Geotag Hack for Garmin Nüvi/Panoramio Photos

How to manually geotag photos for the Garmin Nüvi 1490
Does NOT require the Garmin Connect software.


Recently (yesterday) I was nominated to read up on and figure out the Garmin Nüvi 1490 GPS unit for a friend of the family. Well, looking through the features, I found that photos can be loaded into the unit and displayed in various locations, such as the bootup screen, a simple slideshow, or even as a navigate-to-photo feature!

Now, I assumed that somehow the unit would read out Geotagging meta data from any old photo you might tag in something like Picasa and copy to the unit. But this is not so. Actually, Garmin has signed a contract of some sort with Panoramio, an online photo-sharing site specifically for photos of general public areas, usually landscapes, historical photos, or any other pictures based mainly on a location. By connecting the Nuvi to the computer, one can navigate to http://connect.garmin.com/photos, browse the map for specific Panoramio photo, which, if they have geotag information loaded, will show up on the map, and add it to a separate dock area, which, by using the Garmin Connect software, can be downloaded directly to the GPS unit.

All well and good, except that in the last month and a half, I've uploaded about 20+ photos to Panoramio and NONE of them are showing up on the Garmin Connect map, though they specifically said in the Panoramio forums that they would after some time. And to top it off, a photo that my dad posted about four years ago is also not appearing! Not very on top of this little feature, are we?

Besides that, all of the other threads on Panoramio boiled down to "downloading Panoramio photos to your computer is illegal" and NONE of them gave any helpful information.

So, I decided to do some research and figure out just exactly how the Garmin Connect tool synchronized with the photos feature. When I plugged the unit into the computer via USB, two new drives were mounted: the Garmin Nuvi drive, which is the image of the internal memory, and a Removable Disk, which was accessing the Micro-SD expansion port.

Navigating into the Garmin Nuvi drive (on my machine, I:), there are a number of files and folders:

.System
Garmin
GPX
help
JPEG
keyboards
Reports
Screenshot
Text
Vehicle
Voice
.Volume.icns
autorun.inf
nuvi_drive.ico

Navigating into the GPX folder, I find three files:

Current.gpx
Panoramio_20110810T103416.gpx
Position.gpx

From my previous research using our own GPS unit, the GPSMAP 60CSx, I know that GPX files are an XML-based file that can be opened in any text editor, and record specific gps coordinates along with names of the locations, timestamps and sources. Knowing that the Garmin stored everything in GPX made decoding it so much easier! With this knowledge, I was able to determine that GPX/Current.gpx is the database that stored saved searches, tracks and tagged photos downloaded from Panoramio, GPX/Panoramio_20110810T103416.gpx is the list of geotagged photos downloaded from Garmin Connect/Panoramio, and GPX/Position.gpx is probably the unit's current position.

Assuming that the Current.gpx file is updated regularly based on what the the unit is detecting, I decided to decode the Panoramio_20110810T103416.gpx file. And it worked! The conclusion I came to was the following: photos downloaded from GC/Panoramio are not tagged in the unit using JPEG metadata, and the unit can't detect JPG location metatags. Instead, Panoramio also sends location data alongside the photos that the unit downloads, and injects this information into the Panoramio_*.gpx file. THEN when the photos are opened in the viewer, the proper location-based tools are activated.

Here is a waypoint for a specific Panoramio photo:

<wpt lat="40.615972" lon="-105.171969">
<name>Northwest of Fort Collins</name>
<src>Panoramio <link href="Garmin/JPEG/Panoramio_11075531.jpg">
<type>image/jpeg </link>
<link href="http://www.panoramio.com/user/965071">
<text>WildernessShots.com</text>
<type>text/html</type>
</link>
<link href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo/11075531">
<type>text/html</type>
</link>
<sym>Scenic Area</sym>
<extensions>
<gpxx:WaypointExtension xmlns:gpxx="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtensions/v3">
<gpxx:Categories>
<gpxx:Category>Photos</gpxx:Category>
</gpxx:Categories>
</gpxx:WaypointExtension>
</extensions>
</wpt>

With this information, I think it would be fairly self-explanatory to edit this file. I have yet to actually try it out, but when I figure it out, I'll get back with you!
------------
SUCCESS!!! I simply added a new <wpt> ... </wpt> section to the panoramio_20110810T103416.gpx file and when I rebooted the unit (unplugged it from the computer), the photo appeared in the list AND had the location tools in the lower corner, along with my username and all that!! WONDERFUL!

