral “Illusion” video with animations by Andrew Huang, which were unfortunately not included in this box set (it would have been the right place for it though :) ). All music by VNV Nation.

I also like to remark that the box set includes the first ever LIVE ALBUM by VNV Nation, so fans who prefer VNV Nation live over the studio recordings (like I do) do not have to fall back on the not 100% legitimate Live album solution by ripping the audio tracks of the previously released Pastperfect Live DVD :). Vnv Nation - Pastperfect Limited Edition.

The latter one was actually suggested by Ronan and Mark from VNV themselves, when I meet them by accident in Berlin and asked them (AGAIN) why there is no VNV Live Album yet. I think I sent them all in all 2 or 3 additional emails before I talked to them in person and after. Well, the message finally “found its way home” hehe.

Ronan Harris, the main guy behind VNV Nation, is very responsive to contact attempts and close to the fans and not such an arrogant and careless asshole like the guys from Depeche Mode (a band that I used to adore for about 20 years of my life :( ). VNV has a MySpace page where you get fresh news and updates via their MySpace blog and also some nice goodies sometimes, like a preview of upcoming CD releases via the MySpace audio player. They did this for this Box Set actually.

 
VNV Nation is also on tour soon. The 2009 tour is called “Faith, Power and Glory”. Some tickets are on sale via Fan Direct sale (cheaper) at a ticket solution that I developed for the most part (and my old company hehe). It’s an older and heavily customized solution, because of it’s unique use for fan direct sales by artists. More tour dates and link to regular ticket purchases are available at this blog post at the VNV MySpace blog.

A new album with the same title as the tour will be released by VNV Nation on June 23, 2009. You can pre-order "Of Faith, Power and Glory" at Amazon.com for only $13.99

Now back to the Reformation 01 box set :)

CD 2 of the set includes in addition to various remixes of known songs also some new material, which was previously unreleased.

Last but not least some comments about the box set itself. It's of high quality, compared to other box sets by other bands that I have seen myself in the past. It also contains a thick booklet that wouldn't fit into a regular CD case. The only bummer here is that the booklet is glued to the box set and thus hard to read in comfort because of the 3 discs next to it (when you unfold the whole set).

You can get a good idea about the quality of the box set by looking at the large version of the product image that was provided by Amazon. Use the zoom feature to get a real close look at the material and the "engraved" VNV Nation logo. That's why is the cover so dark, because it isn't printed color. You can feel it (if you bought it :))

p.s. Yes, the links to Amazon.com are affiliate links and I will get $1 or so commission if you decide to by the set from Amazon, right after you clicked on my link. This is not the reason for this post and if you know me a bit better, you wouldn’t even assume that I would do something like that. But for those folks who don’t know me, be happy about this unnecessary disclaimer and shut up :).

VNV Nation – Reformation 01 – 3 Discs Box Set - Track List

Reformation 01 – CD #1 (the Live Album) 01    Joy              05:24 02    Chrome           04:49 03    Testament        06:22 04    Nemesis          04:37 05    Endless Skies    05:58 06    Farthest Star    05:06 07    Procession       05:26 08    Entropy          05:17 09    Illusion         04:51 10    Arena            05:34 11    Honour 2003      07:06 12    Perpetual        08:47 Note: Sound samples for every track of CD 1 and CD 2 are available for free at the Amazon.com web site.

Reformation 01 – CD #2 (the Remixes) 01  Chrome (27.2 Mhz Remix by Modcom)          06:26 02  Chrome (Sitd Remix)                        04:58 03  Chrome (Apoptygma Berzerk Remix)           04:42 04  Interceptor (ABM Version by VNV Nation)    05:35 05  Nemesis (S.A.M. Remix)                     03:50 06  Carry You (Frozen Plasma Remix)            06:36 07  Still Waters                               07:36 08  Suffer                                     07:00 09  Precipice                                  05:40 10  As it fades (2nd Mvmt. by VNV Nation)      03:31 11  Main Theme (from 'Gene Generation')        02:45 12  Mayhem (from 'Gene Generation')            02:03 13  The Lair (from 'Gene Generation')          02:57 The songs in red are NEW and previously unreleased. I also do not recall the songs from track 10-13, but I wasn’t able to listen to all of them without being distracted to be sure. Well, three new songs as bonus is better than none, but 7 would be more than twice as good hehe.

Reformation 01 – DVD #1 (the Live Videos) 01 Farthest Star     05:15 02 Chrome            04:48 03 Nemesis           06:00 04 Illusion          04:54 05 Homeward          05:42 06 Arena             05:57 07 Honor 2003        06:54 08 Perpetual         08:49 Only Honor 2003 was previously available on DVD Video. It’s a different recording though. A previous live recording of Honor 2003 is one of the hidden “Easter Eggs” of the “Pastperfect” Live DVD. Oops, did I say that out loud? Sorry ;)

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

A Guide to Video & Audio for Microsoft Windows

What is this? Online video is booming and more dads become hobby “Spielbergs” every year. Dropping prices and increasing power and capability of video recording, playing and transmitting equipment is also doing his part to aid this trend.

Chances are good that it happened to you that you received a media file, audio or video from somewhere or someone that you wanted to play back on your computer, but couldn’t. Your friend opened it without problems, but you are getting a cryptic and technical error message instead, with no real solution offered to solve the problem.

If you started doing editing of videos and published your creations on CD, DVD, online or elsewhere, the problems encountered related to compatibility issues of your video and audio data that you are working on, probably increased exponentially compared to the time when you just consumed media.

That was at least what happened to me.

I found myself spending more and more time on solving those issues and less and less time on actually editing and publishing videos. I had to learn more about the subject than I ever wanted to, but I was kind of forced to deal with it anyway. I collected a lot of resources and experiences over the past months and even years and sat down one day to work on a consolidated article, post, guide or whatever you want to call it. Well, here is the result of this work that I actually enjoy: writing (and talking hehe).

I hope that this article and the provided information and resources will help you to solve some of the issues faster than I did and to get a general understanding of the subject in a much shorter period of time. I found many great resources, but none that is like mine. The resources that I found were often very detailed and very much technical, talking about my problems, but providing answers that I did not understand and asked me to do decisions for things where I did not understand the consequences of each choice that I could pick from. I pretty much had to rely on instinct, luck and trial and error, which is not a great way of fixing Windows issues efficiently and absolute.

I try to be more generic and only in a few cases specific, where I think I have to, but in the hope that I already provided enough general information that you got a pretty good idea of what the details mean once we get to them.

Feel free to use the comments to provide feedback, suggestions, praise or ask questions.

Thanks and Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

The Containers - Media Files

A video container contains the video images, the audio and any additional features and content for the presentation of what normal people call “a video”. The additional stuff is often not noticed or believed by many, not part of the video files themselves.

Those things include “closed captions” or “sub titles”, “chapter indexes”, “Menu’s” like DVD menus and “Metadata” like “Genre” tags, “Description”, “Copyright”, “Publisher”, “Author”, “Ratings” etc.

The containers are represented as video files with specific file extensions that helps (more the) users and (less so) the computer to be able to identify the different containers, used for a particular “video”.

 

Container	Name	Parent	Company/Consortium
3GP/3GP2	3rd Generation Mobile	MP4	3GPP/Mpeg
AVI	Audio Video Interleave	AVI	Microsoft
ASF	Advanced Streaming/System Format		Microsoft
DIVX	DivX Media Format		DivX
DV	Digital Video		Sony, JVC, Panasonic
DVR-MS	Microsoft Digital Video Recording		Microsoft
EVO	Enhanced VOB	VOB	Mpeg
FLV	Flash Video		Apple
M2TS/MTS	MPEG-2 Transport Stream 192 B		Mpeg
MCF	BSD/GNU Container		BSD/GNU
MKV/MKA	Matroska Video/Audio		Public Domain
MP4	MPEG-4		Mpeg
MPG/MPEG	MPEG Program Stream		Mpeg
MOV/QT	Apple QuickTime Movie		Apple
NUT	NUT Project/GPL		GPL
OGM/OGG	Ogg Media File		Xiph.org
PS	MPEG-2 Program Stream	MP4	Mpeg
RAT	ratDVD (based on VOB)	VOB	GPL
PVR/DVR	MPEG-2 Transport Stream 188 B, DVR (Digital Video Recorder) PVR (Personal Video Recorder)		Mpeg
RIFF	Resource Interchange File Format (AVI)	AVI	Microsoft/IBM
RM/RM VB	Real Media - Variable Bitrate		Real Networks
TS/TP/TRP	MPEG-2 Transport Stream 188 B	MP4	Mpeg
VOB	Video Object		Mpeg
WMA	Windows Media Audio	ASF	Microsoft
WMV	Windows Media Video	ASF	Microsoft

Container	Video Codecs	Audio Codecs
3GP/3GP2	H.263, H.264, MPEG-4	AMR-NB/WB, (HE-)AAC
AVI	MPEG-4, MJPEG, DV, Cinepak, Indeo	MP3, MP2, AD(PCM), AC3
ASF	Windows Media Video, VC-1, MS MPEG4 v3	Windows Media Audio
DIVX	DivX	MP3, AC3, PCM
DV	DV	PCM
DVR-MS	MPEG-2	MP2, AC3
EVO	H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2	(E)AC3, DTS(HD), PCM
FLV	H.263, H.264, VP6	MP3, AAC, ADPCM
M2TS/MTS	H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2	(E)AC3, DTS(HD), PCM
MCF	various	various
MKV/MKA	H.264, MPEG-4	MP3, AC3
MP4	MPEG-4, H.264	AAC
MPG/MPEG	MPEG-1, MPEG-2	MP2
MOV/QT	H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-1, MJPEG, Sorenson Video	MP3, AC3, PCM
NUT	Anything	Anything
PS	MPEG-2	MP2, AC3, DTS, PCM
OGM/OGG	Ogg Theora, Xvid	Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AC3
PVR/VDR	MPEG-2, H.264	MP2, AC3
RAT (ratDVD)	XEB	AC3, DTS, PCM, MP2
RIFF	ANI, MPEG-4, MJPEG, DV, Cinepak, Indeo	WAV
RM/RM VB	Real Video	Real Audio, AAC
TS/TP/TRP	MPEG-2, H.264	MP2, AC3
VOB	MPEG-2	AC3, DTS, PCM, MP2
WMA	-	Windows Media Audio
WMV	Windows Media Video, VC-1	Windows Media Audio

Pretty much all containers support directly or via support tools variable audio bit-rates (VBR), variable video frame-rates (VFR) and b-frames.

FLV, MPG/MPEG (and TS) do not support chapters, those containers also do not support subtitles (or only very poorly via workarounds)

Wikipedia – Comparison of Container Formats

The Components

File Sources

Now I mentioned already that a container holds all the pieces together that we call a “video”. Now we have to start taking them apart and enter the dark side of video format land (slowly).

A file source is a special software component that is able to open one or multiple of the mentioned video containers and get them ready to be processed. It can read the header information of the container and check if it makes sense and what criteria the next components would have to meet to be able to process this media file. You already learned that many containers can handle multiple video and also multiple audio encoding formats. 

Let me use a modified version of a classic saying: "Not all .AVI files are made equal". There is usually not just ONE component that can handle ALL of the video formats an AVI container supports. Also, the container contains VIDEO and AUDIO data, which are two entirely different things (technically) that will have to be processed separately. They must be separated, split from one another, which is also referred to as demuxing.

Muxer, Demuxer (Splitter)

Let’s start it easy and separate just the Audio, Video.

Several of the media containers also support other types of data that are related to the video and/or audio content. Also more than one instance of each media type is possible. A good example is the audio selection on a DVD. Most DVD movies offer a choice of spoken languages and sound quality, such as Stereo, Surround Sound and Dolby Digital. Also available are typically a set of different languages for the sub titles or closed captions for the hearing impaired folks out there.

Captions/Sub Titles, Meta Data and Menu’s are still not unimportant, but less of a problem in my opinion. So I decided to move them to the end. Hey, that does not make me intolerant towards people who are impaired in their hearing. I am a collector junkie myself and love Meta Data.

The file source component that I mentioned before is often part of a splitter/demuxer, which does make sense. A file source already has to know the format of the container. It's from there only one more logical step to take the parts of the media content in the container and pass them over to the right next component to process it. 

The reversed process of the splitting of the content in a media container (demuxing) is the combining of the various parts that need to go into a container and wrap them together to generate a single file that has all the video and audio data etc. in it. This process is being called "muxing" and the component that does this is referred to as a Muxer. The muxer receives the data from the counter part where the demuxer passes the different data streams to.One gets the audio to deal with, the other one the video and maybe another one to take care of the closed captions. The Demuxer passes the data to a "Decoder", while the "Muxer" would receive its data from an "Encoder". An Encoder/Decoder or both is referred to as a Codec.

Codec

The word codec is short for compressor/decompressor but also referred to as encoder or decoder.

Codecs are in many cases not bound to a specific container, which does not make things easier and only more confusing, especially, if you consider the amount of Codecs and their variations that exist. A codec can be a hardware or software component, but in our case are only the software Codecs of importance.

That component can compress and/or decompress video using a particular compression algorithm.

Since all those Codecs and containers must be defined somewhere that the computer system and software can find out what it needs in order to provide/play back all the elements that make up your “video”. You probably noticed all the “aka” and “/” usages for the same or very similar thing. It’s a mess!

The codec tweaking tool GSpot Version 2.7 knows about 749 different FourCC video Codecs and 247 different audio compression Codecs. That gives you an idea about the scope of the problem. This does not even include any special filters, splitters, file sources; renderers and all that other stuff that is part of the system, playing a role in the process of bringing up the video from a file on your screen and the audio out of your speakers.

FourCC

To help the computer a little bit with making sense out of things, a system was devised that is called FourCC or 4CC, which means literally “four character codes”. The folks from the video game development company Electronic Arts introduced what is considered the father of the FourCC concept, called IFF (Standard for Interchange Format Files) in 1985 for the Commodore Amiga line of computers (“EA IFF 85”).

A simplified definition for 4cc could be: Every media component format will be assigned a unique 4 character code, which will be included in the media data itself, that apps and systems can look at a specific place in the media data to find out what format the data is in. It can then simply check, if it has the information for the format that is labeled with that 4 character code or not. If it does not, it will return an error and tell the system or user that it requires the specifications for that format to understand the structure and layout of the data in order to be able to process them properly (e.g. show images from your last vacation instead of a bunch of colored dots that look more like works by Escher).

A good list with Codecs, their FourCC designation, company name and website URL is available at FOURCC.ORG. 

The words “Filter” and “Codec” are unfortunately often used beyond their actual meaning, which only adds to the whole confusion even more. A “DirectShow Filter” might be a Codec, a file source, a splitter, a muxer, a renderer or maybe actually just a filter. The term Codec might be used in the same fashion, but usually implies that the actual encoding and/or decoding piece, is at least part of the software package. For example, if you download the DivX Codec from the DivX website, you get more than just the encoder or decoder, even more than the stuff that is needed by Windows to encode and create or decode and render videos using the DivX video compression algorithm. It comes with players, a converter, statistics and configuration tools along with it.

Why Do We Need All This in the First Place?

Video data are nice, but also have a flaw: they are huge and eat up a lot of space, so much space that it is even with today’s low hard disk cost and higher available bandwidth not feasible to work with raw video data all the time. Codecs reduce the size of video and audio in a flick significantly. There are a number of different algorithms out there and used for the compression, each with their own pros and cons. Some compress higher with less loss of quality, but suck up a lot more resources and demand much more powerful hardware to decode the flicks again for presentation that not all hard and software is able to support them yet, compared to other Codecs, that might not be as good with compression and loss of quality, but are faster and require much less computing power to do something with the crunched data files.

But it is also true that competition, patents and commercial interests play a significant part in this game as well. It does not have to be that messy as it is today.

Most popular Codecs on the Internet

(based on Codecs Database)

I will not mention every of the over 1000 or so video and audio codecs that exist. I will reduce it to one a few that are popular online and offline and cover well over 90% of the entire spectrum. 

Some Video Codecs

MPEG-1/MPEG-2

The video codecs used for standard DVD Video and VCD/SVCD. Typical file formats have the extensions: .VOB

or .MPG/.MPEG.

MPEG-4 Part 2

Most .AVI  files on the internet are using one of the following two video codecs, the commercial DivX video codec (4CC codes: DIVX, DX50, DIV3, DIV4 and DIV5)  and the open source Xvid codec (4CC: XVID, sometimes also xvid or Xvid, which should not but unfortunately does matter some times, if a software component is case-sensitive. I bitched about that elsewhere already).

Xvid is able to process many of the different versions of DivX, except for the really early ones

MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding)

.MP4 files and newer Apple QuickTime .MOV files (4CC: AVC1). You can rename a MOV file to MP4 for example, if a program causes trouble when you want to load a MOV file with it and it might does the trick for you.  Typical are H.264 format based codecs, like the open source X.264 codec  (4CC: X264) or the commercial Dicas H.264 codec (4CC: DAVC)

QuickTime Movies

.MOV (also .QT) files from Apple. The latest versions use the H.264 format, but Apple used in the past a propriatory format (4CC: SV10) and then versions of the Sorenson Video Quantizer  video codec (4CC: SVQ1 or SVQ3), with it's version 3 being already a variation of the H.264 format to make it the next logical step  for Apple and it's QuickTime product to use a standard video format and not continue with its own.

Flash Video

Probably mostly because of the popularity of YouTube who uses Flash Video for showing movies on its social video sharing platform and the general popularity of using Flash for video on the Web, .FLV transformed from exotic video format to a format most internet users are familiar with.

Flash 7 uses the Sorenson Spark video codec (4CC: SPRK) and Flash 8 the On2 VP6 codec (4CC: VP60)

Windows Media

Microsoft developed their own video and audio codecs, which are known as Windows Media Video and Windows Media Audio. They are used in the media containers WMV and WMA and ASF for streaming. 

Real Media

Like Microsoft, Real Network, the giant content portal on the Internet, developed their own video and audio codecs (4CCs: RV20, RV30, RV40). The .RM (real video) and .RA (real audio) file format is still the primary format for Real Networks Real Player. Real Video became popular because it was one of the first video formats that could be streamed over the Internet.

Some Audio Codecs

MPEG-1 Layer 3

Simply known as MP3 is the most known and used audio format today. Part of the credits for making it as popular as it is today would probably have to go to the former file sharing peer-to-peer network Napster and of course to Apple iTunes and their iPod portable MP3 audio player. It was developed by the Frauenhofer Institute in Germany and also made head-line new with it's patent disputes and lawsuits in the early 1990s.

(AD)PCM

Raw WAV files are usually encoded in PCM format. 

AC3

Better known as Dolby Digital (5.1). The popular sound format used on many DVD movies for high quality surround sound at home and at movie theaters. 

MPEG Audio (AAC)

AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding and was meant to be the successor of MP3. It is today in wide spread use, for example in iPhones, iPods (and iTunes now) or the Sony Playstation 3 game console.

DTS (AC)

You probably know DTS from the sound options of many DVDs. DTS is a common alternative audio format, competing with Dolby Digital. DTS stands for Digital Theatre System -  Coherent Acoustics if spelled out. Similar to Dolby Digital 5.1, but some say that it is slightly better that 5.1. Mh. :) 

I mentioned Windows Media Audio already. 

Filters

There are multiple meaning of the word "filter" in video land. In DirectShow (see further down below), every component is called a "Filter", independently from it's function and purpose. So a DirectShow Filter could be a File Source, a Splitter, Encoder/Decoder (Codec), Renderer or actually a Filter in the true sense of the word.

A Filter in traditional terms is a component that alters the video or audio stream. Classic filters that you probably used yourself every time when you edited a video, sound or picture, without knowing that you used one. PhotoShop users will smile now, because they should have a pretty good idea of what is coming now.

If you resize a video for example, or change it's contrast, brightness, saturation, hue, color encoding, number of colors, or turn color video images to gray-scaled ones, deformations, slicers, blenders, mixers, volume adjustments, normalizers etc. etc. All those functions are performed by Filters. Something goes in, gets manipulated and then comes out and hopefully enhanced on the original output as we wanted it to do.

Renderers

Renders are responsible for the output of the video and/or audio stream data to a device that is capable of displaying or playing back the content, such as the video card that then renders the images on to your computer screen or display or to the sound card, which feeds your side speakers or your receiver and then out of your high-end speaker system that you can listen to the sounds and voices of the audio or video file.

Streaming

Streaming is only a special form of rendering that requires that the video data are rendered fast enough to allow the play back of the audio or video in real time, without the need to download the whole video or audio before I play it back. You might think that this is the normal way of doing it, but if you ever converted a video to a DVD or a DVD movie (e.g. MPEG-2/PCM) to a MP4 video file (e.g. H.264/AC3) for example then you probably know that this process takes still longer than the video material itself is long. A 90 minutes movie takes usually more than 90 minutes to re-code/convert from one media type/format to another. The conversion of a video file to HD DVD (such as Blu Ray) can take many hours or days, depending on the hardware equipment used for the conversion.

That is not an option for streaming, especially if the video is streamed while the content is being generated/recorded, such as a Live Event Broad Cast. You don't want to wait to see today’s ball game tomorrow, because it takes a day to recode the video images that you can watch it on your computer or TV, right?

Not all video formats can be streamed and the ones that can, need to be transmitted to the receiver in an optimized way to ensure that the video stream is constant to guarantee fluid video images and flawless sound. For the transmission of the video and audio data are different streaming protocols used, like RTSP, PNM, MMS  or HTTP.

Components Wrap Up

Now you have all those components and elements in the process and all these different methods and formats where non of them just by itself is anything but easy to do. It is already hard enough to get all those things work together in unison and as a whole that the least thing you would want to do is adding another layer of complexity to it and makes things even more complex than they already are, right? Yeah, sure, common sense tells you that this is probably a good idea, but since when was common sense applied to the real world? Think about it!

DirectShow (DS) - Filters, Video for Windows (VfW)

Now Microsoft thought that it could make things even messier… Aehm, I mean improve on them. But I will repeat what they say themselves in the introduction to their “Microsoft DirectShow 9.0 System Overview” at MSDN.Microsoft.com.

The Challenge of Multimedia

Working with multimedia presents several major challenges:

Multimedia streams contain large amounts of data, which must be processed very quickly.

Audio and video must be synchronized so that it starts and stops at the same time, and plays at the same rate.

Data can come from many sources, including local files, computer networks, television broadcasts, and video cameras.

Data comes in a variety of formats, such as Audio-Video Interleaved (AVI), Advanced Streaming Format (ASF), Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG), and Digital Video (DV).

The programmer does not know in advance what hardware devices will be present on the end-user's system.

