Willy Landham's Bonefishing Videos

[Willy Landham]

OK... I'm on board with this video thing!

This is part one featuring my brother, Al Landham. I'll post the rest of the videos as I have time that will feature the rest of the Landham gang.

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[DrRalph]

Excellent, good job!

[SamFamAustin]

Go Willy. Priceless over-the-bow shot there. I'll try but ... so far only a doctor and an engineer could make this work ... how about a doofus like me? Sounds not to bad after the first one, tho'. Thanks for the recipe and let's not lose this one!
sam

[Rock Steady]

...Thanks for breaking the ice.

rs

[Jusbones]

Great stuff ! I cannot take credit for this quote but "Bigfoot lives ! He is on the front of every flats boat !" (Lefty Kreh). Been there done that, fell in the water, had line running 100mph between my legs, frantically try to rip off line so I could step out of the line......I always fish bare foot....it helps a lot.......glad to see I'm not the only one that had those problem.....:D

ALL SAID AND DONE, GREAT WORK !! LOOKING FORWARD TO MORE !!!
PS Where were you ? The Marls ?
Mark

[Willy Landham]

Thanks for the encouragement! Glad you enjoyed it. I'm playing around with the next video now. I had originally made one 30 minute video of the trip but YouTube only allows a maximum of 10 minute clips so I've got to break them up. It will probably be better this way. 30 minutes is a lot to sit through at one time.

Yes, we were in the Marls with guide Justin Sands. Justin along with Buddy Pinder are two of the best guides in Abaco.

[Willy Landham]

Willy Landham with bonefish guide Justin Sands...

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[Willy Landham]

Graphite Mike...

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[Willy Landham]

Rum Runner...

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[DrRalph]

Excellent, thanks!

[JerseyGirl]

Willy:
Incredible! Looks like professional production values to me. I'd appreciate a quick tutorial with some basic information on how you did it: the camera you used, the software, etc. Makes me want to hop on a plane and chase bones in Abaco.
Todd Shipman

[Willy Landham]

Hey Todd,

Thanks! I'm at work right now and things are kind of crazy today. I'll post a response this evening after I get home.

[Patti Puzo]

Thanks Willy. For those of us that have never experienced the thrill of bonefishing, you gave a us better understanding of the sport. Those fish get up and move, and it's incredible how fast they change direction!
Great job.

[BahamaAngie]

Cool, Willy. Thanks!

[Sapelo Son]

Neat Willy!

[bahamajb]

Excellent work, and great fish! Been trying to put a bluefin vid' together will post if I ever figure it out, I'm w/ Todd on the lesson....jb

[Willy Landham]

The camera that we used was my brother's. I think it was a Sony that recorded to those little digital tape cartridges. He bought it several years ago so it's certainly not the latest technology. I'm sure there's better stuff out there but it's not something that I've ever looked into buying.

To get the video from those tapes to the PC he purchased a PCI video capture card and installed it, along with the software that came with it, in his PC. He hooked up the output of the camera to the input of the capture card in the PC, played the tape, and 'captured' the video into the PC. He used this to create a DVD of the unedited 2 hours or so of video that we shot and he gave me a copy of that DVD. The DVD is what I had to work from.

His software had all the editing capabilities but he never got around to playing with editing down our video. So I decided to give it a shot with the software that came with our laptop (Windows Movie Maker). Problem was that it would not import the DVD file format. Here's where it gets a bit convoluted.

I got on the internet and did some searching. I came across a piece of software called Auto Gordian Knot or AutoGK. It takes a DVD and converts it into various types of formats that can be burned to to regular old CD (and something that Movie Maker will import). By the way I believe it will also crack protected DVDs if you're interested in pirating videos. So I loaded AutoGK and ran it against the DVD files. It took a couple hours but I ended up with files that I can import into Movie Maker.

After that it was just a matter of playing with Movie Maker. It's fairly simple but still takes a bit of effort to figure out how to do stuff. Along with videos you can import still pictures and audio files too. The intro that I have is a still photo that I took several years ago of Justin Sands with my brother (sitting in the middle) and Graphite Mike standing on the bow of the boat. I ran that picture through a photo editor and applied a watercolors effect. I made a bunch of copies of that file and added the titles to each picture. Movie Maker could do titles but I didn't like the fonts. I imported each picture into Movie Maker and added a fade transition between each picture. That way you see one title fading out as the next title fades in. I found a piece of music that I liked (in this case I used the Black Crowes' song "Thorn in my Pride" and imported that into the project. You play around with the timing until everything lines up nicely. Then I started to work on editing the video into sections that I thought were interesting and added fade out/fade in transitions to keep it from looking jerky. Believe me it was a LOT OF WORK. I honestly spent dozens of hours working on this stuff (but it was fun). Once you get everthing just right you save the project and Movie Maker creates a Windows Media Audio/Video file (WMV file type). It ends up being a 640X480 resolution and a ten minute video (the longest YouTube will allow) ends up being around 76M. It takes Movie Maker about 15 minutes to create the file and it also takes about that long to upload the file to YouTube.