And just as I suspected, Current.gpx was also updated to reflect these changes, even though I didn't do a thing to them.

So all that needs to be done to add photos to your Garmin, and tag them without worrying about the Garmin Connect/Panoramio tool, simply copy the photos into one of the locations where pictures are kept on the unit. The tool downloads them to /Garmin/JPEG/, but I'm sure /JPEG/ will do just fine (/JPEG/ is where all the sample photos are kept).

Then edit the /GPX/Panoramio_<datecode>.gpx file and add a new waypoint using the <wpt> ... </wpt> tags as shown above. Or if you have a secondary program to save GPX files, I'm sure there is a way to just fix this up to save in this format. Also, the datecode in the filename is in the following format: yyyymmddThhmmss, so in my case, it was 20110810T103416. Just to keep up with the consistency, I also changed the filename to Panoramio_20110810T173100.gpx.

So in the end, here is the waypoint I manually and successfully added, along with the required XML and GPX definition tags:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gpx xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/gpx.xsd" version="1.1" creator="http://connect.garmin.com/">

<wpt lat="40.631839" lon="-105.143142">
<name>Sunrise Over the Neighborhood</name>
<src>Panoramio</src>
<link href="Garmin/JPEG/56784165.jpg">
<type>image/jpeg</type>
</link>
<link href="http://www.panoramio.com/user/5873911">
<text>Daniel P</text>
<type>text/html</type>
</link>
<link href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo/56784165">
<type>text/html</type>
</link>
<sym>Scenic Area</sym>
<extensions>
<gpxx:WaypointExtension xmlns:gpxx="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtensions/v3">
<gpxx:Categories>
<gpxx:Category>Photos</gpxx:Category>
</gpxx:Categories>
</gpxx:WaypointExtension>
</extensions>
</wpt>

</gpx>

I'm sure if you wanted to add non-panoramio files, it would be just as easy. Just change/remove the few <link> tags to reflect something else and you'd be good to go!

Now to write a program to do this for me...

ISO vs. ZIP/RAR

What is an ISO file? An ISO file put simply is a perfect copy of a disc (usually optical) stored in one file on the hard drive of a computer. ISO is uncompressed and contains even free space of said disc.

According to Wikipedia, "An ISO image (International Organization for Standardization) is an archive file (also known as a disc image) of an optical disc, composed of the data contents of every written sector of an optical disc, including the optical disc file system." (Wikipedia, ISO Image, June 2011)

This varies from a compressed archive such as ZIP, RAR, TAR, GZ, BZ2, etc, in that an archive file contains only the files and all unused sectors are removed to save space. With this in mind, one would think that an ISO file was simply an uncompressed archive.

HOWEVER, this is not entirely true. Even uncompressed, an archive file still removes completely-empty bytes. There's no need to zip up the files of an entire 40GB disc and end up with a 40GB file, unless there was actually 40GB of data that was filling the entire thing up! If there was only 15GB on a 40GB disc and you archived the entire disc uncompressed, you would end up with a 15GB file.

This is not true in the case of an ISO file. When you create an image of a 4GB DVD, you will end up with a complete 4GB ISO file, even if half the disc was unused.

This is useful because the main point of ISO files is to be able to create a disc image file and re-burn it to another disc, thus making a copy. In this case, file locations are important in addition to file data, and an burning an ISO image, we are sure that all of the files are laid down on the surface of the disc in exactly the same configuration as the master. Of course, this would only REALLY matter if you were dealing with a raw DVD video that would be more reliant on the burning process than an MPEG-2 file burned to the DVD as data.

Ubuntu Server - Changing Screen Resolution with GRUB2

Recently I drug out my old Dell dinosaur (Dimension) from the closet and decided to try installing Ubuntu server onto it.

