nothing to do with photoshop but something maybe you guys will find intersting i came across this in another forum and wanted to share it


There is a relatively new site up on the Net with a live broadcast from Hornby Island just off the east coast of Vancouver Island Canada. It is sponsored by Hancock House which is an environmental group that supports various wildlife activities.

Anyway . . . they have mounted a web camera just beside an eagle nest and you can watch the activities in a streaming video. Two eggs have been laid and they will hatch at the end of this month. There is also sound.

The site reports over 2 million hits a day with 5,000 online at any one time. It says to use Windows Media but that didn't load for me.

Here’s the URL:

http://www.infotecbusinesssystems.com/wildlife/

You may have trouble getting it to load due to the heavy volume of traffic to the site.

Give it a try particularly if you have kids it is fascinating.

Additional info:

There is a 30 second commercial that plays when you first connect - it pays for the live feed - so the site is free.

If it wont load and you have Windows Media Player try copying this URL into the File > Open URL tab .... mms://array.galaxytelevision.net/hanlive/hanlive.wsx

Be patient, it's well worth waiting for.

(thanks to Goldhat at 419eater.com)

wow. that's pretty cool. worked fine without any hassles using mozilla.

thanks :)

craig

works great for me also, the quality is excellent (i am broadband) and the eagle gorgeous, will add to favorites and will come back later in the month to look for chicks

Palms

p.s. just thought with all the time zones we could have virtualy 24 hour coverage here ! ! ! ! !

ok, here's a bit of an oddity. i thought i'd take a screenshot of the eagle. so, i went to fullscreen mode first. then, i hit the 'Print Screen' button on my keyboard. i called up Paint Shop Pro 10 and hit 'control v' to print the image. a black picture (the background) came up with the live feed showing in this new image IN Paint Shop Pro! in other words, the same thing that was showing live on the web camera was now showing live in psp in the new image! never seen that happen before...and i still couldnt take a screenshot... lol.

craig

Ran into same problem when trying to capture a still from a film. Try this. Hold down "alt" while pressing "print screen." This copies directly to the clipboard.

An alternate is "cntrl-i." This brings up a "save as" window.

Steve

ok, here's a bit of an oddity. i thought i'd take a screenshot of the eagle. so, i went to fullscreen mode first. then, i hit the 'Print Screen' button on my keyboard. i called up Paint Shop Pro 10 and hit 'control v' to print the image. a black picture (the background) came up with the live feed showing in this new image IN Paint Shop Pro! in other words, the same thing that was showing live on the web camera was now showing live in psp in the new image! never seen that happen before...and i still couldnt take a screenshot... lol.

craig

wow didnt have a clue you could do any of that i leave it on in another window when i can (i have 2 monitors) so i watch her alot i love it when she talks i was wondering is there a way to record the video on a dvd? does anyone know and if so how btw i have discovered that after dark when you cant see anything the site reruns the days video so if anyone wanted to record it you might could just take clips or partial somehow although its above my intellegence :cry: but i would like to be able to do that so i can record some of this to show my grandson at a later time any help would be appreciated

hmmm the site seems to be down, however, I did notice that the small add, bottom right, to the main screen is for sale to advertise for 10k per month...spendy!
~Nancy~

hmm i got it but its showing todays video from earlier assumably because its now dark there its worth a second try i view mine with windows media player and click open url and enter mms://array.galaxytelevision.net/hanlive/hanlive.wsx
i dont even see the site itself i guess just the video

froggy, i tried loading it directly into windows media player, but all i get is 'now a word from our sponsors' and the 30 second commercial, but it wont do the live feed. i think if i could load it directly like you're doing, i could get a screen shot.

and steve, control i wont do it and neither will alt print screen. all i get is the same sort of thing i was getting the other ways.

craig

Great cam, I've been glued to it :classic:
I've got it set as my desktop wallpaper so I can view it all the time. If anybody else want's to do it, just copy and paste th text below in to note pad, and save it as eagle.html , then set eagle.html as your desktop wallpaper :wink:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>