The DirectShow Solution

DirectShow is designed to address each of these challenges. Its main design goal is to simplify the task of creating digital media applications on the Windows® platform, by isolating applications from the complexities of data transports, hardware differences, and synchronization.

To achieve the throughput needed to stream video and audio, DirectShow uses DirectDraw® and DirectSound® whenever possible. These technologies render data efficiently to the user's sound and graphics cards. DirectShow synchronizes playback by encapsulating media data in time-stamped samples. To handle the variety of sources, formats, and hardware devices that are possible, DirectShow uses a modular architecture, in which the application mixes and matches different software components called filters.

DirectShow provides filters that support capture and tuning devices based on the Windows Driver Model (WDM), as well as filters that support legacy Video for Windows (VfW) capture cards, and codecs written for the Audio Compression Manager (ACM) and Video Compression Manager (VCM) interfaces.

The following diagram shows the relationship between an application, the DirectShow components, and some of the hardware and software components that DirectShow supports.

The “simple” concept of DirectShow by Microsoft illustrated

The DirectShow API media-streaming architecture was introduced with the DirectX SDK for 32Bit Windows operating systems. If you remember Windows 95 and 98 and played some games on it, then you will remember that DirectX was always required and the minimum version needed to run the game was even shipped with the setup CD-Rom’s for the games and part of the setup process.

The DirectX SDK kind of died as a package with versions etc. The last DirectX version released was a DirectX 9.0 update from February 2005. DirectShow was moved to the Windows SDK. Windows 2003 Server and Vista are the first systems where only the Windows SDK is used and no DirectX anymore.

DirectX was the successor of Video for Windows (VFW), which was introduced in 16-bit Windows (Windows 3.0, 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups). For backwards compatibility reasons to be able to run 16-bit apps under 32-bit Windows, do the 32-bit OS versions of Microsoft support VFV.

But, they did not leave VFV completely alone. Starting with DirectX, many of the VFV features were suppressed, causing incompatibility issues for some 16-bit video applications, if used in Windows 32-bit. They launch and kind of work, but at the same time not really, at least not as expected and most of the time wanted.

Getting your computer to process any type of video with the application that uses DirectShow or VFV does not make things work for applications, which uses the other model. This can get funny and made me scratch my head more than once. Phenomena like player X can play back a video in format Y after you installed an add-on (probably a Codec), but player Z remains unable to do anything with that video.

One uses VFW and the other DS. Both are separate frameworks and each must be supported specifically by any component that is part of your video experience. Some applications support both, but most use either one or the other only.

Because of this mess, do some applications do not use either of those systems and use their own system to process video data. Those applications are limited to what they come with and support themselves. Some allow third parties to create plug-ins to support additional Codecs and file formats. Nullsoft’s Winamp Player would be a popular example for this approach.

DirectShow is like Lego with all the same great attributes and possibilities and virtually the same flaws as well, because of these great possibilities. If you ever owned Lego and played with it, chances are that you owned more than one set. You probably also mixed the parts of different sets and did not keep them separate. With the time became it harder to get original sets together again, because the manual got lost and you had to start guessing which part goes were and was part of a specific set or not. Also parts got lost some times. You had to improvise, and substitute things, which was only possible to a limited amount, because you had to make sure that the parts fit.

The process is virtually the same with DirectShow. A set would be a video file for example that you want to play back with a DirectShow enabled video player, such as Windows Media Player. The components of the set are actually mini-sub-sets itself, like a set in Lego that was part of a theme, e.g. modern city or the knights theme. Imagine having other players coming and using your sets and/or bring some new sets or even modify some of the sets that you already built, because they did not like the way you did it.

Those other players can be any video related software (big app to small tool) that is using DirectShow. Even a small and not very important tool that you want to use for splitting a video into multiple pieces for example, might messes things up or cause the system do things different that it used to before. Stuff is most of the time changed without warning.

I do not have an answer to the problem, that you cannot sit down, make everything work the way you like and then keep it forever. I can only say that if you got everything to work how you need it, be careful what software you install in the future and leave settings related to video and audio alone.

And to make thinks even more interesting for the future, Microsoft decided to introduce yet another system to the mix with their upcoming operation system version dubbed Windows 7 with the bright and shiny name:

Windows Media Foundation. "It will make everything better, promise". It sure will. The only question remains is for whom it does. Mhh?!

Video Tools

Splitter/Joiner

There are also video and audio file splitter tools that do what their name implies. They let you slice up a video or audio file into multiple pieces (splitter) or combine multiple video or audio files into a single file (joiner). You cannot simply cut a video or audio file into pieces or copy different media files together (like with the binary copy command in DOS).

Media files have a header, data at the beginning of the file, which are crucial that media players are able to play them. A missing or corrupt header can make the entire media file unusable und unplayable. If you simply cut a file in half, then you would end up with one file that has now incorrect information about the media file and a second one with no information at all. Individual video frames also have multiple components and a header. If it is a compressed video file (what typically all video files that are used by regular users are), then it is even more complicated, because some frames are needed to render a bunch of other frames, so called key frames.

Cutting a file into pieces without considering all this factors would be like going to a butcher and have him cut the next best piece of a cow when you order X pounds of steak. No pretty picture, but I hope that you get the idea.

Cutting a media file into pieces is generally easier than joining them together (as with almost everything else in life, taking things apart is easier than putting them back together). As long as the Cutter tool knows the file format structure and knows where to cut and to rebuild the file header, things will be fine. If they are not recoding the slices in the process, cutting is also done pretty fast.

Joining files is tougher, unless you want to re-join the pieces that you just created with your cutter. This is rarely the case though. If you only want to slice a media file up for storage and transportation, because the media file is too large, then you should not use a media cutting tool in the first place. Breaking it up with your backup software or with tools like ZIP, RAR, ACE, HJSplit or MasterSplitter will do just fine.

Simpler joiner tools are only able to combine media files that have exactly the same format. When I say exactly, then I mean more than just having the same file extension. The to-be-joined files must be compressed with the same video and audio Codecs and also settings that determine the video and audio quality, such as Bit Rate, Frame Rate, Sampling Rate and Resolution have to be identical. If this is the case, the joiner only has to re-create the information and not to re-encode any audio or video data.

More sophisticated joiners are a bit more flexible and will make adjustments to the source media in order to be able to join them. Some even re-encode the whole video and audio and work like converter, compositing and rendering tool all-in-one. If the joiner has to re-encode anything, then the process can take considerably more time, but it provides the most flexibility regarding the video and audio sources that can be combined together, even allowing the joining of media in entirely different formats.

To join .AVI files that are in the same format, you can use the free tool VirtualDub. You can also use free compositing tools like Windows Moviemaker (also free), or professional software, like TechSmith Camtasia Studio, Adobe Premiere, Pinnacle Avid, Ulead Video Studio (now Corel) etc., but there you have to re-encode the results every time, regardless if it would be necessary or not.

There are many commercial tools available. I can recommend the Splitter and Joiner tools from Boilsoft, because they are very universal and support various video file formats, including .AVI, .WMV, .ASF, .RM and .MPG. They cost about $50 together and you can test them free for a few days before you have to decide whether you want to buy them or not.

The Video Joiner by ImToo is more flexible and re-codes the source video files to the format that you select and only cost $19, with a free trial period to test it yourself.

Resources

The drops of water on the hot stones in the video & audio encoding and decoding desert. Some drops might vaporize away without quenching your thirst, while others might provide just the little bit of water that you need to survive another day in this desert. :)

Codec Packs

It became clear to geeks and people with a great deal of knowledge and understanding of the subject matter that this is not something that you can expect from a normal user to deal with. A large number of people would probably not understand it and an even larger number of people do not even want to understand it to begin with. I belong to the second group that is not a part of the intersecting set with the first group. I just want to watch and edit a movie, that’s it.

The market failed, the competition lead to incompatibility issues and conflicts and the need to spend the equivalent of a college education in time and resources in order to be able to talk the talk and blame it on the other party.

Ordinary people stepped up and developed tools and build packages, most of the time absolutely free, that other people can download and install, to make many of the things work that usually do not, or at least make the problems smaller and easier to deal with.

They are called Codec Packs and are a collection of containers, Codecs, filters and tools that are pre-configured to work together and as many as possible components compatible to each other.

The problem is that Codec Packs, if not done right, can help making things worse. Some packs also think that doing their own thing, ignoring any other standards and best practices, creating their own little island is the solution to the problem. This lead to hate and love that you will get exposed to, if you are doing some of your own research on this subject. Some despise them, some hate them, others love them and calling them saviors. 

To sum it all up, Codec Packs might not a quick and general applicable solution to a wide spread problem as they tried to went out to become. From what I heard from "experts", other geeks and based on some experiences that I made myself with those packs, there are only a few that I would recommend. 

Some of the biggest and popular Codec Packs include:

• K-Lite Codec Pack (KLCP) – provides different packs with different configurations for the different types of users out there. They also have pages with name, brief description and download link for circa 300 video and audio Codecs, filters, splitters, Muxers and De-Muxers etc.
• Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) is the pack that is praised the most (or hated the least) by people who call themselves expert in this subject. I was okay with it, but personally preferred K-Lite.

Other Codec Packs
Please use with Caution and check first, if they offer everything that you need, before you install them.

• Windows Essential Codec Pack (W.E.C.P.) 
• Cole2k Media - Codec Pack
• Gordian Knot Codec Pack
• MediaCoder Pack
• X-Codec Pack

Special Players and Codecs

• QuickTime Alternative
• RealPlayer Alternative
• nLite Windows Installation Customizer
• WMLite, TTPack and QTLite for light-weight versions of Windows Media Player, Apple QuickTime, Real Networks Real Player, FFdshow, Ogg and AC3
• Media Player Classic (MPC) and VobSub
• DirectShow FilterPack (DSFP)

I don't use codec packs today anymore. I install and deal with codecs one-by-one. This is probably the best way to go in the long ground, once you are familiar with the various available options out there and know what you need for your own purposes. The needs of video creators and consumers are not alway the same. I am both and experienced this first hand myself.

Info and Help Resources to Audio & Video

• http://www.doom9.org/
• http://www.videohelp.com/
• http://www.free-codecs.com/
• http://www.codecguide.com/

Advanced: Tools you got to have

Only for the geeks out there, tools to tweak and troubleshoot codec and filter related issues and tools to fix them as well.

• Media Info Lite
• Graph Edit
• GraphEditPlus  (commercial software, $60)
• GSpot Codec Appliance
• AVICodec 
• RadLight Filter Manager
• DirectShow Filter Manager
• Codec Tweak Tool (part of the K-Lite Codec Pack) 
• Sherlock - The Codec Detective
• WinXP Decoder Check  (alternative download)
• VirtualDubMod
  - DirectShow Input Driver for VirtualDub
  - VirtualDub MPEG2 
• MP3Tag
• abcAVI
• aviUtl

Codec Lists and Databases

• Codec Library
• Codecs Database
• Codecs.com
• abcAVI Codecs List
• Codecs Wiki at Multimedia.cx
• FourCC.org

Acronyms and Definitions

Source: http://www.fourcc.org/

Acronym	Definition
ACM	"ACM" files, also known as "Audio Converter Modules", are audio codec drivers installed on your system which export methods that can be performed on a particular audio stream. This includes converting audio from one type of stream to another. An example of this is perhaps an MP3 ACM which could convert MP3 audio to PCM audio.
ATSC	Advanced Television Standards Committee. The technical group that defined the high definition TV standard for US terrestrial transmission.
AVC	Advanced Video Codec. Otherwise known as MPEG4, part 10 this is the codec that most of the worlds broadcasters are moving to for HD transmissions.
AVI	Audio Video Interleave - a Windows file format used to store movies.
Codec	CODEC stands for COmpressor/DECompressor - a software or hardware component that can compress and/or decompress video using a particular compression algorithm. Though CODECS are generally thought of in the context of video and audio, they are not limited to this scope.
FOURCC	Four Character Code - an 8 digit (or 4 ASCII character) value used to identify the pixel format or compression standard (codec) used to store images or video files. FOURCCs are also used for a similar purpose in some audio applications.
HD	High Definition. This refers to a video picture size higher than SD (see below) and typically one of the set of resolutions defined by ATSC such as 1080i (1920x1080), 720p (1280x720) or 480p (720x480).
JPEG	Joint Photographic Expert Group. The standards group that defined the hugely successful JPEG still image codec.
MPEG	Motion Pictures Expert Group. The clever people who brought you the entire ISO standard Codecs that are used in TV broadcast today.
NTSC	National Television Standards Committee. The group which defined the 480 (visible) line video standard used for analog and pre-HD digital TV transmissions in the USA.
PCM	PCM is Pulse Code Modulation. This is basically an audio format that is pretty much "raw" audio. This is generally the format that audio hardware directly interacts with. Though some hardware can directly play other formats, generally the software must convert any audio stream to PCM and then attempt to play it. An analog audio stream generally looks like a wave, with peaks and valleys that are called its amplitude. These are generally sent to the audio hardware and are then digitized. The conversion basically samples this data stream at a given frequency such as 8000Hz, etc. This sampling will generally measure the voltage passing through so many times a second and generate a value based upon this. Remember, Im not an audio engineer so this is just a simplistic way of thinking about this. The PCM format, for example, I believe the base line is either 127 or 128 (in 8 bits per sample). This is the middle, silence. Anything going below is a low tone and above is a higher tone. If you take a bunch of these values and play them at a certain speed, they will make a sound.
RGB	Red Green Blue - a method of describing colors commonly used in PC graphics.
SD	Standard Definition. The size of a typical video image for a "legacy" TV system. In the US, this will typically describe an image with 480 lines (and one of a number of widths, 720 being the maximum, 480, 640 and 704 being other common choices). In Europe (and other areas which use PAL TV standards), SD refers to an image with 576 lines of resolution.
YCrCb	Color format typically used in video processing. A color is defined in terms of a luminance (Y, brightness) value and two "color differences" or chrominance values (Cr and Cb). One correspondent indicates that Y, R and B likely refer to primary colors yellow, red and blue and "C" indicates a color difference.
YIQ	YIQ is another color format and another way of defining a color and is commonly used in NTSC video systems as far as I can remember.
YUV	YUV also describes a luminance/chrominance color model. This is frequently used interchangeably with YCrCb though, technically, they are different.

Rupture by Andromeda Software Development and other cool Demos

I felt that it was about time again to write about demos, recent demos this time and no classics. Another great demo, which was only recently released trigger this post actually. The demo that did this is:

Rupture by the Greek demo group Andromeda Software Development (short ASD). The demo won the 1st place at The Gathering (TG) 2009 Demo Party Competition in Hamar, Norway this Spring. I created a nice animated gif with some highlights from the demo and also included a video recording of it further down below. I also decided to seize the opportunity and also introduce some other great great demos to you, including other previous productions by the top-notch demo team from ASD, but also from other groups that produced high quality PC demos in the past 5+ or so years. I hope that you will enjoy them.

The animated gif is nice as a preview, but the video below is probably better. Best is of course to download the original demo (see links at Pouet.net) and run it on your own PC.

Backup Link to video at Vimeo.com

You can find more information to the demo and a link to download the 25 MB program to run it on your computer in high resolution at Pouet.net. There is also a link to the high definition video capture of the demo in MP4 format and 250 MB in size. If that is a bit too much for you, download the lower resolution video in XVID .AVI format (61 MB).

If you enjoyed that demo, then you will certainly also enjoy what is coming next. :)

Now I have some great demos for you from previous demo parties, and also created  by the guys from Andromeda Software Development (ASD). I also highly recommend watching those, if you get around to it. You can find all of ASD's productions and links to download at their official web site at www.asd.gr by the way. They are Greek and lucky to be able to get the 3 character domain name at the Greek TLD :).

	Lifeforce by ASD (2007) The demo won 1st place at the Summer Assembly 2007 combined Demo competition in Helsinki, Finland. Wrote about Lifeforce by ASD in February  2008 (14 months ago), because I was so impressed by it. I also uploaded it to FaceBook.com and got feedback from non demo "sceners" about how cool it is. It was definitely a demo high light, not just in 2007 (Lifeforce won the title Best Demo of 2007 that year), but the several previous years. My 2008 post includes the YouTube.com Video version of the demo in lower resolution. A better version is available at my Facebook account and you can also download a even better version of the video at Pouet.net, where you can also the demo executables as well.
	Iconoclast by ASD (2005) This demo won 1st place at the Assembly 2005 combined Demo competition. Watch the video of this demo at my Facebook account and/or download a high resolution version or/and the demo executable at Pouet.net. Iconoclast is also one of my all-time favorite demos. Cool effects and nice music as well.
	Planet Risk (2004) This demo by Andromeda Software Development "only" won 2nd place at the Assembly 2004 Combined Demo Competition (The 1st place won the great demo "Obsoleet" by Unreal Voodoo, which I also highlighted in my History of the Demoscene article.   Again, more information and download links for the demo itself etc. is available at the Pouet.net demoscene database and repository.

More Great Demos

by other Demo Groups than Andromeda Software Development

	FR-41 Debris by Farbrausch (2007) This demo by the reputable German demo group (yeah! hehe) won 1st place at the Break Point demo party in 2007. Remarkable about this demo is also the size. It is almost small enough to enter the 64KB intro competition, but it's a full blown demo. The folks from Farbrausch wanted to make a point about debates about the file size of demos, which is increasing more and more in recent years. You don't need 20 MB to create a great demo. That's a myth and "Debris" debunked that myth once and for all :). You can watch the video of this demo at my Facebook account and/or download the demo at Pouet.net and run on your own PC in High Resolution.
	Fr-25 The Popular Demo by Farbrausch (2003) This demo won 1st place at the Break Point (BP) demo compo in  2003 A funky "Disco" style demo with cool lighting effects. Watch the demo in video format at my Facebook account or visit Pouet.net to download the demo and watch on your own PC.
	Final Audition by Plastic (2005) This demo won 1st place at the Evoke 2005 demo party compo in August 2005, which is like Break Point held in Germany each year. Great ambience, cool music and  breathtaking effects. I fell in love with the demo first time I saw it. Definitely one of the all-time best demos. Again, you can watch this demo at my Facebook account or download the high-res video and/or demo itself at Pouet.net.

I hope that you enjoyed the demos as much as I did and that you might got a bit more interested into the fascinating world of the demoscene. There are a bunch of resources and links to the subject available at my main web site, if you want to learn more about this underground art scene and its history.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

New Cirque du Soleil Show Ovo

The name for the new Cirque du Soleil touring show that will premiere on April 23, 2009 in Montreal, Canada was unveiled. The name is: “OVO”.

The theme of the show are insects. Yes, you read this right, insects. This also explains the name choice, because here is what Cirque du Soleil themselves stated about it:

The name OVO means "egg" in Portuguese. This timeless symbol of the life cycle and birth of numerous insects represents the underlying thread of the show. Graphically, OVO hides an insect in its name: The two letter "Os" represent the eyes while the letter "V" forms the nose.

The Cirque’s web site was also updated (it used to show simply “Cirque 2009”, which was the working title of the show). There are not much video images of the show available. The official trailer for the show is a just 16 seconds in length with less than half of that being images from the show itself.

Backup Link to Video on YouTube.com
Download this video in AVI format from my Mediafire.com account.

There are a few more photographs though, which I made available on my Flickr.com account. I created a new set for the “Ovo” show under my existing Cirque du Soleil photo collection.

This is Cirque’s 25th show production in 25 years. Yes, 2009 also marks the 25th anniversary of the Cirque. Congratulations. They were busy over the past few years. More than half of their 25 shows were created within the past 10 years. Last year 3 shows were launched in a single year in 3 different countries on 2 continents.

What is interesting about OVO is the fact that almost every important person among the creators of the show didn’t play a major role in the creation of any of the previous Cirque productions. Except from the usual mention of Guy among the creators of every Cirque du Soleil show, Jonathan Deans who did the Sound Design for Ovo, is the only person who worked on other shows. Jonathan did the sound design for the Cirque du Soleil touring shows Saltimbanco and Kooza and helped with the lighting design for Corteo.

Deborah Colker wrote and directed the new show and also did the choreography. Director of Creation is Chantal Tremblay, who is not exactly a newbie to Cirque du Soleil. She was Associate Producer for the resident show “The Beatles LOVE” at the Mirage hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. She actually started out as a dancer in Cirque, then became an assistant to choreographer Debra Brown, then Artistic Coordinator and then Artistic Director.

The composer of the music for the show is Berna Ceppas. The music by the early Cirque shows was composed René Dupéré, Benoît Jutras and then later also by Violaine Corradi. That changed over the past years and many new composers were introduced to the Cirque family, including: Jean-François Côté (Kooza), Philippe Leduc (Corteo), Simon Carpentier (Zumanity), Éric Serra (Believe). René Dupéré was busy with the music for Zed and Violaine Corradi for the show Zaia. I don’t know what happened to to Benoît Jutras. Maybe he is busy with one of the other Cirque projects that are currently in production. I am not familiar with Berna Ceppas and his music. I know that he is from Brazil and learned that he has a MySpace page where you can listen to some of his earlier work to get an idea about how the music for Ovo might sound like. The short trailer was unfortunately not long enough to get it from there.

Additional show credits: Set Design and Props: Gringo Cardia, Costume Design: Liz Vandal, Lighting Design: Éric Champoux, Make up: Julie Bégin, Rigging: Fred Gérard, Acrobatics Act Designer: Philippe Aubertin, Artistic Guides: Gilles Ste-Croix & Guy Laliberté.

Cirque du Soleil also launched a Facebook page for Ovo.

Another YouTube user from Germany with I am in touch will be in Montreal for the premiere. I won’t be able to make it myself, but he promised me to let me know about his impressions from the show.

Like the previous touring shows of Cirque du Soleil, Ovo will start its multiple years long journey across Canada, the United States and then the rest of the world, including Europe, Asia, Australia and South America.

I hope to have some new video material from the show available soon to post it on my YouTube channel and share it with you. I have already over 350 videos about Cirque du Soleil and related subjects up online. You might want to check it out. Also do not forget my Cirque du Soleil Primer article for facts and information about your favorite Circus, the Cirque du Soleil.

Matching Nude ASCII Art Pieces with Playboy Centerfolds

I posted earlier this month the article ASCII Art Nudes versus Original Playboy Centerfolds where I show for several ASCII Nude pictures of my ASCII Nudes collection the original photograph that was used by the text artist.

I updated the original article, which showed the originals for 29 40 ASCII pieces, and added one more match that I found afterwards. Since then I even found two more matches, which I did not add to the article yet.

The obvious matches are taking care of and also the ones where the file name or content of the ASCII itself had useful and correct hints about the original photograph. I were also able to match a number of ASCII's to photographs where the ASCII had completely incorrect information, such as the wrong name of the girl.