Well, all went well until I also attempted to add the Xubuntu-Desktop package, so I could better run around and do things in there. A quick update for an nVidia graphics driver froze the computer directly after login, and all the stuff I found in the forums didn't really help that much, except for possibly uninstalling all the packages that xubuntu-desktop stuck in there. Since there wasn't a lot on there (except for maybe the neat desktop backgrounds that seem to change with every version of any Ubuntu release), I figured a fresh install would be best.

After reinstalling the OS, I did a repository update, which screwed up my screen resolution. My monitor can handle 1280x1024, but the update had changed it to 640x480.

Note: This is Ubuntu Server 10.04.

How do you change screen resolution within a pure terminal interface? GRUB2.

Around version 9.04, Ubuntu upgraded the bootloader from GRUB to GRUB2. This is way more confusing, but can still be figured out.

For the sake of simplicity, there is no longer /boot/grub/menu.lst. It's just not there, nor will it be used if you create it. Instead, all the configurable options are now moved into /boot/grub/grub.cfg

The problem is though, with the command $ sudo update-grub or on a kernel update, this file is overwritten. Therefore, this file should not be editted.

But where does GRUB pull all this information when it DOES do an update?

All the config options are actually stored in the /etc/grub.d folder. This folder are 7 sub-files:

• 00_header
• 05_debian_theme
• 10_hurd
• 10_linux
• 20_memtest86+
• 30_os-prober
• 40_custom

On grub-update, all of these files are executed and mashed together and copied into grub.cfg. But these files don't change ever. Therefore, you can change them yourself, adding entries and such.

I don't know all the details, but the process for adding more operating systems is much more complicated than before. They've decided to use some C-style function for each menu entry, rather than the old way of a simple list with tabbed sub-values.

You can see the way menu items are placed by looking directly at the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file and scrolling down to the 10_linux section.

In mine, a single final entry appears like the following:

menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.32.32-generic-pae (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os { recordfail insmod ext2 set root='(hd0,1)' search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 0689cdb7-786d-4a68-b14b-634b85c9961b linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-32-generic-pae root=UUID=UUID=0689cdb7-786d-4a68-b14b-634b85c9961b ro quiet initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-32-generic-pae}

All this is somehow scripted into the 10_linux file. You won't see this exact entry anywhere in the file, but instead they've created a way for it to execute a 'find all options and translate them into this format' when you do sudo update-grub.

But anyway, back to the issue at hand. My screen resolution is messed up. I said GRUB2 was the solution to fix this. The options for screen resolutions are stored in /etc/grub.d/00_header.

Open the file in an editor, and scroll down until you see the if statement:

  if [ "x${GRUB_GFXMODE}" = "x" ] ; then GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 ; fi

Simply change 640x480 to whatever your desired (and of course, possible) screen resolution is, save, update-grub and reboot.

Oh, and if it matters, a read through the Official Ubuntu GRUB2 Docs might help.

---

I just now decided to read further into that help file right there...apparently you can also change screen resolution in the /etc/default/grub file, as well as turn on countdowns and things to make sure that you can actually use the menu.

In /etc/default/grub:

GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 - Change to something your screen can handle and that you want. Maximum is usually okay if you're good on small text. They say in the documentation, that you can comma-separate values also, in case one doesn't work. Just put them in a DESCENDING preferred order, usually high to low.

Also make sure you uncomment the line by removing the # symbol at the beginning of it.

The vbeinfo command in the shell should give you your valid resolutions.

Also, if you find that there is no menu displayed, you can turn on timeouts in this file.

if GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT is set to something above 0, a message will be displayed on bootup saying something like, "Press any key for the menu..", unless of course, the GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET is set to true. Then you will see a black screen for that amount of time.

If GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT is empty (GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=), GRUB_TIMEOUT will be used instead, and if this is a number greater than 0, the menu will be fully displayed every time you boot up.

Just remember to run sudo update-grub after editing.

Garfield!!

