Against
Turbines At Chiplow
GOOSE WATCH 2009
We have three wind farms proposed, each just a couple of miles apart, in Docking, Syderstone and South Creake. All of them are in the centre of the feeding and foraging grounds of the pink foot geese, which over winter along the North Norfolk coast. The Syderstone group (ATAC) and the South Creake group (CAPE) are undertaking their own goose logs and bird surveys this winter. In addition to this we are setting up a photo and video library of the geese using the "You Tube" internet site.
Everyone can take part by submitting their photographs and camcorder films for loading on to You Tube. Photos of geese at high altitude against the setting sun make for spectacular images, but it is the geese feeding on the ground or lifting off in a dense cloud which underline the threat of the thrashing turbine blades.
A
pink foot goose in flight
PHOTOGRAPHS
Photographs need to be
taken with a digital camera or mobile phone to provide "jpg"
file(s). For each submission, which may include several photographs taken
at the same time and location, we will need your name, date, time, location and
an estimate of the number of geese. You can email in this information to
us, with the jpg files as attachments.
Better still if you
have Windows Movie Maker set up a wmv file with the above details as the title
page followed by your photographs. In this format you can include several
locations with a slide title before each group of photographs for a particular
date, time and location. Sounds messy, but it is great fun (after you
have done the first one) and you will see your name and photos on the
internet. If this format is too much for you, then please use the format
in the preceding paragraph and we will put the wmv file together.
VIDEO
There are a large
number of video formats around. You Tube recommend the following Video
Codecs: H.264, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4. However the most convenient is Windows
Movie Maker (wmv files). Videos should be no larger than 2Gb and no
longer than 10 minutes duration. Once again put your name, date, time,
location and number of geese on the title page, or if you are including more
than one sighting on the same video, place this information before each video
clip.
It is unlikely that we will be able to convert or edit video files in various
formats, but if you can supply a file with all this information (titles before
each clip), then if You Tube can accept it, we will readily load it to the
internet site.
TRANSMISSION
DETAILS
The You Tube site is
called westnorfolkgeese and can be accessed directly at www.youtube.com/user/westnorfolkgeese
Initially
the site just had a couple of test files loaded to test it out.
Email your photos and videos to norfolkgeeseATgooglemail.com (substitute an @
sign for AT when you type it).
Dermott Sales of Docking (01485 527253) will manage the site and load the
data, with Reg Thompson of Syderstone (01485
578508) as a stand in. Please ring or email if you have any queries, but
we cannot guarantee a very high level of technical expertise.
MOVIE
MAKERS
Windows Movie Maker came bundled with Windows Vista Home Premium. If this is your version of Windows, then you have it already. Strangely Microsoft have not included it in Windows-7, but are promising a free download. There is a free download from Microsoft for Windows XP at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx .
Another
free download for use with You Tube is Picasa 3 from Google at http://picasa.google.co.uk/
DIGITAL CAMERA TO PC
If
your camera instructions do not tell you how to do it, then the easiest thing
to do is to buy an external camera card reader, which plugs into a USB port on
your PC. You then take the memory card out of your digital camera, put it
into the card reader and you can copy your pictures onto your PC hard drive.
The shop in Fakenham sells them for £12, just ask for a Peak USB 2.0 Card
Reader External, see details at foot of this page:
http://www.computeuk.co.uk/flash_memory.asp
The address of the company is on this page as well. I suggest that you
take your camera with you to check that the card reader accepts your digital
camera card as there are a number of different types. The camera card
readers have typically 4 or 5 slots to cater for the different
"standard" digital camera cards.
MOBILE PHONE TO PC
Before
you rush out to buy a digital camera and a camcorder to take pictures of the
geese, I ought to point out that
most mobile phones take both pictures and video clips. If you do not have
a five year old in the house to show you to
load them into your computer, read on ......
Mobile Phone to
Computer
Some mobile phones will come with a cable and instructions to connect with your
PC. However most mobile phones nowadays are Bluetooth enabled. If
your PC is not also Bluetooth enabled then the simplest thing to do is to
purchase a Bluetooth USB 2.0 adapter, sometimes called a Bluetooth
Dongle. This device is a tiny radio receiver and transmitter about half
the size of match box. You just plug it into a USB port on your computer,
install any software driver that comes with it and you are ready to go, it will
talk to your mobile phone. Copy the picture or video clip onto your PC's
hard disk drive. If you have a very old PC it may only have USB 1.0
ports, in which case you will need a Bluetooth USB 1.0 adapter. A
Bluetooth adapter costs about £7 from Argos and elsewhere.
