Please use a proper flash video player for APOD

[soupphysics]

It's great that the video sequences are now in flash instead of animated gifs.

But please start using a flash video player with some controls.

Jeroens JW FLV MEDIA PLAYER is free, simple, unobtrusive and very good.
http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Media_Player

That would give viewers fullscreen option and timeline control etc.

And maybe drop the ugly play symbol on the picture on the main page.

Maybe make the main picture a sequence of pics from the video (like 4 by 3 or something).

[apodman]

This software you recommend is to be installed and used by the person *making* the web site (not the person *viewing* the web site), right?

[soupphysics]

Only the publisher would need to make a change.

And no software is to be installed anywhere.

It's just a matter of the publisher using that flash player (or any other) instead of the one being used now.

[carmen]

What camera can you use to do old fashioned paper and pencil animation? I want to do traditional animation (NO FLASH), and I understand some aspects of it (24 frames per second, one frame is one picture, yadda yadda yadda), but I really don't want to use Flash. To me, doing the normal pictures with pencil and paper feels more natural.

But how do I make these series of pictures...move? How do I put all these bits and frames into an animation just using paper and pencil? What camera do you use?

[apodman]

What camera can you use to do old fashioned paper and pencil animation? I want to do traditional animation (NO FLASH), and I understand some aspects of it (24 frames per second, one frame is one picture, yadda yadda yadda), but I really don't want to use Flash. To me, doing the normal pictures with pencil and paper feels more natural.

But how do I make these series of pictures...move? How do I put all these bits and frames into an animation just using paper and pencil? What camera do you use?

Not my field exactly, but let me try: One way or another, you have to get your drawings digitized. Your choices are camera or scanner. Scanners are cheap, available built into printer-copier-faxes, and make it easy to align each sheet identically. If you really want to go with a camera, you have to go a long way with fixing your drawings and camera in space to equal the accuracy (size, focus, position, lighting) of a scanner. You can come close with a tripod and not touching the camera between shots and pinning your drawings carefully on an easel, but the pros keep a fixed camera in a fixed frame aimed at a rig where the drawing is clamped securely under glass (non-reflective with side lighting). The setup is more important than the choice of camera, and accordingly an important selection feature for your camera is its adaptability to the setup. Once you get all your digitized views together, then you're off to choosing software to assemble your movie. I have no advice about movie assembly software and its use, but save your scanned (or photographed) drawings in a format (file type) that the movie-making software you choose will accept. No doubt the desired file type is one of the usual suspects - I would guess jpg with 100% quality as a default.

[Chris Peterson]

What camera can you use to do old fashioned paper and pencil animation? I want to do traditional animation (NO FLASH), and I understand some aspects of it (24 frames per second, one frame is one picture, yadda yadda yadda), but I really don't want to use Flash. To me, doing the normal pictures with pencil and paper feels more natural.

But how do I make these series of pictures...move? How do I put all these bits and frames into an animation just using paper and pencil? What camera do you use?

As noted, you can either use a scanner or a camera (most any digital camera will probably work, but one with manual settings is best) to digitize the frames. At this point, I'd suggest you convert the sequence to Flash video format, since it's efficient in terms of storage space and will be accessible to nearly everyone. There are lots of programs that can take a sequence of frames and convert them to animated GIF, AVI, FLV, and a number of other formats. Photoshop can do this, as well as Flash. There are also some free or inexpensive programs out there. Quicktime is a popular choice.