A long time ago, I discovered that Jim Davis, the author of Garfield comics, syndicates his stuff with uComics. An interesting, and probably well-known, fact is that uComics actually stores the images from a particular cartoon in a fairly friendly directory structure! At least, they do with Garfield comics. So I was able to do some back-door hacks and write a simple little script that would in essence harvest Garfield comics directly from uComics.

Apart from being able to download a year's worth at a time (any more would probably kill my computer and the web host), I also was able to create a script that would grab today's Garfield comic and display it with general navigation buttons to yesterday..or really any day since it was first begun in 1978.

Anyhow, I have been hosting this script on both my personal web server and on Brinkster. Today, I 'upgraded' my script, cloning it to a new page which is embed-friendly:

• Original Garfield Script
• Embed Page

The fun of an embed page is that I can put the proper code into any webpage that accepts HTML and this will display these comics inline!

So, to embed Garfield on YOUR website/blog, simple paste the following into anything that accepts HTML (on Blogger, this is an HTML/Javascript widget).

<iframe src="http://ppsstudios.brinkster.net/TodaysGarfield_Simple.asp" frameborder=0 width=100% height=240px>Your browser does not support iframe.</iframe>

If all goes well, you should see a floating box with the comic and a few links displayed right on your page (such as the one in the footer below)!

Step Seq.

Recently I discovered a 'game' on Kongregate called Step Seq. Apparently there are electronic devices that look exactly like this simulation. Their point is to create music on a time and frequency grid. I've been playing around with this one, seen at http://www.kongregate.com/games/quickfingerz/step-seq.

The fun of this is that I've also been video-recording a few of these and have been posting them to Youtube.

The few I've uploaded include an initial boring tutorial and then three more samples. They can be seen with the following links:

• Step Seq. Tutorial
• Clip 12
• Clip 16
• Clip 17
• Clip 19

I've also created a Youtube playlist for all of my Step Seq. uploads.

View playlist in new window

New Videos and Subscription

Greetings, all! It's been a while since I did any animation. My attention has been more on live videography of various things including game and oscilloscope capturing. However, just today I put together something like four new animations, plus one overdubbed video of myself whistling three parts to a song. Vain me, eh?

Anyhow, here is a list:

• The Hand
• Quack Ducks 2
• MUSHii - ASCII Animation
• Whistling: Chariots of Fire Theme

In addition to my own new videos, I am pleased to announce that I've connected up with Andrea90723. As of yet, she has not uploaded anything, but hopefully soon we'll be able to expect some fun stuff from her!

Since number of views is the prime goal of Youtube, visit these, link to them, embed them wherever and subscribe! Or just ignore me altogether. I really shouldn't care THAT much.

Step Seq.

A few days ago I discovered an amazing music program hosted on the game site Kongregate. Apparently the creator, the guy who runs QuickFingers.net is in some sort of contest for a LOT of money to see who can make the coolest music game on that site. Well, his was on top when I checked a few days ago, and I tried it out. It was AWESOME!! The game he created is called Step Seq (try it at www.kongregate.com/games/quickfingerz/step-seq).

Really, this is just like any hardware-based step sequencer, which is apparently some sort of grid of buttons that you can press and it will modulate a midi device and play back notes. Each row on the grid is a single note, while each column is some sort of time index. The sequencer part is based on a concept that the grid will play itself over and over and you can change the settings each time.

Well, this game-based one here is absolutely incredible. When I first looked at it, it was barely viewed and still in the testing stages, meaning that the rating numbers were not high. This was ONLY because it was fairly new. I played with it and immediately rated it 5 stars and favorited it. When I came back the next day, it had 10,000+ views already. Obviously this thing is a huge hit.

Well, yesterday I recorded a video of my 11th song using version 0.3.

You can view it at: http://youtu.be/UOFSO7n-obo


It was done as sort of a tutorial, so it's a bit long.

When I came back just like 20 minutes ago, I decided I wanted to record another video. Mostly my songs are fairly random. I start out with a single note and see where it goes from there. So far, they've ALL been different. Well, I clicked through the mandatory get started screens when loading and then started playing, when I noticed the Pad panel was missing!

