Welcome to my "Videography" page
Index
C:
directory. Like this:
I tried to open the same files with Windows Media Player on my Windows XP Pro box with no luck. Media Player tried to open this particular video file as an audio file. I could get audio, but no video (at 4:49 AM). Maybe I'm just tired... At any rate, if someone figures out how to get these DIVX videos to play on your XP system, please e'mail me to let me know about it.
Click on any image to watch the corresponding movie.
2 drunks fighting in Seoul, Korea
Kuwait
Greenland
When the cat's away, the mouse will play.
Scarin' the crap out of my ex-girlfriend
When the dog's away, the cat will play.
Gretta the spider
Nutcracker on the Rocks
This page is up as of 9/18/2005 at 3:40 PM. It was last updated 10/13/2005 at 2:35 AM.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please
If you've already been to this page and you know which video you wish to download, here's an index
of all the videos. Click a thumbnail to go to the section that highlights the corresponding video:
Korea
Tokyo
Muscat
Kuwait
Greenland
Daredevil
Monkey bike
Scarin' Julie
Smokey
Smokey again
Gretta the spider
Hog on stage!
Nutcracker
Apology to the dial-up community...
Unfortunately this page is not going to be very phun for the dial-up community. All my short videos are in the 2-30 megabyte file size range, with the exception of the "Greenland" video, which is a 110Mb monster. Anyone utilizing DSL or better should be able to enjoy this page without too much frustration. Since this page is breaking new ground for me (uploading large files to the public), I welcome comments via the e'mail link at the bottom of the page.
DIVX compression experiment...
Your browser is going to ask you which application you want to use to run these DIVX files. If you do have the DIVX player on your computer, then simply select to open my videos with your "default application." If, instead, you have
Windows Media Player,
on your computer, the executable file (or "program") you need to run my video files with is "wmplayer.exe." On a Windows 2000 system, the file you need is located in your:
|
---Program Files
|
---Windows Media Player 
For those not-so-computer-literate folks out there, I'm leaving the old, phat MPEG files on this page for you. What a nice guy I am.
Unfortunately it seems my Linux box's hardrive is filling up. At present, without loading a single picture on the Linux box for my "Photography" page, I'm sitting at about 95% used-upedness(tm). My only choices are to either replace the hardrive with a larger one, or simply delete extraneous files - which I will probably do. I will keep the phat MPEG files up for as long as I can, however they will probably be gone within the next month or so. My apologies for any inconvenience this might cause. I may keep some MPEG files up for videos smaller than 5Mb.
Introduction; a boring history into my photographic/videographic endeavors (don't read this)...
I've always enjoyed photography. Years after purchasing my first still, film camera (Minolta SRT-101), I decided to give video a try. Starting in 1995, I had done a couple overseas tours with
Tangled Web and then
Ravin,
and subsequently took a lot of pictures - over 1,000 per tour. The first tour netted some great pictures. I found film photography to be very fun, but it had its short-comings. For one, I wasn't able to see pictures until after the tour was over. This really bit me in the ass hard after my first
Ravin
tour where I had taken roughly 1,200 pictures. After having them developed I found out that they were all grossly under-exposed. I had just had my camera "tuned up" by a "professional" photography house, "Camera and Darkroom." It wasn't until the tour was over that I learned that the Camera and Darkroom "technician" had unadjusted my light meter, so now all my pictures were grossly underexposed. Not only was this a huge waste of time and money, but I found myself to be so angry that I never went back to Camera and Darkroom to "talk" to them about it. I have anger management issues. This is yet another reason why I never hire anybody to fix/maintain/build/design/modify anything for me.
