Starcoasters.com posts Superman: Ultimate Flight video

Great vid! This thing has a HUGE potential, think the same, only 200ft tall!

Only 2 not-so-good things about the video, the train drops below the frame in some of the shots. Where's the Inline Twist??

Keep up the good work mate.

Yeah I noticed those after I got home and looked at the clips, but there was nothing I could do since that was my only visit to the park this year. The 2 new videos from Carowinds (Top Gun and a Carowinds vid) that I will be posting in the future will have better shots since I can retake them as I please :). The pretzel loop turned out so amazing, and I can't wait to see more.

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Jonathan Hawkins
Starcoasters.com
"The internet is a great way to get on the net." -Bob Dole

Great vids SC! Just one request.. could we have them in something other than .rm format? :)

But anyway keep going to great parks and sharing your experiences. It's a lot of fun. Speaking of which come by www.CoasterSims.com. We've got member's video from Alton Towers and Disney's California Adventure music video style much like your own.

Plus coming soon, Paramount's Kings Island and Cedar Point for anyone who is interested! :)

Yeah, I always get the Real Media complaint, and trust me, I don't like it just as much as everyone else. I use Sonic Foundry Video Factory. It is easy to use, can do a lot, and was affordable. The only problem is, it cannot encode well. The Real Media videos come out much higher quality with a much lower file size. I've experimented and spent tons of time working with the other file types, but in the end Real Media is all that works well. In a perfect world where everyone had T-line connections and I had unlimited webspace, I would post the 60 mb high quality MPG files, but that isn't happening anytime soon :)

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Jonathan Hawkins
Starcoasters.com
"The internet is a great way to get on the net." -Bob Dole

*LOL* Glad to know I'm not the only one.

Speaking of codecs have you tried .wmv? I found it to be extremely crisp and the file size is reasonable even at 1500kbps stream.

Actually, didn't you get Cleaner EZ with Video Factory? I thought maybe it was bundled. I use Cleaner 5 w/ Sorenson pro and get the very pretty results you see on Badnitrus and certain official park sites (after lots of tweaking to find the "sweet" spot).

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"Let's stop saying 'don't quote me,' because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying." - Dogma, KMFDM

Unfortunately, no, although I think it might come with Video Factory 2.

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Jonathan Hawkins
Starcoasters.com
"The internet is a great way to get on the net." -Bob Dole

Real Media. Belch.

Here's a converter.

I use video factory 2.0 and yes you get the clearner. I thought I was the only one using video factory also! I'm glad to see someone else uses it too.

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Awesome video!

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-Sean

I just found out that it does indeed use Sorenson for Quicktime, but the problem is that I can't create custom settings. I have to choose from their preset 28k, 56k, etc

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Jonathan Hawkins
Starcoasters.com
"The internet is a great way to get on the net." -Bob Dole

What?

Ya'll lost me at Superman.

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3 out of the 4 voices in my head say, go for it!

Well, yes, the Sorenson codec that comes in QuickTime isn't tweakable outside of the bit rate. However, even if you use the basic codec and limit the video stream to 200k, you should get pretty good results.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"Let's stop saying 'don't quote me,' because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying." - Dogma, KMFDM

I often jump in on these conversations as I'm interested in optimizing the videos I work on. Jeff always plugs quicktime files using the Sorenson codec and I'm sure he knows what he's talking about - his videos look great. I've never been able to achieve good results with that combo and I think I finally figured out why...Sonic Foundry products!

I'm using Vegas Video (the "pro" version of Video Factory) and my results are similar to Johnathon's. All things being equal, Real Media files do indeed look the best overall and produce a file size slightly smaller than MPEG or WMV. The WMV files are only slightly less in quality (as Jeff put it once they look "soft" in comparison) and the file size is not so much bigger than an RM file to make much of a difference. Render to MOV files (quicktime) is where it gets ugly. To achieve the same picture quality my file sizes end up 3 to 4 times as large. If I reduce the rendered file size to be equal then the picture quality is substantially worse. Vegas Video includes both the Sorenson and Sorenson 3 codec and both give similar results. The bottom line for me is I refuse to use real media and quicktime just isn't happening - thus I went with Windows Media for my files.

I'm thinking it's the Sonic Foundry products that are the problem here. I don't know enough to speculate but there must be something in the Sonic Foundry / Sorenson combo that just isn't efficient.

And just to see what would happen, I rendered a Steel Force video I'm working on as Jeff suggested using the 256k defaults. The two and a half minute file ended up being 1/5 the size (5MB vs 25MB - I do render WMV files at 1.5MB, however, so a 5 times higher sampling rate resulted in a 5 times larger file) but the video was flat out lousy, many of my effects were lost in the muddiness and the sound was horrible. Sure the size is a huge difference but I'd rather have less people see a great looking / sounding video than everybody seeing a subpar rendering of my work.

Then just for kicks I rendered the quicktime file at the full 1.5MB I use on WMV files and vice versa. In both instances the Windows Media files looked and sounded much, much better. Damn you Sonic Foundry!

Again, I don't claim to be even close to an expert on the subject, just passing along my "average joe" results. My guess is something in the way the Sonic Foundry products and the Sorenson codec interact.

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www.coasterimage.com
Dorney Park visits in 2002: 15

You might be right in figuring out what the problem is. Your compression is only as good as your source material. If your source material is MPEG, any further compression will look like crap. Most consumer products, including Windows XP's built-in Movie Maker, do a crappy job of maintaining quality.

I pull video in as DV via Firewire using Avid Xpress. (I used to edit video for a living, so even though I'm a programmer now, I still need the good stuff. ;) I don't expect many people would shell out four figures for software.) Avid's codec is light enough that it isn't heavily compressed and makes for good source material.

When Badnitrus gives me source files, they're rendered right out of Max to Quicktime using the Animation codec, which doesn't actually compress anything. So when I do their stuff, I've got the best possible starting point and I can compress the animations, even at 320x240x30fps, down to 15 MB or less.

Some of the POV I've done for various parks I can get a nice clean file from the original tape under 4MB at 160x120x15 fps. Try as I might, I couldn't get anything that nice in any other format.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"Let's stop saying 'don't quote me,' because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying." - Dogma, KMFDM

Those were some great, interesting shots you took when we were there, and a nice job you did of putting them in the video.

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My two favorite coasters are both named Superman.
Nitro, Gemini, Laser, Ice, Thunder...The American Gladiators!