Templot tutorial videos - from the 2mm Association

[richard_t]

I see the 2mm association have put up some Templot Tutorials on YouTube. I've not had a chance to watch them yet.

The first

There are 4 parts so far.

 

[Martin Wynne]

Thanks Richard.

Laurie Adams did contact me about posting these recordings of his group's Zoom sessions.

Unfortunately the awful YouTube MP4 image compression makes these unwatchable for me. Trying to watch a fuzzy image gives me a blinding headache within a few minutes. The same applies to all other software demos I have ever tried to watch on YouTube.

That's why I have put the Templot videos on FlashBackConnect. When set to HD > Original quality they are just about watchable. But for best results the FBR file can be downloaded for watching in the Templot Video Player.

Listening to some of the convoluted discussion about storing templates at the end of the last one does baffle me. I know lots of folks find it confusing, but it's so simple and obvious to me I don't know how better to explain it. You may remember in the early days there was much discussion about what to call the control template. I've thought since that it would have been better not to call it a template at all, but simply to call it "the generator" or some such name. But it's too late to change again now.

Maybe I should make this page more prominent somewhere:

https://85a.uk/templot/companion/origins_intent.php

I think it might clear up a lot of the confusion about what's going on in Templot.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Paul Boyd]

Unfortunately the awful YouTube MP4 image compression makes these unwatchable for me. Trying to watch a fuzzy image gives me a blinding headache within a few minutes. The same applies to all other software demos I have ever tried to watch on YouTube.


Listening to some of the convoluted discussion about storing templates at the end of the last one does baffle me. I know lots of folks find it confusing, but it's so simple and obvious to me I don't know how better to explain it. You may remember in the early days there was much discussion about what to call the control template. I've thought since that it would have been better not to call it a template at all, but simply to call it "the generator" or some such name. But it's too late to change again now.

Hi Martin,

I started watching and like you I found the fuzziness difficult to cope with. Not just for eyestrain but in terms of seeing what was actually happening. That's such a shame, given the effort that's been put into making the videos, although I'm sure others will manage just fine. My eyesight also gives me some problems at work, and yes, I do wear appropriate glasses! I generally avoid YouTube as much as possible - surely there must be a better platform these days, like YouTube but with decent quality.

Regarding the saving of templates, when I first started using Templot 20 years ago I too struggled with the concept. Once it clicks though, it is obvious as you say! The difficulty is getting people to stop thinking in terms of the Windows file system, and that's a challenge. Any explanations you've given over the years seem to make it obvious, but apparently not. A new-ish Microsoft evil is Autosave which seems to keep turning itself back on.

I also remember the "discussions" about the current/control template. To me, it's still the current template because it's the one I'm currently working on, but maybe it's best not to go back there

Cheers,
Paul

 

[Charles Orr]

YouTube is perfectly capable of rendering 4K images (if you can put up with the adverts ) but I suspect it's the Zoom software that is causing the fuzziness

Charles

 

[Paul Boyd]

YouTube is perfectly capable of rendering 4K images (if you can put up with the adverts ) but I suspect it's the Zoom software that is causing the fuzziness

Charles

Hi Charles

I don't know enough about Zoom to comment on that (I'm forced to use Microsoft Teams), but Youtube seems to be fuzzy for everything. Maybe people just aren't making many videos at high resolution. Your other point though was the final straw with Youtube! I don't know if you know Arvo Part's "Spiegel im Speigel", but it's a beautiful, peaceful piece of music. Anyway, about 9.5 minutes into an 11 minute performance, as it was gradually winding down, I was suddenly and loudly interrupted by 12 dancing bunnies advertising bog roll! That destroyed it for me, and the thought that at any moment I might be rudely snatched out of my reverie whilst watching or listening to a performance means I now actively avoid Youtube.

PS. - I might be paraphrasing the advert, but whatever it was advertising was loud and inappropriate!

Cheers,
Paul

 

[Charles Orr]

Hi Paul,
That is terrible. The only option, it would seem, is to become a premium member for something like £12 per month. But that seems to be defeating the original purpose of YouTube. (However see below for a solution)

We have greedy Google to blame for this.

However, if you don't mind viewing YouTube on a PC then try out a peice of software called Motion Box.
You can add your subscribed channels, and guess what? No adverts.
It's what I use now.

https://omega.gg/MotionBox
You can contact the developer and make requests for extra features as well.

Charles

 

[Charles Orr]

Whoops sorry for the typo, should be 'piece' and Motionbox is one word

 

[Martin Wynne]

YouTube is perfectly capable of rendering 4K images (if you can put up with the adverts ) but I suspect it's the Zoom software that is causing the fuzziness

Hi Charles,

The problem is the lossy MP4 image compression format -- which is intended for moving camera images. For which it can look very good. But it's completely useless for line graphics such as computer screenshots.

In the world of static images we have two different image formats, JPG for real-world camera images, and PNG for lossless line graphics. I can't understand why mainstream video doesn't also have two different formats. For a long while we did have a very good lossless video format, Flash. But Adobe shot itself in the foot by allowing it to be bloated with extra stuff which created security bugs and holes, instead of concentrating on simply displaying a crisp lossless image. With the result that Apple made war on it, and Adobe finally gave up on it recently. Now we have only MP4 and other lossy formats for web video.

