Amoeba going lots of directions at the same time

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 9:38 pm

A nice amoeba from a few months ago....

I decided to go a little Hollywood

and play around with some videos. All I have learned so far is that there is a lot to learn! Don't know if I will catch the video bug... quite time consuming, and it's frustrating trying to keep decent quality while compressing things enough to make the files manageable on the internet. If you are curious here are a few fledgling attempts. (I probably will not leave these up too long... still playing around with CODEC's and compressions. There are two different videos here, each with two different sized files). I used a cheapo Chinese eyepiece camera. Could not get anywhere near correct white balance so removed all color. (These were compresssed with the WMV 9 CODEC. Most fairly recent Windows Media PLayers should have it). Don't expect much.....

... but you gotta start somewhere!

http://www.krebsmicro.com/forumpix/amoeba_320.avi (1.6 mb)
http://www.krebsmicro.com/forumpix/amoeba_640.avi (6 mb)

http://www.krebsmicro.com/forumpix/Ciliate_1_320.avi (6.2 mb)
http://www.krebsmicro.com/forumpix/Ciliate_1_640.avi (13.3 mb)

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 11:10 pm

Fun stuff, Charlie! Send more!!

These look stupendous as a first attempt. I'm thinking that color might be nice even if it's not white balanced, but I guess we have to trust your judgement there.

A couple of observations that struck me as interesting...

The Imagen player reports that you've got 2:1 duplicated frames in all videos. The fades are different in every frame, but the rest of the image content is two frames the same, then the next two same as each other but different from the first two, and so on. Perhaps you could compress more tightly by reducing your nominal frame rate to eliminate the duplicated frames.

Around 38 seconds into the ciliate flick (e.g. frame 1160/1268), you've got some great images of what I take to be an oral groove. Is that really what I'm seeing, or is that linear structure at bottom of frame something else?

--Rik

PS. I'm utterly jealous at your ability to find such large and mobile amoebae. I have never ever found such nice specimens outside of a commercial culture.

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 6:24 am

Well I don't suppose we will see them out on DVD anytime soon before Christmas but these are fantastic videos Charlie. Granted there are a few minor flaws here and there but the details of the amoebae and the cilates are great. I watched those amoebae for quite some time, really neat how you captured the protoplasmic streaming and all the other cell inclusions along with the vacuoles and such. Really awesome videos! Looking forward to more of these from "Krebs Productions."

bernhardinho · Post by **bernhardinho** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 1:44 pm

Hi Charles,

those videos are great!! I'm amazed by the resolution of your chinaware.

Rik: yes, that is the mouth (peristome) of what I take for a Colpidium spec.

Bernhard

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 9:53 pm

Well thanks... not so sure I want encouragement

I've already got so many things I want to do I'll have to either stop sleeping at night, or start taking better care of myself to add on a few more years.

It'll take me awhile to figure this out to my satisfaction. The Chinese camera has pretty good resolution, but the software is just adequate and sort of clunky. Noise levels seem higher than I would like, and color balance is very "iffy". It was enough to get me interested, but I am already looking for a reasonably priced, decent quality camera.

Rik... I didn't even notice the duplicate frames. Perhaps the USB2 connection and/or camera/software can't really manage 30fps at 640x480 so it "cheats" and doubles up the frames. I went back and processed every other frame, and reduced the frame rate to 15fps. Can't see any difference in quality, and, as would be expected, the file size really dropped! Right now my thinking is that if I can get a good quality, 45sec 640x480 clip at 15fps that comes in between 2 and 4mb I will happy. (It's amazing how the file size varies with the subject detail and motion). These first ones are far too large and have numerous other problems. I'll give 'em a few more days and then zap them!

What do you all think...
If there were videos to be seen, is 2-4 mb a reasonable size to download?
Also... what would you prefer to see for this size download?:
1024x768 video, 20secs
640x480 video, 40secs

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:57 pm

Charlie,

Internet Explorer just now downloaded your Ciliate_1_320.avi file in 69 seconds for 5.87 MB. That's on Verizon's lowest quality DSL line.

I'll download 2-4 MB on speculation; 10 MB and up if I have some reason to think that it'll be good stuff. Having a highly compressed low-res version backed by higher resolution, higher quality, is always a good idea. Another possibility is to back videos with some selected still frames captured at highest possible quality.

Sorry, I can't answer the tradeoff you ask about. It would depend on the material.

--Rik

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 3:24 am

2-4 Mb is not much for me seeing as I have Ultra High speed DSL, just one step below Bellsouths 6.0 full blown and even 10 Mb isn't much fo me to download but for folks who only have access to dial up either one would be a challange. I don't know anything about AV files so there is nothing that I know of that I could contribute as for suggestions, however as for preference, 640 X 480 would be okay.

Thomas Ashcraft · Post by **Thomas Ashcraft** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 8:16 am

Charlie wrote:
What do you all think...
If there were videos to be seen, is 2-4 mb a reasonable size to download?
Also... what would you prefer to see for this size download?:
1024x768 video, 20secs
640x480 video, 40secs"

Hi Charlie,

Consumer grade cameras with movie-mode are getting pretty good.

My own camera, as an example ( Canon S3 IS - costs around $300 now), has the possiblity of shooting 30fps and also 60 fps. It shoots 640x480 but I am pleased that when the movies are played full screen they do not pixelate very much.

I generally try to shoot 20 second or less clips but sometimes an interesting scene goes on longer. This Canon shoots to a SD memory card and I have 2 separate 1 GB cards and when one card is downloading into the computer I can keep shooting. Works well.

I am a rural person and up until last year I only had dialup speeds. I used to try to keep all my work product small in megabytes out of respect for slow internet users but now I find this constraining and make file sizes whatever they need to be. Such is the modern world and the future. ( Although if a file is over 8 MB I cannot send it via certain mail servers).

It seems technology is getting better rapidly. When I look at my own movies and compare them to the archive of specimen movies at http://internt.nhm.ac.uk/jdsml/research ... index.dsml
I am pleased at their quality. But......I would really like to see sharper detail ( like your DIC and still flash pics! ) and think that this sort of quality will be available in the not too distant future.

Maybe you will be an innovator.

Encouragingly,
Tom in New Mexico

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Fri Dec 01, 2006 11:58 am

Thats quite cool,looks like its imitating a Hydra!