Streaming fly tying videos and podcasts

All about flies Fly Tying
1

In January I started writing a fly tying column for an FFF affiliate organization - the Buckeye Fly Fishers -http://www.buckeyeflyfishers.com. What makes the column unique is that I’ve been including video instruction of the fly tying process as a streaming media option. The third in the series - the James Wood Bucktail- has now been posted to the BUFF web site. It is available free to anyone, you don’t have to be a BUFF member to access the video.

Starting yesterday, we’ve begun producing these videos as “podcasts” and making them available for general download. Jim Stuard, a fellow BUFFer and the producer and editor of these efforts, tells me the whole podcast thing is pretty hot.

The first fly featured as a podcast is Jack Gartside’s Sparrow nymph. There are three flies currently on the BUFF page with streaming video, The Simple Shad, The James Wood Bucktail and the Sparrow. The link for the first podcast is below.

Windows Media: [url=http://www.flytyingforum.com/index.php?act...ow_wm.wmv&id=54:e88d2]http://www.flytyingforum.com/index.php?act...ow_wm.wmv&id=54[/url:e88d2]

Quicktime: [url=http://www.flytyingforum.com/index.php?act...w_PC2.mp4&id=55:e88d2]http://www.flytyingforum.com/index.php?act...w_PC2.mp4&id=55[/url:e88d2]

We’re going to try explore downloadable media as a way to demonstrate fly fishing and fly tying techniques. We’ll parallel release the fly tying videos we’re creating for the Buckeye United Fly Fishers in streaming Real Audio with a downloadable podcast in Windows Media and Quicktime. [url=http://www.flytyingforum.com:e88d2]www.flytyingforum.com[/url:e88d2] has agreed to host the podcasts, they are a real bandwidth hog and are far more than a club or my little page, [url=http://www.flyfishohio.com,:e88d2]http://www.flyfishohio.com,[/url:e88d2] can handle. That way you can select whether its easier for you to get a lower bandwidth streaming feed, or download the full 20/30 Mb file. The podcast files are definitely producing a better image and sound quality, IMHO. Plus you can store them on your hard drive or even burn them to a CDVideo for play on your DVD player. The streaming media looks just fine, however, and both are identical as to content. Needless to say, these video are not for commercial sale. They are a volunteer effort to promote the art of fly tying and the sport of fly fishing.

The Simple shad and the James Wood patterns will soon join the Sparrow in the list of flies available as downloadable files. Jim and I will be filming the next few flies in the series over the next couple of weeks. I’m trying to focus on tying primarily warm water fly patterns for the remainder of this year.

Upcoming flies include the Thief- a variation of the Muddler Minnow - and a variation of the Thief that I call The Modern Thief (a great smallmouth bass fly, btw). This will be for April. For May we’ll be presenting The Predator, a Skip Morris foam pattern that is great on top for 'gills and bass, or fished- as intended by Morris- on a sinking line as a dragon fly nymph imitation.

For June the fly will be the Roderick Haig-Brown Steelhead Bee. I tie it modified for warm water applications on a size 10 Mustad 94840 with hen hackle fan wings. It’s a pretty little thing, and if any of you read Haig-Brown its just appropriate to see it float. That fellow was a giant among writers.

Let me know if you have any particular requests or suggestions. I’m definitely open to ideas. I hope you find these videos useful!

Thanks!

Joe C.

Fly Fishing Warm Water Rivers is my new book based on nearly two decades of exploring and fishing the flows of the Midwest. [url=http://www.flyfishohio.com:e88d2]www.flyfishohio.com[/url:e88d2] for more information

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Thanks Joe! I for one really appreciate your effort and making these available. I just downloaded the podcast and will watch it later.

The links in your post only took me to flytyingforums home page, but I searched and found the link. I’ll try posting it below, this is the Windows Media link:

[url=http://www.flytyingforum.com/index.php?act=special&page=video2&file=Sparrow_wm.wmv&id=54:1969a]Windows Media File[/url:1969a]

3

Sorry about that - I thought I had the URL right. The file is hosted by Will at FTF, but this isn’t a feature of the site or anything so it’s not easy to find. Thanks for posting the corrected URL. Let me know what you think once you’ve had a chance to watch it.

Joe

4

I definitely will. As far as the link goes, I think your link was shortened by the forum software here and therefore just loads the root page. That is why I posted the link masked. Glad to help.

Here is the Quicktime link:

[url=http://www.flytyingforum.com/index.php?act=special&page=video2&file=Sparrow_PC2.mp4&id=55:66f0c]Quick Time File[/url:66f0c]

[This message has been edited by jeep274 (edited 07 March 2006).]

5

Thank you for doing this! From a beginners perspective, seeing something done goes a long ways towards helping me understand what is being described.