There are good lossless formats out there, such as the FBR format which I use for Templot, but none of them are directly supported by the mainstream browsers.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Laurie Adams]

Hi Martin, Charles et al,

Many thanks for your comments about the tutorial Zooms recently uploaded onto the 2mmSA YouTube channel, and my apologies for the delay in responding. I agree that their screen quality is disappointing (and just how disappointing was something of a surprise to me), and I wanted to try and identify the cause before commenting.

I think it is due to the loss of resolution when saving an edit in the Windows Movie Maker program, which is the editing program I have. The raw Zoom recordings look fine to me on the computer screen (mine is A3 so a reasonable size). Each video takes several hours - spread over a number of sessions - to edit and caption, and my habit with any extended piece of computer work has been to save it after each session to avoid losing it should the PC crash (?or automatically update?). So there were several sequential "saves" in the production of each video. The end result replayed from You Tube was usable, but annoyingly blurred. I hadn't realised the effect of this whilst editing as the Movie Maker editing screen is low resolution to start with. Replaying the interim saved edits, it's now clear that there is substantial deterioration between the original Zoom recording and the final edited version which was uploaded to YouTube (which is not obvious on the Movie Maker editing screen). I do need more editing facility for these than just a simple trim-and-cut-and-paste program.

The edit of another video has just been completed (admittedly not yet uploaded to You Tube), and this risked just a single save at the end of all the editing and captioning. I can detect little if any difference between that and the original Zoom recording, so any fuzziness on this will be due to whatever YouTube does with it.

The original intention was to share our understanding of Templot as a mutual resource within our Area Group. Recording and editing the meetings to make them more widely available was a response to suggestions from those attending so they could replay them, and to requests from those unable to attend the original meetings. Several have come back and said they found the videos already uploaded helpful despite the less-than-ideal visual quality, and I hope we can improve on that for the rest of them. If others continue to find them helpful, then it will have been worth doing.

Laurie Adams

 

[Martin Wynne]

Each video takes several hours - spread over a number of sessions - to edit and caption

@Laurie Adams

Hi Laurie,

Don't I know it. I used to think I must be missing something in finding it so time-consuming to edit and prepare the Templot videos, but then it seems everyone says exactly the same.

The strange thing is that for the recent live demo sessions, several viewers said they actually preferred it with all the mistakes, pauses and mouse fumblings left in! So in future I'm going to simply upload the original recording as-is and leave it at that.

I've also discovered that using the OBS encoder (free) it's possible to tweak the settings for streaming on Twitch (also free), with the result that the MP4 image quality is acceptable. It is still not lossless, but watchable.

The recording of the most recent live demo* is at:

https://85a.uk/templot/companion/demo_001.php

(no sound for the first few minutes).

The live demo page is:

https://85a.uk/templot/companion/live_screen.php

If you watch any of the pre-prepared interactive videos on FlashBackConnect:

https://85a.uk/templot/companion/online_video_list.php

You will see a download link for the original FBR lossless video files, which will open in the Templot Video Player. You can then see what a vast improvement lossless video is over MP4, and be mystified why there seems to be no way to play lossless video in the standard web browsers. Especially when the FBR file is significantly smaller than the MP4 equivalent.

*that demo includes an explanation of storing the control template, which may explain some of the points which were puzzling you in your demo. Thanks again for making it available.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Laurie Adams]

Many thanks, Martin, I much appreciate the time and interest you have shown in giving me these links. I've browsed a few of the demos and tutorials and increasingly realise just how much Templot has to offer that I still don't know about and don't use. It really is the most remarkable program.

I can see the different qualities of the different systems - but OBS, Twitch, FBR etc are all totally new to me, and inhabit an area of computer-land of which I am totally ignorant. I have modest computer literacy at a basic level at best - and the last "job" I need on my list at the moment is another learning curve! I'm optimistic that saving the edit in Movie Maker just once will significantly improve the quality over the first group of recordings, so I'll press on with the next one, upload that, see how that replays on YouTube and then take it from there. Perhaps I could let you know when I've done that, and you could let me know what you think again then, please? The recording that Zoom delivers is an MP4 file with no other options, so I fear we are stuck with making the best of that.

Thank you again, Martin,

Kind Regards,

Laurie Adams

 

[Martin Wynne]

@Laurie Adams

I have only just discovered that Laurie has continued to make Templot tutorial videos, and there are now 9 of them:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmQOZ5ZtoA5seU2kUISlwpyCQudSZM4xE

How come you didn't mention them here, Laurie? Learning about Templot is what this Templot Club forum is here for.

The video quality seems to be much better than before, but can still be uncomfortable for me to watch for long periods.

I find them very hard work to watch because all the way through I am shouting at the screen "that's not the best way to do that!" or "there's no need to do that!", or whatever. And it's the same with other Templot videos which folks have posted on YouTube.

But after 20+ years of explaining Templot over and over again I think I have run out of steam. I want to spend my time now on getting the new 3D functions working, and folks will just have to work out for themselves how they want to use Templot. Or ask on here and someone else will answer.

I will however continue with the live online demos, and it's high time I did another one:

https://85a.uk/templot/companion/live_screen.php

Martin.