Import into Windows Movie Maker
This is a simple menu option in Windows Movie Maker (WMM). Pictures are
pretty much standard and are in jpg format. However on my mobile phone the
video clip was in 3gp file format, which WMM did not recognise. Two
options presented themselves, either install the appropriate Windows Codec
Driver for 3pg format, or find a piece of software to convert the file. I
opted for a free download from www.dvdvideosoft.com
to convert 3gp file formats to avi format. (I don't usually download
software from unknown sources, but it did not do me any harm). It has
other conversion programs for different video format files.
Make Your Film
In Windows Movie Maker paste your pictures and video clips into the time
line. Put a title at the front of your film with your name, date, time,
location and estimated number of geese. If you are including details of
more than one sighting put the appropriate title information at the front of
each picture or video clip. Then publish your film to the hard disk drive
on your computer to create a file in wmv format. Email your masterpiece
to us at the address above.
Is it that Simple ?
Well, although I have taken a few pictures on my mobile phone, I have never
taken a video on my mobile phone before. So, one Sunday afternoon I took a
picture of Syderstone church and a video of a passing car, as there were no
convenient geese to hand. When I returned home, the above exercise took
me no more than 10 minutes on the computer. I should say that it was a
grey day and the light was extremely bad and my hand was shaky as I panned the
passing car, so the end result is pretty naff, but judge for yourself at www.youtube.com/regthompson
. My first ever attempt !
CAMCORDER TO PC
To
transfer your video clips to your PC, you will have to consult your camcorder’s
instructions. It may be a cable
connection (e.g. FireWire) or Bluetooth (see Mobile Phones above). Once you have your video clip on your PC, it
will probably be in a proprietary format.
Some of these will work with You Tube and Windows Movie Maker, others
will not. If you Google with "xxx
video converter", where xxx = your video file extension, e.g. mov, then
you should find some software to do the job.
Files in .avi format seem to be pretty standard and should work with
most movie makers.
However
if your video clip relates to a single sighting then email it to us in whatever
format, together with your name, date, time, location and your estimate of the
number of geese, and we will see what we can do with it. On the other hand if you have several
sightings from different locations and times, we will not know where to splice
in the title pages in respect of each sighting. This is why we are suggesting that you assemble your clips into a
movie yourself. Remember movies should
not be greater than 2Gb and no longer than 10 minutes duration – these are the
You Tube limits. See Transmission
Details above for our email address.
GEESE OVER CHIPLOW 2007
During the winter of 2007/08 the Syderstone group (ATAC)
made a 10 minute film of the geese in the Syderstone area. You can view it on You Tube at www.youtube.com/geeseoverchiplow
. You may also view it in a larger
screen format on the ATAC web site at http://www.syderstone.com/ATAC/geese2007.htm
. As the ATAC server is not a streaming
server like You Tube, please allow a couple of minutes for the movie buffers to
fill before playing (Windows Media Player).
This
film shows what can be done, but it only covers the small area of the
Syderstone (Chiplow) wind farm. With
three wind farms now proposed close together we need wider coverage. As the geese move from field to field on a
daily basis, every picture and movie clip is relevant to all three wind farms.
CHRISTMAS PRESENT ?
If you are feeling left out of all this technical junk, then why not hint for a digital camera for Christmas. You will not go far wrong with a Fujifilm A235 digital camera. Not only does it take super snaps but it will also make a movie with sound. At 3” by 2” and 1” thick it slips into a pocket or handbag. Black, Silver or Dusky Pink with 12.2 MegaPixels, inbuilt flash, microphone and speaker, red eye, and loads of other tecci stuff, it is just £67 from Tesco. The inbuilt memory is very small, so you will need an SD memory card at £8 for 2GB. This size gives you hundreds of pictures or 25 minutes of movie, or you can double this with a 4GB card. The picture file format is .jpg and the movie format is .avi, which both load to Windows Movie Maker and You Tube. To copy to my PC I took the memory card out of the camera and put into my card reader and copied the pictures and movies with no problem. If you do not have a card reader, it comes with a USB cable and software to transfer the pictures and movies to your PC. The only drawback which I found was that it comes with a 96 page manual on CD ROM, which was both daunting and sleep inducing. However I just set the camera to AUTO mode and did not bother to read any more ! Consequently there is my really naff first attempt called “Feeding the Hounds” at www.youtube.com/regthompson .
CONTACT US
Our email address is shown above under Transmission Details. It will have to be typed manually into your email program. This is because automatic address links (hyperlinks) attract too much computer generated junk mail (spam).