Mike
Cadillac, MI

6

Joe, I just finished watching the video. It was great. Very well done with great instruction. I really got a lot out of that and look forward to your future ones. I think I will be tying some Sparrow nymphs this week!

Jeff

7

For some reason, the QuickTime version downloaded with a warped file name (double extensions) on my Mac. It came down as:

Sparrow_PC2.mp4.txt

The URL isn’t the problem and the fix is trivial.

After the download completed, I just removed the “.txt” from the end and when the Finder whined at me for changing the extension, I told it I meant to do that…plays just fine now.

I mention that only in case anybody else hits the same problem and wonders how to fix it.

The video quality is great! I can even double the size it plays back at to see more detail without the picture getting too fuzzy to tell what’s going on. Nicely done!

I would suggest editing out the bits where you lean in front of the camera to reach materials. They’re brief, but very distracting (there’s one at about 4:45 and another right after it at 4:46-4:47). It’s a trivial thing but messes with the camera’s focus and wastes download bandwidth (figure a couple seconds per download times your eventual viewing audience).

I was watching a commercial tying video late last night and the editing mistakes were driving me nuts.

Your video is far better done! Congrats and keep it up. I can’t wait to see the additional patterns.

Thanks for sharing!

8

I should clarify…when I clicked the QuickTime URL listed above, the file download as raw text in a window instead of starting a proper download so maybe something is weird with the way its posted.

To get around that, try this in Safari:

Control-click on the URL and select “Download Linked File” from the menu that pops up.

Once the download completes, twitch to the Finder and rename the file to remove the “.txt” extension. You can then double-click or drop it onto QuickTime Player to watch the video.

9

Thanks for the encouraging words and the head-up about the QT version. I’ll get with the webmaster at Fly Tying Forum to see if the problem resides there or with my elementary computer skills.

The “podcast” versions definitely have better image quality. It’s surprising how much better!

Regarding the edits, the rendering takes forever because we needed to use certain filters due to poor lighting. We are at the beginning of the learning curve here. It took three hours to render than video! I doubt we’ll re-edit that one, but expect much better results as we learn how to do this. The Sparrow was only our second try at making a video (the Simple Shad was the first).

Joe C.

Fly Fishing Warm Water Rivers is my new book based on nearly two decades of exploring and fishing the flows of the Midwest. [url=http://www.flyfishohio.com:dfe46]www.flyfishohio.com[/url:dfe46] for more information

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I wouldn’t bother re-editing either. Sorry I wasn’t clearer on that. I was trying to offer input for future releases. Tweaking existing stuff is usually a big hassle.

As I mentioned before, you’re already ahead of some big-name commercial videos I’ve seen.

This thread prompted me to check the podcast section of the iTunes Music Store. I found three podcast series there that cover fly fishing.

Any chance yours can be added? That might boost distribution though I’m not sure how handles the server traffic.

I’m still downloading the episodes for “Fly Fish Radio” and haven’t watched them yet. I doubt they cover much fly tying though (i.e.: they’re probably not competing with what you’re doing).

11

I’ll have to check out the I-Tunes thing. At the risk of sounding like a snob, I don’t even consider downloading music so I’ve never used or looked at Itunes. That’s something for a guy who makes a living in the CE business running a division that makes audio and video products! It’s all vinyl and vacuum tubes for me!

Maybe it’s time I surfed on over, though. Jim S. has been after me to load Itunes so I understand what we’re doing. Frankly, I just want to tie flies. I’m not even sure how the heck this whole project started (but it sure is fun).

Joe

12

I just poked a bit at Apple’s web site and found the answer to who provides bandwidth for podcasts…the podcaster does.

iTunes will let you submit (very easily) the URL for your podcast and will let users search by topic, etc then direct them to your feed.

You can read more details here:

[url=http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/techspecs.html:7746c]http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/techspecs.html[/url:7746c]

and here:

[url=http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/faq.html:7746c]http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/faq.html[/url:7746c]

You can download your own copy of iTunes free from Apple’s web site as well while you’re there and make Jim happy.

13

The Sparrow Video was very very good! Thanks.
Rich

14

cornmuse,

I asked a buddy that works on browsers to take a look at why the QT feed comes down with the wrong file type. Here’s what he said:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=“1” face=“Verdana, Arial”>quote:</font><HR>
That URL seems to redirect to the following URL:

[url=http://www.flytyingforum.com/videos/Sparrow_PC2.mp4:fcc1b]http://www.flytyingforum.com/videos/Sparrow_PC2.mp4[/url:fcc1b]

… which is “text/plain” according to the Apache server on the other end. (I checked via “curl -I”.) So, clearly, they could be doing something better over there.

However, Firefox on Mac appears to recognize it as a media file which means they’re being more clever than Safari, probably preferring the file extension over the MIME type.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Since curl makes the same mistake, it looks like the problem is on the server side.

Hopefully that info willl help your server admin fix things up.

Thanks again for the cool video!