Eventually I moved up to digital photography. I borrowed a Sony Mavica digital camera from my good friend, Mona Chaney. Unfortunately the early daze of digital photography netted poor results. Low picture resolutions made for some pretty piss-poor photography. Pictures were small, grainy, and often very pixelated. That camera eventually disappeared from my check-on luggage during a subsequent European tour with Ravin. Since the flight was a very short one (Rome to Paris), it's a cinch that it was either stolen by the Italian or French airport authorities. Since I watched my luggage being loaded at the Rome aeroporto, I'm pretty sure that it was an employee of the Charles De Gaul airport that relieved me of Mona's camera (damn the French).
Low pixel issues were alleviated with the purchase of my Sony CD-1000. I instantly went from 640 x 480 picture resolution to 1600x1200 resolution - a marked improvement. In addition, the CD-1000 uses a rather low compression ratio of 7:1, compared to some earlier digital cameras that used compression ratios as high as 18:1. Though I wouldn't consider my CD-1000 to be a "high resolution" camera (2.1 megapixels), the optics on it are much better than most cameras with twice the resolution. What this means is that this camera takes really nice, medium resolution pictures, but doesn't do so well when you blow the picture up to say 10"x12".
On one of my tours we traveled for 3 weeks with another band called "Vivid" out of Austin, Texas. Their guitar player, Mark, was documenting their entire tour on video. After watching their videos, and even helping shoot some (they mistakenly gave me the camera to "shoot what I wanted"), I discovered that I had a real love for videography. After the tour was over I purchased my first video camera, a JVC Digital Video camera. Most of the video contained within this page was shot with that camera. I later purchased a prosumer Sony 3 CCD camera, but that camera is too big to shoot "spontaneous" video with.
I rendered most of these videos using the early mpeg1 compression scheme - not the best compression scheme in the world. Video quality is not the best. I apologize for that. As video technology advances, decent editing tools will become more affordable to "average-Joe-video-editor" guys like me. I see a Mac in my future...sigh... The "Kuwait" video was rendered as an .avi file. Don't ask why. I'm sure I had my reasons...<;^)
I hope you enjoy watching the videos as much as I enjoyed making them.
MicroFilm productions...
"MicroFilm Productions" is the name of my short film (or tape) production company. The name has already been copyrighted, so don't try to steal it.
The following videos are in a somewhat chronological order.
(Warning: Video files are between 2 and 30 megabytes with the exception of the "Greenland" video which is a 110Mb monster (didn't I say that already?). Unless you have Broadband or a lot of time and patience, I don't recommending downloading these files. Downloading out in the real world I've found the transfer rate on a broadband system to be no less than 90KB/Sec, with speeds of up to 200KB/Sec. What this translates to is about 10 seconds per megabyte at 90KB/Sec.
If you notice that the download process has seemed to stop, just click "cancel" and then click the video again. This should restart the download from where you left off. There are very few file transfer clients left on the planet that actually make you start all over again. If you have one of those, you really need to update your computer...<:^)
This first video was shot in Seoul, Korea after roller-blading to a music store for some drum heads. I was roller-blading back to the hotel when I saw these 2 drunk guys duking it out (drunk people don't fight very well). I thought it might make for an interesting video, so I shot it. In the video one of the guys tries to punch me, but I block his punch. I never stopped taping...<:^) This particular video was produced on my old AMD 400Mhz Toshiba laptop using ULead video editing software. Because of the slow nature of the processor and low memory issues (128Mb), this video took about 24 hours to produce. Every little edit would take 5-10 minutes to render. It was painfully slow. I think I did this one in like '96 or '97.
MPEG version (9.7Mb)
DIVX version (4.2Mb)
Go to index
Overseas Band videos
Through my travels I've shot several hours of video - much of it still sitting in my closet in its raw state. Below are a few videos that made it to the forefront of my project list. They range in size from a few seconds to almost 25 minutes. A lot of work goes into making these videos. I hope you enjoy them.
These 2 videos were originally shot as promotional videos for the ravinmusic.com website. Don't look for it. It's no longer there. Video post-production was done on that same Toshiba laptop I mentioned earlier.
