Scratch

Bluestribute wrote:

dbal wrote:

Bluestribute wrote:

How long does it normally take to upload? I mean, it's just a simple frog animation. turn head, move forward, go back, turn camera

It usually takes me a few minutes just to get ready and create the video to get it ready for upload to YouTube.  You did convert it to a video before uploading it to YouTube didn't you?

After I realized it was the wrong format. I converted it to .mpg

That should work.

Bluestribute wrote:

.mpg didn't work!!! Now I'm trying .wmv

Never tried mpg at YouTube, but I've used wmv at YouTube, so I know it works. Maybe they don't like the compression in mpg or something.

Bluestribute wrote:

How long does it usually take?

I've never noticed it taking particularly long.  Since this is a Saturday and lots of folks are at home in front of their computers, the YouTube servers may be very busy.

Bluestribute wrote:

dbal wrote:

Bluestribute wrote:

How long does it usually take?

I've never noticed it taking particularly long.  Since this is a Saturday and lots of folks are at home in front of their computers, the YouTube servers may be very busy.

Well, I guess I'l try making another one while it uploads...

What is your login name at YouTube?  I will do a search there and see if it shows up.

Bluestribute wrote:

dbal wrote:

Bluestribute wrote:

Well, I guess I'l try making another one while it uploads...

What is your login name at YouTube?  I will do a search there and see if it shows up.

I always use Bluestribute, whether it be Scratch, YouTube, or even Xbox Live

Maybe something failed in the upload.  I searched YouTube for videos uploaded today from Bluestribute and didn't find any.  Maybe you should try uploading it again.

.wmv didn't work...

Bluestribute wrote:

.wmv didn't work...

I don't know why .wmv didn't work for you. For whatever its worth, here is a copy of a post that I put on the Alice forum a few months ago when I was working on trying to get the best possible quality when converting an Alice world to a YouTube video:

================= Begin material from the Alice forum
You can find my third, and so far best effort to create a video of an animation and post it on YouTube at http://www.scratch.mit.edu/ext/youtube/?v=7r6BmaXUMdw

This is much better quality than the previous one, particularly with regard to the visual quality of the background scenery. For anyone who may be interested, I will document my settings.

I captured the program output into a large avi file using the free screen capture program named CamStudio. Then I trimmed the ends and converted it to a wmv file using Windows Movie Maker.

For the second step, I downloaded and attempted to use a movie editing program named VideoSpin but I couldn't get the editing portion of the program to work. The reason I tried it in place of Windows Movie Maker is because it can produce a Flash output file that is directly compatible with YouTube. This eliminates one format conversion that has the potential of degrading the visual quality of the video. I was able to use VideoSpin to produce the Flash output file, but once again, I couldn't get the editing portion to work the way I thought it should. (Maybe the problem was simply a short between my ears but I gave up and went back to Movie Maker.)

Here are my settings for CamStudio for those items that seem to be critical:

On the Region menu, I selected the Fixed Region option. This causes the program to produce a 320x240 rectangle when you click the record button. You drag the rectangle onto the screen and place it where you want the capture to occur. When you click the left mouse button, recording begins, and includes everything inside the 320x240 rectangle.

Options Menu
VideoOptions
Compressor: Microsoft Video 1
Quality: 100 (This is the maximum allowable value.)
Check the Auto Adjust checkbox and all of the other values are set automatically.
I selected Do not record audio for this video, because there wasn't any audio. In an earlier test of Chris101b's War Zone video with lots of audio, I found that it worked well to select Record audio from speakers. Then under Audio Options/Audio Options for Speakers, I set the Recording Volume slider at about the 1/4 point from the left end. Any higher and I got garbled sound. Any lower, and the sound volume was too low.
Under Program Options, I selected Save Settings on Exit and Capture Translucent/Layered Windows (I believe this is the default.) I selected Normal for Recording Thread Priority.
View Menu - I selected Normal.

On the button bar, I selected Record to AVI. I didn't record the Flash output because I needed to edit the file to clean up the ends and I don't believe that Windows Movie Maker will accept a Flash file as input for editing (although I didn't try it).

