08.26.16
August 26,
2016 Uploads
In this
entry, I'll be discussing the five videos uploaded on the 26th,
which are Orange
Fuzzy Caterpillar: Possibly Spilosoma Virginica,
Some
Bush Trail that Connects to Concession Road #3,
Pac-Man:
Sound Test With The Retro Arcade King!,
Asphalt
8: Ruf, ruf! Can you hear me now?,
and
Run In Crowd: How Far Can You Run With Your Friends? 5 videos is quite a lot, so let's dive right into it!
Remember
Trans-CanadaTrail: North of Regional Road 28?
Yep, I came back to the same place that day for another trip! I found
this fuzzy, little critter when I was close to the end of trail, so I
squatted to film him, because I thought he'd
make an interesting subject, since I haven't really filmed much
animals on this channel. It may look cute and tempting to touch, but
I often hear that these furry caterpillars
may cause adverse reactions if you touch them, or worse, eat
them!
Ok,
I don't think anybody would be stupid enough to do that, but you
never know. I have seen images of people holding them, but I
preferred to play it safe and avoided
handling this
little chap.
Now for the big question: what species is this caterpillar? Spilosoma
Virginica? Estigmene acrea? Or could it even be Acronicta aceris?
Only a skilled entomologist would know for sure.
Ah,
the video that was never supposed to see daylight, but ended with a
second chance! For
real though,
the
video had some heavy, unwanted rippling, horrendous shaking and
constant exposure changing! Prime emphasis on the exposure changing!
I don't think there's an exposure lock for the built-in camera, so
I'll have to
poke around to find a fix or maybe see if there are 3rd
applications
that can solve it.
So in order to fix these, I've obviously
applied anti-shake and changed the colours to improve the video. The
results? Far from spectacular, but better off from what it used to
be. So! What about the trail itself, you may ask? Well, it's really a
shortcut to a dog park that you can use when walking north up Valley
Farm Road,
and is located to the
left, or right in the case of the those coming from a southbound
direction. It's not difficult to navigate, but due to the copious
amounts of long grasses, bushes and trees, you're definitely going to
want to make sure you have bug spray and water. That's of course if
you're using it in late spring, summer and early autumn. Common
sense, but it's worth a mention anyway. Oh, and final thing: even
though it's a “shortcut” it's not super short per se, but not too
long either, so just be weary of that.
Good
ol' Pac-Man! He's a very famous, well recognized, classical arcade
icon that almost everyone has played with before. In this gaming
session, I decide to play a mobile version of the game to conduct my
1st
sound test with a new application I purchased recently. The results?
Fairly good until I found out that the video stopped recording after
about three and a half minutes... Joy. I should also mention that it
doesn't even actually record the video's
audio along with the video itself for games which really sucks, and
for other applications you have to downgrade to 360p to get get both
sound and video saved. No thanks. Thankfully, I've discovered a
workaround that sounds counterintuitive, but here goes: set the
resolution to the highest you see, which will be 720X720 for the
phones like the BlackBerry Q10 and Classic and likely 720X1280 for
the slab phones like the Z10, Z30 etc. I'm not sure about the
Passport, but I also hear that the 1440X1440 resolution is
unavailable, which again is another caveat. So after choosing your
resolution, you actually have to set the audio to disabled.
Sounds odd doesn't it? Until when you realize you get the full audio
blaring at you while you're recording! While this is happening, you
make sure you have a microphone near by to capture the audio, which
you can then later toss into your editing software to get the best of
both worlds: Native application + Sounds! Is going through all of
this worth it? Depends. I can imagine BlackBerry Passport users
having an easier time with the multitasking and screen capturing due
to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 Soc in their phones, which brings me
to the next point – actually not yet..... I'll save what I was
about to mention for the Asphalt 8 section since I didn't have that
problem for this game. Ok, so this feels more like a review of
Headless ScreenCorder rather than Pac-Man, but because the game cut
off so early, I didn't get to feel the vibe for long enough. And to
be honest, I think I'm somewhat glad it
stopped
because I did mention lots of random, weird things and frequently
brought up soundwaves, so I won't complain too much, but should
probably try Pac-Man again later at some point. Let's just say that
this game is fun. Very fun! Next time around I'll try
not to let
the ghosts kill me so much!
In
this experimental episode of Asphalt 8, I play with my preferred Ruf
car, the Ruf Rt 12 S, in Barcelona. The video tells you everything:
choppy, choppy, lag, lag! Choppy,
choppy, lag, lag! Seems like the combination of a high graphics,
processor demanding game and screen recording with a new application,
was too much for the ancient Snapdragon S4 Plus. I mean, it got the
job done, but poorly... I don't know if it's mostly the application
to blame, the processor or both, but something tells me that it's
likely both, because even on other recording applications like Screen
Recorder (I
know, very generic name) you may have seen it happen in some of other
videos like Asphalt 8: The Unfamiliar Roads, but
it hasn't been as bad as it was with ScreenCorder. So with this said,
this is why I believe that BlackBerry Passport owners may fare better
with these type of tasks; for
the reason
I mentioned above in my Pac-Man ramble: their beastly Socket on Chip!
Seriously, I often hear about how these guys keep bragging about how
fast their phones are, and how they handle Android applications like
champions, which can be just plain boastful to say, but there may
very well be some truth to it. So will I shoot another episode with
Asphalt 8 using ScreenCorder? YES.
I
have to get more results and compare different tracks before I can
come to concrete conclusions. As for the gameplay itself, hasn't been
my best run due to the constant pausing, but hey, at least I did a
clean run in one
attempt.
Not 1000 like
the way I often do!
This
is a game where you race alongside other players in a new world each
day. You tap to jump and tap again for a double-jump. Pretty
self-explanatory if you've played this game
or watched my video, where you'll also see it picking up the pace!
This
will require you to use faster reflexes and much more caution to
avoid running into crates or dropping off
the cliff like a grand loser! The game is cross-platform and
apparently you actually get to race with people from iOS, Android and
BlackBerry 10 in a session, unlike Asphalt 8 and other so called
cross-platformers which is pretty awesome. Wait, where's Windows 10
Mobile?! Who knows. As simple as the basic premise may be, this game
is actually a great time killer with a wonderful soundtrack. You can
customize your person, but as you heard me complaining
about, you have to cough up $0.99 CAD for one outfit or $2.99 for
all! Not digging that. I don't why the developer couldn't just make
you pay with in-game currency, or better yet just charge $0.99 CAD
for the whole application with everything unlocked. I'd totally pay
for it, but I know some cheapskates wouldn't and this is especially
true on the Android platform where piracy can be very rampant. So
what about Headless
ScreenCorder's capabilities, you may ask? This is the 3rd
game I've tested with it and have seen mixed results. The games loads
and runs fine, but the audio stuttered rather frequently. While this
is a bit of a nuisance, it's much better than the scenario
with Asphalt 8 where it was both gameplay and audio. I've already
went into detail about theories behind this, so I won't bore anyone
with that here. Despite the varying results I've had with audio and
gameplay during these
sessions,
I'll definitely be testing more native game applications with
ScreenCorder, but will use Screen Recorder for the Android games,
which does a phenomenal job at capturing both audio and footage
simultaneously, without the need for using an external microphone to
save audio that
would have otherwise disappeared with ScreenCorder
under high resolution recordings.
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