David White

Vimeo is free and will support HD .wmv files at 1280 x 720. There are any number of options for arranging the clips into albums, marking them as private etc. Short clips are probably better for web distribution anyway since it will take a long time to buffer a feature length film in HD. I have a few examples of moderate length clips at www.vimeo.com/oceanview. I still think that DivX is the best codec for web delivery of HD video files.

I dove Tiger Beach on two separate occasions last year aboard Dolphin Dream and found the behaviour of the captain and crew to be of the highest professional standards. The martial arts sequences in the video brought out a chuckle or two but I did not appreciate the spear chucking incident at all. If the dives had been conducted in deeper water they could at least have used the excuse that they were narc'ed.

I really enjoyed the clarity of the Stage6 experience and would welcome the opportunity to share my videos through the DivX codec and player again. Vimeo has proven to be the best alternative to Stage6 in my opinion for good quality, full screen display. However, their 500 Mb weekly upload limit means that only a few clips can be uploaded each week.

It is 2pass but not sure of the bit rate.

Pakman, The file is initially rendered as HD 1080(1920x1080), Upper field first, Pixel aspect ratio 1.0000, SONY YUV Codec, interleave every .25 seconds, using SONY Vegas 7.0. The audio format is PCM Uncompressed, sample rate 48,000Hz, bit depth 16, stereo. It renders out as a 42.8 GB file. Once converted to the DivX codec using Dr. DivX in 1080HD mode @ 1200 x 672 pixels, the file is only 161 MB. Hope this helps. David

Nick, Thanks for the promotion, I truly appreciate it. I have been posting videos to Stage6 since very early in their inception. Yes, you need to download their player to play the files but it has never caused any problems with my system either. The DivX codec is absolutely incredible for converting video to stream over the internet. Another of my files, "Majesty in Motion" rendered out at 40Gb but is just a little over 100Mb when converted to the DivX codec. Big difference. The thing that I personally like about Stage6 is that they distribute high definition files at full screen while retaining very good video quality. Certainly worth a look. However, I have noticed that my P4 @1.3Ghz machine cannot play the files without losing audio and video synchronization...it is better to download the file. Even then, sometimes the syatem still hangs up. The dual xeon's @ 3.2Ghz system streams the high definition files seamlessly though. One day I will figure out what render qualty works best for distribution.

We spent some time with the Tigers in the Bahamas this March aboard the Dolphin Dream. Although we were inundated with Lemon sharks we did not see any Hammerheads or Bulls. Towards the end of the trip one of the Tigers started to get a little aggressive but she was being beaten to the chum by the Lemons and was obviously hungry and more than a little frustrated. When she started cozying up to my butt from behind I thought it prudent to exit the water and call it a day. I have posted a clip at: http://stage6.divx.com/OceanView-HD/video/...jesty-in-Motion.

Kudos to Andy for his vision. Well done with the video Shawn, nice job on the editing. There should be more places like this that are focused on conservation of the reef.

Hello Keith, I registered at your site and on several occasions attempted to upload some video files but the clips just seem to disappear somewhere into the Internet. Any suggestions?

Thanks for the suggestion Nick. By rendering within Vegas to Video for Windows.avi and selecting Custom template>Video rendering quality:Best - Video Tab>Frame size:HD 1080 (1,920x1,080) - Frame rate:29.970 (NTSC) - Field order:Upper field first - Pixel aspect ratio:1.0000 - Video format:Sony YUV Codec and Interleave every 0.250 seconds the file rendered into an acceptable format for DrDivX to convert. I am suitably impressed with the DivX codec since these 2 to 4 minute HD video clips render out as 30GB to 40GB files and yet after conversion are ony 60MB to 100MB in size. It is possible to stream them from Stage6 but unless the entire file is buffered before initiating playback the audio and video get out of sync. You can check out the results here: http://stage6.divx.com/OceanView_HD/videos .

Hello Paul, Tried to FTP some files to you today but the uploads failed on too many retries. Alternatively you can download the files from: http://stage6.divx.com/OceanView_HD/videos . Or, I could send you DVD's via snail mail. Cheers, David

Hello Paul, I managed to get a smaller file (LC.divx @ 22.7 MB) transmitted successfully. Larger files, around 90 MB, consistently give "The conection to the server was reset while the page was loading" error message. There are some files at the Stage6 site that I will try to transmit or, failing that, will transmit via FTP. Cheers, David

Hello Paul, Tried to send a file last night and left it transmitting when I went to bed. Got an error message this moring that no file had been selected. Tried the new uploader page from within Firefox today and it timed out on a server not found message after several minutes. Will keep trying...persistence pays.

Hello Paul, I sent a couple of clips through your uploader page but they went through really quickly so not sure if they actually transferred or not. They were named BRHD.divx and TTTug.divx. This will be both an excellent place to display our work as well as check out other places we would like to visit. Kudos to you and keep up the good work. By the way, Kelly was a beautiful bride. Congratulations, David

Thanks Nick, rendering to the DivX codec within Vegas seems to work better and uploaded no problem. However, the video came out at 4:3 instead of 16:9.