Tag Archives: videos

Events

Schaffhausen Music School’s Youth Choir at Margarethenkirche, Medias

On October 11, the Youth Choir from the Canto department of the Schaffhausen Music School, Switzerland, gave a concert at Margarethenkirche (Church of St. Margaret) in Medias, the same church where organ concerts were held this summer. Medias is a medieval city in the province of Transilvania, Romania.

The choir sang a wide selection of classical, traditional and modern pieces. Some interpretations even included coreography. Here are some of the titles: “L’amur es ĂĽna dĂĽra chassa”, “Stets i Truue”, “Mir Senne heis luschtig, “Schau auf die Welt”, “Leise zieht durch mein GemĂĽt” and more. I have to admit the experience was more entertaining than the organ concerts, and perhaps some of the more lively pieces had something to do with it.

You can watch the video on Vimeo and YouTube.

My wife thought the conductor was very good. His name was Hans-Jörg Ganz. The other instructors were Marei Bollinger (Co-Leader), Mirjam Berli (Rehearsals) and Remo Weishaupt (Voice Instruction). Claudia Hold played the piano.

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Events

Organ concert at Biserica Sf. Margareta

All summer long, the city of Medias sponsored weekly organ concerts at the oldest church in town, Biserica Sf. Margareta (Margarethenkirche). Medias is a medieval city in the province of Transilvania, Romania.

The concerts were held every Monday night at 7 pm. We attended one of them on September 7, 2009. A wide selection of music was played for 1 ½ hours, from medieval pieces to Bach, and all the way to a modern piece written in the 1940s. I lost the program note, so I can’t go into the details, but overall, the concert was good, and some pieces were great. I’m definitely looking forward to attending more of these recitals next summer.

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Events

Florin Sasarman at Schuller House

Florin Sasarman, the Romanian folk singer, gave a wonderful performance at Schuller House in Medias, on October 8, 2009. He was invited to sing there for the book launch party of Laurentiu Oprea, a local artist, writer and publisher. Medias is a medieval city in the province of Transilvania, Romania.

You can also watch the video on YouTube.

If you’re not familiar with Florin Sasarman, you will be after you watch the video. Born near the city of Bistrita, he’s been singing on stage since 1984, all over the country of Romania.

The second song in the video clip was dedicated to Daniel Thellmann, the mayor of the city of Medias, who had died just a few days before the performance. Sasarman, along with all in the audience, had known the mayor well, and the song brought tears to many eyes.

I apologize for the quality of the video, the lighting wasn’t ideal, and there was quite a bit of lens flare. The limitations of my N95’s video camera are readily apparent here, but it’s better than not having filmed anything at all.

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Reviews

Who gets my vote for online video?

I wanted to upload a 25 min/525 MB video to a video sharing site recently. I found myself out of options. Ever since Google Video stopped allowing new uploads, there is no other site where you could upload a video this long, at that file size, without having to upgrade to some sort of paid account. Still, there’s one site that gets my vote for being a whole lot friendlier to its users.

First, let’s look at what’s available.

YouTube

They’re the giant with the huge market share. We already know we’re up against the 10-minute limit there, which can only be lifted if you’re some sort of government or news organization.

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The nice part about YouTube is that they’ll allow video clips to be up to 2 GB in size, but I do wish there’d be a way to lift that 10-minute limit, at least for some of the videos we upload, say, something like 1 video per month can be up to 30 minutes in length, or something like that. There’s no Pro option at YouTube, although it’d be nice if there was a low-cost one that would have longer time limits for uploads.

Vimeo

Vimeo is up next. It’s a much smaller site than YouTube, but it’s geared more toward video pros and amateurs, people who tend to do more with their videos than just turn on a webcam and hit record. If you have a free account there, you’re up against a 500 MB weekly limit, which is generous, but in my case, it turned out to not be enough.

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The Pro option at Vimeo is $60/year, and it ups the weekly quota to 5 GB (from 500 MB), with unlimited HD uploading. It’s pretty cool, but since I don’t work with a lot of video, it’s not the option for me.

SmugMug

SmugMug has NO free video uploads, but they offer that option to those with paid accounts (Power and Pro users). I have a Pro account with them, which lets me sell digital downloads and prints of my photos very easily. I appreciate that a lot. The Pro account also lets me upload SD and HD video, but the really annoying part, the part that gets me steamed up, is that I’m limited to 10 minutes in length and 600 MB in file size per video clip.

I’m sorry, but that’s even lower than YouTube standards! Why am I paying $130/year when the video uploads are so hamstrung? I don’t care so much that the codecs used for compressing the uploaded videos are better than those at YouTube; I happen to care when I can’t upload a video and have paid for a Pro account…

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SmugMug should seriously reconsider upping their limits to 30 minutes per video and at least 1 GB per file. They’re behind the times.

Facebook

I got a really pleasant surprise when I checked into Facebook’s video upload requirements.

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They have a 20 minute limit and 1 GB file size limit per video clip. In my opinion, that’s better than what YouTube, Vimeo and SmugMug provide. The best part is that they’re free. As far as I’m concerned, they get my vote for the best online video offering. It may not be the highest-quality compression, and it may not be the biggest free offering, but I think they’ve struck a great compromise between video clip duration and size.

I should mention that WordPress also has a video upload option, which I reviewed recently, but have not included here because it’s tied into their blogging platform. They have no standalone video upload and share option.

There you have it. If you want to share larger videos online, use Facebook.

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Thoughts

Turning trash into usable products

Ann Wizer from XSProject Foundation (as in “excess”) is making custom-designed bags and other products from non-recyclable plastic waste found in Indonesia and the Philippines. She buys the raw materials from trash pickers, whom she pays at above-market rates, and, using trained artisans, creates beautiful products from trash that would be clogging landfills, streets and waterways in those countries.

Through its work, the Foundation is protecting the environment, reducing poverty, and teaching locals how to sustain themselves through the work of their own hands. The end results are beautiful, as you can from the photos and the embedded video below. The cause is noble, the work is noble, the means are innovative, sustainable and ennobling, and so I think Ms. Wizer and her XSProject Foundation deserve our applause for the wonderful work they’re doing.

Embedded video from CNN
Turning trash into usable products (CNN)

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* I would have linked to their online catalog of products, but at the time of writing this, it seems to be down.

Images used courtesy of XSProject Foundation.

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