MOTUnation.com

This guy is one of the “Citizen Scientists” who process raw, filtered spacecraft data, and in some cases stitches it together in spectacular animations. His Juno and Cassini work is some of the best I have ever seen and far surpasses anything NASA has released. Check him out and watch fullscreen in full res. Astounding.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/136797589@N04/

What amazing work! It takes an obsession to do that. I know the feeling. I create animations from webcams in various parts of the country, just to see what it looks like. You see the still picture, but you know that being there is a whole different experience, and animation is much closer to being there than still pictures, so you just plow through the work with that goal in mind of seeing it moving. It's amazing.

But what I do is nothing compared to what this guy is doing. Wow! It's fantabulouser! It's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

He's got an interactive zoomable picture of Manhattan and surrounding area. I was marveling over that until I realized that I do that all the time with Apple Maps. Their 3-D view of NYC is something you can get lost in for days at a time. (and I have) I'm not sure what Sean did, but it's still a fantastic picture. Deep resolution, perhaps? I found the Steinway Factory on it. (this side of Riker's Island, west and a wee bit south of the power plant on the western approach to La Guardia, east of Hell Gate Bridge and RFK Bridge)

But nothing compares to those clouds and waves. It looks like Earth is alive.

Shooshie

Shooshie wrote:What amazing work! It takes an obsession to do that. I know the feeling. I create animations from webcams in various parts of the country, just to see what it looks like.

What software do you use? I know Sean uses PhotoShop and Premier among many others. I have GIMP on my Mac and I've examined some tutorials, but I haven't a clue as to how to proceed. Just downloading the source data is a daunting task. Basically each frame is a separate black and white shot through a red, green, and blue filter. Each filter is converted to its native color, and the tricolor layers are combined. All for on frame.

Oh, you don't wanna know how I do it. It's lame, but it works.
I use an old version of Quicktime and QuicKeys. When I was doing this fairly often, I had a QuicKeys routine that downloaded various shots from various cameras at their fastest intervals — usually one minute. Sometimes 15 minutes. These were sorted by name, then put in a folder and sorted by date. They were renamed in GraphicConverter with a 5 digit suffix. That covered up to 99,999 frames. Quicktime was bad about getting the order right if your numbering system had different length whole numbers. For instance, a typical sorting might go 77, 78, 79, 8, 80, 81... or 799, 8, 80, 800 801... or something like that. So, renaming them in GC assured all the frames were in the correct order.

Once that was done, another QK routine opened the folder in Quicktime, chose the first frame, set the frame rate, then Quicktime made a film out of it. When it encountered incomplete frames, it would stop, so I had to "clean" the source pictures before putting them into Quicktime. Removing those frames meant that my final movies were pretty jerky at times, depending on the reliability of a given webcam that day.

I've got dozens of them, and no clear idea of what to do with them. I thought of creating a movie as a vehicle for music, but because of the irregularity of the animations, they're really not good enough for that. Once in a while I get some cool ones, though. Here are a few:

Smoky Sunrise in Houghton, Michigan, March 2015
Watch it at full screen for best results.
Same thing, same location, 7 years prior
Same thing 11 years prior, and a mile away, looking back.
Again, full screen playback works best.

If you ever wondered what it's like to see ships go through the Panama Canal, here's a lo-res movie:
Panama Canal, Miraflores Locks, December, 2004
Even though it's lo-res, you still see much more at full-screen.

The Panama Canal video frames were downloaded by QuicKeys, at whatever interval the camera updated. Some movies get downloaded entirely by me.
Some of the movies cover 5 or 10 years. Others, a few minutes. It's just something I did occasionally for many years. Never got serious enough about it to find software for it. It was usually a spur-of-the-moment thing; I'd see something interesting happening, knowing that the only way to visualize what was interesting was through time-lapse, so away I'd go.

Shooshie

Well, my day has been opened with a bunch of very cool stuff, for sure!
Thanks for the downloads, Shooshie!
Have to take that tour of Manhattan later today!