Now it's tougher to find corresponding photographs and I could use some help with it. It is not such a bad job actually. You get to watch a lot of beautiful girls naked hehe.

I also ran into cases where I am not 100% sure, if I matched the ASCII with the right photograph. Like this one.

The arm position is right, the pose is the same. The breast size is about the same and the hair resembles also the photograph. I am pretty sure that I found the right photograph, but a second opinion would increase my confidence even more.

If you want to help matching ASCII pictures to Playboy photographs, then you will need in addition to the ASCII pictures from my gallery, also the Playboy Magazine photographs from all issues, right?

Guess what, I happen to have a collection of those :). I zipped the photographs up into one file for each decade of Magazine publications.

Playboy Magazine Centerfolds Photographs (Complete) and additional Photographs from the Mag:

• 50's (93 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?jjnzwynyeyq
• 60's (92 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?nyzmmwzgi2m
• 70's (111 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?fjylwngwgjn
• 80's (110 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?k1zmwfihqtz
• 90's (69 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?tkgnnzi25ot
• 00's (269 MB) http://www.mediafire.com/?nnwdtzd5mod

Here is also a zip file with the collection of my work files. It includes PNG versions of all the ASCII art pictures and the already matched photographs. I also sorted the pictures where I did not find a match yet by the pose of the girl in the picture. I found out that this helps with finding a matching photograph. Poses like kneeling, sitting, lying and standing and "standing" broken down even further into "front", "behind", "left side" and "right side".

ASCII Nudes work Images
Zipped 38 MB* http://www.mediafire.com/?he22vyjndtj (Updated 04/2009)

*The 38 MB Zip file contains the photographs of the already matched pictures, the side by side pictures from my blog post, the original ASCII art pieces in text and PNG format, thumbnails and notes that might help with uncovering more original source photographs that were used by the text artists.

If you find matches, please post them in the comments section of this post. Post the PNG image file name of the ASCII picture and the image file name of the photograph that you believe to be the original.

Update: Including the picture above, I now have matched 40 ASCII art pieces and updated my original blog post with those matches. I matched "Anna", "Ingrid", "Kelly", "Susan", "nude330", "nude342", "nude353", "nude357", "nude1312" and "nude1317". I noticed that some of the originals used are not the Centerfolds itself, but other photographs from within the magazine as well (I am not surprised, but thought that I will mention it). My image collections contain some of those other images but by far not all of them. Also not included are the pictorials, which were also used for some of the ASCII art pieces.

Promo Video for ASCII Nude Collection

I also created a short promotional video for my ASCII Nudes collection and for my article about the match-up with Playboy Centerfolds. YouTube and MySpace made already a fuss out of it, because the video shows some nipples. It's not pornography for Christ's sake and the YouTube account warning for violation of their community guidelines was a bit too strong of a response for my taste.

 

So I created a censored version for YouTube and MySpace where all nipples are covered, even the ASCII nipples.

That makes the stuff look even more funny than I wanted. You can see for yourself what I mean by that.

I put the uncensored version up on Vimeo.com, which I used to embed the video into this blog post as well. You can download the uncensored natural version of this video in 720x480 pixels resolution and .AVI format (XVID) at Mediafire.com as always. Backup link to video on Vimeo.com. Enjoy!

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Cirque du Soleil in Lecce, Italy - KA Show Videos

Cirque du Soleil gave a special acrobatic performance on December 5, 2008 during the Notte Bianca street festival in Lecce, Italy that consisted of multiple parts, involving dozens of artists.

Acts like Russian Bars, Spanish Web and other Aerial performances, Cyr Wheel, Wheel of Death and general dancers, singers and musicians as well as light projection and other special effects.

My 28 minutes video of these performances is based on the footage of several home made videos that I found on the web. The visual quality differs from good to poor, but I hope that I was able to capture the essence of the show. I replaced the audio almost entirely, but tried to be true to the actual music as good as possible. The original videos are still out there, if you want to see the true live recordings of the event.

Here is the 28 minutes video that I created about this special performance by Cirque du Soleil in Lecce, Italy.

 Backup Link to Video on Google Video

Cirque du Soleil - KA - Video Recording of the Entire Show

I was talking about the issue that non of the Vegas Cirque du Soleil shows are available on DVD and that video footage will leak out over time to cover the whole show, like in the case of Cirque du Soleil's epic show KA, which is performed live at the MGM Grand hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The raw videos of the show are available via torrent downloads, such as here (German Intro Narration, XVID, .AVI) and also here (French Intro Narration, MPEG-2 Format).

So I decided to lean myself a bit out of the window and sliced the video up into 9 pieces and put it up on my YouTube channel for Cirque du Soleil related videos of mine. Here is the link to part one. To find the remaining 8 videos, check out the play list that I created for this video series.

The Intro narration is in German (that's the version that I used for YouTube) and translates to:

On the way to a pageant to their honor, the imperial twins put their skills in the traditional art of sword fighting to the test. They have no idea on that day, about the real threats that lay ahead of them. About the great thunder that will soon put an end to the innocent lives that they were used to. About destruction and devastation that will drive an entire nation into exile and about the chaos of war that will soon separate the brave brother from his beloved sister. This is the story about the journey to self discovery of a young man and a young woman through their experiences with love, conflicts and the duality of KA, the fire that has the power to combine or to separate and the power to destroy or to enlighten.

Fast Facts about KA

• Length of the show: about 90 minutes
• Venue: The "KA Theatre" at the MGM Grand hotel & casino in Las Vegas, NV
• Premiere(s): 26.November 2004/03.February 2005, in Las Vegas, Nevada
• Official Show Homepage on the Web: http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/KA
• People: 80 artists from around the world perform the show twice per day, 5 days per week and about 50 weeks per year
• Show times: Tuesdays to Saturdays, one at 7:00 pm and a second show at 9:30 pm local time, No show performances on Mondays and Sundays
• Over 100 crew members are working for the show in 8 or more technical and artist support departments, including wardrobe, make-up and wig personal.
• The music is played live, by human-beings, every time, only about 2 minutes of pre-recorded audio is used throughout the whole performance
• The total number of cast and crew for the show is about 266 people
• The production cost for KA were higher than the combined cost of all Broadway productions that were released in the same year as KA
• The custom build venue for the show inside the MGM has 1,951 seats
• Every seat is equipped with its own loud speakers for optimal sound experience
• The main stage of KA is called a "Gantry" made of 2 decks, one that can slide forward and backward and the other one which can be rotated and moved 360 degrees.
• The main deck is 25x50 feet (8x16 meters) in diameter, weighs 300,000 lbs, which is more than a fully booked, loaded and gassed-up average-size jet airliner
• If fully erected to its maximum height, artists perform their act 100 ft above the ground
• Ticket prices for the show range from about $75 to $165 per seat and are available at the MGM box offices at MGM properties, via toll free phone # at (800) 929-1111 and on the web at http://mgm-cds.admission.com/ or http://www.cirquedusolei.com/CirqueDuSoleil/en/showtickets/ka/tickets/

The Creators of the Show KA

• Show Director: Robert LePage
• Director of Creation: Guy Caron
• Music Composer: Rene Dupere
• Set Designer: Mark Fisher
• Costumes Designer: Marie-Chantale Vaillancourt
• Props Designer: Patricia Ruel
• Lighting Director: Luc Lafortune
• Sound Designer: Jonathan Deans
• Trainer for Aerial Performances: Andre Simard
• Choreographer: Jacques Heim
• Puppets Creation & Choreography: Michael Curry

For more Cirque du Soleil visit http://www.roysac.com/cirque

Regardless of the video, you should go and see it live, if you get to Vegas, because no video can substitute the live theatre experience. However, I do hope that this incident will cause MGM and Cirque du Soleil to rethink their policy about DVD releases of Vegas Cirque du Soleil shows and release those shows on DVD for people to buy legally. Not everybody can make it to Vegas and/or afford the ticket price to see the shows live. And also people like me, who saw the shows already, several of them even more than once, would like to have the DVD and watch it to refresh some of the good memories from the live experience.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Time for Another ASCII and More

It has only been two months, a bit less actually, since I created my last piece of ASCII text art.

Well, I did it again. Actually more than just a logo as I did the last time for CPI. I also design the NFO file body and more. I will show you the details further down below. I am pretty proud of myself, because I did not use any of my old styles for this new ASCII. I tried something different. I think that the result is very good, but it will be for others to decide if that is the case or not.

I also created a FILE_ID.DIZ logo for them in oldskool ASCII (Amiga style), which I do not consider myself particular good at. I actually said always that oldskool ASCII's should stay where they belong, on the Amiga, where they look right and not on the PC, which displays them much different as you can see at my article about the different art styles in the underground text art scene.

While I had the creative urge going, I also created VGA pixel logos for the same group. It must have been their lucky weekend I guess. hehe.  It could also be that the release that they announced where this artwork will be used was highly motivating for me :)

The second VGA logo. Simple and much smaller than the first one. It can also be read much easier.

The VGA logos were used for a cracktro, together with an old pixel art font of mine, which I highlighted in a blog post last December. The font took me hours to create and I was a little bit disappointed that it was only used for one Genesis intro, coded by Synec, which was only used for one or two releases and that's it. That particular intro is also one of the few that I have problems with to capture and publish in video format :(

I am glad that it was now used again. The music is also cool. It was created by Paso from Berlin and Dytec (and Dynamix & Remedy, the Sysop of Ice Cream and the coder & musician of the Cebit1993 party winning Amiga 500 dentro called Vaginal Massacre).

The tune was also used on the PC once, also for a Genesis intro by Hetero, with graphics by Dream Design, together with a second song, which IMO sucked. A randomizer determined which of the two songs was played and it appeared to me that the shitty song was played much more often than this cool one by Paso. I am sure that he will be glad that one of his tunes was used again in a cracktro.

Okay, here is the screen capture video of the new cracktro:

RoORS Cracktro 2009 V2 from Carsten Cumbrowski on Vimeo.

You can download the video in AVI format (76 MB) here at Mediafire.com 

I hope that you like my new stuff. Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Where is the Delirium DVD by Cirque du Soleil?

The Cirque du Soleil show Delirium, which was called a "music concert" rather than a traditional Cirque du Soleil show, was the first experiment by Cirque to transport the experience of a Cirque show from the Big Top into the arena environment to be able to reach a greater audience.

This experiment was obviously successful, because they converted their oldest touring show Saltimbanco to become an "Arena Show". Saltimbanco Arena re-launched in the year 2007.

Delirium was only running between 2006 and 2008, 2 years.
I don't know why they stopped touring with it in 2008, but that is also not the reason why I am writing this blog post.
I watched Delirium in 2006 here in Fresno, California, the first time that a Cirque du Soleil production made it here. It was a good show, different, yes, but different does not mean bad.

The show was obviously filmed by a professional film crew at one time during the shows run, because in summer 2008 Cirque announced something unusual. I cannot recall that Cirque ever did something like it in the past.

Delirium Shown in Movie Theaters

They announced the screening of Delirium in movie theaters. It was only shown at selected movie theatres and only for a few days. I missed that and thought that it will be running longer, like a movie release. But I was lucky, they announced "Delirium Encore", another screening of the show at local theaters. There were only three screenings, the main one on Wednesday, October 15 at 7:00 PM and then two more, each at midnight on the following weekend on Saturday, October 18 at 12:00 AM and on Sunday, October 19 at 12:00 AM.

I saw it was my family on the Wednesday. We were the only ones in the theater, except for one other group of 3 or 4 people. I recorded a little bit of the show with my Flip Camera and used the material for a 7:24 minutes long promotional video, but lost by accident the raw recording (40-45 minutes) that I made shortly after. I was not too much upset about it, because I expected the DVD to be released by Christmas anyway.

I posted a 28 minutes video with the complete hula hoops and hand-balancing act included two months earlier in August, after the announcement of the release of the show in theaters, all in the expectation that the DVD release is not far in the future anyway. Now it is March 2009, five months after Delirium Encore and still no DVD release of the show in sight, what's up with that?

Where is the DVD?

An user with the name "funplyr69" posted a comment about one week ago at the video of the Delirium Encore trailer at YouTube.com that he contacted Cirque du Soleil to inquiry about the release of Delirium on DVD and got the response that

"there was currently no plan for a release but that there could be in the future." (video with comment at YouTube)

WHAT? Why the heck would they do that?

He stated correctly that Cirque released in the past all of their shows on VHS and/or DVD, except for their resident shows in Las Vegas.

I also created a video where I talked about this issue.

Backup link to video on YouTube.com
Download the video in AVI format and 720x480 pixels resolution at MediaFire.com

Spin Off to Las Vegas Shows

In the case of the Las Vegas shows, I believe that the reason for not publishing a DVD is MGM who owns all the Las Vegas properties where Cirque du Soleil shows are running.

But that changed now too. I know about a pirate release of the recording of show KA at the MGM Grand hotel and casino. I am not talking about a shaky recording by somebody sitting in the audience with a cheap digital video camera, no, a quality recording, fully edited and almost perfect DVD quality.

The NFO file of that pirate release states:

All Cirque du Soleil shows became eventually available on DVD, even while they are still running and touring around the world. The only exception is the Las Vegas shows, which all happen to run at MGM properties only.

Cirque must have signed an exclusivity agreement with MGM, from how it looks like. Franco Dragone, the famous former Cirque du Soleil director, who directed many of CDS shows, including Alegria, Mystere and "O", split from Cirque to found his own company. Franco Dragone created a Cirque du Soleil like show called "Le Reve" for Steve Wynn's latest Las Vegas property, the "Wynn Las Vegas".

The exclusivity agreement must be limited to Las Vegas only, because Cirque created and launched a show in Asian new "Las Vegas", Macao, China last year, called "Zaia" and that show runs at the Venetian Macao, which is owned by Sands Corp. and not MGM, who also operates casino and entertainment properties in Macao as well.

I am certain that the reason why no DVD release exists for any of the currently SIX and later this year SEVEN show productions is MGM and their old fashioned and paranoid management.

The oldest show launched almost 15 years ago and stills no DVD release of it in sight. A large amount of segments became public naturally through promotional ads, documentaries, news reports and other media releases, but never an entire show, with all consecutive pieces in place and consistent format of video and audio.

This is a first now. Cirque du Soleil shows (Circus a la carte) is a live experience that no canned version will ever be able to replace. For this reason I am convinced that this "pirate" release of the show will not hurt Cirque nor MGM ticket sales for the show in the years to come.

I dare to say that the opposite will be the case. The recording will only function as better advertisement for the show than anything that is currently out there already.

They probably will lose on DVD sales, but no, wait, they won't, because they do not sell any recording of the show on DVD, except for a behind the scenes/making of documentary, which might won't sell as good now anymore, since it is also part of this release as well.

If MGM does not like to miss out on revenue and profits, then they have to release their own official DVD version of the show.

People will eventually find this release, because nothing else like it exists at the moment... If the choice that people have includes only downloading a pirated show recording or no show at all, many will decide to choose the pirated version, with only little or no remorse, because MGM prevents people from being able to make the right choice and buy the legitimate version of it.

As long as we agree that the purpose of copyright laws is still to make sure that artists are being compensated for their work and creations and not as a tool to execute a real form of censorship, which I define as the prevention of access to content and/or information that are of interest for the general public and for the benefit of the society as a whole, if access would be possible), then nobody should ever feel the wrath of the Justicative arm of the government.

Most of the free world guarantees rights to its people to be able to access information without censorship via fundamental laws or constitutions, which means that nobody would have to fear, facing positional imprisonment or monetary penalties/fines for executing those rights in the real world.

List of Cirque du Soleil shows and the year the show was launched at MGM properties in Vegas:

- 1994 - Mystere at Treasure Island
- 1998 - "O" at the Bellagio
- 2003 - Zumanity at the New York, New York
- 2004 - KA at MGM Grand
- 2006 - The Beatles "Love" at the Mirage
- 2008 - Criss Angel's Believe at the Luxor

... And later this year in 2009 an "Elvis" themed show at the MGM City Center, which is currently under construction. MGM also owns the Mandalay Bay, Excalibur and Monte Carlo properties in Vegas (I hope that I didn't miss any).

and also

I hope that this release will function like a sticky note at the tip of a baseball bat that gets slammed into MGM Executive faces with the words:

"Release freaking DVDs of the Cirque shows at your properties in Vegas! Damn it!"

Amen to that. I hope that this will have the desired effect on MGM and/or Cirque du Soleil.

I also hope that Cirque du Soleil will change their opinion about the release of the Delirium DVD. I guess I will continue to gather up as much video material from the show I can get my hands on, to create another video of the show, which will be even longer than 28 minutes, like the last one.

Notes to Copyright Laws and Implications

Stuff is easier to find on the Internet than it used to be in the past. We will get the content... slowly and with pain staking work and not over night, but eventually we will get there. All this only, because content produces hide content that is in demand in their vaults rather then making the content available FOR PAY that people can easily get access to the content without jumping through hoops and doing it "illegally". Illegal is too hard of a word in this case, because the only crime committed is a violation of "Copyright Laws" that is supposed to protect the creators of content from getting robbed of their intellectual property and not to prevent access to that content in general.

If the content has implication on people and society, this withholding of content would be called "censorship".

If I want to pay you for your work that you have already done and you don't make it available, but it gets out to become accessible anyway, then accessing this content should not be against the law, due to the fact that It is impossible to obey to the law and compensate the artist for his work. If the content is made available for pay (in a way that follows common sense business rules and pricing), then you might call it unlawful, if the same content is being acquired without paying, because it was possible for the person to obey to the law, he had a choice.

As a side note: I think that in some cases copyright protection should be removed, if the material is of great importance for history and society itself. I am referring to footage of events of historic significance, such as news images. In those cases copyright becomes willingly or not a tool for censorship that prevents people from educating themselves about the facts of historic events

Additional Links to Delirium Videos

• Cirque du Soleil's Delirium, a 28 Minutes video (split up) on YouTube, including the complete Hula Hoops and Hand balancing Act: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
• 7:27 minutes video on YouTube.com about my experiences from the Delirium Encore event on October 15, 2008. I split the video into 3 parts for some reasons: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
• Official Delirium trailer for movie theater release from August 2008. Video on YouTube.com

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Convert Video to ASCII Text Art

Uh, third post in 2 days... that surprises even me. Hehe

It was by coincidence actually, but somebody at Mahalo Answers made me aware of the feature of the free VLC (VideoLan) video player to convert video images to color ASCII art (some would call this ANSI hehe) in real-time.

I thought that this is a cool feature, just by hearing about it. I downloaded the player and was unable to find the option for the ASCII art output, so I asked the guy at Mahalo Answers about it and luckily for me, he answered this question as well (a bit delayed, which made me drop the ball on it as well).

The feature is buried deeply within the configuration options of the player and not that easy to find.

To help you with this problem, see my step by step guide to enable the feature in the VideoLan player. Every step is illustrated with a screen shot, so that there should not be any excuses for why you could not set it up yourself properly. Start with getting the latest version of the VideoLan video player at VideoLan.org (note: the latest version does not have this feature anymore. See note at the end of the post for details). The player is available across platform, over a dozen different Linux and Unix distributions and versions. Binaries for Windows, Macintosh Mac OS X, BeOS and Syllable are also available by the way. It's released under the GNU License.

Step by Step Guide to Enable the Color ASCII Art Output Module Configuration in the VLC Video Player

1. Start the VLC/VideoLan media player and open any supported video file.

2. Click on "Settings" in the top menu navigation and select "Preferences"

3. Audio is selected by default at the left. Check out the bottom-right where you can find a check box labeled "Advanced Options", which should be unchecked (default). Check that box to enable the Advanced Options.

4. Back to the navigation to the left. Click on the plus sign next to "Video" in the preferences box to open the configuration tree node for the "Video" options.

5. Click on the "Output Modules" node

6. Change the "default" in the drop down options for video output module to "Color ASCII Art Video output"

7. Click "Save" in the lower left of the window

8. Stop the video that you opened, if it isn't stopped already or if you stopped it after step 1.

9. Press "Play" to re-start the video again with the new video output module

Here are some results of me playing with that option for some videos of mine to give you an idea of how the real-time converted video images look in text mode with colors. I am not sure yet, if the module sticks to the 16 pre-set colors defined for PC MS DOS ANSI, which would be really cool. It may uses other colors instead. I have to do some more tests to find that out.

 
Playing Around with the VLC Color ANSI Art Video Output Module from Carsten Cumbrowski on Vimeo.

You can download this video in AVI format at Mediafile.com.

The player itself is worth checking out in general, beyond the ASCII output feature, which is kind of a "hidden treasure" within the features set of this open source video player. It supports virtually all major video formats, including Mpeg, AVI, QuickTime MOV/MP4, Windows Media WMV/ASF, Macromedia/Adobe Flash (FLV), the open source Matroska, Real Media (RealPlayer), OGG, FLAC and even Midi and raw DV video, WAV, MP3 audio etc.

It can play back streaming video UDP, TCP and DCCP/RTP Unicast or Multicast, HTTP/FTP and MMS in addition to traditional DVD video and audio, Audio CD, Video CD and SVCD, DVB from Satellite, Digital TV and cable television. A lot of stuff for NO BUCK at all. You cannot beat free, or can you?!

Also check out my previous posts about ASCII and ANSI Text Animation:

• ASCII plus Animation is ASCIImation
• What is ANSI Animation or ANSImation?
• Beck ASCIImation and a Walking Man 7-Bit ASCII
• my ASCIImations and ANSI Animations Video Play List at YouTube
• Review of Image to Text (ASCII) Converters

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Update: I just learned that the current version of VLC (Version 0.9.8a, 16 MB) does not have the ASCII output feature anymore. I have VLC Player Version 0.8.6f Janus (wxWidget interface) from last year, where the feature is still there. You can download this older version here from my web site: vlc-0.8.6f-win32.zip (9.19 MB). I don't know why they would remove such a nice feature from their player. Mhhh.

Cirque du Soleil - Complaints and Suggestions Revisited

In my blog post and video from January about some issues with Cirque du Soleil, I was complaining about three things. 1.) about the hard to impossible to find Wintuk show soundtrack 2.) the unavailability of merchandize, especially the media content (DVDs, CDs etc.) outside the United States and 3.) about the missing tracks on many of the so called official soundtracks of Cirque du Soleil shows.

It is two months later now and I decided to check once more to see if anything changed this my last "rant".

If you rather watch and listen than reading my blog post, watch my 9 minutes video below, which covers pretty much the same content as I do in my writing below.

• Backup Link to video on YouTube
• Download the video in AVI format and 720x480 pixels resolution (50 MB) from MediaFire.com.

