When Youtube network connections are slow and the video stops frequently …

The good news is that tonight, our Youtube viewing experience is back to the way it used to be. After a month of very slow Youtube video delivery with frequent stops and buffering, we are back tonight to playing videos as they should always play, which is, without stopping!

Somethings I learned that may or may not be helpful – when playing a video that is having problems, right click (Windows) or Ctrl-click (Mac OS X) with the mouse on top of the video – a pop up menu will be displayed.

Click “Report Playback issue” to report problems to Google.

Click “Take Speed Test” – and then right click and choose “Show video info” (you can click this on any video too). At the upper right you will see some interesting data about the video and the video streaming.

The other night, I was watching this barely move along at 100 kbps to 200 kbps – and then mysteriously, very very late, it popped up to around 2 to 3 Mbps, which is more like what we ought to be seeing.

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Panasonic’s newest cameras to interface with iPhone and Android phones

BUT:

Panasonic currently doesn’t have plans to allow developers to create apps for its cameras but it does not rule anything for the future and will continue to evaluate the development of the connected camera market.

via photokina 2012: Interview with Panasonic • MegaPixel.

Arghhhhh. As a software engineer, I would really like to see software development kits for these embedded systems. Why not?

At the 2012 CES, a Nikon Field Engineer told me Nikon would not provide an SDK as it would enable 3rd party apps to potentially tarnish the Nikon camera’s quality. I said, “You mean like how iPhone apps have tarnished the iPhone?” Heh.

I couldn’t resist. He understood what I meant but said Nikon’s executive management was then opposed to opening up their cameras.

Which is funny because in August, Nikon announced an Android powered camera! And its a nice camera too!

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Using a hybrid video frame rate for 3D (or 2D)

Is Variable Frame Rate Better than High Frame Rate for 3D?.

There are times, in video, where we want 30 fps – but that can result in jittery motion if the shutter speed is fast. We can either use a longer shutter speed (e.g. 1/30th of a second) to blur motion, or we could shoot at higher frame rates (60 fps).

The authors propose shooting subjects that have fast action in 60 fps but continuing to shoot slower moving subjects in 30 fps. In post production, the entire production can be rendered as 60 fps by doubling up the 30 fps frame.

They did their tests, by the way, for 3D video. 3D likes good detail and does not like lots of motion blur, complicated the decision: how to render detailed 3D without ending up with motion blur problems.

(Actually, the link is to a PAL world discussion where they do thinks in 25 or 50 fps. I translated to 30/60 fps for the North American audience. Also, I did some similar tests sort of along the lines of the authors, but was just playing around with 720p/60 for 3D and found the results were much better than I had expected. But that also may have depended on the inexpensive cameras I was using.)