Flying Scooter video now available...

The Flying Scooters video I promised in the Ponchartrain Flyers thread is now available on my web site in the "adventures" section. It's a 5.5 Mb QuickTime/3ivx MPEG 4 clip entitled "Flying Scooters with ACE Pilots".

Enjoy! This should show you what "snapping" is all about. :)

What version of Quicktime do you use? At least I could here the snapping.

I only got audio too. I have all my quicktime stuff up to date... at least it sounded insane. :)

I am having trouble with your quicktime file as well.

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Do the Moo Shoo!

Guess us Mac users are outta luck :( It's exactly what you state on that page about QT not playing cause of the codec. Hmmmm *downloads everything in sight.....
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Brad Sherman
"Crying is for little girls, babies and men who just had their ears ripped off!" - Oobedoob "Scoobi-doobi" Benubi, Thumb Wars
Arrowed!

Sorry...

I'm kind of stuck with QuickTime because that's what Avid will create and I don't have an add-on encoder like Jeff does. Besides, I don't want to make anybody use Media Player; I think Microsoft crossed a line they shouldn't be allowed to cross with the EULA for that one.

Anyway, the basic problem is that the DIVX group hasn't gotten off their collective asses and finished the compliant MPEG-4 encoder for Mac OS yet, and I don't have QuickTime Pro yet so (as my page clearly states where it says, "This probably won't play on your computer the first time") I used the 3ivx codec, which is also MPEG-4, which QT-6 should be able to play, but won't because the encoded stream is marked "3ivx" instead of "mpeg-4". There's a link to them on the same page as the movie...they're at http://www.3ivx.com. For Windows there is a painless installer (you don't even need to restart). I'm not sure how it installs into MacOS 9, but under OS X you need to put the 3ivx codec into /Library/QuickTime (to make it available to all users; you may have to override ownership of the directory to do that) or into ~/Library/QuickTime (to make it available to "you").

3ivx is a really nice codec; so far, of all the codecs I have tried, it has given me the best picture quality/data rate ratio, which is typical for any MPEG-4 codec. Note that Windows Media Player isn't really compliant MPEG-4, but the real MPEG-4 is similar. And I promise I will eventually upgrade to QT-Pro because I really do hate making people jump through hoops to view web content. Apple's MPEG-4 codec is supposedly pretty good, too.

Sorry about the inconvenience...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

UPDATE as well LOL......I just downloaded the 3ivxwhatchamacalitthingamajig and i get video! No sound though, but I am all too familiar with the shudder of snaps. Thanks for putting that online, now I can actually show people what these things do!
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Brad Sherman
"Crying is for little girls, babies and men who just had their ears ripped off!" - Oobedoob "Scoobi-doobi" Benubi, Thumb Wars
Arrowed!

Keep searching and don't give up hope just yet, Brad! I was able to view the video with sound on my Powerbook. If I knew which codec was making that possible I would let you know, but unfortunately (for you) I was able to view it on my first try.

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James Draeger
-Captain Sarcasm (aka Sour Boy)

Hmmm...I updated my QuickTime and downloaded the codec thing, but I still get nothing. It downloads and plays, but all I see is a white screen with no sound.

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Knott's Unlimited
http://www.knottsunlimited.com
"Your Guide To The Farm"

Okay, I watched it. I still don't understand what snapping is. Can anyone explain this to me in detail? I've never ridden flying scooters and I've only seen them at one or two parks. I think I heard the snapping noise in the video, but I had no idea what I was looking for. Was it when they went sideways?

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I was asked to describe X in one word. The word? -- OhmygoshwhathaveIgottenmyselfintothisisthescariest
thingintheworldhelpmeIamgoingtodieAHHHH!!!
*** This post was edited by haux 3/9/2003 2:55:17 AM ***

Nice vid Rideman! I noticed that you forgot to change the headline on the page though which is still from the Idlewild picnic.

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Jonathan Hawkins
Starcoasters.com
"There is a cluster of bees at the top of the lift. Sorry for the inconvenience."

haux: Watch for the cable. Right at about the 18 second mark, one tub goes by really high, containing somebody in an orange Stark Raven Mad shirt. The tub right behind that flies in almost to the center of the ride and stalls with a big loop in the forward suspension cable. Oh wait, you can't see the cable on that one because of the compression. But you can see that the nose of that tub is pointed upward at about 40 degrees. You can also see that when that tub gets near the center of the ride, right in front of the camera, its nose drops suddenly, the back end kicks up in the air, the tub jerks skyward, and you hear a frightening "KACHUNK!!" as the cable pulls tight.

StarCoasters: Thanks. I have fixed that little problem. It seems I can't change or add a movie page without screwing up some reference on it somewhere (the Idlewild movie is still up at ..movie.html, but obviously I used its page as a template for ..pilots.html).

SpongeBob: After you installed the codec, did you restart QuickTime? The simplest way is to restart your browser, but just closing and re-opening the page should do that, and the browser should be smart enough to play back the video from the cache. Or, save the file on disk and open it directly with QT. Again, if you didn't directly save the file, go to your browser cache and look for a .mov file that is 5.5 Mb that was created in that session to save yourself a 5Mb download. Once you have the codec it should play properly, but the trick is that you really need to have the codec before you play the movie 'cause QuickTime doesn't update its codec list 'on the fly.'

Draegs: QT-6? The audio is MPEG-4, which QT-6 handles natively. The 3ivx codec works with anything after QT-4, but QT-4 and QT-5 don't have MPEG-4 audio, and the 3ivx codec is video only. So if you have video but not audio, you're probably using an earlier verison of QT. That doesn't explain Brad's problem, as he just downloaded QT-6, as I understand it.

Brad: You know I wouldn't leave out the Macintosh users, not intentionally, anyway. Windows users, maybe, but not the Mac users, as I am one... :)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.