Issue 1 Reviewed - Where to Buy the Official Wintuk Soundtrack CD

Okay, first to the positive things (bitter sweet actually, because it is not all positive, only partially).

When I checked the CD section of the Cirque online shop (Cirque Boutique), I couldn't believe my eyes at first.

There it was (see screen shot image to your right), the  official soundtrack CD for the show "Wintuk" is now finally also available in the general Cirque du Soleil merchandise online store and not only in that special micro online shop on another web site that they created, just for that one lonely show.

You have to have "United States" selected as ship-to country to get that listing.

You can still buy the official Wintuk soundtrack CD at that special store. Regarding the listing. Also note that the United States version has even a second listing page for music cd releases (see second image on the left). I will get back to that one in a moment.

Okay, so far so good. But I also tried Google again, to see, if I would be able now to find the sound track cd, if I would still be looking for it, like I was last year.

So I typed "buy official Wintuk soundtrack cd" into the Google search box and checked the results that I got back on my screen. You can look at the screen shot of the Google.com search results page with my comments below.

The number one results is still a torrent with the pirated version of the soundtrack CD. mmmh.

The number two result is an eBay auction listing for the CD. Also not so great, because folks are sometimes abusing the lack of availability or easy access to things to make a quick buck by purchasing the stuff for the original price from the original source that nobody can find and then turn around to sell the same product with hefty profit margins added to it at a place that people are actually able to find.

The number three listing is finally the official special mini store for the Wintuk show, where you can buy the CD without any problems or artificial mark-ups etc. Hallelujah.

This is funny. The number four listing is my blog post from January where I complained about the inability to find the soundtrack hehe. Well, that post has also (just like this one) a link to the CD at the official store. I wonder if my nice and descriptive text links from my Cirque du Soleil 101 primer article and my other blog post had enough "Google Juice" to push the product listing of the CD out of the supplemental search index hell of Google and up into the top of the SERP's for the terms where it actually should rank number one?

Possible. My blog is getting older and older, more and more traffic and more and more authority and Google PageRank as a consequence of it.

The Cirque Boutique is nowhere to be found at all, but that does not surprise me a bit. I couldn't even help them with a link to the item there, because last time I checked, deep linking into the Cirque Boutique eShop did not work at all (unless you had a cookie set from a previous visit to the same online shop already, where you selected the correct shipping destination (country), which makes no sense whatsoever). Why would I want to refer people who visited the store already back to the same place again. If they wanted to buy something, then they probably did so already.

Well, until now, the few okay to good listings are surrounded by junk or unrelated  stuff, like promo videos on YouTube, Torrents, Torrents, Torrents, a Wikipedia article, the old out of stock Amazon.com marketplace listing of the CD, some forum posts and more Torrents to download the pirated version of the CD in MP3 format.

Issue 2 Reviewed - Cirque du Soleil Merchandise outside the U.S.

If you read the first segment of this post, then you already saw the CD listings for customers from the United States at the Cirque Boutique online store.

The listing shows 20 Music CD releases on two pages, available for purchase.

To your left is a screen shot of the DVD section of the store, also for customers in the United States only. Not too bad, 16 DVDs listed in total, 2 of them unfortunately out of stock, which makes it 14 DVDs available for purchase.

Now I went back, erased my cookie for the store that set the U.S. location and selected India as shipping destination instead.

The prices of the store are still shown in U.S. dollars, but the look and feel of the store changed (different site) and most importantly, the listings of available products changed as well. I did not embed the screen shots. I only linked to them via plain text link. Here they are:

• Link to screen shot of DVD section for India
• Link to screen shot of Music CD section for India

The results were bad, really bad.

The DVD selection is worse that it was last year in September, when I checked the last time. Instead of 5 DVDs available back then, only 4 DVDs were available 7 months later. Nothing compared to the 16 (or 14) DVD releases available for U.S. customers.

The Music CD selection is almost as bad, but just not as bad as the DVD section. It lists 11 CDs, but shows 4 of them as being out of stock = 7 CDs actually available. Not convincing, if you consider that for U.S. customers are 20 CDs available to choose from at the same category.

Cirque du Soleil - Fix This!

Oddities in Cirque Boutique U.S. Listings

1. Mystère CD or Mystère Live CD or Mystère What?

Have a look at the product detail pages screen shots for the two CDs.

• Mystère CD 1 product detail screen shot
• Mystère CD 2 product detail screen shot

I will keep this one short. Look at the screen shots and tell me, if you notice something?

Okay, I am just kidding. They are the same, except for the Image and the Catalog numbers. The real product pages even link to the same music sample files. The CDs are virtually identical, except for the cover and booklet.

So don't waste your money on both of them.. buy only one of them, unless you are a collector.

2. No Thrilling Ride to Kooza Show DVD

The Cirque Boutique lists the latest show DVD release for "Kooza", but unfortunately it is out of stock. The release contains two DVDs and the item is sold exclusively through the Cirque du Soleil Boutique. It is not made (officially) available anywhere else.

I purchased the DVD (2 discs) already a while ago and even blogged about it, when I got it. Before the show DVD was released, a "making of" documentary about Kooza was released earlier. The DVD release called "A Thrilling Ride Through Kooza"  is only 47 minutes in length.

See screen shot of product detail page for the documentary DVD "A Thrilling Ride Through Kooza".

The documentary DVD is available for $19 for, which is a not so good price for a rather short making of documentary feature. Like KA Extreme, about the show KA, which is also short like this. They did a better job with "Flow" about the show "O" and "The Mystery of Mystère", which are each 80 minutes in length or "Lovesick" about the show "Zumanity", which is 99 minutes in length.

Anyhow, the thing is that the whole 47 minutes documentary that they sell for $19 dollars is included on the second DVD discs with bonus features of the show DVD release for only $10 more. That CD, where you get a lot more bang for your buck is out of stock. Not very good for their own latest DVD show release, which they did not make available for purchase at other large retailers like Amazon.com etc.

If you do not happen to walk by a physical Cirque Store location (in Vegas, Orlando, Tokyo or Macao) where they might have a copy of it left (if you are lucky), your options to get the DVD legally are thinning out quickly.

Guess what, the whole disc set is available for download in ISO format via warez torrents or on Usenet. It will probably not for long that pirated versions will be the only versions that can be found in Google, unless I write a few more blog posts about the DVD release to out-rank them.

Not good. FIX THAT!

That Cirque cannot do much that quickly about missing tracks on soundtrack CD releases is clear.

However, I hope that the OST CD releases for the shows that launched last year in Asia and Las Vegas will become available for purchase soon. The music for the show "Criss Angel - Believe", which premiered in October in Las Vegas, Nevada, the show "Zaia", which premiered in Macao, China last August and the show "Zed", which launched also last October at the Disneyland Tokyo in its custom build theatre.

I hope that Cirque will not show the same attitude that it shows to U.S. content for non-U.S. customers in reverse. I mean that the merchandise for the Asian shows will not become available for purchase to customers outside of Asia (e.G. the United States). It would not surprise me too much, if this happens, but I try to remain optimistic and hope that Cirque will get their act together and fix this problem.

I also hope that the sound tracks will be complete. I will get them, one way or another, if not via purchase from a store officially, then via MP3 download from the Internet, where they will become available with absolute certainty.

Oh Boy, this post became longer than I originally intended. It also contains more stuff than my 10 minutes video. So if you read this post instead of just watching the video, them you got rewarded for hanging in with me :).

But now it is enough! Seriously!

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

A Movie That You Should Watch

I finally got around to watch the sequel to the documentary "Zeitgeist" called "Zeitgeist Addendum". It was already released last year in October. The first part was released in June 2007 and created a lot of controversy

I blogged about the first installment and some other related documentaries that were release around the same time last January. I highly recommend checking those out as well. You can watch all of them online, free and perfectly legal... no copyright infringement crap. 

You can find all of them on Google Video, but for the Zeitgeist video's I suggest to make a detour and go to their official web site first, because they have some more interesting stuff up there, beyond the documentaries itself.

The URL is ZeitgeistMovie.com

When part one was released, some people tried to down-play it and stuff it into the box labeled "Conspiracy Theory", which does not do the movie justice. Some people were offended, but I think that this happened unintentionally, because in Addendum they changed the tone a little bit and also elaborated in much more detail the points that are a bit more radical and could be misunderstood by some folks.

Addendum in particular has at its core the presentation of facts, historic and present day facts and figures, mathematical stuff. No, not statistics or probability stuff, which is basically the interpretation of seemingly unrelated figures with filling in the gaps and missing connections through more or less educated guesses. No, No, that would only be another "theory". No guesses here, but also no advanced mathematics that require a masters degree in math to be able to understand it. It's simple math, some addition, some subtraction, multiplication and dividing.

The facts are not very pretty and it would have been a poor choice to leave it at that, without adding some theory, thoughts, opinions  and  ideas and try to figure out the WHY and WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT? There you can agree, not agree or only partially agree on, but what you cannot do, is denying the facts. You can try sweet-talking the issues or down-play them, but that does not help anybody.

I am not a fan of the proposed immediate action items that people like you and me can do today. In my opinion would it be much more effective, if they would have provided detailed information to the court case were the guy was able to prevent the foreclosure of his home by the bank. That is something that many Americans could put to good use... especially today, where foreclosures are rampart and the economy is in deep shit.

If thousands of people would sue, go to court and prevent the seizure of their property by the banks, that would have impact on the stability of this whole house of cards. Add to this as a bonus a handbook for the "How to refuse paying the unconstitutional federal income-tax without getting shot by the IRS." hehe.

Okay... you are probably thinking right now: WTF is this dude talking about?

Watch the video yourself and you will understand what I just wrote.

Here is a short teaser video that I took from the main documentary. It was well made and sends a message all on it's own and wasn't really designed to promote the Zeitgeist movies. It does not even mention Zeitgeist. I added the URL to their web site to the video. The original didn't have that.

Watch It Begins. It Begins Now!

  

You can download this video in AVI format at Mediafire.com here.

It's time to find out what is outside the bubble you were living in your whole life until now!

Visit Zeitgeistmovie.com if you dare to find out!

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

First ASCII Art Piece of Mine in Ages

I cannot believe that I actually managed to create my first piece of block ASCII Art in ages... eons might be the better word to describe the time frame between the creation of this ASCII  and the last ASCII of mine that I created before this one.

The ASCII that I created was a long over-due request by Mad Max, the co-founder of the old scene group CPI, Canadian Pirates Inc., which I actually joined myself in September of last year.

I had this open request on my conscience for way too long and I am glad that I got this off my head now. I also hope that Mad Max will like the NFO file logo. I have to admit, that I got a little bit rusty (old maybe? :( ).

I sent the ASCII to him via email, but did not hear back from him since then. I will find out sooner or later :)

I also Finished Something Else ;) !!!

I wrote about the amount (count) of different SAC releases across all pages earlier this year.  I also made stuff available for download in re-sorted and grouped bundles by content type rather than by SAC artpack.

• Interesting SAC Art Packs Statistics, Figures and Downloads
• Interesting SAC Art Packs Statistics, Figures and Downloads - Part II

More SAC Art Put Up for Access On-Line via Web Browser

That was all nice and good, but does not make the old-school art of ASCII, ANSI or Pixel Art accessible (viewable) online and across platforms.  Okay, so I took it upon myself to convert the thousands of ASCII and ANSI art pieces that several dozen artists produced over a period longer than 10 years and converted all of them into PNG image format, which is compatible with everything today. I also converted the Pixel art that was for a large degree saved in the old IFF (or LBM of Deluxe Paint II) format and other similar depreciated formats, which are today not in use anymore.

1. ASCII ART Collection

All 3,000+ Superior Art Creations ASCII Art Pieces from 30+ artists and all 35 SAC art packs in one Flickr collection with 30 separate picture sets, sorted by artists most of the time.

2. ANSI ART Collection

All 450+ Superior Art Creations ANSI Art Pieces from 25+ artists and all 35 SAC art packs in one Flickr collection with 10 separate picture sets, 9 sets for the nine most productive ANSI artists in SAC and a tens set with various ANSI art by 15+ SAC artists who did not produce very much ANSI art for the packs overall.

I created by far the most ANSI art of all (over 130 ANSI art pieces), followed by Rave with 105 pieces. Hetero did 72, Dark Star aka Puschel did 25, Raiser 24, Shot and Kenet 18 ANSI's each, SL aka Strike Light 16, Webpige0 12 and 56 ANSI art pieces created by over 15 different artists.

3. Pixel Art Collection

All 500+ of Superior Art Creations oldskool pixel VGA art pieces, logos for the most part, created by 30+ artists and all 35 SAC art packs in one Flickr collection with 16 picture sets. The largest number of pixel art contribution was done by the following SAC artists (alphabetically): Asphyx (ASX), Cokine (COK), Creator (CRE), Creator of Hell (CH/CoH), Desolation Angel (DA), Dream Design (DD), Eboy (EB), Fefst (FST), Ferrex (FX), HKultra (HKU), [K], Kenet, Moolok (MOO), Nerv (N,NR), Pasha (P), Puschel (PL), Roy, Sergeon, Senser (SNS) and Webpige0 (W0)

SAC artists who contributed to pixel art, but only very little were: Antibody (AB), B5, Bazilla (BAZ), ED, Flames, FX, GTI, Hetero (HT), IX, Marky (M), Mattey, Mr.Jezus, n]-[wa, Poldi (PD), Rave (RV), Silent (SiL), Sprocket , Techbit (TB), TPK

Putting over 400 MP3 Songs Up for Play-Back in Browser

All MP3 files are stored in a single "Directory" at Amazon S3 - Help Wanted and Appreciated

I already uploaded most of the 400+ tracker music files converted to MP3 to my Amazon S3 Account. I need to check and then upload if I missed any song and then think up a way to put them up somewhere for easy accessibility and play-back capabilities via web browser, without too long load-times or requirement for setting up another browser plug-in, which would have to be downloaded first. All this should of course take as little as time as possible, without sacrificing the accessibility of the music by platform restrictions.

Ideas and suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Whatever the suggestion might be, it has to run on MS IIS6 on Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, Classic ASP and/or ASP.NET and/or PHP 4. If it requires MySQL 5 and/or MS SQL Server 2005 portable or developer edition, fine. Also MS Access 2007 as database storage for some settings and catalog content would be alright.

Thanks and Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Roy/SAC Homepage

Extended Cirque du Soleil KA and Love Videos

It has been a while since I created any extended videos about any of the Cirque du Soleil shows. Well, I have been busy and finished now two very extended videos for the Cirque du Soleil shows "KA", which is currently performed at the MGM Grand hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada and the for the show "The Beatles Love", currently performed at the Mirage hotel and casino, also in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The last extended, 28 minutes long, video (78 MB download in AVI format) that I did was for the Music Concert/Show "Delirium", which was running in movie theaters for a short time already and where I am still waiting for the DVD release.

I still remember the C&D letter that I got from the Cirque because of my videos and therefor will not embed them here in this post for you to watch, without leaving my web site. Like I did with my old posts as the reaction to the letter, links with image place-holders will have to do hehe.

Cirque du Soleil "Love" Video

The "Love" video is a whopping 55 minutes long. You can download the video in AVI format (422 MB in size) here.

Backup link to video on Google Video

Cirque du Soleil "KA" Video

The "KA" video even tops the "Love" video, being 57 minutes long. You can download the video in AVI format (384 MB in size) from MediaFire.com via this URL.

Backup link to video on Google Video

As I always say, no video recording will be a substitute for watching a Cirque du Soleil show live and in person.

However, I hope that my video releases will put some pressure on Cirque du Soleil and MGM to release show DVDs for the resident shows in Las Vegas and elsewhere for people like me, who have seen the shows live already and for people who can not afford the trip in person to Las Vegas and watch the show there. They will have at least the next best thing available to them, which is watching a canned recording of the live show at home on DVD.

You can find links to the videos and other videos that I created for other Cirque du Soleil shows at my updated and extended Cirque du Soleil Primer Article by the way. Video downloads in AVI and WMV format for all my Cirque du Soleil videos can be found at this shared folder at the file sharing service MediaFire.com.

Informational Videos about the Cirque

I created a series of informational videos about Cirque du Soleil merchandise, which you might find interesting as well. I covered only the digital content though and not the clothing and other "schwag".

All links are going to the video recordings at my YouTube.com account about Cirque du Soleil.

• Cirque du Soleil shows on DVD
• Cirque du Soleil TV & IMAX Productions on DVD
• Cirque du Soleil Documentaries on DVD
• Cirque du Soleil Music on CD

To get a nice overview of the Cirque du Soleil shows from the past and present, check out my 5:37 minutes long video, which is an extended version of the 2004 promotional video "Then & Now" from the "Midnight Sun" DVD, covering the 9 new shows since 2004 in addition to the existing 11 shows of the original video.

This extended introduction to the world of Cirque du Soleil covers the following shows: La Magie Continue, Cirque Reinvente, Nouvelle Experience, Saltimbanco, Alegria, Mystere, "O", Dralion, Quidam, Varekai, Zumanity, KA, Love, Corteo, Delirium, Kooza, Wintuk, Zaia, Zed and Believe.

Cirque Complaints and Suggestions

I also created a video with some complaints and suggestions that I have about the Cirque and their merchandise.

Backup link to video on YouTube.com

1. I hate that they miss almost on every official sound track CD for any of their shows the music for several of the acts in the show. It is not an official sound track, if it is not complete!

2. It took me almost one year to find the official sound track CD for their seasonal show Wintuk. I even contacted their customer service who was not able to help me. I got a pirated copy of the album, which was not hard to find at first, until I finally found the web site with official Wintuk merchandise last year in December. The site is not in the search engines at all and why they do not offer the OST in their Cirque Boutique web site with their other CDs and DVDs is a mystery to me.

3. Many of their merchandise is not available for purchase, if you select as shipping location the wrong part of this planet (such as Asia). For an international company, touring world wide and having fans world wide, it is a shame to leave people out in the dust without the ability to legally buy many of the merchandise from the Cirque du Soleil web site. Especially the digital content like CDs and DVDs should be made available, because people can get those anyway, yes, illegal and as pirated version, but what do you want them to do, if this is the only option to get the stuff? People want to do the right thing. People want to pay the money. Don't force them to do the wrong thing, because there is absolutely no reason for it.

You don't believe me? See for yourself. I took some screen shots of the Cirque du Soleil online store (Boutique).

• Screen Shot - Cirque Boutique DVD Section for India
• Screen Shot - Cirque Boutique DVD Section for the United States

Some difference there, eh?!

FIX THIS!

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Interesting SAC Art Packs Statistics, Figures and Downloads - Part II

I posted yesterday Part I of my findings about the Superior Art Creations (SAC) Art Pack Releases.

I was sorting today through the ANSI and ASCII releases and also uploaded all the music files converted to MP3 to Mediafire.com for download by anybody who is interested and not able to play back the music in its original format (MOD, XM, S3M, DMF, IT and SID). You can find them all at this web address. More download links can be found at the end of this post.

I shouldn't have made jokes about the file duplications by some of the SAC pixel artists by saying "funny, he obviously had no directory with all his art work in it, like the rest of us hehe", because it appears that I made the same error myself a few times when it comes to my ASCII art releases. I file name duped pretty often actually so I should have kept my mouth shut, because it seems that I am the worst offender of them all hehe.

But more to that a but later. Lets start with some additional music dupes that I found. I believe the following facts might not be as interesting as the stuff in my previous post, but it is interesting for me and maybe a few folks out there and that is enough for me to publish it on my blog hehe. Sorry :)

File Name          Pk   MP3 File Name      MP3 MD5 Check Sum
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
mt_addi.sid        27 mt_addi.mp3        1aca2c2191c2173e2d5dc858ec9d6a21
mt_holba.sid       27 mt_holba_beer.mp3  dc14a3fc3a5ac670e4b3e2313a546055
mt_addiction.sid   28 mt_addiction.mp3   1aca2c2191c2173e2d5dc858ec9d6a21
mt_holba_beer.sid  28 mt_holba_beer.mp3  dc14a3fc3a5ac670e4b3e2313a546055

I did not catch it myself. It was Mediafire.com who does automatically a de-duping based on the MD5 hash (obviously). The fact that the files have the same size in MP3 and SID format (MP3: 4,799,520 bytes, SID: 6,142 bytes) made me wonder, because I noticed this during the conversion.

There are in fact 25 unique SID songs by Maktone, MRD and Crome that have the same size. I tried a few to see if there are dupes, but the ones I checked were fine. Below is the list of the 25 songs that I mentioned.

Obviously not, because there were two real dupes actually.

MD5 Check Sum                    *File Name
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1aca2c2191c2173e2d5dc858ec9d6a21 *mt_addi.mp3
dc14a3fc3a5ac670e4b3e2313a546055 *mt_holba_beer.mp3

5e3319cd92b5229dcfd36455d5a7a598 *mrd_lazyrainydays.mp3
441187bae1564e4cf97f998adc92ee36 *mrd_graduationseasonfinal.mp3
ae4f190f150a6acb48d2fcb61aec08d8 *mrd_wondersoftheworldfinal.mp3
d407917b591cd2f4fdebdaadd6ca3c0a *MRD_RCM.mp3
654449199e164bbecc0c4e2ff11f6955 *mt_white_s.mp3
dc14a3fc3a5ac670e4b3e2313a546055 *mt_holba.mp3
a5aefa7e2c7a6cba1ce93a36cb059c67 *MRD-Airikka_High_Kick.mp3
3e3c9255d4bd5873474e1ca7346a84dd *MRD-Knark_I_Karusellen.mp3
ebf7397b9fb8a004a5d0eff788c71ed4 *mt_nag_cham.mp3
f428fbeb5742cae559a3ea53ef53ff61 *mt_kingsize.mp3
ea4c9a758e5c2972d1478be35516b8fa *mt_mortal.mp3
52a4565a7a6418d15743ae915a5b4abe *mt_hansa.mp3
1aca2c2191c2173e2d5dc858ec9d6a21 *mt_addiction.mp3
673c85d6306a3e9db345b9bbd6f7cf9b *MRD-Disco_Night.mp3
ba58e84da350b367c533901fcf49c11e *MRD_SG.mp3
c021cfeafa008da75308a026060ccf6c *crome-For_the_Years.mp3
e0aa086df18ff8892f10cfacc0c28a3c *crome-Bleib_wie_du_bist.mp3
dc91edc0775ef95f87c14cf50984b06e *!bla.bat
854553bcdf4fe85b59fdc515c1ad03b0 *mt_druid2rmx.mp3
33bb3b7b044bb8d0e8adb826e96b534b *MRD-Good_Bad_Necrotoad.mp3
25c6b194fd33085baa6fe851a42e2346 *mt_gob_king.mp3
7eaed33fd861fe5b8767ca36fc512774 *mt_fltdemo1.mp3
908997a8b0ed342b5b4f8eeab747f422 *mt_3ankare.mp3
b9c509d805eedaca308631770a8e4676 *MRD-Polymatrix.mp3
3661d853298174e0d301dfc104021924 *mrd_questoflightfinal.mp3

Btw. Just for clarification, in the case that you didn't get it already, File Name Dupe means that the two files have the same name, but differ in size and/or modified date. Full Dupe means that not only the file name is the same, but the size and last modified date as well.