Here's the MPEG versions
Ravin in Tokyo, Japan (2.6Mb)
Ravin in Muscat, Oman (4.4Mb)
And here's the DIVX versions
Ravin in Tokyo, Japan (1.12Mb)
Ravin in Muscat, Oman (1.35Mb)
Go to index
Go to the "Ravin" section on the "My Music" page.
This next video was shot at the Kubal in Kuwait in 2000. Post 9/11, this particular camp was nick-named, "Little New York." The Kuwait desert is indeed a vast one. If you notice in the background, the soldiers lined up trucks along the outer perimeter so that guys in the back could have a decent view of the show.
I shot this video while performing. I've shown this video to many people and nobody ever notices the video's perspective. Either I was shooting the video while playing the drums, or there was a little camera man on my shoulder...<;^) Another note-worthy item is that the camera is a "right handed" camera. So I had to not only play drums 1 handed, but I had to play left handed while operating the camera's buttons with my right hand - not easy. Again, painfully slow video post-production was done on my Toshiba laptop. It's a good thing I had a lot of down time on that particular tour.
Ravin in Kuwait
AVI (Quicktime) version (23.9Mb)
DIVX version(6.3Mb)
Go to index
Go to the "Ravin" section on the "My Music" page.
This final Band video was shot in Thule, Greenland. Thule is near the Arctic Circle. This part of the world has only one day and one night. During the Summer months the sun circles Thule (never rising, never setting). Eventually, after 6 months of daylight, the sun sinks below the horizon for 6 months. I found that living in a perpetual "day" environment wasn't that bad. Dare I say I enjoyed it? However 24/7 of night was a different story. We found it hard to wake up. The later we woke up, the later we went to bed. Eventually our body clocks got so screwed up that we threw our sleeping "schedule" out the window. It was quite an experience. I don't know how someone can live in that environment for 6 months.
The first half of this video was shot late December 2000 and early January 2001. This is the "night" portion of the video. The second half of the video is actually a slide presentation that was shot previously during the week of 4th of July, 2000. I didn't own a video camera at the time, so all I had was a bunch of still photos. The slide show is the "day" portion of the "video." Between both, the video is about 25 minutes long. I tried splitting the video up into smaller sections, but Pinnacle 8.12 (junkiest software I've ever used with NO tech support) craps out on large files. I will try to use some other video authoring tools to split this video up. For now the Greenland video is a HUGE monster. I apologize for that. Because this video is so huge, it is not available in MPEG format. It is only available in the DIVX format. Whomever is brave enough to download this monster, please time your download and tell me how long it takes. I'm about to change broadband service, so my upload pipe should at least double, if not almost triple around the 10th of October. I hope you enjoy the video.
Greenland moon at 1:PM.
DIVX video of Ravin in Greenland (110.7Mb)
Note: I was able to download this video in 4 minutes from my Windows Box at home. If download progress appears to stop, just click "cancel" and then click on the picture again. The download will resume where it left off. I recommend you choose the "save to disk" option and then play the video. When I tried to simply play the video without saving to disk, it ended up having an annoying 1 second lag between the audio and the video.
Go to index
Go to the "Ravin" section on the "My Music" page.
These 2 videos were shot at my old work place, IDMicro. Dave (our boss) was away on business, so we thought that, instead of working, we'd have phun instead. This pattern continued for many years at IDMicro...God I miss that job. At any rate, I gave Dave a credit at the end of one of the videos as one of the stunt coordinators just because he was a great boss and a great guy. I showed him the videos as soon as he got back. He got a kick out of 'em. He did request I not ride my mountain bike down the stairs any more...<:^/
These videos were rendered on my desktop at work. My personal machine was a 1.2Mhz AMD with 2 gig-o-ram. Software used was Pinnacle 7.