I looked around and saw that instead of the percussion being a selection of a few different pre-programmed sequences, it suddenly had its own entire submenu! That's when I realised that sometime during the night or today, he updated it to version 0.4! I explored around (which you will see in the following video), and found that not only had he given users the ability to create their own percussion as well as the previously-available instrument 1 and 2, but there was an entirely new menu of Advanced options. This gives the user the ability to change keys, change the actual instrument definitions of Instr 1 and Instr 2, and even edit the reverb and echo settings! TOTALLY a surprise!

The only thing I hope for now is that once he reaches version 1.0 or something, he makes an installable offline program. Loading it from a website is very taxing on my computer, and I usually have to turn off everything in order to play with it, but if it were a standalone program, I think most of those problems could be alleviated.

In any case, I'm totally loving this thing. Not only is it letting my creativity out, but the features he's adding are making the thing so much better many times over.

One thing my mom suggested is that I make ringtones from it. I think I'll do that soon!

Here's the sample of version 0.4: http://youtu.be/jgsZEvezWaI

Filehost

I've created an Apache-based filehost. This is generally for short-term downloads that I want to make available to certain people. Really, I don't expect to leave files in this folder up for very long, but only long enough for people to download. How many ways can I say this?

Anyway, you'll find the filehost at http://ppsstudios.myftp.org. If you see anything there that you don't think should be there, give me a buzz with the contact link, which is not at this exact moment available, but will be in a few minutes hopefully.

Enjoy!

Faster Internet is (at least for now) better.

We've just gone live with our newly activated ADSL connection. As of 5:00 this evening, I was able to plug in the aforementioned modem that we bought on Friday and successfully connect to first Qwest's initial login page, then, well, everywhere else! Of course, everybody's test to see if they're connected is Google. Well, not everybody. The modem and the Qwest disc would rather you connect to their homepage, but it's still essentially the same thing.

I had to spend a little time figuring out the best configuration, and I decided to go with the transparent bridge setup, where the modem simply acts as DSL-to-Ethernet translator and all other router functions are disabled. In the same manner, I am able to put in all of the primary internet login information directly into the Wi-Fi router and everything works like a charm.

Of course, with this setup, port forwarding is working wonderfully. I've already opened ports from a telnet server that I have running on my main computer, as well as a few webservers that I have not yet been able to figure out permissions on. For some reason, only the localhost can access it. I'll be sure and fix that before I give any updates on where they are or what they do.

When Andrea got home from work and settled in, she turned on her laptop and managed to get on without telling me. I was a bit suprised, mostly because I was still configuring the whole system and relying on the assumption that nobody would be immediately demanding service from it. But I haven't heard any complaints yet. She had her laptop down on the coffee table with Astronomy Picture of the Day loaded. I mentioned it and her exact words were, "I was waiting for it to load and it just appeared!" So obviously this system is better than I had anticipated. Apparently 1.5Mbps is a TON better than 28Kbps...nearly 54 times as better in fact.

Anyway, yes, we are up and running and everything is functioning perfectly. There are no extraneous redundancies such as making the modem work as a second router/firewall, so we don't have double-network problems to work through. Of course, we still have to call Integrity and get all our stuff filtered, and since we're all on a pretty much parallel network, it won't be easy to get everyone proxied through them unless we install the hardware solution. That's about the only way I could think to make filtering work...and how would that affect my port forwarding requirements? I really really don't know. I hope this works.

Yep! Everything's just fine and dandy here!!

DSL and Networking

I've always hated self-help books you find at B&N or the library on how to set up your own home network. In short, they always would assume that you had high-speed internet coming into your house and that you could create a standard configuration. However, up until about 30 minutes ago, we were using dialup for our main internet connection.

I purchased a wi-fi router a few months ago which was able to tie all of the computers in the house together so we could theoretically manage LAN games, streaming audio from one computer to another and sharing a gigantic hard drive. The only thing I had to consciously do was ignore every instance of "how to hook your router to the internet" because routers don't really take into account dialup connections. Here is how it looked:

If you notice, I had a nice little tie point for the four computers (actually, I couldn't make Laptop 2 connect due to Windows Vista finickiness, but it would have worked if I'd been able to sit down and fix it up). But this tie point was not at all able to access the internet. Instead, I had to run a proxy on Laptop 1, which has a built-in dialup modem. That way, Computer 1 and Computer 2 could route THROUGH that proxy via the internal network I had set up and access the internet just fine. Very nice..and workable.