ANSI File Name Dupes: 5
ASCII Full Dupes: 22
ASCII File Name Dupes: 45

ANSI File Name Dupes
------------------------------------
Pack 7               Pack 14
HT-PC2.ans           GTI-AR.ANS 
    
Pack 8               Pack 30
RV-RAY.ANS           w0-sacns.ANS 
RV-ULBY.ANS    
    

ASCII Full Dupes
------------------------------------
Pack 13              Pack 20                 Pack 33
SL-CO.ASC            CH-ACE.ASC              asx-bmf.txt 
                     CH-CLASS.ASC            dip-dsco.asc 
Pack 16              CH-DE3.ASC              asx-dsm.nfo 
SL-SUB2.ASC          CH-ESTRA.ASC            asx-dsm2.diz 
                     ch-mw2.asc              asx-sven.txt 
Pack 17              CH-MW.ASC               asx-svn2.txt 
ARL-SS.ASC           CH-PNC.ASC              S!-trd.diz 
ARL-FLOO.ASC         CH-REUNI.ASC    
                     CH-RISE2.ASC    
                     CH-RNDIZ.ASC    
                     CH-RNS3.ASC   

   
ASCII File Name Dupes
--------------------------------------
Pack 6               Pack 18                 Pack 25
ROY-DTCD.ASC         RV-CNC2.ASC             CH-RISE.ASC 
                     RV-CNC3.ASC             CH-RNS2.ASC 
Pack 8               ROY-CNCD.ASC    
ROY-PNSD.ASC         ROY-LSWA.ASC            Pack 27
ROY-IMPD.ASC                                 aln-solskogen.txt 
                     Pack 19                 scr-vite.nfo 
Pack 10              ARL-HIJA.ASC   
ROY-PNS3.ASC         sns-sacd.asc            Pack 28
                                             ROY-DEVN.ASC 
Pack 13              Pack 20   
ROY-SDMD.ASC         CH-DE.ASC               Pack 30
                     CH-RNS.ASC              cDr-soh.asc 
Pack 14              CH-MOTV8.ASC    
ROY-IMP.ASC          roy-phs.asc             Pack 32
HLX-SAC2.ASC         sns-eur.asc             dip-dark.asc 
HLX-SAC3.ASC         sns-pdx.asc    
                     SQZ-DST.ASC             Pack 33
Pack 16                                      nr-sac.asc 
ARL-PVM.ASC          Pack 21   
HLX-SAC.ASC          sns-stc.asc             Pack 34
ROY-PCY.ASC          frx-stc1.asc            cDr-sweatshop.asc 
ROY-NBD.ASC          frx-mth3.asc    
                     sl-ref.nfo    
Pack 17      
ARL-DREA.ASC         Pack 24   
ARL-NGT.ASC          scr-sac.nfo    
RV-CNC.ASC           sns-stat.asc    
ROY-PHC.ASC       
scr-cms.nfo       

Special ASCII Packs (which were already included in my original count)

Pack 32
cDr-glftpd: 75 files

Pack 34
nerv-purpleous: 33 files
S!-phus9: 7 files

Total ASCII: 3,001 (instead of 3,023)

Found another music dupe, Crm_Turr.xm Pack 21 and crm_turrica1.xm from pack 23 are the same. I discovered this one by accident.

Adjusted Music Files: 425 (instead of 428)

I had the music disks not in my original count. I used the dedupe feature by Mediafire.com for the MP3 to find out, which songs in the MDs where new or new versions of older songs that were already released in SAC art packs.

Crome's I Miss You Amiga: 25 files, 5 dupes = 20 original
SvenZZon's Chip Disk: 22 files, 5 dupes = 17 Original
Total = 37 Originals

Music Total: 463 Files

SvenZZon included a little intro with his music disk. I did not realize that until yesterday. Here is a capture of this mini intro. It's from 2004 as his music disk. Code by Red and Graphics by Webpige0/SAC. Music by SV of course hehe.

Backup Link to Video on YouTube.com
Download the video in AVI format from Mediafire.com

I then also found an intro with the same file name (except SACtros where it is expected).

File Name Dupe Executable: FRX-CRO1.EXE

in Pack 18
Date Created: Saturday, May 29, 1999, 00:03:38
Size: 26,063 bytes

in Pack 19
Date Created: Monday, September 06, 1999, 14:09:58
Size: 26,331 bytes

The date and size of the executables are different so I count the re-release as a file duplicate only although its not an entirely new intro (borderline cheat hehe).

More Downloads

• SAC Original NFO Files and File_IDs-!nfo.rar (286 KB)
• SAC Original PPEs - !PPE.rar (132 KB)
• SAC Original ANSI Art - !ANSI.ORG.rar (616 KB)
• SAC Original ASCII Art - !ASCII.Org.rar (2 MB)
• SAC Original Exe and Tools - !Exe.ORG.rar (7,4 MB)
• SAC Music in MP3 Format (over 400 individual files)

Okay, that's it for now.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

INC Rules! Flame War ANSI Animation from 1992

Okay, I changed my mind. I wrote yesterday that it will be my last post during the holidays and here I am now, writing another post hehe.

I did in the past already some sound-overs for ANSI animations, which come by default without any sound effects or music. I posted one of them with my post about ANSI animation, the Korova Milkbar ANSImation by Blade Runner/ACiD (Ansi Creators in Demand) . I didn't write a post about the other, but I also did a sound update of the ANSImation "The Bog" by Tracer and Jed of ACiD. Since I did not post about it, I also included it in this post further down.

For the Korova Milkbar video I even recorded my own voice for the spoken dialogs (something that I didn't do really for the others. The "The Bog" video has voice-overs, but heavily distorted, making my voice unrecognizable.

The ANSI animation that I just dug up recently is titled "INC Rules!" ("rulez" in "leet-speak" hehe). It is long, very long for this type of stuff, over 1 minute. The ANSI animation (ANSImation) was created by Amroth/iCE (Insane Creators Enterprise) for the pirate (Warez) game release group INC (International Network of Crackers) on the MS DOS PC in 1992.

INC had some "Flame War" going with its rival FLT, Fairlight, which is the subject of this ANSI animation. As I mentioned already, the original ANSI animation had no sound whatsoever. I added foley (sound) effects and the background ambience music to pep it up a little and make it more enjoyable.

Have a good laugh!

Disclaimer: This video tries to depict images of severe graphic violence in really bad resolution (text mode), not suitable for illiterate persons and folks with too much imagination or fantasy, who tend to see more in things than everybody else (= than there are). ;-)

INC Rules video backup link, YouTube.com

Download video in AVI format at Mediafire.com

And here is my older "The Bog" ANSI animation by Jed and Tank/ACiD from 1992 with full "voice-over". My previous disclaimer applies to this video as well hehe.

The Bog video backup link, YouTube.com

Download video in WMV format at Mediafire.com

Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

ANSI Animations Part Deux

I posted in January a detailed post about what ANSI animation is, hence the "part deux" for the title of this post. If you want to know what ANSI animations are and how they are created, check out my previous post.

I discovered some additional ANSI animations thanks to PabloView. ACiDView for Windows obviously did not show them properly or I just never looked at those ANSI's right, which could also be the case. Anyhow, I was using PabloView to browse some old art packs and realized that the AAA art packs from 1991 consisted mostly of ANSI animations. The majority of the animations were pretty short, they also look a bit "rough", but you have to keep in mind that this stuff is pre-ACiD and pre-iCE material, so give the artists a break. They were kind of pioneers back then and had no clue where this whole thing would lead to one day.

At the same time I decided to make a video that highlights some of the ANSI animations from my last post, but also a bunch of really great (and long) still ANSI pictures with hundreds of lines in length.

So I ended up creating two videos. :) Here is the first one ... Background music is by Jeroen Tel from the C64.

It starts off with a bunch of ASCII and ANSI logos by myself. It shows the ASCII version of a logo first and then peels it away to show the ANSI version of the exact same logo. I thought it would be nice. Then follow a bunch of really long and really cool ANSI images by various artists (from ACiD, iCE and other groups) and then shows ANSI animations from 1992 by members of ACiD (ANSI Creators in Demand, in case you forgot)

Backup Link to video on Google Video.

You can download this video in AVI format at Mediafire.com

About the second video ...

Classic ANSI Animations from 1991 by Members of the first PC ANSI Art Scene Group, AAA - Aces of ANSI Art, Mondoman, RaD Man (founder of ACiD in 1992), Shadow Demon and Willie. I warned you already that they are a little bit more rough, but that's how it started man. Remember your history! a smart man once said. ;)

Creating thumb nail images, uploading all captures of the ANSI animations manually to YouTube and then creating a table grid in my blog post was a pain in the neck to do and I decided not to do it again for this post, sorry folks.

I made instead one video where I also added some nice music by Jeroen Tel, Rob Hubbard and JCH/Vibrants. The Individual pieces included in the video are...

• Mondoman: Above the Law, Astral Plane, ICE Castle, Lost Castle, Seven Heaven, Shadow Gate, The Inner City 1 & 2, The Pits, Total Recall, Tower of High Society
• RaD Man: Hamburger Heaven, Hard Kod, Logix Probe, Louder Than Bombs
• Shadow Demon: Final Frontier, Hamburger Heaven, Hard Kod, The Pits
• Willie: Pistol, Rush

Voila, the video...

Backup link to video on Google Video.

You can download this video in AVI format at Mediafire.com

You are still able to download the individual video captures of each animation individually in the original resolution as I recorded them in. Check out this shared folder at Mediafire.com for the individual videos. This folder also contains the previous captures of ANSI animations by ACiD and iCE.

You can also download the original AAA art packs in zip format, with the old school .ANS files included.
Aces of ANSI Art packs: aaa-8991.zip (382 KB) and aaa-vol2.zip (11 KB)

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Moments in History - The Fall of the Berlin Wall

It is now about three month ago that I wrote about the Version 4 of my Berlin Wall video.

Since then I got visited by my family who brought with them four DVDs (actually 7, because two of the DVDs are an entire series) that I had ordered from Amazon.de and shipped to my parents address in Berlin, Germany.

All of the DVDs are documentaries in German language about East Germany and the Berlin Wall. They provided me with tons of new or better material that I decided to work on a Version 5 of my Berlin Wall video. This will probably take a while, so I decided to create another very short video just about the events surrounding the night when the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989.

I got already a bunch of positive feedback on Facebook.com and online video sharing web sites where I uploaded the video too. Judge for yourself, here it is.

Moments in History - The Fall of the Berlin Wall from Carsten Cumbrowski on Vimeo.

Of course is the video also available for download in AVI format from Mediafire.com again, here is the Link.

To expand the reach of my videos, I decided to create an account at Archive.org and uploaded this video as well as my 30 minutes long Berlin Wall video V4.0. They are accessible here and here.

I watched in the past months several videos that are about the nuclear holocaust and its horrors. Those videos were a mash-up of original footage from the nuclear bomb drops over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan during World War 2, government footage from atomic bomb tests, including weapons effects test and from special effects scenes from various apocalyptic Hollywood movies, like Terminator 3, Sum of all Fears, Armageddon and others.

I started to collect video segments from various disaster movies. I already had a collection of nuclear bomb test videos and documentaries. I also had video material from documentaries that recreated some of the scenes that must have occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I took all this material and create a video of my own about the subject. I used the music by the Greek/Canadian singer Nitza as background music for my video. And here it is:

Nuclear Holocaust from Carsten Cumbrowski on Vimeo.

 

This video is available in 720x480 resolution and AVI format for download here.

 

Let me know what you think of the two new videos of mine!

 

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Cirque Du Soleil: 20 Years Under the Sun - A Book Review

In case that you missed it. I created a book review video in October for the book "Cirque Du Soleil: 20 Years Under the Sun - An Authorized History" (Hardcover) by Tony Babinski (Author), Kristian Manchester (Contributor). I also uploaded this video review to Amazon.com, which is shown on the product detail page of the Book on their web site now. I find that pretty cool hehe.

As I said indirectly already, the book is available for purchase for about $37 (USD) at Amazon.com and here is the video review of the book. My review in text format follows right below this embed video.

Backup Link to Video on YouTube.com

As always, you can download this video in AVI format at Mediafire.com

The book is a monster in size and weight and packed with glossy images of the Cirque and its shows and provides a interesting behind the scene look at the humble origins of the enterprise and its worldwide successful shows.

It's a good gift for somebody who is interested in the Cirque, beyond just the acrobatics. Other people probably won't appreciate it as much, so check first, before you make the $37 investment for this book.

The book was published in 2004 and probably written in 2003 to early 2004. That means that many of the Cirque du Soleil shows are missing in this book. Cirque du Soleil was very busy over the past four years, since this book was published.

The last touring show covered by the book is "Varekai" and the last residential show "Zumanity", which is performed at the New York, New York hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The show "KA" at the MGM is barely mentioned, not even by name yet and there is nothing to be found about the touring shows "Corteo" and "Kooza", the Las Vegas shows "Believe", "The Beatles - Love" and as I already mentioned "KA". The new resident Asian shows "Zaia" and "Zed" are of course also missing. The music concert "Delirium" is also not part of this book.

All those shows were created after 2004. This is quite a lot of shows, so I can only say again, that you better make sure that the person who you would like to buy this book for can actually appreciate it anyway.

All the new stuff is missing, but the more it covers the early Cirque and first shows that are not running anymore, such as "Fascination", "Le Grand Tour", "La Magie Continue", "Cirque Reinvente" and "Nouvelle Experience".

Also covered are the still running and touring shows "Saltimbanco", "Mystere", "O", "La Nouba", "Dralion", "Alegria" and the mentioned "Zumanity" and "Varekai". The special anniversary show for the 20th anniversary of Cirque du Soleil at Montreal "Midnight Sun" is also not mentioned. Keep in mind that this special performance happened also in 2004, the year when the book was published for the same reasons.

I don't know, if the book is also available in other languages than English, but I would assume that this is the case. It should also be available for purchase at any other well sorted book store, other than Amazon.com, such as Barnes & Noble or Borders.

I hope that you found this brief review helpful. Let me know via the comments section below.

To learn more about Cirque du Soleil, check out my Cirque du Soleil primer, here at RoySAC.com and also my special YouTube account "CirqueDuSoleilGuru" for Cirque videos and my Cirque du Soleil photo album collection at the photo sharing web site Flickr.com.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Negative Feedback for Criss Angel's and Cirque du Soleil's 'Believe'

I was surprised a lot when the first comments for the new Cirque du Soleil show "Criss Angel - Believe" were made at preview videos of the show at my YouTube.com channel "CirqueDuSoleilGuru" and also at previous posts of mine about the show here at my blog.

I cannot recall any instance where a Cirque du Soleil show received that many negative comments in such short period of time (less than 3 months). It's usually all praise and love with a stupid idiot posting some mindless comment once in a while. In case of the new show "Believe" did very specific negative comments pour in pretty much since the first pre-screenings of the show in September and onwards.

Here are the unaltered negative comments about the show from my various videos and blog posts. Since I did not alter them, all misspellings and grammatical errors remained as they were also.

User: HOTskull888 on YouTube said:

honestly the show was the shit. like it was nuts and dont say stupid as shit stuff like ow it suks or what ever because i do magic to and i dont care what anyone thinks of it

User: rjslider58 on YouTube said:

i saw the show oct 10, it sucked do your self a faver dont waste your time or money.

User: emtttmike on YouTube said:

I wasted my money going to see 'Believe" on 10/17...I sat waiting for it to get better and it never did...I actually looked at my watch hoping it would end soon. It was that bad.

User: jshkneale on YouTube said:

this show sucked. i mean it really sucked. it would have been good only if they changed one thing,.....Chris angel, he destroyed the show. the dancers were OK if you like them to be out of sync with each other.

User: Kraken303 on YouTube said:

Anyone who thinks Criss Angel is a good magician is completely ignorant when it comes to magic. The show does not suck because of Cirque--it sucks because Criss can't pull off any tricks without using extensive camera edits or plants. I really makes me angry to think that that $100 million dollars was spent on this show, and it's still so BAD.

User: taxthis2001 on YouTube said:

Saw Believe last week, was disappointed. To much Cirque not enough Angel. I was very impressed with mind freak on the street but some of those disappearing tricks done on a stage with 40 trap doors are not as impressive. Criss u can do better. I leave this feedback to help guide your show for the better, please use it as such. Keep Mind Freak going.

User: 2RISEPROD on YouTube said:

Enjoy Criss Angel on A&E for years, when he said for all skeptics I will be doing this stuff live in my new show "Believe' I was like OMG! really can't wait! Went to Vegas for the opening, must say it was a total disaster and waste of money!! It made no sense at all! Criss did a dove from sleeve trick - and some very predictable birthday trick..Then he lip sang his MF song at the end, people were leaving before the show was over and bitching in the Luxor about how it sucked ass!! ??

User: iglesiasarenas on YouTube said:

is not MF but is not "o" or "the bettles shows" is the worst show of Circus du solei with the best magician Criss...

User: StealthCracker on YouTube said:

I went to the show Oct 4, and I thought it was too much dancing. -.-" only a few tricks performed. HE NEEDS MORE TRICKS

and

Everyone look at the words BELIEVE... if you look at the logo, you'll see that the BE---VE is faded out, leaving bold words: LIE. I found this out. Check it out!!!

Anonymous Blog Comment here at RoySAC.com:

IMOP...I went to see the Criss Angel Believe show at the Luxor, and I must say.... IT WAS HORRIBLE! I am a huge Criss Angel fan, I think he is a great entertainer, however this show was horrible. I found out after watching the show that everyone that has seen the show to date has hated it also, everyone left the theater talking about how bad it was, my suggestion is it is better to save your money for another show and skip this trash. Also, it is not kid friendly at all, I did not take my kids to it, however there where some there and they left in tears from being scared of it. Think of Alice in Wonderland on really bad drugs.

User: realhonest1 on YouTube said:

I went Nov. 3. The show has lived up to the reviews. It sucked. I wish someone would have said "lets go!" Unfortunately we sat through to the dismal end. I want my $200 and 2 hrs back! Bad actor and bad tricks. On a pos. note the backgrounds and Wade Robson choreography were nice. Criss Angel is why this show bombs. I used to be a fan, but can't even watch Mind Freak anymore. Way to go Criss, thanks for robbing your fans.

Thoughts and My Own Comments

I wrote a comment at one of my "Believe" videos at YouTube in response to some supporting comments by "Loyals" (Criss Angel Fan Club Members), who were appalled by the negative comments by others and expressed their sympathy for Criss. It reflects pretty much what I believe to be the actual problem here.

I have the feeling Criss managed to disappoint both crowds at once, for the "Mindfreaks" is the show not freaky enough and for the "Cirque Fans" is there too little circus and too much dancing, with some creepy atmosphere.

I cannot imagine that the show itself is that bad, its just not what people in the know expected it to be like. So they either get over it and take a new look at it from a distance or Criss has to look for new type of fans, who are not prejudges and in-flexible.

I will be in Las Vegas in January 2009 for a conference and hope that I will be able to see the show myself and get a real grip on what the problem might be here.

In the meantime enjoy a extended trailer video for the show that I created. Those images look actually pretty cool and promising, don't you think?

Backup Link to Video on YouTube.com

You can download this video in 480x360 pixels resolution and AVI (XVID/MP3 Lame) format at Mediafire.com.

Additional Links related to this post

• Video - Criss Angel - Believe - Animated Slide Show
• Video - Cirque du Soleil & Criss Angels -Believe- Special Preview
• Video - Cirque du Soleil - Believe - 1st Real Show Footage
• Official Show Homepage at CirqueDuSoleil.com

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

VNV Nation's Illusion, Online Video and Ronan Harris

I mentioned it on several occasions that the VNV Nation, a British EBM/Industrial act, is my favorite band for several years now. Several things happened to me recently, which are related to VNV Nation and interesting enough to write about them publicly, so here we go.

A Coincidental Marriage Made in Heaven

Somebody else mixed the song "Illusion" by VNV Nation with the video "Doll Face" by Andy Huang (Andrew Thomas Huang), then still with Root Film, and uploaded it to YouTube.com over one year ago. It is now approaching the 900,000 views mark.

I re-edited and uploaded the video under my account (kind of a dupe), just to make sure that it is there and not getting lost. I also changed the intro and end credits to pay all necessary dues to the respective parties appropriately. I updated the audio too, replacing it with a high quality rip from the album, while I was at it. The main video is based on the original QuickTime file of the "Doll Face" animation. The music and video seem to be made for each other and fit perfect.

Illusion from Carsten Cumbrowski on Vimeo.

Backup URL to video on YouTube.com

The video is also available for download in .AVI format (XVID, Lame MP3) via MediaFire.com here.

Although it is not one of my favorite VNV Nation songs, I cannot deny that it touched me nevertheless.Another interesting part about this video is that it got the attention by Ronan Harris from VNV Nation himself, who did not pull the video, because of copyright infringement and tried to get in contact with the animation creator Andy Huang from Los Angeles, California instead.

They met in October 2008 and plan to work on some new projects together in the future. This video, although not officially a VNV music video was silently acknowledged and approved, used now for viral marketing on the Internet. It contains credits for the creators after all.

Ronan Harris, "Mr.VNV Nation" also wrote about this video at his MySpace blog earlier this month. The song "Illusion" was not released as a single and is only available on the 2007 VNV Nation album "Judgement" (track number 8), published in the United States by Metropolis Records.

To learn more about VNV Nation, visit their official web site at VNVNation.com or their MySpace page at MySpace.com/VNVNation, which is maintained by Ronan Harris personally.

Two Way Communication with my Favorite Band

How do I know about all this? Well, I contacted Ronan via MySpace.com about the video, without knowing that he was already aware of it. I told him not to have the video pulled (because that was not my intention), but to contact Andy, get permission to use the video for an official music video and release the song with this video as an official single. I am an Internet marketer, who also spent some time on online video now, so I kind of knew quite a bit what I was talking about. It was not just amateurish Blah Blah.

Ronan was already working on getting in personal contact with Andy and had already a meeting with him arranged during the short VNV Nation West Coast tour in October/November 2008, where Ronan also worked as DJ for a special event in Los Angeles.