<body bgcolor="#000000">
<p align="center">
<object classid="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11D3-B153-00C04F79FAA6" type="application/x-oleobject" width="640" height="480" align="top" standby="Loading Microsoft Windows Media Player components..." id="Player" viewastext="viewastext">
<param name="URL" value="mms://array.galaxytelevision.net/hanlive/hanlive.wsx" />
<param name="AutoStart" value="true" />
<param name="uiMode" value="none" />
<param name="EnableContextMenu" value="true" />
<param name="stretchToFit" value="true" />
<embed src="mms://array.galaxytelevision.net/hanlive/hanlive.wsx" width="640" height="480" autostart="1" align="top" type="video/x-ms-asf-plugin" pluginspace="http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/wurecommended/s_wufeatured/mediaplayer/default.asp" showcontrols="0" showdisplay="0" showstatusbar="0"></embed>
</object>
</p>
</body>
</html>

Great site. Thanks for the link Frog.

I also found this.
http://www.briloon.org/ed/eagle/

I looks like it may be the same pair from a different angle.

The video is not as good but they have a collection of archived images which can be saved.

Ken

Great site, and the tip from chrishoggy makes it a very cool screensaver! :bigthmb:
Btw I heard some chainsaws on the background. I hope they leave our tree alone! :happy:

i heard the same thing i told my family if im watching this and the tree falls down im gonna be really ticked :devious:

thanks chris i used your post and made this my desktop as well and it plays even better than on media player no buffering and freezing i love it kudos to you :bigthmb:

This is the best eagle cam I've seen -- such a closeup view! Watching the "changing of the guard" was very cool (such strange sounds they made before the one that had been egg-sitting flew off to eat). The forum mentioned "The eagles nest is beside a quiet road next to a beach. There are houses around it and people working...." Hopefully that means that the chain saws are being used by people some distance away, and not timber cutting.

It's great to see things like this. I've spread the word about this cam, and every forum I've posted the link on, is now captivated by it. We don't have many large birds of pray in the UK, so it's a treat to see them.
Our kids are off school at the moment, but I will be giving the school the link so they can watch it in the classrooms on the interactive projection boards (what ever happened to blackboard and chalk? :grin: )

Thanks to msfrigyfrog for the original link, and here is a bit more info some of the other forums have found
http://www.baldeagleinfo.com/eagle/eagle4.html
http://forum.hancockhouse.com/staticpages/index.php/20060323091954727

OK Craig, go to Windows Media Player/tools/options. Click on the performance tab. Then drag the video acceleration slider back about half way. (Reduce Vid Acc. by half.) Click apply or ok. Then try CNTRL-i or alt-prnt screen. Should now save a still of any video running on WMP. If it's a movie it's best to still-frame it before saving to avoid blur and get the exact still you want.

Steve


froggy, i tried loading it directly into windows media player, but all i get is 'now a word from our sponsors' and the 30 second commercial, but it wont do the live feed. i think if i could load it directly like you're doing, i could get a screen shot.

and steve, control i wont do it and neither will alt print screen. all i get is the same sort of thing i was getting the other ways.

craig

Now, if someone knows how to play a DVD movie, which is poor quality and enhance at the same time then save it, then re-record it to DVD, please let me know.

I have movie maker, Sonic, and WMP to work with.

Steve

froggy, i tried loading it directly into windows media player, but all i get is 'now a word from our sponsors' and the 30 second commercial, but it wont do the live feed. i think if i could load it directly like you're doing, i could get a screen shot.

and steve, control i wont do it and neither will alt print screen. all i get is the same sort of thing i was getting the other ways.

craig


I loaded the url into Windows Media Player 10 "File->Open url" and the feed showed up after less than a minute. When I tried "Alt-printscreen", I got only the viewer minus the eagle cam when I pasted into Photoshop BUT when I checked my Windows clipboard -- I found it was running the live feed! Craig, I've never seen that before, but I've never looked for it before either. However, when I use only "Printscreen", I am able to get the screen capture into PShop.

Two more weeks (plus a couple days or so) and we'll see babies!

