Videos are added in chrono­log­i­cal order,
the newest are at the bot­tom… 17 and counting

Most of my videos are shot with a VadoHD.  I love the thing.  It’s tiny, has a fixed focus, non-zooming wide angle lens and 8 Gigs of inter­nal mem­ory. It shoots very good to excel­lent HD video, espe­cially once I mounted a polar­izer and lens hood to it.  I like wide angle… most of my work is wide angle.  So I set about to build a hous­ing that would allow me to add fil­ters, hoods and an even wider lens. Yes, this whole thing weighs sev­eral times more than the VadoHD. I feel safe now using it under extreme con­di­tions. As can be seen from the pho­to, its pretty well pro­tected from abuse, but not weather-proof. I use it in tan­dem with a Man­frotto Ball head attached to a Man­frotto Super-Clamp.  These shots show it mounted to the roof rack of my Isuzu.

Apple’s Final Cut Express & iMovie are used to edit the final video.  It is extremely time con­sum­ing to edit in ‘HD’ from a lap­top.  Graph­ics were cre­ated in Illus­tra­tor and col­orized in Photoshop.

Here’s a cou­ple of tips for New­bies, view­ing YouTube videos

If you are on a ‘dial-up’ Inter­net account, I sug­gest skip­ping the videos com­pletely.. they are huge files and will take (almost) for­ever to down-load. Do you have an hour or so to wait?  If on the other hand, you have a high speed con­nec­tion (DSL, cable modem or some such thing), it should take only a few min­utes to down-load.  When you start a video, there is a ‘progress bar’ at the bot­tom of the frame that tracks the down-load.  There is also a ‘play/pause’ but­ton imme­di­ately to the left of the bar.  As soon as the video starts to play for the first time, stop (pause) the video.

The YouTube vid will con­tinue to down-load
even though you have paused the play.

You can see the progress of the down-load as the bar slowly turns red.  Once the bar is mostly red (3/4 or bet­ter), restart the video to watch it with­out inter­rup­tion. Once it has com­pletely down-loaded (a solid red bar), you can watch the vid over and over with­out reload­ing it, with­out the jit­ters or breaks.

The Scurvy Dog’s YouTube Archive:

The Scurvy Dog’s Puerto Rican Blog Introduction:

My first (ever) edited video and the only one I’ll do with me in front of the cam­era.  This sequence was staged next to an old dilap­i­dated shed near my old place in
Wil­low, Alaska.

This minute and a half was orig­i­nally over 560MB’s.  I did man­age to com­press it to 65MB’s before upload­ing to YouTube.

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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The Scurvy Dog’s PR Blog Intro Bloop­ers Reel:

Yea, its pretty funny…  I had a good time shoot­ing it.

My close friend in Alaska, Con­nie assisted with the shoot.  You can hear her com­ment­ing in the back­ground.  Since we let the cam­era run con­tin­u­ously, I was able to do excerpts of the stu­pid stuff.

The weather was nice and warm the day we did this.  In fact, 2009 was one of the best Alaskan sum­mers I ever remem­ber.  It made up for how down right crappy the pre­vi­ous one was.

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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Road Trip– Mon­key Isla & Points South Along High­way 53:

This was shot lit­er­ally ‘From the Road’ as the lit­tle Vado HD vid­cam was clamped to the roof rack of my Isuzu Rodeo. Unfor­tu­nately, its not a water­proof solu­tion so I had to shut it down, once it started to rain. No biggie.

This “muvee” is 3 sec­onds short of YouTube’s 10 minute limit.

The orig­i­nal clip was over 25 min­utes long. The edited (HD 720p) video was 874.7MB’s. For­tu­nately, YouTube does some clever com­pres­sion on their end so its a whole lot smaller to down-load and view.  The music was free­ware off the Net. The first and last songs were by Kevin MacLeod. I love his stuff.

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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Road Trip– Above Coamo, in the Bar­rio Col­lores of Juana Diaz:

This 9 miunte, 45 sec­ond video was shot in the moun­tains, up above Coamo. Very dif­fer­ent ter­rain ver­sus the first ‘From the Road’ video, but very typ­i­cal of Puerto Rico’s inte­rior.  No Palm trees to speak of.

Its hard to edit down when there is so much to see.