That is pretty much it for CaMStudio. Just click the red button, place the 320x240 rectangle on the portion of the screen that you want to capture and click the left mouse button. Recording will begin. Start your Alice program running. When you have recorded enough, click the blue button to stop the recording. Enter a file name for the output file when requested. After the avi file is written, CamStudio will play it for you.

Editing the video
Start Windows Movie Maker
Start a new project on the file menu
Select Import video on the left and point to your avi file.

You should see your video being loaded. It will probably be automatically subdivided into a set of sequential clips represented by rectangular images.

Read the help screen or search the web for instructions on how to edit your video. It is really straightforward to trim the ends and put a title at the beginning. I didn't do anything else.

When you are happy with the edited video, select "Save to my computer" on the left.

Enter a file name and directory and click Next. (Don't put .wmv on the file name, else it will appear on the file name twice.)

Check the radio button labeled Other settings.

Select "Video for braodband (512 Kbps)" in the pull-down list and click the Next button.

Depending on the speed of your computer and the size of the video file, it may take a long time to write the output file. The computer in my office at the college required about 15 minutes to write the wmv file for Chris101b's WarZone video. My computer at home only took about one minute to do the same thing.

If you want to view the movie immediately, click the checkbox that reads "Play movie when I click Finish" and then click Finish. This will put you back in movie edit mode, possibly with the video running in Windows Media Player.

If you have a YouTube account, you can upload the wmv file to YouTube. Note that when it is displayed on YouTube, the wmv file will converted to a Flash file format and enlarged to 425x350. This enlargement causes some degradation in visual quality. This is where it may be advantageous to create a Flash output file instead of a wmv file. It may be possible to create the Flash output for 425x350 and avoid the enlargement of the 320x240 wmv file to a 425x350 Flash file. I haven't seen anything on the web about this one way or the other.

This is not a very organized explanation, but maybe it will help someone who would like to put their Alice videos on YouTube and don't want to spend the entire day experimenting with various program settings like I did.

Dick Baldwin
Free Alice tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/tocalice.htm
Free programming tutorials: http://www.dickbaldwin.com/toc.htm

================= End material from the Alice forum

You will find some other videos that I have posted on YouTube at the following links.  I believe that they were all wmv files:

http://www.scratch.mit.edu/ext/youtube/?v=eeH80wuj--Q
http://www.scratch.mit.edu/ext/youtube/?v=deGzFJSBFCk
http://www.scratch.mit.edu/ext/youtube/?v=Oeqs7-vaabc
http://www.scratch.mit.edu/ext/youtube/?v=S3zFejKsEgo

But I have a Mac (no windows movie maker). I'll try to put them on My site later and see if that works

Bluestribute wrote:

But I have a Mac (no windows movie maker). I'll try to put them on My site later and see if that works

OK, let me know when it is posted.  I am looking forward to seeing it.

Bluestribute wrote:

dbal wrote:

Bluestribute wrote:

But I have a Mac (no windows movie maker). I'll try to put them on My site later and see if that works

OK, let me know when it is posted.  I am looking forward to seeing it.

O.K., I will

Did you get your Alice video posted yet?

If you want to send it to me as an attachment to an email message, I will try to convert it to a video and post it for you.

Bluestribute wrote:

dbal wrote:

Bluestribute wrote:

O.K., I will

Did you get your Alice video posted yet?

If you want to send it to me as an attachment to an email message, I will try to convert it to a video and post it for you.

I'm still trying to, but I just found the do together, loop etc blocks!

DoTogether is extremely powerful.  Keep at it.  Sounds like you are making a lot of progress.

While we're mentioning other languages. Let's not forget Scheme. lisp > all.

dbal wrote:

Bluestribute wrote:

dbal wrote:

DoTogether is extremely powerful.  Keep at it.  Sounds like you are making a lot of progress.

Yeah, I guess I am making progress. Oh, I sent you my first Alice Creation- a frog

I didn't see it. How did you send it?

An attachment. It was My_World_Alice or something. How should I send it?