Of course, everybody who has anything to say about anything will say that running dialup through a proxy or internet connection sharing is pretty pointless, and I have to agree. 28Kbps (3.5KB per second) running on even just one computer is painful to deal with. Splitting it between two or more would be one of the most annoying problems you'd run in to. BUT my point was, I wanted to make it work! Putting annoyances aside, will it even WORK? Of course. The picture above shows the configuration that actually worked for me.

In fact, Laptop 1 and Laptop 2 both had dialup modems to connect to the internet, as you can see, but if I had successfully been able to get Laptop 2 onto the wi-fi network, I could have routed that through the proxy so that Laptop 1 would have been the only machine with a real internet connection.

However, just 30 minutes ago, Mom and I got on the phone with our phone company and had them add DSL internet to our landline phone service!! FINALLY I can standardize my router and use the modem port on the back of it...and forget all this proxy and internet connection sharing nonsense that I had to work with.

At least, they said that by Wednesday the line should be activated with DSL. And by Wednesday, they'll have the self-installation disc with all the tutorials on how to make sure it works. I'm excited. We're planning on stopping by Best Buy this afternoon to pick up the $40 modem. Of course, that's a whole new snag. People assume that you don't already have a standalone router that cannot connect directly to the internet. They think that you don't have ANYTHING and that you'll just buy a router-modem combo, which is very true in the STANDARD case.

Of course, the combination router-modem box will cost $100 or more. And the standalone router I have now was $100 by itself. Via marketing logic, you would think that my $100 router by itself is of a higher quality than a router + modem that costs $100. That's my guess.

Anyway, I went to Best Buy earlier this week to check out what was possible and it turns out that for a mere $40, they also have a standalone DSL modem. Of course, there's only one choice in that sense, meaning a DSL modem is a DSL modem. There probably isn't a lot you can do with it apart from hooking it up. And by hooking it up, I mean, attaching it to the phone line, running an ethernet (CAT5) cable from the modem to...the router or a single computer, which I can do both, installing whatever software on that computer (or a computer that can access router functions), and accessing the modem from inside the home network.

This I am very excited about...but still somewhat confused. The phone company, in order to set us up, had to know how many computers would be connecting to the internet at any given time. But..why do you need to know? I can put a TON of computers in my home network. My router is a very nice one and can take probably hundreds of simultaneous connections. Why does the ONE wire that comes from the modem and that plugs into the WAN plug on the router need to know how many computers are behind it?

Unless somehow the router and the modem together are going to give each individual computer its own internet IP address. I don't know! I guess we'll find out. I had almost hoped and was at least planning that the router itself would be given an IP address on the internet and that the computers behind it would be able to "route" through to access the internet, but any What's-My-IP web scripts would only see the router's IP as accessing their sites/services, not the Laptop 1, Laptop 2, Computer 1, Computer 2 that's accessing the router.

Maybe there's something I don't understand, but that's how I thought this was going to work. But really, I should know by Wednesday how everything works. I told them that I was up for installing it myself instead of having a tech come out and fix us up for $50. Save money...and learn the ins and outs yourself. Not that I'd want to hack my connection. I just don't want to be one who stands around hoping the tech knows what he's doing because I don't. I want to know what he's doing also!

All in all, I'm excited. And you should be too. After all, if this is a success, I'll be able to finally host a website from my very own computer!! No more of this Brinkster stuff for me.

Youtube (Again)

Ten great uploads just today!! Nine of the ten are mine (and Andrea's) first Linerider lines that I didn't ever get a chance to capture until a few weeks ago. Check them out here.

Also, Dad brought home his Batman figurines we got him on a birthday cake a long time ago. Well, I just couldn't resist an animation.


View it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhKnMy6MVqE

EVEN MORE VIDEOS

Seems like all I post about anymore is new videos.

