Archive for the 'Video' Category

Where can you find a surprisingly good Elvis impersonator? Denver People’s Fair, apparently.

Published on 2010/07/20 in Photoblog, Photography Stories, Travel and Video. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Sometimes, you wander right off of one street only to wander onto another one just as (or perhaps even more) compelling. The day I wandered into the Denver People’s Fair was such a day, and I’m so glad that I happened to wander through because it was overflowing with MUSIC.

As I mentioned before, I’d just finished marveling at the creativity exhibited at the Denver Chalk Art Festival when I walked right into the People’s Fair, which was literally about one block away. And to my great delight, a surprisingly good Elvis impersonator was performing “Suspicious Minds.”

Thankfully, I had enough camera memory to shoot a video for your viewing enjoyment. Here’s a short 60 second version of the video:

If you’d like to hear more of the song, the full length video is now on YouTube. (And if you enjoyed this video, you should consider subscribing to the Byteful Travel Video channel on YouTube.)

With music loud and long

Old man playing an Appalachian Dulcimer

There were other delightful things to see, too. Nearby, guitar and drum lessons were being given, and among the tents I even stumbled upon an old man playing a particularly unique instrument: an Appalachian Dulcimer.

You may be familiar with the Hammered Dulcimer, an ancient instrument that’s been used for thousands of years, but this dulcimer was an Appalachian Dulcimer, something altogether newer in design. Also known as a mountain dulcimer, the Appalachian Dulcimer is plucked like a guitar, not struck with a hammer like its ancient counterpart. And its sound was quite mesmerizing amidst Denver’s summer air.

A Surprisingly Musical Day

Street performer Jentry McCombs

And as I left, I was given to one final musical treat for the day. A particularly good street performer by the name of Jentry D. McCombs was performing near the edge of the fair. He was truly a professional street performer because his money box was basically a business card, complete with his email and phone number in large letters. Not a bad way to spread the word about your talent…

Overall, it was an excellent ending to a truly artistic, and surprisingly musical, day.

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Photos from this trip are in the Denver Chalk Art Festival album. All photos in the Byteful Gallery can be used as desktop wallpapers because they are high resolution (1920×1440) just like the fullscreen & widescreen wallpapers.


Recommended Reading:

  1. Can high art be produced with mere chalk? The Denver Chalk Art Festival surprises.
  2. The Top 5 Surprises at the Denver Art Museum
  3. Denver Doesn’t Know What Century It’s In!
  4. Denver’s City Park Jazz & The Haunted Fountain
  5. Why the Colorado Capitol Dome is Worth Visiting
  6. The Ancient Secret of Denver’s Cathedral Basilica
  7. Personal Development for Smart People & Travel


Magellan's Travel



Wheels, Jets, & Rails Travel Video

Published on 2008/07/23 in Travel and Video. 1 Comment

I conclude this Dallas Trip blog series with a compilation video of my trip back. Over the course of one day, I used 9 different kinds of public transportation to cover over 1,000 miles from Dallas, Texas to Minneapolis, Minnesota – all without setting foot in a car. It was quite a day, and I’m pleased to be able to share a sliver of the experience with you in the form of this video. A list of all articles from this series is at the bottom of this article.
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Jet Wing and Moon

More time and energy went into creating this video than any of the previous byteful videos, involving dozens of editing passes to identify and strengthen weak points in the timeline. Originally, the video didn’t feature a map montage, but the idea occurred to me to overlay a moving map to create a montage that lent a sense of direction to the slideshow. Making the map montage involved many steps to achieve, but the end result was well worth it. Some of the photos used in the montage are in the Leaving Dallas album of the gallery.

Podsafe Music Network

Once all of the main pieces were in place, I began looking for royalty-free music. In a different world, I would have used music already in my music library, but unfortunately record labels of this era, most of which fall under the RIAA, are less than enlightened and do not allow podcasts to use their media without a specific license and royalty agreements (i.e. payment based on usage), which is costly and not worthwhile to the vast majority of podcasters. It’s much easier to find a musician independent of a large record label and get permission to use their music instead. That’s where the Podsafe Music Network comes in.

The Podsafe Music Network brings podcasters and independent musicians together, providing royalty-free music to podcasters and exposure for musicians. A podcaster or musician can visit their website and sign up for a free account which gives them access to the entire Podsafe Music library.

After listening to dozens of songs about travel, I finally settled on “Future Travel” by Dreamline and “Safari (Travelling)” by Mpemba Effect. You wouldn’t know it, but the airport ambiance at the beginning of the video is actually “Future Travel” and the rest of the video uses “Safari (Travelling)”. Amazingly, Mpemba Effect, which I think is pronounced “pemba effect”, is from South Africa which explains their unique tribal sound.

Finishing Touches

Once I had settled on what music would be used, I began making the finishing touches such as ‘grooving’ the video to the music — harmonizing the rhythm of the video to the rhythm of the music. While not immediately obvious, this makes the video much more cohesive and pleasing to view. I also realized that I ought to start adding a Creative Commons notice at the end of byteful videos to remind people that these videos are released under a much freer license than standard copyright. I went over to the Creative Commons Press kit and created a high resolution graphic to show at the end of this and future byteful videos. If requested, I can add this graphic to the byteful gallery.

Once the video was done encoding using the settings specified in “How to Encode Video for a Podcast”, I realized that the video seemed washed out, and I went on a wonderful google adventure in which I learned of a 3 year old Quicktime h.264 encoding bug. Just goes to show, that even a seemingly innocuous task of putting out a travel video can lead down a rathole of technical complexity. At any rate, this bug can be overcome relatively simply, and I will outline the solution in the next article.

Without further ado, I present to you “Wheels, Jets, & Rails”:

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Go to Byteful Video to see this movie in large size.
Subscribe to the Byteful Video RSS feed in the right hand sidebar to know about new videos as soon as they are released.

All articles within the Dallas Trip 2007 series:


Recommended Reading:

  1. Minneapolis Train Ride Video
  2. 7th Holiday Extravaganza – Fragile Army poem
  3. Train Ads and Modern Air Travel
  4. Visiting the Minneapolis Central Library
  5. The 7th Annual Holiday Extravaganza
  6. How to Fix Washed-Out H.264 Video
  7. Exploring Minneapolis Institute of Arts museum


Magellan's Travel