Terry

Lovely work, Shooshie. I'm impressed.

I figured that some sort of automation script is necessary, but then I think back to the time when all there was was pencils, paints, and cels.

terrybritton wrote:Well, my day has been opened with a bunch of very cool stuff, for sure!
Thanks for the downloads, Shooshie!
Have to take that tour of Manhattan later today!

Terry

Apple Maps. Freaking incredible. Keep Google Maps on hand to go down onto the street, but most of the time you don't need to.

Once, just for the exercise, I used Apple Maps to locate the exact apartment where my son and his girlfriend were staying in New York on a visit. He had sent us some pictures taken from inside, pointing out the window, which I used to triangulate his position from buildings in his pictures. Then I lined up angles to the ground over rooftops and water tanks to triangulate the floor where the windows were. I was right, but called it the wrong floor because of their naming conventions. I think it had no 13th floor, which made it the 27th floor instead of the 26th. Someday I just want to know how they do that. I mean, I understand "skins" over geometric shapes, but this goes way beyond that. It must not be easy, because most towns do not have the 3-D option, or have it only over a limited area. In Dallas, that area is the immediate downtown, and not even the outer-lying buildings of downtown. I keep wondering when they are going to finish it.

Paris and London are also amazing. With a Magic Trackpad, you can just rotate, zoom, and move anywhere, as if you were a bird. Or a plane. Or Superman!!! I love that stuff!

Shooshie wrote:

terrybritton wrote:Well, my day has been opened with a bunch of very cool stuff, for sure!
Thanks for the downloads, Shooshie!
Have to take that tour of Manhattan later today!

Terry

Apple Maps. Freaking incredible. Keep Google Maps on hand to go down onto the street, but most of the time you don't need to.

I've not used Apple Maps yet. I wonder how it will compare to Google Earth (Google Maps on steroids!) I'll definitely take a look at it!

Terry

Apple Maps doesn't come close to Google Earth in many ways, but it does two things fairly well: 3-D rendering of cities that have it, and getting around in those. That is, navigation in that environment. It does one other thing very well: it works within the apple ecosystem to get you directions and act as a GPS, with Siri reading those directions to you as you drive. They have made it so easy to use in that regard that I have come to depend on it. Oh, there is no need to compare. They're all fun and amazing. Better to have and use them all!

Shoosh

I found another one I kinda like. The Predatory Zombie Zambonies of the snow trails in the woods just north of Hancock, Michigan, in the Yooper's Keweenaw Peninsula.

There are trails in those woods where people get out on skis and have a great time. But how many of them know that there are zombie zambonies lurking out there? Prowling the woods? And when they come upon a skier, well... sadly you'll just have to watch the movie to see what happens then.

Full screen if you want to see the action.

The Predatory Zombie Zambonies of the Yooper Keweenaw Peninsula Snow Trails



Obviously, you can't do this with automation. I'm not even sure HOW I did it at this point. It was only 5 years ago. I must have had a dull night. Had to find something fun to do. I can see a little music would liven up this one a great deal. And no... not the theme from Jaws. (although I did think of it.) One bit of trivia: every frame was downloaded by hand. First to tabs in Safari, then to a folder.

Enjoy,
Shoosh

I just knew those things would become "self-aware" one day and pose just such a threat. Just look at them! It's always been clearly obvious to me. I rarely ski anymore, so it doesn't keep me up at night, but anyone who does should be shown this movie as a public service. And justifiably so.

Thanks for the diligent detective work, Shooshie!

Terry

terrybritton wrote:I just knew those things would become "self-aware" one day and pose just such a threat. Just look at them! It's always been clearly obvious to me.

Yes, I believe Zombonis should be outlawed! They are clearly a threat to humanity. Well, technically I guess those are just snowplows, but they have that same sinister look on their faces that Zambonis have. And do you ever see a Zamboni out just enjoying a nice summer day? Noooo... These things are evil, I tells ye!

Shoosh