Ronan decided not to pursue the idea of releasing the song as single, which I still believe is a mistake. It has the material for mainstream success and would maybe top the commercial success of the VNV Nation single "Genesis", which made it to number 67 in the German Media Control Charts, along with making it to number 1 in the German Alternative Charts (DAC).

If you like the music, you can buy the "Judgement" album by VNV Nation, which was published by Metropolis Records in the United States in April 2007 via Amazon.com here.

I had some email communication with Ronan where he mentioned that he is looking into doing more with online video, but thinks that it is to costly and too hard to do. I sent him a long response where I encouraged him to do more online video and also provided some tips and suggestions for the content that he could produce and debunked the myth that video production cost for online video are high and not affordable.

I did not get a response to this email yet, Ronan was also on the road, but I hope that he will check some of my suggestions and moves ahead with this idea. I also bugged him about an official VNV Nation Live album, which still does not exist.

Okay, there is the "Pastperfect" Live DVD from 2004 and I ripped the music to burn it on a music CD. That is not perfectly legal, but Mark Jackson from VNV Nation personally suggested to me to do this, back in 2005.

Pastperfect Touches of the Past

Talking about the Pastperfect DVD by VNV Nation, which you can get here btw. The spelling as one word, rather than "Past Perfect", which would be grammatically correct, was done intentionally by VNV Nation, just FYI. ...

I put months ago the DVD intro up on YouTube, which is a cool Metropolis-Style like animation, very short, only 1:30 minutes in length, but pretty cool.

Backup Link to Video at YouTube.com

You can download this video in AVI format at MediaFire.com here.

The Metropolis-Style animation was created by the German Media Agency "Raumgleiter" and the great epic music is a remix of the classic "Romeo and Juliet (Julia) - Suite No. 2: Montagues and Capulets", composed by Sergej Prokofieff (1891-1953) (also spelled Prokofiev) in 1936.

I learned all that, when I did some research about it, after another YouTube.com user asked me about the music.

It was true, the music was not typical VNV Nation stuff and sounded familiar, but I did not really think about it, until it was brought up recently. I thought that it is an interesting fact to share.

I also recommend checking out the 3:48 minutes long DVD trailer/promo video for the "Pastperfect" DVD from 2003, which is pretty cool too and also uses some of the video footage from the DVD intro video. It is also available for download in AVI format via MediaFire.com, here.

Enough of EBM/Industrial music and VNV Nation for today :)

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Roy/SAC Homepage

Dancing Around the World, Paid For, Everything Inclusive

If you did not hear about Matt Harding yet, then it is about time. He is the guy that became famous for "dancing on the Internet", okay, there are a bunch of guys that are "famous" doing that, but he is the one who did it in public at places around the whole globe.

  The story goes like this...

1. A 32 year old deadbeat who was born in Connecticut, USA and ended up working for a company in Brisbane, Australia decided in 2003 to quit his job and use the money he had saved to do a trip through Asia until he was broke.
2. During the usual posing for tourist photo graphs and home videos as proof for his friends and family that he was at the places he said he was, a friend suggested to do his funny dance, the only dance Matt knows and do that instead of the usual boring posing.
3. He did that for the rest of his trip until he ran out of money. He published his short videos on a web site that he mainly created for his family to check what he was doing and where.
4. The stuff went somehow "viral" on the Internet thanks to social media. It also caught the attention of a company called Stride Gum, who thought that doing more of this kind of videos sponsored by the Stride Gum brand would be a fantastic idea. Matt thought so too, especially when he was told that Stride pays for the whole thing, everything inclusive.
5. The result is his second video, which made him even more famous.
6. Seeing one dude dancing alone got kind of old when Matt had an idea. How about having people dancing with him, people who contacted Matt over the Internet. Stride thought too that it is a great idea and off he was for the third trip around the globe.
7. That video is the 2008 video  and made Matt even more famous. So famous in fact that he was asked to talk at social media conferences etc.

His 2006 and 2008 videos were viewed over 11 Million times EACH on YouTube alone! "Nicht schlecht Herr Specht" as we say in Germany to something like that.

Here are some interesting facts about the locations that Matt visited.

Three videos were released, labeled 2005, 2006 and 2008. Each with the results of an entire trip lasting several months to over one year. The first video from 2005 included 20 locations, the video from 2006 included 36 and the last one from 2008 included a whopping 69 places.

There is also an out-takes video for the 2006 trip with a few locations that are unique and did not make it into the final video. That means that the actual number of places visited is higher than the ones I mentioned.

Unique Places shown in his 3 Videos Abu Simbel, Egypt Agra, India Ala Archa Gorge, Kyrgyzstan Alhambra, California Amsterdam, The Netherlands Angkor Wat, Cambodia Antseranana, Madagascar Area 51, Nevada Atlanta, Georgia Auckland, New Zealand Auki, Solomon Islands Austin, Texas Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Bangkok, Thailand Batik, Morocco Beijing, China Bengal Jungle, India Berlin, Germany Brisbane, Australia Brussels, Belgium Buenos Aires, Argentina Cape of Good Hope, South Africa Chakachino, Zambia Chicago, Illinois Christmas Island, Australia Chuuk, Micronesia Cologne, Germany Delhi, India Demilitarized Zone, Korea Dubai, United Arab Emirates Dublin, Ireland East Jerusalem, West Bank Easter Island, Chile Ephesus, Turkey Galapagos Islands, Ecuador Giant's causeway, Northern Ireland Guam Gurgaon, India Half Moon Caye, Belize Hanoi, Vietnam Haute-Picardie, France Impenetrable Forest, Uganda Istanbul, Turkey Kilimanjaro Summit, Tanzania Kjeragbolten, Norway Kuwait City, Kuwait Lancelin, Australia Lemur Island, Madagascar Lisbon, Portugal Lisse, The Netherlands London, England Los Angeles, California Luang Prabang, Laos Machu Picchu, Peru Madrid, Spain Mexico City, Mexico Miami, Florida Mokolodi, Botswana Monte Alban, Mexico Montreal, Quebec Monument Valley, Arizona Moscow, Russia Mulindi, Rwanda Mumbai, India Munich, Germany Mutianyu, China Neko Harbor, Antarctica Nellis Airspace, Nevada New York, New York Panama Canal, Panama Paris, France Paro, Bhutan Petra, Jordan Poria, Papua New Guinea Prague, Czech Republic Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Rock Islands, Palau Routeburn Valley, New Zealand Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia San Francisco, California Sana'a, Yemen Sao Paulo, Brazil Seattle, Washington Seljalandsfoss, Iceland Seoul, South Korea Siberia, Russia Singapore Sossusvlei, Namibia South Shetland Islands Soweto, South Africa Stockholm, Sweden Stone Town, Zanzibar Suhbaatar, Mongolia Sydney, Australia Tagaytay, The Philippines Taipaei, Taiwan Tel Aviv, Israel Teotihuacan, Mexico Thimphu, Bhutan Tikal, Guatemala Timbuktu, Mali Tokyo, Japan Tongatapu, Tonga Tsavo, Kenya Vancouver, British Columbia Vava'u, Tonga Venice, Italy Very Large Array, New Mexico Wadi Rum, Jordan Wainivilase, Fiji Warsaw, Poland Washington D.C., USA Westport, Connecticut Yangon, Myanmar

Unique Countries of Islands Antarctica Argentina Australia Belgium Belize Bhutan Bolivia Botswana Brazil Brunei Cambodia Canada Chile China Czech Republic Ecuador Egypt Fiji France Germany Guam Guatemala Iceland India Ireland Israel Italy Japan Jordan Kenya Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Madagascar Mali Mexico Micronesia Mongolia Morocco Myanmar Namibia New Zealand Norway Palau Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Peru Poland Portugal Russia Rwanda Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea Spain Sweden Taiwan Tanzania Thailand The Netherlands The Philippines Tonga Turkey Uganda UK United Arab Emirates USA Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zanzibar Places he visited Twice Brisbane, Australia London, England Los Angeles, California San Francisco, California Sydney, Australia Tokyo, Japan* Places he visited on every trip New York, New York Seattle, Washington   *Tokyo actually appears three times in his videos, but only in two of them and not three. Tokyo is the only real duplicate within any of his videos. Tokyo appears twice in the 2008 video. Once in location #29 and the second time in location #42. Also, if you look at the overall data, he rarely made it to the same place twice. 8 places that he visited more than once, out of 114. ... not bad.

YouTube - Where in the Hell is Matt Harding? - Megamix

Link to my megamix video  on YouTube, also available for download in .AVI (XVID/MP3) format and 640x480 resolution via Mediafire.com at this URL.

Here is a link to Matt's presentation at the 2008 Gnomdex conference, which was held between August 21 and 23, 2008 in Seattle, WA, where he talks about what he did and how he did it to travel around the world not only once or twice, but three times. Once on his own expense and twice on somebody else's.

Gnomedex is by the way the tech- or geek-conference organized by Chris Pirillo, who is also notoriously known for his online video stuff and live chat.

What is odd to me now is the fact that just when I decided to write this post about Matt, his web site went offline. WhereTheHellIsMatt.com does not resolve at all. There is a cached version of the site in Google, with a date of either November 8 or 9, so the site was up about a week ago. I hope that this down-time is only a temporary glitch. However, if I would be Matt, I would have a word with the hosting company (unless that company happens to be the sponsor for his web site hosting hehe)

I put up the link to his web site anyway, hoping that it will be up very soon.

Other Links

• Matthew Hardings Public Picasa Albums
• Matt's Typepad Blog
• MattHarding2718, his YouTube Channel 

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Video Editing, Ripping, Converting and Capture Tools for the PC

Someone asked me recently, which tools I am using for all my video stuff (see for example my four YouTube channels: CirqueDuSoleilGuru, SACReleases, CumbrowskiCom and TurnbeutelvergesserB). An interesting question, which I decided to post the answer for here at my person blog, because it might also interest some other folks as well.

Okay, here is a quick 101 of the tools that I use personally for all my video, images and audio stuff.

DVD Ripping and Converting

For ripping video from a DVD and converting it into an AVI, I use various different tools.

I like iLead DVD Ripper (download), if I just want to get a specific and short snippet of content from a DVD and converting a whole chapter or VOB file would be way too much.

To convert whole DVDs or individual chapters I am using either ImToo DVD Ripper (download) or Nidesoft DVD to AVI Converter (download).

Video Downloading and Stream Recording

To download movies from web sites, such as CirqueDuSoleil.com where it is a bit harder, i am using Jaksta Stream Recorder (download), unless it works already fine with the download Browser Plug-in from RealPlayer or Replay Media Catcher by Applian.

Video Conversion

I then convert the videos with either MP4 Converter (download) by 4Media or Moyea FLV Converter (download). I wrote a post about video downloading at my personal blog for more information about this subject.

Video Editing

I do some basic cutting and filtering with the free tool VirtualDub.

If I have to do some more editing, I am using ImToo Mpeg Encoder (download) to convert videos to Mpeg2 and edit them with Adobe Premiere. You have to convert all video footage to one format, one that the editing software handles well, or you might get all kinds of issues. I also to resizing to one resolution before hand. I do that mostly with VirtualDub.

Images and Audio Editing

For still images, I am using Adobe Photoshop, Snag-It Editor and an old version of Paintshop Pro (without Layers). For audio editing I am using the free tool Audacity or Adobe Soundbooth.

... and I am sick and tired of Windows and issues with video and audio Codec etc. and THAT close to get a Macintosh. :)  

I used in the past Camtasia Studio by TechSmith for video composition, because it was easy to use, just like the (free) Windows Movie Maker by Microsoft, just a little bit better.

Screen Captures and Screen Recordings

For screen captures and recordings I am using TechSmith's Snag-It or the CamRecorder that comes with TechSmith's Camtasia Studio. To record demos and intros (sacreleases account at YouTube), I am either using the capture feature that comes with the emulators (DOSBox or WinUAE) and for Windows stuff the free tool called KKapture, which was developed by the famous (in the demoscene) demo group Farbrausch.

That's about it...the whole deal :)

I use and used to use some other tools, but that is often only for convenience reasons, nothing more. I could do everything with just the tools that I mentioned.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Applications List

• iLead DVD Ripper (download)
• ImToo DVD Ripper (download)
• Nidesoft DVD to AVI Converter (download)
• Jaksta Stream Recorder (download)
• RealPlayer 
• Replay Media Catcher
• MP4 Converter (download)
• Moyea FLV Converter (download)
• ImToo Mpeg Encoder (download)
• VirtualDub
• Windows Movie Maker
• Camtasia Studio
• Adobe Premiere
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Soundbooth
• Audacity
• Snag-It
• KKapture

Cirque du Soleil Delirium Encore

I was with my parents and my sister who are currently visiting me here in California at the movies on Wednesday evening. We are usually not much of movie goers and prefer watching movies and other stuff from the comfort of our own homes. However, there was something special that made me go to the movies this week and take my family along with me as well.

Cirque du Soleil's stadium show and music concert "Delirium" finished touring this year. It was launched in 2006 and toured the whole country. I saw the show/concert live in 2006 when they made it to Fresno, California (which actually surprised me).

Cirque du Soleil decided for something unusual after the tour was over. They showed the show in movie theaters, but not for a regular run, like any other movie, no, it was only screened for a few days this August.

When I wrote my post about this back in August I also thought that it will be a run for several weeks and not only an one time thing. I learned about my error the hard way, when I was looking for movie tickets for Delirium here in Fresno. I first thought that it wasn't aired in Fresno at all, but I found out that I missed the show altogether, bummer.

I also learned that Cirque du Soleil decided for an Encore event, which was on October 15, 2008 (Wednesday). I was smarter this time and got tickets. I thought that it will be sold out, but that was just an assumption. The movie theatre was almost empty. Only 4 more people (next to the four of us) watched the show. Okay, it was shown in Fresno's largest movie theatre, the Edwards Stadium at River Park and it was a Wednesday evening (not exactly prime time for movie buffs), but I was a bit disappointed anyway. Not in Cirque, but Fresno, or better the people in Fresno.

Last Chance to see on the Big Screen

In the case that you happen to read my post today, there are two more Encore presentations of Delirium tonight at midnight and tomorrow at midnight as well. It is weekend, so if you do not have anything better planned for the weekend, here is a good option for you.

The movie presentation, which is not an IMAX movie as I thought, convinced me that a DVD release of the concert is on the horizon, probably before Christmas. The Kooza show DVD also came out much earlier than I would have expected, so if the Delirium DVD would be available for purchase at the Cirque Boutique online store next week, I wouldn't be surprised by it either.

Delirium Pirated Promo Video :)

Because the theatre was almost empty, I couldn't help myself and use my Flip camera to take some video recordings. No, I didn't record the whole show and no, I won't publish everything that I recorded. Wait for the damn DVD and buy it. It cannot be for long anymore. However, I did create a short seven minutes promotional video to shorten the waiting time for the DVD a little bit. I told the marketing folks at Cirque du Soleil, who sent me the Cease and Desist letter last month that their policy regarding the maximum allowed length for promotional videos of 3 minutes is b.s. in the world of the Internet and social media.

To demonstrate my point though, I decided to slice up my 7 minutes video into three pieces for YouTube, non exceeding the 3 minutes mark. To avoid trouble and make somebody really mad, I will only embed video 1 of the trilogy in this post and link to the two other parts. If you want to watch the video as a whole, check out the provided link to the un-sliced version at Google Video and/or download the AVI version in higher 640x480 resolution from Mediafire.com. All the URLs can be found below.

 

Links to Videos Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 at YouTube.com

Link to .AVI video file on Mediafire.com

an last but not least the link to video in one piece at Google Video

Enjoy the video! Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

p.s. some notes on the side. The editor of the movie (not my video) sucked. I think he failed to capture important elements of the show by selecting the wrong shot at some of the scenes. He always had multiple camera angles available to pick from and he picked too often the wrong one IMO. I was also disappointed that the opening act for the show was not part of the presentation. 

The opening act for the show was the Greek/Canadian singer Nitza, which was actually pretty cool too. She was doing a mix of traditional Greek music and Western pop/rock music in English. Check out her web site, which is also pretty cool and features some (extensive) samples of her music. You can buy the CD and other merchandise for Nitza right off her web site.

I bought her CD right there at the concert venue in 2006. I hope that the opening show will be part of the DVD release version or of a 2 DVD discs special edition of Delirium or something like that. I have my doubts that Nitza would be against this, so there is no reason for not putting it on the DVD as bonus. It was after all the official opening act during the entire run of the show as far as I know. It would be something that is missing, if it is not included IMO.

Update!

I just saw on her web site that she signed up with Cirque du Soleil again. She is the featured vocalist of the new resident Cirque du Soleil show "Believe", a partner project together with the street magician and entertainer Criss Angel. The show just premiered a few days ago at the Luxor hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

How to Download Videos from YouTube

I do a some video stuff and have multiple YouTube accounts (and tons of accounts for other video sharing web sites). I even have one just for the content related to this blog and web site, my YouTube account SACReleases here. 

Because of my activities in that area I am getting from time to time personal emails from people who want to use a video offline for something and ask me if I would send it to them. I kind of got tired of explaining the same stuff over and over again and decided to write a blog post about the subject instead. 

Videos on YouTube and other video sharing sites can be downloaded in most cases without the need for jumping  through too many hoops. There are exceptions, but I will address those as well. Getting the video down to your hard disk is usually the least of the problem. In most cases do you already have the video on your hard disk, you just don't know it and also not where you can find it.

Your web browser was probably caching the video and saved it in its temporary folder for some time, which depends on your individual browser settings.

However, getting to this cached video is a bit cumbersome, but  I will explain it as the last option anyway. This option does not cost any money and no software installation is needed. With some experience is this method also the faster one, compared to others that are also free and do not require the installation of any software. The option has another catch and that is the problem that the downloaded video is probably in Adobe's Flash Video format, which is great for viewing on the web, but isn't much usable anywhere else. Chances are that any editing software that you might own or downloaded (there is plenty of free stuff available too) does not support the FLV Flash video format. That means that you need to convert the video to a more practical, which is not possible without some special (and usually commercial) tools.

Some folks asked me for the video that they can embed it into a Microsoft Power Point presentation. Flash Videos cannot be used in Power Point. I just wanted to mention that.

Option 1 - Online Downloaders

This option is probably the best one for the occasional video downloader, like the one who wants to use a video in a Power Point presentation or something like that.

The good thing is that this option does not require any downloads and installation of software on your computer. It is also free, which is always nice.

There are plenty of web sites out there that let you download and convert a video, by simply providing a link to the video at the video sharing web site.

The conversion on the services end and the download that follows might take a bit of time, some services also have limits for the length of the video they download. Also, the service must explicitly support a specific video sharing web site. Pretty much all of them support YouTube, but beyond that, things do not look as good anymore. Here a few of those online downloader's to choose from. 

Vixy.net

Link to Web Site

Supports conversion of Flash Video / FLV file to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP) file online. On that site, enter into the text box in the middle of the page the URL, such as: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HbbUgHNM8Q

Press "Start" (the default format to save the video should be .avi). It may take a while to do the download and conversion. Vixy.net also offers now a desktop video downloader for Windows PC and MAC OS users available for download on their web site.

YouConvertIt.com

Link to Web Site

YouConvertIt.com is an online tool with many features beyond the simple downloading of videos from video sharing web sites like YouTube. It is able to convert hundreds of different  video, audio, image, document and archive formats to make it a useful tool whenever you need to be able to convert a file that you receive from somebody else in a format that you cannot handle to something that you can work with.

You can upload files from your hard disk to YouConvertIt.com for conversion. If the conversion takes a little bit longer, no problem, because you do not have to stick around until it is done. Simply provide your email address and YouConvertIt will send you an email notification with download LINK to receive the converted file once it is done.

The video downloader is as simple as it can be. You just copy and paste the URL to the video on YouTube or any other popular video sharing site and YouConvertIt will extract the video file for you and if you like to, also converts it into one of the many available video formats that might better suit your needs. Also here, you have the option to provide your email address to receive a notification when the downloaded and converted video file is ready for you to download.

Here is a list of the supported file formats, to give you a better idea about the versatility of this free online tool.