So bottom line... I don't recommend the path that I took. If you're interested in this stuff then go purchase some sort of a video capture device (either internal or external) and use the software that comes with it to do your editing and file creation. It will still consume a great deal of time (or at least it did for me) because you have to put a lot of thought into it to have something that's OK.

Hope this helps a little but again the best thing to do is go get the hardware/software that you need and read the directions.

[DrRalph]

I have a SonyPC1 video camcorder (no longer made) that records video/audio to miniDV tape. Most of the new camcorders record to a small DVD, you can take it out of the camcorder and instantly play it back unedited on a DVD player.

That having been said, not many of your friends and neighbors, or even you for that matter, want to watch 1-2 hours of unedited video. When we take a long vacation, I usually come back with about three hours of video, and I try to get it edited down to less than an hour.

Most modern camcorders have a "firewire" (IE1394) output that allows you to upload your video onto your computer hard drive, then you use software to edit it. I have used six different editing programs, they are all buggy and horrible to use, but in my opinion the least painful is Pinnacle's Studio (just Google it, the version and URLs change frequently). You edit your video, then write it onto a DVD that you can watch on your home DVD player.

You'll want to make separate clips to upload onto the YouTube site: each clip has to be less than 10 minutes in length, and have a filesize under 1 GB. The video I uploaded had a res of 320 x 240 and is a little fuzzy, Willy's is 640 x 480 and looks sharper, that may be the way to go.

You can buy excellent quality camcorders for $3-400 now, and if you'll take some time to learn the editing software, it can yield a crisp product that you and your family and friends will enjoy watching. Just make sure the camcorder outputs video in a way that your computer can "eat" it; i.e., if your camcorder outputs firewire, make sure your computer has a firewire input. Otherwise, you have to do what Willy's brother did: buy a card you install in your computer that accommodates the output of the camcorder. And let me tell you, that is big fun:eek:.

[Willy Landham]

The technology that I was working with is many years old. Definitely pre-Firewire. There's better stuff out there now that should be much easier to work with.

[Wonkee]

Make a man Cry... I wish the School year only lasted about 3 weeks so that I could spend the other 11 months in Abaco. Sadly it does not, I was going to come down for Christmas, but just heard that my guide, and most of the rest of the Family will be state side. The Videos were great, they give you a feel for what goes on out there, but just cant give you that raw energy of having that reel in your hand while a bone is on a long run. Great job.

[BahamaAngie]

You know Dr. Ralph when we bought our very first camcorder, I bought the one with the small casette and you played it in a special holder that would fit into the VCR. I did not want the 8mm that plugged into the tv. Our latest camcorder is probably about 3 years old now and it has a mini mini casette and you need to plug it into the tv to play it!!! Certainly got what I didn't want 10 years ago. Now you are saying small dvd....now that I would like. But I am not buying another one this is about my 4th camcorder either a Sony or Samsung....I am not sure. I like it but I don't like the plugging into the tv thing.

[Salt Dog]

Willie, best post on the Sportsman's section of the forum to date. Thanks for sharing your efforts, I needed a voyeuristic thrill today. You're also a lucky man to get to spend time fishing together with your brother...good times.

[DrRalph]

You know Dr. Ralph when we bought our very first camcorder, I bought the one with the small casette and you played it in a special holder that would fit into the VCR. I did not want the 8mm that plugged into the tv. Our latest camcorder is probably about 3 years old now and it has a mini mini casette and you need to plug it into the tv to play it!!! Certainly got what I didn't want 10 years ago. Now you are saying small dvd....now that I would like. But I am not buying another one this is about my 4th camcorder either a Sony or Samsung....I am not sure. I like it but I don't like the plugging into the tv thing.

Angie, the deal is this: most people shoot a whole lot of video that looks good when you shoot it, and not so good when you look at it, and REALLY not so good when you show it to family & friends. If you can learn to edit it on a computer, you cut out the stuff no one wants to watch, you get it down to 10-15 minutes, and now people enjoy looking at it.

Ever get invited to someone's house, they get all excited about showing you their "vacation video," you're nauseated within the first two minutes from all the excess camera motion, and they don't let you leave until it's 1 AM and you've sat through four VHS cassettes? You gotta think about making it presentable to your audience, not just connecting the camcorder to a TV and having to live through hours of raw video.

[Jusbones]

Thanks for the encouragement! Glad you enjoyed it. I'm playing around with the next video now. I had originally made one 30 minute video of the trip but YouTube only allows a maximum of 10 minute clips so I've got to break them up. It will probably be better this way. 30 minutes is a lot to sit through at one time.

Yes, we were in the Marls with guide Justin Sands. Justin along with Buddy Pinder are two of the best guides in Abaco.

Willy, again thanks for, what I know was a lot of hard work, the videos are great ! However, (there is always a however, it seems). Your guides have a great reputation, but let's not forget the boys down Cherokee way. That's the place to be !!! Marty Sawyer was guiding bonefishermen
and free diving crawfish since he was 13 years old. Obviously my favorite guide !! Again, well done mate !
Mark Dougherty