And today is not an exception. I have uploaded nearly......15 new videos within the last two weeks or so. And in fact, most of them are linerider captures that I've made within the last year. The other few are fractal zoom captures and a quick clip of an event I volunteered with last week. Which was AWESOME!

Anyway, go to http://www.youtube.com/user/depwl9992#g/u and check them out!

New Classic Uploads

I've uploaded about five new classic animations from 1999.


Lego Wars


Lego Wars - Bloopers


Lego Wars - Ambush


Horse Hunt


Beanie Portraits
.
.
.

I said five, didn't I? Well, "Beanie Portraits" are still processing, so that'll it'll be a little while until those are ready. Until then you'll get an error on that embed/link.

I found the ORIGINAL tape we did Holy Living Man on, and there I found the whiteboard-based credits Ben wrote. I'll try to get that portion of it up in a couple days, and if popular polls request it, I might splice the two back together or remix the video and upload it in its full-length glory.

ALSO, this original tape contains Star Travels (unabridged). It was a VERY tedious video that I animated which was based more on the background music than any specific plot. Thus, there was a lot of sitting around staring at the same shot while we waited for the music to finish. When I dubbed it over to the tape that I've gotten all of these from so far, I fast-forwarded through these long parts, so the audio would cut out and the dead space would speed up. However, it's just not the same as the original lame cut. Therefore, with my discovery of the original tape, I'll be uploading the full-length version. Oh the horror.

Classic Animation Now Live!!

After weeks of mixing and testing and getting everything just right, I've finally uploaded the first videos of the classic animations we filmed back in 1999.

See the full playlist at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F1B815064BEE9BA6.

Youtube Shorts - Sony Vegas Testing

Recently (I think I mentioned this before) I found a trial version of Sony Vegas 10 Pro, an excellent piece of software for video mixing in Windows. Well, from Christmas until New Years, I took four videos which I later (just today) finally mixed up at the fastest possible framerate.

See how you like them by watching:

• Monkeys
  
• Spinning Bug Base
  
• Smooth Motion 1
  
• Smooth Motion 2
  

Just in case you were wondering, PPS Classic is still in the process of being converted. I'm also planning a nice intro for them, so such things as lipsynchORswim's Holy Living Man videos will be up soon: as soon as I can get the intros and credits (and no they will not be too long ;)) mixed in.

Yet another short intro

I've posted another prospective intro. See how you all like PPS Short - Black Exploding Cube.

I was able to download a trial copy of Sony Vegas, which I'm experimenting with. The cool thing here is that this software will allow you to make 1-frame per picture animations, unlike Movie Maker which is limited to 1/8th of a second durations on each picture. So if your video is something like 30 frames/second, you can get 30 pictures down into that second! The video will be extremely fast, yes, but also extremely smooth despite the size of your jumps, which is the attraction here.

Merry Christmas!

It's Christmastime...again. Such a cliche statement. Anyway, here's a little thing I put together for ya'll.


Open video in a new window.

Short Intros

Here are a couple more intro shorts for you to choose from. I'll update the poll to reflect them:

• PPSStudios Short Intro - Emerge
  
• PPSStudios Short Intro - Cube
  

Again, comments and suggestions are welcome.

PPSStudios Intro Video

Take a look at my three new videos..actually, I'll make it four.

• Short Intro Black
  
• Short Intro White
  
• Short Intro Ambient
  
• Long Intro
  

Comment on these and pick your favorite. I'm trying to put together some kind of intro video for my Youtube uploads and would appreciate any feedback. Also feel free to make suggestions on improvements and effects and the like.

Here's my goal: something that's short, but really neat looking. I don't want it to be as long as the Long Intro video. 30-40 seconds for an intro is just too long. If it could be under ten seconds, that'd be ideal (that's 80 pictures or less at top MovieMaker speed). Something that says "PPSStudios" or "A PPSStudios Production", and possibly "Classic" for the older videos which are still in the process of being ripped.

Maybe I'll put up a poll just so we can get a real tally system. BTW, the short intros are quite small (600KB or so each), so it shouldn't take too long to buffer them and view them in full.