A VadoHD mounted in a cus­tom bracket and clamped to the roof rack of my ride, did all the work.

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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Ponce, PR to Tibes Cer­e­mo­nial Cen­ter, ‘From The Road’:

A new ‘From The Road’ video shot with my cus­tomized Vado HD videocam.

If you look close, you can see the PONCE let­ters, just before I turn off Express­way 52 on to High­way 10.  This is one long, unbro­ken clip, right into the park­ing lot of the Tibes Cer­e­mo­nial Park and Museum as reported on in my post.  I did get per­mis­sion to pho­to­graph on the grounds of the Cen­ter.  A spe­cial thanks goes out to staff and man­age­ment.  Its well worth the trip.

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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That Long Road to Hacienda Buena Vista:

Here’s the promised ‘From the Road’ video to Hacienda Buena Vista, from Express­way 52 as if you were com­ing from San Juan. If you are already in Ponce, then take High­way 123 North. Its a straight shot, sort of.

As always, it was shot with my trusty Vado HD video cam, mounted to the roof rack of my Isuzu. You can just make out the PONCE “P” before I turn off 52, onto High­way 10.

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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Coamo to Degetau’s Rock and Back, Part 1:

Part 1 cov­ers the road trip from Coamo, up to the ‘Mirador Piedra Dege­tau’ located in Aibonito.  It was a beau­ti­ful day with just enough clouds to give the sky some sense of scale.  Some of this video was ‘sped-up’ so I could include more ‘From The Road’ con­tent.  Most of the time I was lucky if I was going 35 – 40 MPH.  The switch­backs and hair-pin cor­ners make it hard to go much faster than that.  A two-door con­vert­ible (with roll-bar) would be fan­tas­tic here… An old Porsche, TR6 or XKE would be seri­ous fun though tough on the undercarriage.

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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Coamo to Degetau’s Rock and Back, Part 2:

Its all down hill for Part 2.  It felt like a road rally in places.  As can be seen in the video, we drove on every­thing from divided high­way to crum­bling back roads.  No, we did not take the direct route home.  Since we were dri­ving along sev­eral moun­tain ridges, you can occa­sion­ally catch glimpses of the coast on the south.

As men­tioned in the Post, we stopped for Pin­chos and a cold beer before head­ing back to Coamo.  This ‘From The Road’ trip fin­ishes in the park­ing lot of Wal­greens… DOH!

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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48th Annual San Blas Marathon, Coamo:

This is my short­est YouTube video to date… 5 min­utes, 14 sec­onds. The first part was shot with a Sony Handy­cam DCR-SR45. The last half was shot with the VadoHD firmly attached to a tele­phone pole at about 10 feet up. Since the San Blas Marathon runs late into the after­noon, the set­ting sun messes with part of the video.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did putting it together.‘Double-Speed’ effects were added with Apple’s iMovie.  Music was cour­tesy Pac DV Free Music off the Net.  The win­ners of the race are the first two run­ners after the Coamo Motor­cy­cle Police Squadron.. keep an eye out for the run­ner push­ing the baby buggy near the end!

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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Old San Juan Trol­ley Run up to El Morro:

I had the thought to try and shoot this video since before I ever set foot in Puerto Rico.  I had no idea if it would work.  The video suf­fers from the jit­ters of rolling over 500 year old cob­ble­stone, but I think it came out ok.  I now have ideas on how to make it bet­ter.  I used the ‘Triple Speed’ effect here so as to keep the trip time to a min­i­mum.  The trol­ley moves pretty slow.

Maybe I’ll use my Steady-Cam Jr. or mono­pod next time.. maybe.

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post,
then scroll to the bot­tom of the page.

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Lights in the Night Sky & the Unex­plained in Puerto Rico:

This was my 3rd attempt at this so I was get­ting pretty tired of it.

The UFO model was made from the face of 2 fans cov­ered with space-blanket mate­r­ial, half a smoke detec­tor and a bike reflec­tor. The exte­rior lights were LED Christ­mas lights pow­ered by over 24 AA and AAA bat­ter­ies  The OVNI was sus­pended from a piece of black Dacron cord. I used a small metal pul­ley spray painted flat black and the model was sus­pended with nylon fish­ing line. I rigged up a rod and reel to pull it up the cord, but the slope was not steep enough to fall back down on its own. The strob­ing and smoke was me down below set­ting it off while my assis­tant manned the rod and reel..

