Well, I was going to try to create a cool popup window that would play streaming video embedded in the window, but I got bored and gave up on it. Maybe it wasn’t so cool of an idea after all. So, click the photo and watch the fish and listen to the new age aquarium music and the ritalin-deprived children in the background.
This is a 3 MB AVI file, so don’t go clicking on it unless you’ve got enough bandwidth or patience. I shot this video (320×240 resolution, 15 frames/second) with my tiny Canon S400 digital camera. This clip is 34 seconds long. I edited it down from a longer clip. The S400 uses an MJPEG codec. The shareware video editor I was using doesn’t support MJPEG, so I had to re-encode with an Intel Indeo codec. The Indeo-encoded video quality isn’t as good as the original, but it uses a higher compression ratio. The original was 13 MB and 1:27 long.
Update Dec. 11, 2003: The codec used by the shareware program I tried out is apparently not commonly available on Mac and Linux platforms. As soon as I get a chance, I will re-encode it with a more common codec.
Update March 10, 2004: If you’re looking for info on MJPEG, read the MJPEG HOWTO. The info is most useful if you have access to a Linux box and MJPEG-tools. There’s also an OS X port.