Hydra in a video

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ralfwagner
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Hydra in a video

Post by ralfwagner »

Hello,

the characteristic behaviour of a hydra (cnidaria) can be demonstrated best in a video. I found this species sitting on a root
of a common duckweed. The section of the root with the hydra was cut off and observed on a concave slide in a few drops of water. No coverslip, darkfield, lens 4x/0.1. First a photo here:

Image


The video (~2.8 MB, DIVX-AVI-format) can be downloaded here:


http://home.arcor.de/dr.ralf.wagner/Bil ... 9-divx.avi
Last edited by ralfwagner on Sun Jun 18, 2006 9:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
--- Ralf ---

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Lovely! It took me a while to notice the bud, but that sure caught my attention in the last few seconds.

A quick technical question: what video editing tool did you use? I'm especially interested in the scale bar overlay.

Thanks,
--Rik
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Thomas Ashcraft
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Post by Thomas Ashcraft »

Ralf,

That's a very fine video! Thanks for sharing it.

I am wondering what video camera and software system you are using? It seems to capture a rich and deep black background very well. Any details appreciated.

Thomas Ashcraft

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ralfwagner
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Post by ralfwagner »

Hello rjlittlefield and Thomas Ashcraft,

the video was edited with "virtual dub", a free video editing tool, available for free via the internet. With the aid of the filter "logo" you can overlay any bitmap.

I use a CANON Powershot A85 camera both for recording the videos and the fotos. No special software for recording the video, just the camera. Please have a look at my homepage under "Technische Informationen" for more details. Sorry, but at the moment this page is available only in German, but the pichtures of the setup will surely help a bit.
--- Ralf ---

Thomas Ashcraft
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Post by Thomas Ashcraft »

Ralf wrote: "I use a CANON Powershot A85 camera both for recording the videos and the fotos. No special software for recording the video, just the camera. "

Hi again Ralf,

You have a very fine collection of specimens on your website. Nice!

It looks like your Canon Powershot A85 is capable of good and fast frames per second movies. I see you also have a Tuocam. Is the Canon Powershot better than the Tuocam? Now that digital photo cameras have movie capabilities, maybe they are better than the lower megapixel webcams?

Thomas

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ralfwagner
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Post by ralfwagner »

Hi Thomas,

I do not use the webcam anymore. The resolution and the quality of the "lens" of the webcam are bad compared to the A85. The A85 in video mode is capable of recording 30s movies in 640x480 (highest possible) resolution. It then takes 10 frames per second. The videos taken with the A85 are better than those taken with the webcam, because the A85 has the superior opticical components.
--- Ralf ---

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Ken Ramos
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Post by Ken Ramos »

Great shot Ralf. :D Haven't seen a Hydra in ages. Usually I find the Green Hydra here in the mountains of North Carolina but its been awhile. For some reason I could not get Windows Media Player to cough up the vidio clip. :|
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ralfwagner
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Post by ralfwagner »

Ken,

if you have problems with the videos, you must install the "divx-video-codec". You can download the codec from this site:

http://www.divx.com/divx/windows/download/

I use this codec because it reaches a high compression rate combined with a good qualtiy.
--- Ralf ---

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