The local TV news called me last week to interview me...and my car! It was about the Consumer Reports satsifaction survey with 94% Prius owners saying they would buy one again, etc. I did about 15 minutes of interview in front of my car and then about 10 minutes of me driving with the camera person in the back filming. Of course the actual on-screen time for me was about 20 seconds with just a couple of soundbites: "It's just a kick to drive". It was cool, though. Plus I'd just completed some one-year anniversary number crunching and got quoted with "I've saved over 1,000 gallons of fuel over my old SUV in the 1st year alone." She also mentioned my hybrid car club I've formed, which was nice. The dealer was interviewed and got a really nice quote about the lower emissions: 'The Prius at 60 MPH puts out fewer emissions than a '72 Buick does just sitting in the garage.' The reporter did a major disservice by stating the Prius is hard to get with only a dozen in the whole US. Yeah. Nice figure. I called them to complain, but only got a machine. I'm unsure if they corrected that major blunder. I didn't even talk about my wait time (3 months). Anyway... I'm going to get the footage transferred from VHS to a format to post (MPEG?, AVI?), just not sure where to post this. Any advice out there? Thanks for allowing me to toot my own horn!
Finman, that IS SOOOOO AWESOME!! Be sure to let us all know when you post the link to the news footage......
That's so incredibly inaccurate it's funny. Apperantly all the American Prii were at the last Chicagoland meet-up. And the other must have been Canadian. A reporter for WGN news in Chiacgo said one night as they were reporting on a toll increase that there are thousands of miles of interstate in the Chicagoland area. They corrected themselves a few minutes later.
Yes, but, all autographs aside, now I need help in posting this news story. I have it in .mpg format (from VCR to my capture card) and it plays in windows media player ok. It's 40 MB. How to post it/link it? I'm not at all familiar with doing this sort of thing. Pictures, yes. video, no. Any help out there?
What about getting someone to put it on a web site and then link to it like this Prius video: http://www.verdictoncars.com/jsp/vocmain.j...12&go.y=9&id=36
Just find somewhere to host it and then post the link to where you uploaded it. If you need somewhere to host it, let me know.
yep, that'd be my next question: where to 'host'? I'm a computer geek but not really a web/internet geek...yet! Any help in the 'hosting' thing would be great. Thanks.
Okay, I've the footage in .mpg format on my machine. Danny, just need help in hosting it, if you can. I realize you're a busy person, so when u get a chance , let me know how to go about it. Thanks again!
I can put it on my site, gunn.ath.cx, but I don't have the fastest bandwidth. I can also help getting it down below 40MB. Try looking up VirtualDub (a sourceforge project) that can make it into an AVI with the codec of your choosing. (May or may not be smaller)
Okay, I'll work on the VirtualDub thing and make an AVI. Does that seem to be the thing to do for a .mpg clip that is going on the web? I'll be honest, if I screw around enough I can figure most anything out, yet, if I can get advice to head me in the right direction, then all the better! Thanks, I'm on it to convert to AVI... ...and after it's in AVI format? send you the file? You then 'upload' to your site?
It used to be that when I talked about getting a hybrid car that people would ask me what that was or what kind, not knowing of any by name. It's nice to see now that most people first, know the Prius by name, and second, have some sense of appreciation of the appeal of the car. I think that any coverage is better than none, but I think it's even better that the Prius is getting so many favorable reviews/positive media. Also, congrats on getting on the news. I wanna be on TV...
just toss it to my email, or if that doesn't work, i'll give you a login for my ftp. Email is my username at gmail.com
Okay, so the weekend did not produce anything smaller than 40 MB for my news story. Tried VirtualDub, as well as an mpeg-to-avi converter program. I must not be doing the compression thing right?? So, I'll try to send the 40 MB .mpg file if that's all right. Not sure if my work email will handle that big of an attachment. Or the login thing to your website? Would that be a better way to go? Let me know what you think. This is hard work to showoff!
i made it on TV too. i was at the Albany auto show, the toyota dealer asked me if i would speak to the news cameras about the Prius because i knew more than all the salesmen and could articulate it faster then anyone else.
If all else fails, just use the windows media encoder (free download from MS). It produces nice small files without much work. Dave.
Well, I still need a place to post my .mpg file. Engunneer, I tried to send the file via gmail, but it's too big. All the .avi files I've tried to make are bigger than the 40 MB .mpg original. I'm not smart enough to make the windows media encoder work. Besides which I completely dislike media player. So...any other ideas? What's the login for your webpage, Engunneer? How does that work? Thanks for all the advice so far...I'm determined to get published here, ha, ha!
finman? have you tried any file spliter tools. they can break a large file up into pieces sized according to your specs. then when all the pieces are sent, they are reassembled into one. a google search brings up several possibilities
Thanks, Dave, I did split the .mpg file into 5 files of 8 MB each and sent each of them to engunneer thru the newly formed gmail.com (10 MB max on attachments, 1 GB storage!). Hopefully they all went thru and he can work with them. Although the previous "test" e-mails I've sent to him thru gmail.com have not been answered. Not sure if he's around or busy or ? l'll see what next week brings...