Added the image of the eagle vocalizing -- not sure if it's telling its mate to hurry up and come back for its shift, or yelling at one of the other birds callng the background...

there is an awful lot of thrashing around in the woods very very close to our bird i cant tell what it is ... sometimes sounds like metal hitting metal and sometimes sounds like clearing is going on i sure hope that no one takes out our nest ... whatever is going on is upsetting our birds

OK Craig, go to Windows Media Player/tools/options. Click on the performance tab. Then drag the video acceleration slider back about half way. (Reduce Vid Acc. by half.) Click apply or ok. Then try CNTRL-i or alt-prnt screen. Should now save a still of any video running on WMP. If it's a movie it's best to still-frame it before saving to avoid blur and get the exact still you want.

Steve ok, that worked a charm. got the capture. didnt even have to use alt or control. just used a normal print screen.

and, being a good student here on retouch, i'm attaching a cleaned up image of that capture :)

craig

edit: changed the image out. the last one was over-sharpened. this one is better and also corrected with black and white points.

Yeah, I should have mentioned that I used only "Print Screen" also. But everyone's system is a bit different and "cntrl-i" and "alt print screen" work on most machines.

Glad you got your capture.

Am attaching one that I got from a movie shot at the Flatiron building in NY in 1903.

Steve

ok, that worked a charm. got the capture. didnt even have to use alt or control. just used a normal print screen.

and, being a good student here on retouch, i'm attaching a cleaned up image of that capture :)

craig

Today is estimated date of first egg hatching --- tune in if you can...

thanks cj.

had a hard time getting in today. also noticed this new 'news' item on the site which seems to explain why:

"April 26, 2006
Attention all eagle watchers!
We appreciate everyone’s support and interest in the eagles. Due to popular demand, the streaming video is on overload and is working hard to accommodate all viewers. If you are not watching the eagle site, please close the browser window to allow other users to see the birds."

so, all you folks that have set this as your wallpaper in windows, please un-set it or deactivate it when not using the computer.

craig

Craig -- good reminder! I'm only checking in on the nest every hour or so.

There's a post from Doug Carrick, the owner of the eagle cam, from April 23rd -- due to the age of the eagle couple, we shouldn't get our hopes up too high -- but we can Hope!

"Doug Carrick --
Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 4:46 pm
Post subject: Hornby Island Update #3 - April 23

On Saturday, April 22, the chick pecked a small hole in the shell which will get larger in the next few days until hatched. Everyone should be aware that the survival rate is far below 100%.
Here are the statistics for this nest over the past 16 years:

On only 4 occasions did both chicks survive - 25%
On 7 occasions 1 chick survived - 45%
On 5 occasions no chicks survived - 30%
These statistics get worse with aging and these eagles are getting on in years - 6years of immaturity plus 17 years of egg-laying = 23 years of age - with a life expectancy in the wild of 30 years. Equal to 60 years of age in humans ... if such comparisons have any validity.

Looking at it in another way:

In the first 5 years these eagles fledged 7 eaglets.
In the last 5 years these eagles fledged only 3 eaglets.
So the odds of success now are even lower than the average numbers provided above. Let's just hope for some success."

I just got a good shot of the eggs. 29/04/06 3.08AM GMT.

Ken

Only one egg left. According to the forum, mama probably pitched the other one out of the nest overnight, and we can assume it was not viable. Hopefully, this egg is the second one laid, and still could be viable. On the positive side, this pair has already reproduced themselves numerous times; on the negative side -- we want to see a BABY!

It looks like the second egg was not viable. The Eagles have gone.
Infotec are moving the webcam to another nest.

In the meantime there is another webcam here

http://www.nu.com/eagles/live/default.asp

This nest has one hatched chick but the quality is not as good. Let’s hope Infotec’s new camera is as good as the last. It will hopefully be online today.

Ken.

It is a shame that the other egg wasn't viable but that is nature, I for one had a interesting time watching the eagles for the last two weeks, as you know cameraken we dont get much chance to see eagles in the uk ! i expect i will tune in to see the new eagles and agree hopefully the quality will be as good.

Palms