1978 ad for Hagoromo Foods, spoofing Star Wars. Goofy, silly, weird and fun. Looks to be an ad for what they call “sea chicken“, which I’m guessing is tuna.
Tag Archives: youtube
Music with veggie instruments
YouTube user heita3 from Japan has been making wind instruments from vegetables and eggs, and he’s been posting videos of himself playing those instruments online. So far, he made 50 videos, most of which are quite popular, having garnered well over 10 million total views.
In addition to playing the instruments, he shows people how to make them. Here are just a few videos that show the results of his interesting hobby.
(Carrot pan-flute, “Moon on the Ruined Castle”)
(Carrot ocarina, “The Legend of Zelda”)
(Apple ocarina, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”)
(Butterbur oboe, “Lightly Row”)
(Radish slide whistle, “Grandfather’s clock”)
(The piece-de-resistance, Carrot ocarina trio, “Lightly Row”)
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.
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.
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…
SmugMug should seriously reconsider upping their limits to 30 minutes per video and at least 1 GB per file. They’re behind the times.
I got a really pleasant surprise when I checked into Facebook’s video upload requirements.
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.
Vivaldi's Four Seasons on the accordeon
A teen plays a segment of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons so masterfully on his accordeon, that his video, uploaded to YouTube, is bound to go viral. Unfortunately no credit is given to him in the video or in the video’s description. Does anyone know who he is? He plays incredibly well for his age.
And now, for something completely random and very weird…
Adrian Holovaty
It turns out Adrian Holovaty, the co-creator of the open-source Django Web framework, also plays the guitar. My wife found a few videos of him on YouTube and sent them to me. The videos aren’t recorded professionally — it’s him in front of a webcam, with a small mike placed on the table close to his guitar, but his music is great. From the looks of the background in some of his videos, it looks like some are recorded in his office at work — when you think about it, it’s pretty cool when you can play guitar at work, right?
Adrian creates his own arrangements for various songs, video games and TV shows, like Duck Tales (which I love, btw).
Adrian Holovaty – Duck Tales theme song
There’s also an acoustic version of the Super Mario Bros. theme.
Adrian Holovaty – Super Mario Bros. theme song
He’s got plenty of serious stuff if you’re not into cartoons and video games. For example, there’s his rendition of Beatles’ “Yesterday”.
Or how about “Hit the Road Jack”?
Adrian Holovaty – Hit the Road Jack
He also did the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer”.
Adrian Holovaty – Daydream Believer
Sometimes he does multitrack videos, like his rendition of Nola, a 1915 ragtime piano piece by Felix Arndt. Here he used the original Les Paul arrangement from the 1950s, where he recorded the lead guitar at half time, then sped it up 200%, to give it the classic high pitched sound.
While I’m on the topic of multitrack videos, he also did a gypsy jazz rendition of the Super Mario Bros. 2 theme song.
Adrian Holovaty – Super Mario Bros. 2 theme song
I love gypsy jazz, which Django Reinhardt popularized. Adrian did a multitrack gypsy jazz version of “All of Me”, which I think is great.
I’m going to close with Adrian’s rendition of Django’s “Tears”. He plays it with four fingers, unlike Django, who played it with two. Did you notice the Django Web framework shares someone’s name? Methinks Adrian is a big fan of the legendary guitarist.
Raoul Pop 