Capturing Video... lots of ideas, none working so far.

Alrighty then. I'm trying several ways to capture video. YouTube is easy. I'm trying to do this, however, from a site that's gotten creative in how the streaming video is displayed. The video appears in a little window within a pop-up window. There is no URL to the file.

Real Player version 11 Tools -- Preferences -- Downloads and Recording

While this works nicely for YouTube, it records just the blue surrounding background window for the videos I'm trying to capture.

Firefox's Download Helper then convert it from flv using Media Converter. (Super (c) will also work.)

Download Helper shows a list of sites that it works on. My site is not on that list.

Use a program called 'Replay Media Catcher' to grab the file.

I'm trying out the free trial version of this now. So far it doesn't seem to be doing anything. I'll have to test it on YouTube to find out if I'm just using it incorrectly, or if it's this site again.

You don't need any software to capture the You Tube videos. UseInternet Explorer to access the site. Then open your Temporary Internet Files Folder via Windows Explorer. Sort the files by "Last Accessed" byclicking that heading. The YouTube videos have a filename using this pattern: "get_video?video_id=".
Drag this file to your desktop or another folder and give it the nameof the file you just watched with the filetype of ".flv". Download theFLV file player or VLC and you can watch the video as often as youlike. NOTE: The file won't appear in the folder until it is nearly done playing; the time depends upon your internet speed.

For some reason this isn't working for me. There is no file in my Temporary Internet Files folder (and I remember there once was a whole listing) just a dat file. ??

For firefox users, flash streamed videos can be found in the user'stemp folder in the format fla???.tmp. Wait until the progress bar iscomplete (press F5 in explorer to ensure that the file size is nolonger increasing) then use an unlocker to copy the file to anotherlocation with an flv extension. I use Unlocker from http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/ (freeware).

I haven't tried this yet.

I am still open to suggestions, helps, advice from all you tech-savvy people. :)

In other news, I downloaded my first torrent last night. Go me.

Ha. My poor Out Of Bounds betas.

At least they're not whimpering yet.

You see, perfica has done a lot of work on Out Of Bounds over the months, and now the new betas are jumping into the middle of the pond.

I had no idea we'd fleshed out so much backstory.

In just three days rabidfan, dossier, sarka, and emeraldsword have been flooded with 21 back-and-forth emails and a massive story outline spreadsheet. Mostly me pouring it out to (on?) them. None of the emails are short. I realize, of course, that a lot of this is catch-up work. dossier and rabidfan are the most involved in the discussion so far (especially dossier, wow), while sarka and emeraldsword will most likely be more involved in the beta of specific scenes.

The back room of Out Of Bounds is a busy place. And I'm not even giving them all the skating videos I watch (mostly because it's a paid site).

Should I be this gleeful about overworking my betas? Or maybe I'm just happy that they know that yes, sometimes I'm slow to update but by god, I'm always working on this thing, always, I take my notebook to bed with me at night, I'm not shitting you. Or perhaps it's just fun to share the music and the cool stuff that's coming because I can't wait but there's lots of transitional stuff to wade through until we get there.

Heh. I think that last one's it, actually. *g* I mean, Blink 182? Is so 28-year-old John.

Please shut up, Nancy Kerrigan.

I can't stand Nancy Kerrigan as an announcer.

Okay, okay, during the competitions she's not bad. She knows (and can tell us) the difference between a triple flip and a triple Lutz -- although no one does it like Dick Button. Button tells where the skater has been, tells us, "Ryan has always had trouble with his speed but boy, he's fast tonight!" He gives us a sense of history, that this competition isn't an isolated event.

But she's driving me batty during the exhibitions. She just doesn't know when to talk or when to shut up.

Pointers for future announcers:

1 - Watch your mic. If it's fallen closer to your face -- put it back where it was! Otherwise your voice is now very, very loud, and very unprofessional. A tip: your nasal voice should not be louder than the skater's music.

2 - Give the important information up front. The song. The skater name. Don't wait until halfway through the performance when the viewer is into the show to interrupt it to tell us this shit. Cute comments also go in the beginning. Then let the viewer watch.

3 - We don't care about your past experiences in skating. Really. We don't want to know what it's like for you to perform in an exhibition. We're not watching you. You are not the show. You are just a disembodied voice. (Besides, Nancy, you always sucked. You were technically pristine but a boring performer.)

4 - You are watching the jumps. The viewer is watching the show. Don't shut up during the jumps and talk over the performance when you get bored. The truth is, hard as they are, important as they are, you've seen one jump, you've seen them all. Footwork, character, expression are what matter in an exhibition. You know, the stuff you're interrupting?

5 - It's an exhibition. Telling us during an exhibition that it's illegal to do that backflip in competition is completely irrelevant. It's not a competition.

6 - Pay attention to what's going on. Never tell us what you don't know. For example, telling us that "I got so into it I didn't catch whether Takahachi did a triple flip or a--" *strangles Nancy*