"Daredevil Donnie" (11.6Mb)
Famous "Monkey bike" video (27.7Mb)
DIVX Version (11.5Mb)
(Sorry...No DIVX version available)
Go to index
This video was shot on my still camera, so the video quality is horrible. However I think you'll still enjoy this one. After seeing this video, you'll understand why she left me...<:^0
Scarin' Julie (1.3Mb)
Go to index
If you have seen my "Pets" page, you know about my cat, Smokey. I have always maintained that he's the best cat in the world.
Smokey has 2 distinctive "meows." There the "regular" meow, which says, "Lemme in" or "Lemme out" or "Feed me." Then there's the "I have a gift for you" meow. This meow is much more robust and infinitely harder to ignore. Of course when I say "gift," I'm talking about an animal offering in the form of a bird or a mouse. The mice are usually brought to me unscathed. They scatter off,
Smokey
catches them and then brings them back to me. It's a little game we play. Birds don't do so well...<:^/
In the first video, one particular morning around 5:30 AM
Smokey
jumped in through my bathroom window and started his "I have a gift for you" meow. Sure enough he had a mouse for me. I just happened to have my video camera charged up and ready to go, so I shot some video. I hope you enjoy this one. It definitely shows off Smokey's ability to hunt.
The second video was taken in my livingroom. This time it was a little earlier than 5:30 AM...I believe it was around 9:PM. I was doing some work in my office and heard Smokey's tell-tale meow. I just happened to have my video camera set up on a tripod in the livingroom, so I shot some video.
I managed to recover some disk space on my Linux machine, so the second video will be available in a Low-resolution DIVX version and a high-resolution DIVX version.. All videos will play using Windows Media Player (see instructions near top of page). To download the FREE DIVX player,
click here. Enjoy!
Smokey - DIVX version (22Mb)
Smokey-2 DIVX Low-res (15Mb)
Smokey-2 DIVX high-res (28Mb)
Go to index
Go to Smokey's web page
Note: If you arrived here via a link from another page, click the "Back" button on your browser
to get back to where you were.
Here's a time-lapse video I took in my back yard of my pet Pumpkin Spider, Gretta. Gretta is an Orb Weaver. This video has been sped up 90x. The original footage was just under 40 minutes. I've compressed this video down to about 50 seconds with 30 seconds of extraneous phun stuff...<:^)
It's been very fascinating watching her eat and spin her nightly web. She's very tidy, so she eats her web every night and then rebuilds it during the wee hours of the morning. I've been feeding her cockroaches which she seems to enjoy a lot.
Because I am running out of disk space on my Linux machine, this video will be available in DIVX version only. It will play using Windows Media Player (see instructions near top of page). To download the FREE DIVX player,
click here. Enjoy!
Gretta in DIVX (6.4Mb)
Go to index
Every year I'm in a local production of the Nutcracker called "Nutcracker on the Rocks." It's a Rock-n-Roll version of the original stodgy ballet. Their motto is, "More heat, less suite!" And, "It's not your mother's Nutcracker."
One year I decided I was going to do a DVD of the entire show. I set up three cameras and took video footage over a half dozen performances. I had tons of raw footage. I was not allowed down front (where the other camera guy was), so I had to shoot from the control booth about 100' from the stage. Needless to say that with video cameras zoomed all the way in on such a dynamic performance, getting quality video was tough. I started the project with gleaming anticipation of the beautiful, finished product. Unfortunately after about 100 hours of work I ran into brick walls software-wise. Ulitimately I was only able to render 4 or so minutes of video using Pinnacle v8.12. Any more than that and Pinnacle would lock up - this on a computer that was set up specifically for video editing (read: no extraneous software. The hard disk had only Pinnacle, the O.S. (Windows 2000) and a few other minor programs that aided in the video editing process). Thanx Pinnacle!!
Nutcracker - No video yet (??.?Mb)
Hog on stage - DIVX (6.9Mb)
Go to index
Click here to go to see Carley on my "Motorcycles" Page.
E'mail me
All pictures & material Copyright © 2005 Donnie Frank