Safari Videos
 

Being a very shy kinda guy, I’ve been lurking here for a couple of years now. Using all of your helpful information and opinions, I put together a Southern Africa safari including time with Selwyn D. in Cape Town, Livingstone, to see the falls, eased into the bush at Chobe Chilwero and then onto Chief’s Camp, Mala Mala and Ulusaba Safari Lodge.

One of these days I might be able to get my wife to transcribe her journal into a trip report…but for now I’ve posted some video clips (including a leopard kill and a black rhino sighting) to http://www.roydeb.com/unsecure/afric...a%20Movies.htm

Merry Christmas and happy Holidays to all!

Thanks for posting your videos. The elephant safari brought back fond memories of our own experience. I noticed the baby ellie in that clip. Did they say how old it was? Just curious because one of the ellies was pregnant when we were there in July 2004.

I'll have to go back on your site tonight and check out more of your videos.

They told us that the mother (whom I was riding) was "kidnapped" by wild ellies and returned pregnant. The baby was born 7-Nov (same day as mine) last year. Sounds like the one you saw.

Cheers,

Thank you so much for sharing those wonderful videos.

Very enjoyable and so well done - you've made my day.

How involved is the process to format as you did?

Thanks;
Sherry

Only watched the leopard kill clip so far but WOW what a sighting!!!

Just watched the Leopard kill. Amazing sighting and great work on the camera. As the videographer in our house, what camera were you using and what editing software do you use?

Hi rgiampo1,
I just watched your leopard warthog kill, avi. What resolution and fps was this taken at? I don't want to be mean, but the video has serious problems with exposure (over) and resolution (poor). Did you do a lot of processing to it to put it on the web site? My Canon S2, which is primarily a still camera, takes videos much better exposed and sharper (640x480 pixels, 30fps) videos.
I'm sorry to be so negative but I think you talents deserve a better camera. Maybe Santa can bring you one for Christmas.
Merry Christmas - Tom

PS,
If someone can tell me an easy way to put a short video on a web site, I will be happy to post a short, 1 min, video. Taken with the Canon S2 on safari. I have photos on the Kodak Gallery but I doubt if I can put a 10 meg video on it, no?
Merry Christmas - Tom

I ended up watching half a dozen of your videos on my way to bed. I can't believe how close you were to the leopard! Meanwhile, my two favorites, thus far, were the group of lionesses (beautiful!!!) and the little elephant trying to get out of the mud bath.

Wonderful!

Cheryl

rgiampo1,
I think I've found at least half of the problem (mine?). When I view the leopard/warthog avi, if I turn the player's brightness way down then the exposure looks good. This doesn't help the resolution/sharpness any. But the lack of resolution must be do to extreme compression of the video encoding. A 3 minute video of only 19MB size must have been compressed A LOT. Yes?
So, never mind.
Merry Christmas - Tom

Thanks for sharing! The baby elephant in the mud bath was great! Guess I should look into a video camera for my next trip. Happy Holidays!
Dennis

To napamatt: Actually, I’m the still photographer (shot over 6,000 images, some of which will get posted one of these days). One of my traveling companions shot the video. He used a Sony DVD-203 which is a direct-to-miniDVD recorder.

To cybor: I used Pinnacle Studio to edit the videos. It’s pretty straightforward once you learn the software. If you’re running Windows, you probably have MovieMaker, which is included with XP. While it’s not as robust as other packages, it is certainly capable of the type of edits I did to create the videos. Just keep in mind that video editing takes a lot of computer processing power.

To cary999: The AVI formatted files use the DivX 5.0 codec rendered at 29.9 fps; 784 kb/s; at a resolution of 704x396 (16:9). I chose DixX because it does perform some pretty amazing compression with high quality. Did you try the .wmv formatted clip? If that played ok, then you might need to get the latest version of the codec from http://download.divx.com/divx/DivXPlay.exe