AUDIO Formats: AAC (Advanced Audio Coding File), AIF (Audio Interchange File Format), AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format), MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer 3), OGG (Ogg Vorbis Codec Compressed Multimedia File), RA (Real Audio Sound),WAV (Windows Waveform Sound),WMA (Windows Media Audio)

VIDEO Formats: 3GP (3GP Video File), ASF (Advanced Systems Format Media), AVI (Microsoft Video for Windows Movie), FLV (Flash Video File), IVR (Internet Video Record File), MOV (QuickTime Movie), MP4 (Mpeg-4 Video)
MPEG (MPEG Video File), MPG (MPEG Video File), RM (RealMedia File), RV (Real Video File),SWF (Shockwave Flash), WMV (Windows Media Video)

DOCUMENT Formats: CSV (Text CSV), DOC (Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP), EPDF (Encapsulated Portable Document Format), EPI (Encapsulated PostScript Interchange format), EPS (Adobe Encapsulated PostScript), EPS2 (Adobe Level II Encapsulated PostScript), EPS3 (Adobe Level III Encapsulated PostScript), EPSF (Encapsulated PostScript), EPSI (Adobe Encapsulated PostScript Interchange format), EPT (Encapsulated PostScript Interchange TIFF Preview), HTM (HyperText Markup Language), HTML (HyperText Markup Language), INFO (UNIX GNU Info Reader File), ODG (OpenDocument Drawing),ODP  (OpenDocument Presentation), ODS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet), ODT (OpenDocument Text), OTG (OpenDocument Drawing Template), OTP (OpenDocument Presentation Template), OTS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet Template), OTT (OpenDocument Text Template), PDF (PDF-Portable Document Format), POT (Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP Template), PPT (Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP), PS (Adobe PostScript file), PS2 (Adobe Level II PostScript file), PS3 (Adobe Level III PostScript file), PSD (Photoshop Format), RTF (Rich Text Format), SDA (StarDraw 5.0), SDC (StarCalc 5.0), SDW (StarWriter),SHTML (Hypertext Markup Language client-side image map), STC (OpenOffice.og 1.0 Spreadsheet Template), STI (OpenOffice.org 1.0 Presentation Template), STW (OpenOffice.og 1.0 Text Document Template), SVM (SVM - StarView Metafile), SXC (OpenOffice.org 1.0 Spreadsheet), SXD (OpenOffice.org 1.0 Drawing), SXI (OpenOffice 1.0 Presentation), SXW (OpenOffice.og 1.0 Text Document), TXT (TEXT), VOR (StarWriter 5.0 Template), XHTML (XHTML), XLS (Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP), XLT (Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP Template)

IMAGE Formats: ART (PFS: 1st Publisher), AVS (AVS X image), BMP (Windows OS/2 Bitmap Graphics),CIN (Kodak Cineon Bitmap File), CUR (Microsoft Cursor Icon), CUT (DR Halo), DCM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) ), DCX (ZSoft IBM PC multi-page Paintbrush image),DIB (Microsoft Windows Device Independent Bitmap), DPX (Digital Moving Picture Exchange), EMF (Extended (Enhanced) Windows Metafile Format), EXIF (Exif digital camera binary data), FAX (Group 3 TIFF), FITS (Flexible Image Transport System), GIF (Graphic Interchange Format), GRAY (Raw Gray Samples), ICB (Truevision Targa image (ICB)), ICO (Windows Icon), ICON (Windows Icon), JNG (JPEG Network Graphic Bitmap), JP2 (JPEG-2000 JP2 File), JPC (JPEG-2000 Code Stream Bitmap), JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group JFIF format (62)), JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group JFIF format), MIFF (Magick image file format), MNG (Multi-image Network Graphic Animation),MONO (Bi-level bitmap in least-significant-byte first order), MPC (Magick Persistent Cache image file format), MSL (Magick Scripting Language), MTV (MTV Raytracing image format), MVG (Magick Vector Graphics),OTB (On-the-air Bitmap), P7 (Xv`s Visual Schnauzer thumbnail format), PALM (Palm pixmap), PBM (UNIX Portable Bitmap Graphic), PCD (Photo-CD Image), PCDS (Photo-CD Image), PCL (HP Page Control Language), PCX (ZSoft IBM PC Paintbrush file), PDB (Palm Database ImageViewer Format), PFA (Postscript Type 1 font (ASCII)), PFB (Postscript Type 1 font (binary)), PGM (Portable graymap format (gray scale)), PICON (Personal Icon), PICT (Macintosh Quickdraw/PICT Drawing), PIX (Alias/Wavefront RLE image format), PNG (Portable (Public) Network Graphic), PNM (PBM Portable Any Map Graphic Bitmap), PPM (Portable pixmap format (color)), PTIF (Pyramid encoded TIFF), PWP (Seattle File Works multi-image file), RLA (Alias/Wavefront image file), RLE (Utah Run length encoded image file), SGI (Irix RGB image), SUN (SUN Rasterfile), TGA (Truevision Targa image (TGA)),THUMBNAIL (Thumbnail), TIF (Tagged Image Format File), TIFF (Tagged Image Format File), TIM (PSX TIM file), UYVY (Interleaved YUV Raw Image), VDA (Truevision Targa image (VDA)), VICAR (VICAR rasterfile format), VIFF (Khoros Visualization Image File Format)
WBMP (Wireless Bitmap File Format), WMF (Windows Metafile), WPG (Word Perfect Graphics File), XBM (X Windows system bitmap, black and white only), XCF (GIMP image), XPM (X Windows system pixmap), XWD (X Windows system window dump), YUV (Color Space Pixel Format)

ARCHIVE Formats: 7Z (7Z File), ACE (ACE File), ARJ (ARJ File), BZ2 (BZ2 File), BZA (BZA File), CAB (CAB File), GZ (GZ File), RAR (RAR File), TAR (TAR File), TGZ (TGZ File), YZ1 (YZ1 File), ZIP (ZIP File)

Javimoya.com

Link to Web Site

Available in English, Spanish, German and Japanese

Zamzar.com

Link to Web Site

Download and convert videos and other documents from other web sites or from your local hard disk. 100 MB file size limit for the free version. Supported file formats:

• Image formats: bmp , gif , ico , jpg , pcx , png , tga , tiff , wbmp , wmf; 
• Doc formats: csv , doc , docx , html , odp , ods , odt , pcx , pdf , ppt , pptx , ps , pub , rtf , txt , wpd , wps , xls , xlsx , xml; 
• Music formats: aac , ac3 , flac , m4a , mmf , mp3 , ogg , ra , ram , wav , wma; 
• Video formats: 3gp , 3g2 , avi , flv , gvi , iphone , ipod , m4v , mov , mp4 , mpg , ogg , rm , rmvb , vob , wmv; 
• Other formats: 7z , tar.bz2 , cab , lzh , rar , tar , tar.gz , yz1 , zip

Offers file storage and sharing service (not free), starting at $7 per month for 5 GB. Paid accounts also increase the number of possible concurrent conversions and the maximum file size.

Bad: opens multiple pop-ups

Media-Convert.com

Link to Web Site

Online file converter/downloader/file hosting with advanced settings, such as resizing, or splitting into smaller pieces for video files. Available in almost 20 languages.

Supports even more formats than Zamzar. Some good info's about which cell phones support which formats. Conversion of files on your hard drive or on the web, requiring the URL of the source document. Maximum file size is 150 MB. Free and anonymous file hosting is also provided. Files are kept for 120 days and will then be deleted. You can even upload uncompressed documents and have media-convert compress it for you with the tool of your choice, e.g. ZIP, RAR, LZH etc.

Bad: User interface is confusing, especially for non-tech savvy users

Other Online Tools/Services

• XConv.com
• KeepVid.com 

There are tons of other sites out there that do this. Some even offer code or widgets for other webmasters and bloggers to add to their sites that they can offer video downloads from popular video sharing web sites.

Option 2 - Desktop Downloader (recommended)

You can also download a PC based tool here, which does the same like the online tool, but on your own computer. You might want to do that for the future, in case you need to download another video one day or if download videos frequently. As their online counterpart, these downloader tools are limited regarding the video sharing web sites they support to download videos from.

Win XP, Vista, Mac  (Intel/PPC)

The desktop tool saves automatically the downloaded video with a random file name on your windows desktop. You can move it via windows explorer somewhere else or use it from right there with MS Power Point or any other application that you are using for your school presentation.

Vixy.net also offers a downloader for Windows PC and MAC OS for free download from their web site.

Some commercial converters come with video downloader plug-ins for IE and/or FireFox as a bonus, such as the "Sothink Web Video Downloader for FireFox" or "Moyea Flash Downloader Plug-In for Internet Explorer".

  If you want to get videos downloaded to your local hard drive that are beyond the ability of the regular download scripts and desktop tools, I recommend to use some more serious tools, such as stream rippers/downloaders.

With them is it even possible to download a video where you do not know the URL to the video, because the video is streamed from a different specialized video streaming server and the web site where you watch the video does not actually host physical video files and only relays a real-time video stream to the user at the time of the request. In that case, nothing is even stored in you local browser cache.

For example video sharing sites like Ustream.tv use this method. The best and really working stream rippers are not available for free, except for a few days trial period where you can test the software before you have to decide, if you want to buy it or not.

Jaksta Stream Recorder ($35)

Product Details - Free Trial Download - Buy Now

WMRecorder ($49.95)

WM Recorder  by Alex Urich, published via Applian Technologies

Product Details

Replay Media Catcher ($39.95)

Replay Media Catcher by Applian Technologies

Product Detail

Option 3 - Browser Plug-In Scripts

A kind of "in between" solution is the use of special browser plug-ins and user scripts, if your web browser supports one or the other. Mozilla FireFox users have probably the most options and choices available to them, but there are also some solutions for Microsoft Internet Explorer.

One problem with all of those solution is the lack of video conversion. You get easily to the video in Flash format, but that's about it. If you want to use the video in another application, manual conversion, using third party conversion tools will be necessary. If this is not a problem and you just want to be able to watch the videos without being connected to the Internet or only have a slow connection. You can keep the Flash files as you downloaded them and use a free desktop Flash movie player to watch the movies when you feel like it. For example the GodLikeMouse (GLM) Flash Video Player http://glm-flv.sourceforge.net/

FireFox Plug-Ins

FireFox has a plug-in called Grease Monkey Script for Mozilla FireFox. This Plug-in allows the execution of custom User Scripts, which are plenty available for all kinds of purposes, including downloading of videos from video sharing web sites like YouTube.

Grease Monkey Script for Mozilla Firefox  - get it here or here

You can find those scripts at UserScripts.org. Here is the link that performs a search for YouTube Video Downloader scripts.

Here is a screen shot that shows the FireFox browser with installed Grease Monkey plug-in and some downloader scripts running, while I was accessing a video page at YouTube.com.

Real Player Download Plug-in (IE Users)

Link to Web Site

I am not a fan of Real Player, because of all the unwanted ballast that they try to force down your throat, but once you declined all the unnecessary junk, one feature of the current version of the player comes in very handy for Microsoft Internet Explorer users. Real Player installs a browser plug-in that detects videos in web pages, not only YouTube, pretty much any page that has a video embedded, Macromedia (Adobe) Flash, Apple QuickTime, Windows Media etc. See the screen shot below that shows the Real Player plug-in in action. Straight forward and simple to use. The video format depends  on the source video on the web site. It is most of the time Flash, so you still have the problem of possible conversion, if you want to use the video for something else than just viewing.

Option 4 - Browser Cache

The old fashioned and most painful way... but most of the time working also.

I demonstrate how it works with Internet Explorer. It's also possible with Google Chrome. I don't know if it is that simple with Mozilla FireFox and I didn't try it with other browsers like Apple's Safari browser or Opera.

The following steps only work for Windows users with Microsoft Internet Explorer.

1. Locate your user directory under the "Documents and Settings" directory on your local hard disk.  The default location is usually C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME. USERNAME could be just your Windows login user name  plus maybe followed by "." and either the computer name or the domain name, if you are part of a business network.
2. Every user has a directory called "Local Settings" under its user directory, but the video file for the video file that you just watched is only cached under your own user.   Select the "Local Settings" folder and then the folder "Temporary Internet Files" below that.
3. You can only find the  cached video file in this directory, if the browser downloaded it entirely. Watch the whole video on the web site first, if you want to make sure that the browser had the chance to cache the whole thing. Web video players usually indicate via a separate progress bar, who much of the video they have cached, next to the play progress bar.
4. The "Temporary Internet Files" is usually packed with all kinds of files, images, CSS style sheets, JavaScript and HTML files etc. I recommend to sort the files in that folder by Size, showing the largest files first. The temp folder does not behave like a regular folder and also has different columns. The "Name" of the files is also weird in some cases, such as video files from YouTube. Cached YouTube videos usually start with "get_video?video_id=XXXXXX ...". Compare that name with the URL of the video page in your browser. It should have identical values after the video_id= parameter. Select the matching file and press CTRL-C in Windows Explorer, select a folder where you want to put the video and press CTRL-V. Windows Explorer will now copy the video file from the cache directory to your selected target directory.
5. A regular windows file name does not allow characters like "?" in the name. For that reason does Windows Explorer use only the part before the ? as the file name in the target directory. "get_video", then it usually adds "[2]" to it, but no file extension. Press F2 to rename the file and enter at the end of the new name .FLV as the file extension.

Click Image to enlarge!

If you need a good video converter for Flash Video to something else, I recommend Moyea FLV to Video converter, which delivers the best conversion results that I have seen so far. You can try it for free, before you have to decide, if you are going to buy a license for it or not.

Another good converter, which is also a little bit more versatile than the Moyea one is the MP4 Converter by 4Media. The name MP4 Converter is a bit misleading, because the tool can handle a lot more than just videos in MP4 format. You can download the free trial version of the tool here.

That's it! Happy Video Downloading!

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Summary of Tools Mentioned in this Post

Online Video Download Tools

• Vixy.net
• YouConvertIt.com       
• Javimoya.com      
• Zamzar.com       
• Media-Convert.com   
• XConv.com        
• KeepVid.com         

Windows Desktop Download Tools

• Free YouTube Downloader

Commercial Windows Stream Recorder/Capture Software

• Jaksta Stream Recorder
• Applian WM Recorder
• Replay Media Catcher

Flash Video Player

• God Like Mouse

Browser Plug-ins

• Grease Monkey Script for Mozilla Firefox
• Downloader Grease Monkey Scripts
• Real Player Download Plug-In for IE

Flash Video Converters for Windows

• Moyea FLV to Video Converter
• MP4Converter by 4Media

Star Trek, The Experience is Gone!

You heard correctly, Star Trek - The Experience is gone ... where no Star Trek Experience has gone before ...  into oblivion. I just returned from Las Vegas today. 

I was at the Hilton Las Vegas yesterday and shocked to see that the Star Trek Experience is now closed, not for maintenance, updates, NO ... FOREVER!!! It is actually closed already since September 1, 2008. WTF?

Okay, I did the Experience already four times (or five, I am not 100% sure). I did it the first time in 2002 (or was it 2001?),  when there was only the Klingon Encounter and then several times more, after they expanded the Experience with the Borg Invasion (4D) ride in early 2004 (I always liked the old Klingon ride much more, but then I also liked only the Original Series and Next Generation and never got into DS9, Voyager or Enterprise).

What a loss! ... and probably only because some greedy bastards could not agree on how to share the profits.

The Experience wasn't cheap (about $25 until 2004 and $40 or so, after they launched the second ride. Okay a bit less than that, one or a few bucks, but that does not matter anymore), plus the revenue from the gift shop and the overpriced "Quarks" restaurant that served TGI Friday's kind of food for twice the price and half the quality. Not being profitable could not have been the reason for shutting it down after over 11 years of operation.

It's a shame and Gene Roddenberry, who passed away in 1991, did obviously some poor decisions regarding who and how the franchise that he created, will be managed after his death. What a blow and slap into the face of Star Trek fans worldwide. Gene would turn in his grave (bless his soul), if he'd know about this.

Backup URL to Video on YouTube

I bought some Star Trek stuff at the gift shop myself. A plush bear (star fleet commander), a small Tribble (from Star Trek, the original series) and a shirt with a Star Fleet Academy logo on it. Here are some pictures of it. The Tribble makes actually a sound, if you press it hehe. I don't know where you could buy this stuff now, because the gift store at the Hilton is gone like the rides, restaurant, bar and museum. The online store and web site StarTrekExp.com is also down now :(

I am glad that I "forced" a friend of mine, an American who grew up in Chile and worked at my former employer with me, to go to Vegas and do the Experience, before he went back with his wife and kids to live in Chile. He was/is a huge Star Trek fan and even wanted to do this Star Trek wedding (but the wife was not so thrilled about that and said no). I knew that he would regret it for the rest of his life, if he had not done it, so I forced him to his luck. Now it's gone and he wouldn't have a chance to do it anymore. I am sure that he will appreciate my persistence a few years ago even more now.

That's a lesson for anything in life. If you really want to do something, don't leave it an open item on your "to-do list" for too long, because of stupid excuses, just do it, or you might never get the chance to do it at all.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Major YouTube Upgrade

I cannot recall when YouTube was as much unavailable for as long as it is today. Something major is cooking.

There cannot be any other reason for this significant outage. You can see the following message on all pages on the YouTube website at this moment.

"We are currently performing site maintenance. Be cool - we'll be back 100% in a bit."

The user profile pages are not accessible. You can log-in and log-out and see a bit about your subscriptions, but that is pretty much all that you can do at your account area. You cannot access your videos (for updates), upload new videos, access ratings, messages or account settings.



You can access videos via direct URL and play them, but there is no interactivity possible, such as video ratings, adding comments or adding a video to your favorites or a play list.

It also seems that videos embedded in other websites are not working. I noticed problem with that already last night, which means that this update is going on for way over 16-17 hours already. Again, the same video on the YouTube site itself still works.


Image caption: screen shot of video embed in this blog when I tried to play it.
Comments on YouTube Site
Okay, I admit, the user interface of YouTube sucked. They tried to improve things here and there, but it kept on sucking. A major overhaul of it would be great.
Google Video seems to be up, no sign of any upgrades there, although I had some issues with Google Video during the past days. So it seems that Google Video is not going to be merged into YouTube with this upgrade.

Thoughts on Google Video
Google Video seems to have more focused on the search aspect of things and tries to become something like a major Video Search Engine. They do a better job at embedding videos from 3rd party video sharing sites as well as videos that were posted on individual websites, not using a video sharing site for video hosting and distribution.

The "social" aspect of Google Video sucks as always, no improvement there. You don't even have a "user homepage" or anything like that. I figured out a way to create one for my account though. It was tricky, but at the end possible. Comments are buried and not really used (if you can find them). You cannot tell if your videos got comments, which is really "helpful". I wouldn't be able to know about them, if it weren't for a service like TubeMogul, but then again, nobody uses it anyway.

No Restriction of Video Resolution and Length (on my Wish List)
I have tons of videos on YouTube and Google Video and the main reasons for me to continue to use Google Video is the non-existing video length and video file size restriction. You can upload whatever you want and I have several videos that are longer than 10 minutes or exceed the 100 MB limit if you want to keep the video quality decent. The video resolution at Google Video is also higher than on YouTube, even the fairly new and mostly unknown High Definition option at YouTube is a joke. The video resolution might gets up to 480x360, if you are lucky, but that is again related to the size limit of the videos. I did it myself that I scaled a video down to reduce the file size, because YouTube does not play the higher resolution video anyway. I got told though that YouTube keeps the original uploaded video, along side with the encoded one for the use on their website.

It would be nice to see a change in that respect with this upgrade. No limits and higher resolution play back option, 640x480 pixels would be nice, but at least SVCD resolution (480x576 in PAL and 480x480 in NTSC) should become available.

YouTube Messaging Interface Comments
The last upgrade of YouTube, where they introduced a new messaging interface and the annotation and video overlay feature were also not ready for prime time yet. The new messaging interface solved some problems, but at the same time introduced new ones, specifically problems with navigating between comments and messages and content they refer to (comments, videos, user accounts etc.). The annotation feature was also still very buggy. I had to contact YouTube support because it did not work at all for a video when I actually needed it.

Video Update Feature (on my Wish List)
Another thing that bugs me a lot at YouTube and other video sharing sites is the lack of ability to replace a video with an updated version of it. You have to upload the almost identical video again, which many would see as a duplicate and you have to decide, if you keep the old video up (because of comments, favorites, video responses etc.) or if you take it down, delete it or at least set it to private (also something new).

Now people who argue that this would allow all kinds of abuse, like using deceptive switch and bait tactics are to some degree right, but there are options to a solution to this problem. Because there are bad people in the world, is it wrong to assume that everybody is bad until proven otherwise (an impossibility to do btw.). Previous versions of a video could be kept as reference and version history, unless very good reasons were provided for a total removal without a trace.

The option between the two cases would be to only keep as reference the date and time when the video was replaced to indicate that all comments etc. that were made before that date and time, referred to the previous version of the video and not the current one.

Pessimistic Options
Maybe it's all about infringing video content detection and making it harder for people to upload their videos and to give traditional commercial publishers more power to control distribution of "their" content (claiming a bit of content here and there along the way, where they actually own shit). I hope that this is not the case. I am fed up with this crap.

DailyMotion Incident
My YouTube issues from June are still very much in my memory, as well as all the pain it has caused. I just posted in the night from last Thursday to Friday about my updated video version about the Berlin Wall and how I was taking special care about the legal things of it.

Well, I got an email from DailyMotion.com during the weekend that one of the four parts of my video (I had to slice it down for all video sharing sites, except Google Video), were taken down, because of possible copyright infringement... I went... WHAT??? and are in email communication with DailyMotion since then. It's not up again as of now.

I added in my initial response among the requested information about the video content that "I hope that they are better than YouTube, where a large music publisher claimed to own the copyright on another video of mine, where they did not own anything (That's also called theft IMO). I stated in detail that this company can not own any copyright on anything in this video and provided names, emails and mailing addresses of the content creators and a reference to their copyright license, which permits the creation and publication of my video. YouTube did not bother and did not put it back up again. I had to re-upload it and loose all comments, stats and favorites for the original video."

They responded to that email and asked for the URL of the video (which is kind of stupid, since they should know what they did and include a key in the email notification that is being sent as a result of it to the user who uploaded it.), so my comment was not making them upset a la "Of course we are not YouTube!" mentality. Let's see how that one goes.

Well, enough speculating and hoping. It won't be for long anymore (I hope) and we will see what they came up with. Let's hope for the best.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

The Berlin Wall History - Lessons Learned ... Again

I did a long and detailed post about the Berlin Wall in June, titled "The Berlin Wall and the Walls between Us". It also included a 13 minutes extended edition of my video "Berlin Wall - Lessons Learned". It was already version 3 of the video (Here are the links to version 2 and version 1 of the video as well, just for the sake of completeness).

Why the different versions? Well, there are multiple reasons.

First, I improved my editing skills and was able to do things better where I was unhappy about in a previous version of the video.



I also got access to new or sometimes just better quality sources. One of the latest discoveries was a high quality video version of the episode "The Berlin Wall" from the National Geographic TV series "Turning Points Of History". That 45 minutes documentary virtually contained the video snippets of all my video sources about the 1950-1970s that I already had from elsewhere (stock footage, public domain etc.), but in much better quality.

I spent the last few days on version 4.0 of my video. This time I did re-created it entirely from scratch. It's not just an edit of the previous version. I even re-cut, re-edited and re-sorted the sources again. This version is a whopping 30 min (almost) long.

Note: Google Video messed something up. It shows only the first 5:41 minutes of the video. I will re-upload it again and try to figure out what the problem is. Once I have the full 30 minutes version up and working, I will update the links in this post.

Google Video seems to be fine again. I used the Google issue period to make some enhancements to the video. It is now also slightly longer than before and surpasses the 30 minutes mark now. (30:20 min or something like that). I also updated the Link to Mediafire.com and got the AVI file-size reduced thanks to the use of H.264 video and AC3 audio compression. It's about half the size of the previous Xvid/Mp3 encoded version, which I deleted.

I also refrained from using any music that might infringe a little bit copyright here and there. It is using all Classic music (with the creators dead for far longer than 50 or 70 years). It is in some cases matching even better than the music that I used before, but unfortunately not always. I had to make some compromises for the sake of legal purity :).

Music Credits

• Samuel Barber "Adagio for Strings"
• Richard Strauss "Also sprach Zarathustra"
• Richard Addinsell "Warsaw Concerto"
• Carl Orff "Carmina Burana, 1st mvt 'O Fortuna'"
  
• Franz Schubert "Serenade"
• Georges Bizet "Carmen Suite No. 1 & 2"

I don't think that using the National Geographic documentary footage (logo blurred out) is an issue, because they also just used stock footage from CNN and other media sources. This video is not commercial in nature and CNN and others should not have a problem with my use of their stock footage.

So here is the 30 min video

• Backup link to video at Google Video.
• Link to video in .AVI format and 640x480 resolution at Mediafire.com (Large! 282 MB)
• I also made this video available at the Internet Archive, where you can also watch it online and download in various different video formats, including Mpeg-4, Cinepack and OGG Video.
• You can find additional videos of mine about the Berlin Wall for download here.
• More videos about the East Germany and the Berlin Wall, including original news reel footage and documentaries are available for download at this location.

Feel free to comment and tell me what you think about the video. I am also open for any suggestions, praise and criticism :).