I had hoped the light from the bar would spill over and help define the observers, but no.  Next time (if there is one), I’ll take a bat­tery pow­ered lantern and put an orange or red gel on it to side-light the crowd.  It was still a lot of fun!

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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The Dog’s Blog 1st Anniver­sary & Slide Show!:

Its been a year since this blog went pub­lic, so I’m tak­ing the oppor­tu­nity to pause and reflect.

4 years had elapsed since build­ing my last Web Site.. many things had changed. CSS, Blogs and Social Media have become the “rule of the day”.   A con­ven­tional HTML Web site was just not gonna cut it.  I’m not in denial about my site. Its a ver­ti­cal mar­ket with lim­ited appeal.  I sim­ply intend to be the best damned travel blog ded­i­cated to Puerto Rico for Eng­lish speak­ing folks like me.

I hope you enjoy the slideshow, it was built from images used within the Web site.

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post

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Hur­ri­cane IGOR Skips Puerto Rico:

When I told my friends in Alaska, I had decided to retire to Puerto Rico, they all thought I was crazy.

Puerto Rico is not near as prone to hur­ri­cane destruc­tion as is the coast of Texas or the South­ern States or even New Brunswick in Canada. Hur­ri­canes are just get­ting fired-up when they pass us by.

Most Puerto Ricans keep an eye on the weather from mid August through the end of September.

The short ani­ma­tion was done to show what a hur­ri­cane looks like as it passes through the Caribbean. Cap­tur­ing the stills off NOAA’s Web site and build­ing them into a Quick Time ani­ma­tion was fun. I added descrip­tions to the islands and coun­tries and a lit­tle music too.

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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Las Vegas, Nevada– A Run Down the ‘Strip’:

The late, Tues­day night ‘From the Strip’ video was shot with my VadoHD held out the win­dow while I drove with my other hand.

Being Jan­u­ary, it was too damned cold, even with a glove on.  My hand turned numb before I got halfway down the Strip.

About 40 min­utes com­pressed to 9 so it zips right along.   The music sound track was cour­tesy of FMA (the Free Music Archive) and fea­tures the silky smooth vocals of Lil­lian Hak and Michael Win­kle. BTW, FMA’s ‘Dig­i­tal Dump’ is a cool pod­cast, baby!

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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49th San Blas Marathon of Coamo, From the Route:

This ‘From the Road’ video cov­ers the entire marathon route, the morn­ing before the race.  Shot from the roof of my SUV with a mod­i­fied VadoHD videocam.

The orig­i­nal 1.75 hour trip was com­pressed into 11 min­utes. Because the cam­era tracks with the SUV, you do not get a sense of how steep it is in places.  There are a few ‘burps’ in the video near the end before I ran out of bat­tery.  Music for the video was cour­tesy, The FMA.

A spe­cial ‘thank you’ to the police for let­ting me through 2 road-blocks.  Oth­er­wise, this would have never happened.

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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49th San Blas Marathon of Coamo, The Runners:

A video of run­ners from the 49th Annual San Blas Half Marathon of Coamo, Puerto Rico. Shot from up above the 15th Kilo­me­ter mark. I got about an hours worth of video before the bat­tery quit. Com­pressed into 13 min­utes, 40 sec­onds. Late evening sun fad­ing to low con­trast dusk.

You can see the helicopter’s shadow as it passes by and the ‘Baby Buggy Guy’ is near the end.

The ‘ani­mated’ old guy keep­ing folks out of the way of the run­ners and pass­ing off water is to be com­mended for his efforts.. THANKS!

To See the Video, please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

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The Rio Camuy Cave Park:

This 9 minute video cov­ers the trol­ley shut­tle run from the main stag­ing area, down to the Empalme Sink­hole.  This is fol­lowed by a quick scan of the Spi­ral Cave and sink­hole at the back of the Clara Cave.  Then the trol­ley run back to the main facility.

The music score is cour­te­sey the FreeMusicArchive.org and music4YourVids.co.uk

A great trip with great weather and one I’ll repeat some­time down the road.

To See the Video,please go to the Orig­i­nal Post.

Videos are added in chrono­log­i­cal order so the newest are at the bottom…

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