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Cirque du Soleil's Music Concert 'Delirium' Video

Cirque du Soleil's music concert and arena show "Delirum" is now running in Movie Theatres. You cannot see the show live anymore, because it is finished touring.

However, you can see it on the Big screen at the moment and hopefully soon on DVD.

I finally got around creating a longer sneak preview video, which I had on my to-do list for some time already. The news that the show stopped touring and is now shown in movie theaters made me realize that it won't be for long anymore and a DVD will be available and no need for me to spend time on editing together a nice video hehe.

So here it is now, a 28 minutes long sneak preview of some segments of the show. I think it is a record... yes, it is. The "O" and "Mystere" videos were "only" 21 and 22 minutes long.

As a special bonus, both, the handbalancing (Andrey Koltsov) and hoola hoops (Irina Akimova) acts are covered completly (yeah! hehe). Editing video on a PC is still a bitch and it took me longer than I wanted to. Not the editing, but the rendering of the final video :(. God, I hate this "codec", "DirectShow Filters", "Video for Windows" crap and all the problems that come with it.



Backup link to video at Google Video.

You can also download the entire video in 400x300 resolution and .AVI format from Mediafire.com here. Other Cirque du Soleil videos of mine can also be downloaded. See a complete list at this URL.

For more Cirque du Soleil visit my Cirque du Soleil primer.

Something else...
A side note about my blog here at RoySAC.com/blog.

Have a look to the right side and you will notice a new text box below the text box for the email subscription to my posts via Feedburner.

It's a new search feature for my blog. It only searches my blog and not the rest of the website.

I use Google's Custom Search Engine (CSE) for it and tweaked it to make the results even more relevant. I excluded the "category" pages and the homepage for example. It should actually only search and return blog post pages, if I did everything right and as I wanted it to be. The Category pages and homepage tend to rank high in Google, but they are not that much helpful, especially if you are looking for something specific. :)

So check it out and let me know how it works for you. I am thinking about creating a second CSE for the rest of the RoySAC.com site, which is also getting bigger and harder to navigate every day.

Enjoy and Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Think Different! Be Different!

In case you did not notice, I started blogging a little bit more about political and social subjects recently. There is a reason for it. I spent more time thinking about the things that happened in this world. I did't say that I wasn't thinking about those things in the past, I just say that I did spend more time than usual.

See for example my longer posts about the Crazy Horse Memorial, the Berlin Wall or Nationalism and Blind Obedience to your Government.

This also lead me to create a category at my blog titled "Politics" where I attached all those (more or less) politics related blog posts of mine (including past blog posts from last year or the year before that).

Well that's enough for an intro :).

I stumbled recently across a cool Apple Computers commercial that I don't remeber seen on TV, but that has nothing to say, since I did not watch TV really during the past 1-2 years or so.. thanks to the Internet hehe.

This is IMHO the best Apple Computers commercial of all times and one of the best commercial of all time in general too. Well, and if there is one thing that you can say about the Apple CEO Steve Jobs, then it would be "Yeah, He thinks different!".

The message of the video is clear:

Follow your instinct and ignore what other people might say. The people who thought different and were called all kinds of words by the people during their lifetime are the ones who actually did change the world (for the better or worst).

Changes happen because of people who do not comply with old rules and established thinking and follow through with their ideas and believes regardless of the problems they got as a result of it.



Backup Link to Video at YouTube.com.

The text of the video goes as follows.

Here is to the crazy ones,
the misfits, the rebels,
the trouble makers,
the round pigs in the square holes,
the ones who see things differently.
They are not fond of rules
and they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them,
but the only thing you can't do...
is ignore them,
because they change things.

They push the human race forward.

And while some might see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius,
because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world,
are the ones who do.

Think Different!

Great stuff. Heads up to who came up with this.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Cirque du Soleil & Criss Angel's 'Believe' - A Special Sneak Preview

The news that the new Cirque du Soleil show with the (in)famous magician Criss Angel with the title "Believe" will premier much later than it was originally planned was bad, but there was nothing that could be done about it.

There is only about 1 1/2 months to go until the current premier date and the Cirque is already on "promo tour", which is a good sign. You do not go on promo tour, if you are in trouble and far behind schedule, risking further delays... no, you would be back "home" and work overtime, weekends and holidays to get the thing done on the date you said it would be done.

Well, 16 dancers of the new show and their ceographer were sighted in Los Angeles, California a few days ago. They gave a special performance at the event "So you think you can dance?" and a first real sneak peak of the new Criss Angel show ever, actual footage from the show itself, no talks, no stills, drawings and models.. nope, the real deal this time.

It shows the actual performance to get a glimpse of the things to come, when the new show finally premiers in October 2008 at the Luxor hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This performance was aired on TV on Fox and somebody was kind enough to record it/Tivo it and upload the whole thing to his favorite video sharing website, where I picked it up. I also found a mini-documentary video, officially by the Cirque itself that shows "behind the scene" footage of this special performance called "All in a Day's Work".

I grabbed that one too. Then there was also the very first show teaser that was released.. no show footage (unfortunately), but you cannot have everything you wish for all the time.

Anyhow, I grabbed those 3 videos and added some stuff from a fourth one and some images for a mini video slideshow, with music from the actual show in the background, to round up my video version of all this.

All in all some entertaining 7:22 minutes to enjoy.



You can download this video in higher 640x480 resolution and in .AVI format at Mediafire.com here.

To learn more about Cirque du Soleil, their shows and special performances, check out my Cirque du Soleil primer.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Cirque du Soleil's Delirium Coming to Movie Theaters

Some good, but not entirely unexpected news, at least half of it.

Cirque du Soleil and Sony Pictures announced a few days ago the release of the Cirque du Soleil concert show for the big screen in movie theaters. It will be released this month (they made the announcement on very short notice).

This probably means that we can expect a DVD release of the show by Christmas this year or latest by Spring 2009. I would be surprised, if they would not release it this year already. Christmas would be perfect to get a piece of the holiday business.

I am not surprised about the availability of a recorded version of the show, the Cirque did that with other shows that were not resident shows in the past already (with exception of "La Nouba"), including "Corteo" and "Varekai". It should not be for long until a video of the touring show "Kooza" will become available on DVD. I do not recall though that they had the recordings running in Movie Theaters prior the DVD release. That's a first as far as I know.

Here is the trailer for the Movie release, coming to selected Movie Theaters near you.



Backup Link to Video on Youtube.com.

For more Cirque du Soleil visit my Cirque du Soleil primer. Also check out my YouTube channel about Cirque du Soleil and performing arts in general.

This announcement also reminded me on working on a longer preview video of the show. I got many video snippets and have the official soundtrack CDs. I need to sit down and spend the time to create a nice little teaser as I did for other Cirque shows, such as "O" and "Mystere" to name the shows where I was able to create a 20+ minutes teaser and "Zumanity", "Kooza" and "KA" where I was able to create 7=10 minutes long teasers. All of those mentioned videos are available through my YouTube channel and also referenced in my Cirque du Soleil Primer article.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

The Berlin Wall and the Walls between Us

I created an extended version of my video about the Berlin Wall. I was born and grew up in Berlin and was 15 years old when the Wall finally fell on November 9th, 1989.

It's a personal subject, as for all Germans, especially Berliners who were affected by it the most. It will be soon 20 years, in one year and a few months, since this historic event occurred. It seems to me a long time ago, although I have many vivid memories of events from back then that seem to have happened only recently.

Maybe the global events of the past few years that are IMO disturbing and the parallel development of a global sense and community because of the Internet, which attempt to counter those negative events, brought some of my old memories back into my mind.

I never felt compelled before to talk or write about the historic events that happened in my hometown and which I was able (in part) to witness myself. I never owned or wanted to own a piece of the Wall, which is not unusual for a child of that city. I would say that you probably will have a hard time to find a Berliner who has a piece of the Wall, if you would start looking for one. I am pretty sure about that.

Something changed my attitude towards the subject and I am not 100% sure what and why. I got the feeling that telling the story and facts out of the mouth of somebody who knows personally a bit about it carries more weight and that telling the story became more and more important.

Remember history, because history tends to repeat itself! That is an old and true saying. It is especially true unfortunately, for things that should not be repeated at all, but people forgot about how bad it was over time and then allowed it to happen again.

Maybe it's the creation or fortification and militarization of new and existing Walls that were and are being erected between people at many places around the world. Walls are bad, they separate and isolate. They segment people who should not be segmented. Walls that separate families or big group of people are causing suffering, pain and even death.

Most Walls are unnecessary and should not be erected and it only happens, because people allow it to happen. If people would say "no more", those Walls would fall and crumble, just like the Berlin Wall did in 1989. The Berlin Wall example also shows that Walls can be torn down without violence or war.

Berlin Wall - Lessons Learned

• Backup Link to Video at Google Video
  
• Download the Video in .AVI format and 640x480 resolution (96 MB) free via Mediafire.com

My video is 13 minutes in length and contains material of over 30 video and audio sources and over 70 images and over 470 words of text annotation and caption. Feel free to share and distribute it.

The Story
A journalist from the West German newspaper "Frankfurter Rundschau" asked the question, if the creation of a "Free East Berlin" means that a border will be erected at the Brandenburg Gate.

The East German Head of State "Walter Ulbricht" responded to this question with the following...

"I understand your question like that there are people in West Germany who wish that we mobilize the construction workers of the capital of the GDR to erect a wall, yes?

I am not aware of such intention, but that the construction workers of the capital are mainly busy with the construction of homes and that the available man power is used entirely ...

Nobody has the intention to build a wall."

That statement was a straight and convenient lie. During the night of 12-13 August 1961, a barbed-wire entanglement was hastily constructed through the heart of Berlin.

Just two days before the barrier was erected 1,500 refugees had moved to West Berlin. Watchtowers punctuated the city limits and the temporary barbed-wire constructions were soon replaced with concrete. Within a year the Wall was seven and half miles long and fences stretched the remaining 91.7 miles around the city.

The wire fence and small brick wall segments were replaced in 1965 with a concrete wall. Between 1975 and 1980 the final and most sophisticated version of the concrete wall was built. It was made up of 12ft tall and 4ft wide reinforced concrete segments and the top lined with smooth pipe made of concrete to make it harder to climb.

Border Guards had the order to shoot anybody who attempted to cross the border and ignored the guards order to stop. Over 200 people who tried it died.

The wall fell on November, 9th 1989 without a single shot being fired or anybody getting injured. The first segments of the wall were demolished within the first few weeks.

Within a few years only very little remains of the Wall were left and had to be preserved be declaring them a historic monument that is not to be demolished.

The largest remaining segment of the Wall is the "East Side Gallery" near the Oberbaumbrücke along the Spree River. Another segment can be found north of Bernauer Straße. The third and last segment still in existence is located at the location of the former Gestapo head quarters between "Checkpoint Charlie" and "Potsdamer Platz".

The Berlin Wall separated physically and spiritually families, friends and fellow Germans for 28 years. It was causing hundreds of deaths and inflicted pain and suffering for millions of people of two generations.

Much good information can be found at a special section of the Berlin.de website. It's available in SIX different languages, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian and Russian.

Over 100,000 people attempted to cross the border between East Germany and West Germany or East Berlin and West Berlin between 1949 and 1989.

About 1,000 people died. Not all deaths are the result of shootings, many drowned, suffocated or died as a result of hitting a land mine or triggering a spring gun, which were installed by the East German border guards to prevent border crossings.

The first victim of the Berlin Wall was Ida Siekmann on 22th August 1961 who died as a result of her injuries caused by her jump out of a Window at the Bernauer Strasse where buildings were in the middle of the border itself, one side belonging to East Berlin and the other to West Berlin.

The first victim shot at the Berlin Wall was Günter Litfin, who was killed on 24th August 1961. The last victim shot at the Wall was 20 years old Chris Gueffroy, who was killed on 5th February 1989.

The probably most gruesome death was the shooting of Peter Fechter on 17th August 1962, who was lying for one hour crying for help at the "Death Strip" near Checkpoint Charlie, in front of allied and West Berlin police, who could only watch helpless how Peter was bleeding to death before their eyes.

The border guards got trained to shoot at the legs to prevent the escapee from crossing the border, but hitting the legs with a fully automatic AK-47 over the distance of 200 yards or more is almost impossible to do. Because of the significant dispersion rate of the AK-47 was it easy to hit the head of a moving target, even if you aim at the feet.

Many more border guards did not shoot as they were ordered to do, shot after the escapee was already gone or aimed deliberately off the target to miss.

Some who did this were just mildly punished, however, some ended up in military prison for violation of article 262 of the East German criminal code of law (Paragraph 262 im Kapitel des DDR-Strafgesetzbuches über das Militärstrafrecht).

Border guards also had the order not to shot at Children, Women and on West Berlin Territory, also not at "three targets", a law that has its roots in Prussian military conduct. Guards usually were ordered to shout "Halt" (Stop) and fire a warning shot into the air first, before shooting at the target directly, but there exist files from the East German secret police, the Staatssicherheit or short STASI, which contradicted and violated those rules. A special unit of the Stasi operated covertly within the border guard units to prevent desertion of border guards. (Souce: Spiegel)

Also the fear of being shot at was not unreasonable. A number of East German border guards were shot at and killed by either the escapee itself or one of the helpers from West Germany or West Berlin.

The first border guard killed after the building of the Berlin Wall was Jörgen Schmidtchen, who was shot by two of his deserting comrades on 18th April 1962.

The exact number of deaths is unknown and varies depending on the source and over time. Here are some of the figures.

• State Attorney of Berlin (Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin): 86/169
  
• Inspector General of Berlin (Der Polizeipräsident von Berlin): at least 92
  
• Central registration office Salzgitter (Zentrale Erfassungsstelle Salzgitter): 114
  
• Central Auditing Agency for Government and Reunion delinquency (Zentrale Ermittlungsstelle für Regierungs- und Vereinigungskriminalität): 122
  
• Work Group "13th August" (Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August): over 200
  
• "Victims of the Wall" (Opfer der Mauer) by Werner Filmer and Heribert Schwan based on research at the Strausberg military archives: 216

The Museum at Checkpoint Charlie (Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie) published: 1,065 Border and Wall deaths

Breakdown with deaths before / after 13th August 1961

• Killed at the Berlin border (incl. Wall): 37 / 190
  
• Killed at German/German border: 247 / 237
  
• Killed/Died at Baltic Sea border: 17 / 164
  
• Killed border guards: 18 / 19
  
• Other deaths (incl. off East German ground): 59 / 77

People have names and each name has a story. Just mentioning figures is cold and without feelings. That should not be... here are the names of 136 identified and verified deaths (as of 1th August 2008) and the year when they died forcefully before their time.

Source: The joint research project of the "Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer" (Berlin Wall Memorial) and "Zentrums für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam" (Center for time based Historic Research Potsdam)

1961 Siekmann, Ida Litfin, Günter Hoff, Roland Urban, Rudolf Segler, Olga Lünser, Bernd Düllick, Udo Probst, Werner Lehmann, Lothar Wohlfahrt, Dieter Krüger, Ingo Feldhahn, Georg 1962 Schmiel, Dorit Jercha, Heinz Held, Philipp Schmidtchen, Jörgen (Border Guard) Böhme, Peter Brueske, Klaus Frank, Horst Göring, Peter (Border Guard) Haberlandt, Lutz Hannemann, Axel Glöde, Wolfgang Kelm, Erna Huhn, Reinhold (Border Guard) Noffke, Siegfried Fechter, Peter Wesa, Hans-Dieter Mundt, Ernst Seling, Günter (Border Guard) Walzer, Anton Plischke, Horst Reck, Ottfried Wiedenhöft, Günter 1963 Räwel, Hans Kutscher, Horst Kreitlow, Peter Muszynski, Wolf-Olaf Mädler, Peter Widera, Siegfried (Border Guard) Schröter, Klaus Schulz, Dietmar Berger, Dieter Schultz, Paul 1964 Hayn, Walter Philipp, Adolf Heike, Walter Gneiser, Rainer Wolscht, Norbert Trabant, Hildegard Mispelhorn, Wernhard Schultz, Egon (Border Guard) Wolf, Hans-Joachim Mehr, Joachim

1965 Unknown (N.N.) Buttkus, Christian Krzemien, Ulrich Hauptmann, Hans-Peter Döbler, Hermann Kratzel, Klaus Garten, Klaus Kittel, Walter Cyrius, Heinz Sokolowski, Heinz Kühn, Erich Schöneberger, Heinz 1966 Brandes, Dieter Block, Willi Schleusener, Lothar Hartmann, Jörg Marzahn, Willi Schulze, Eberhard Kollender, Michael Stretz, Paul Wroblewski, Eduard Schmidt, Heinz Senk, Andreas Kube, Karl-Heinz 1967 Sahmland, Max Willi Piesik, Franciszek 1968 Weckeiser, Elke Weckeiser, Dieter Mende, Herbert Lehmann, Bernd Krug, Siegfried Körner, Horst Henninger, Rolf (Border Guard) 1969 Lange, Johannes Kluge, Klaus-Jürgen Lis, Leo 1970 Wehhage, Eckhardt Wehhage, Christel Müller, Heinz Born, Willi Ehrlich, Friedhelm Thiem, Gerald Kliem, Helmut Friese, Christian-Peter 1971 Kabelitz, Rolf-Dieter Hoffmann, Wolfgang Kühl, Werner Beilig, Dieter 1972 Kullack, Horst Weylandt, Manfred Schulze, Klaus Katranci, Cengaver

1973 H., Holger Frommann, Volker Einsiedel, Horst Gertzki, Manfred Krobot, Siegfried 1974 Niering, Burkhard Sprenger, Johannes Savoca, Guiseppe 1975 Halli, Herbert Mert, Cetin Kiebler, Herbert Hennig, Lothar 1976 n/a 1977 Schwietzer, Dietmar Weise, Henri 1978 and 1979 n/a 1980 Steinhauer, Ulrich (Border Guard) Jirkowski, Marinetta 1981 Muschol, Dr. Johannes Starrost, Hans-Jürgen Taubmann, Thomas 1982 Freie, Lothar Fritz 1983 Proksch, Silvio 1984 Schmidt, Michael-Horst 1985 n/a 1986 Liebeke, Rainer Groß, René Mäder, Manfred Bittner, Michael 1987 Schmidt, Lutz 1988 n/a 1989 Diederichs, Ingolf Freudenberg, Winfried Gueffroy, Chris

There exist several memorials, which commemorate the victims of the Berlin Wall and German/German border. The most important ones are:

• Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer (Memorial "Berlin Wall") (includes 60 meters of border)
  Address/Location: Bernauer Straße / corner of Ackerstraße, 13355 Berlin-Mitte
  
• Gedenkstätte Günter Litfin (Memorial "Günther Litfin")
  Address/Location: Kieler Str. 2, 10115 Berlin-Mitte
  
• Parlament der Bäume (Memorial "Parliament of Trees")
  Address/Location: Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus, Promenade Schiffbauerdamm
  
• Gedenkort Weiße Kreuze (Memorial "White Crosses") at the Reichstag
  Address/Location: Reichstagufer, west of the memorial at Scheidemannstraße, south of the Reichstag-building
  
• Gedenkort Peter Fechter (Memorial "Peter Fechter")
  Address/Location: Zimmerstraße

... no more to say... signing off
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Cirque du Soleil – Criss Angel, new Tokyo and Macao Shows Updates

Hey folks, here is a quick update for what is going on with Cirque du Soleil.

The new Cirque du Soleil and Criss Angel's "Believe" show at Luxor was supposed to open September 1, 2008 for 15 previews through September 11, 2008 followed by a grand opening gala on September 12, 2008, instead, the gala opening has been pushed back to October and the show gets a "soft" opening on September 12, 2008.

The gala opening premiere date was first rescheduled for October 9, 2008 but then moved back a day to Friday, October 10, 2008, because October 9, 2008 is a major Jewish holiday.

It is now questionable, if I can make it to the show as I planned for September. I will probably be again in Vegas in November though, for a second chance. It’s a small bummer though.

Meanwhile, the names for the Cirque du Soleil shows for Tokyo and Macao were revealed and there have been some press conferences where I got some video footage from to get a small glimpse at the new shows.

The Tokyo show is called "Zed".

Here is a video that includes the web intro, some press conference footage and a TV spot in Japanese for the new Cirque du Soleil show that will premiere on October 1, 2008 at the Cirque du Soleil Theatre at Disney Resort Tokyo (Disneyland).



Backup Link to Video on YouTube.

Also see the official "ZED" website for ticket purchases and more.

"Zed" Show Creators

François Girard -Writer and Director
Line Tremblay - Director of Creation
Francois Seguin - Set Designer
Renee April - Costume Designer
Rene Dupere - Composer and Arranger
David Finn - Lighting Designer
Debra Brown - Choreographer
Jean-Jacques Pillet - Choreographer
Francois Bergeron - Sound Designer
Scott Osgood - Acrobatic Equipment and Rigging Designer
Florence Pot - Acrobatic Performance Designer
Eleni Uranis - Make-up Designer

The upcoming show by Cirque du Soleil at the Sands Venetian Macao resort and casino at the Cotai Strip in Macao, China (Asia) is called "Zaia" (Work name Cosmos).

Here is a 9:07 min preview for the show. This video took me some considerable work to do. The show is expected to open on 26. August next month.



Backup Link to Video on YouTube.

You can tell that the quality of the individual video sources differs significantly, but you will get an idea of what the show will be like and that is the whole purpose of the video.

I could (if I would have it) show a multi-angle 7.1 Dolby digital HDTV-DVD version of the entire show and it would also just be a preview of the show, because Cirque shows have to be experienced live. There is no canned substitute for this yet.

"Zaia" Show Creators

Guy Laliberté - Guide
Gilles Ste-Croix - SVP, Creative Content
Gilles Maheu - Writer and Director
Neilson Vignola - Director of Creation
Guillaume Lord - Set Designer
Dominique Lemieux - Costume Designer
Violaine Corradi - Composer & Musical Director
Martino Müller - Choreographer
Jeff Hall - Acrobatic Choreogpraher
Rob Bollinger - Acrobatic Performance Designer
Guy Lemire - Acrobatic Equipment & Rigging
Axel Morgenthaler - Lighting Designer
Jimmy Lakatos - Projection Designer
Raymond Saint-Jean - Projection Designer
Steve Dubuc - Sound Designer
Nathalie Gagné - Make-up Designer
Leonid Leykin - Clown Acts Designer

I also got some video footage from new Cirque du Soleil special performances. I updated my Cirque du Soleil primer with those, so go and check it out. You can also access my latest Cirque du Soleil videos on YouTube.

That is it for now. Signing off

Carsten aka Roy/SAC