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It's only taken me three tries to get a reliable, correct formatting, PoE camera. It works great! Plenty of controls, video qualities for most any bandwidth/browser/OS type. The thing even has sound! ;)
Now, comes the part about getting the images to my web site. Thanks to an answer by Stu earlier, I now know to forget the video recording; only use jpeg 'snapshots'. I even found the settings in the camera to save those on a regular schedule.
I even managed to get WC to 'see' the images on the camera's SD card, the only place it want to store things, BTW. All I had to do was enter the URL and the path to that SD card directory. The "Show Video Preview" worked. Unfortunately, for me, anyway, the term "Video" confuses me. These are not videos but single jpegs shown in a 'slide show like' method. Or am I just looking at what WC is actually doing; converting the single images into a video?! [blush]
Other questions will follow.
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Dear X-Air and WeatherCat web spinners, . . .
Unfortunately, for me, anyway, the term "Video" confuses me. These are not videos but single jpegs shown in a 'slide show like' method. Or am I just looking at what WC is actually doing; converting the single images into a video?! [blush]
WeatherCat is making the single images into a time-lapse video. It is "kind of" a slide show if you want to think of it that way, but a movie is nothing more than series of still images. Real time movies are typically taken as rates like 24-36 frame per second. WeatherCat is stitching images taken say every 30 seconds (1/2 a minute.) So you are getting a true time-lapse video effect. It is just the thing to see the movement of normally slow-moving clouds.
Hope that helps, . . . Edouard
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Thanks for confirming my 'theory'.
As you can see by the title of this tread, I need to be led by the hand! I can't even spel "web cam"! :(
I'm off to visit Sam's to pick up some more cheap stuff, my fingers are sore from pinching pennies elsewhere! :P Just had some carpets steam cleaned and I can't sleep on the floor for 8 to 12 hours!!! I hocked the beds to pay for the camera!!!! :o
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Beds are overrated. A good webcam is priceless. You did the right thing.
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Second confusing fact:
It appears that WC actually converts/stitches together the jpags saved by Evomcam into... wait for it... Movies (.mov formatted video)! As the explanatory text in the "Webcam" prefs says (last line):Pictures and movies are stored at Home/Library/Application Support/WeatherCatMedia
There are actually two directories there, that I assume WC created: Movies and Pictures.
The "Pictures" directory has nothing except Network Cameras.evocamdata (created 7/8/15, 5:28pm), Untitled.evocamsettings (created 7/8/15, 5:32pm), and webcamForPicture.jpg (created 'Today'-7/10/15, 10:33am). I do not have "Images" set to be saved, which likely explains the scarcity of images. [rolleyes2]
The "Movies" directory has two sub-directories: Today and WeatherCatDailyMovie_2015_07_09. Both folders have what I assume are 1 hours worth of the jpgs created by Evocam scheduled 5 minute captures. I'll attempt to look at those in iMovie and see if they are, indeed, 12 individual 'frames'. Perhaps I can make that schedule a bit faster at the cost of making the 'movies' longer/larger. OTOH, there's not really a lot of action in the back yard! [lol]
Each of these movies appears to be appended with the hour_minute of creation. I have WC set to "Create Daily Movies" and "Keep For 7 Days". That could probably be changed and save drive space.
(http://i1327.photobucket.com/albums/u666/xAirbusDriver/WC%20WebCam%20Prefs_zpsgew9ryaz.jpg)
Bottom line: I believe these settings to be somewhat standard/normal. Informational tidbit: WC cannot grab/use .mov files created by a camera, but it can/does create them from .jpg images. Most people could probably not care less about this detail, of course. [banghead]
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Next order of business: Using the WC webcam image(s) WeatherUnderground.
First, my confusion with WU:
WC Prefs->On-Line-Wunderground
Here is a screen shot of my settings:(http://i1327.photobucket.com/albums/u666/xAirbusDriver/WU%20Prefs_zpsvd3tj55d.jpg)
You can see that I need to enter a "Camera I.D." from WU. That's the simple part, even I can understand. However, when I go to WU, sign in, click the "Add Webcam" button, I have a choice of FTP or URL methods. Obviously WU can't create a different page for every user, of every weather app on every OS. Deductively, I reason that WC will actually take care of the FTP option despite the text reading "will require [me] to send [them] the images. That's what I've done, anyway.
Now, my question: Where is this image coming from? I assume it is the most recent jpeg? It should be whatever there is in the ~/Library/Application Support/WeatherCatMedia/Pictures directory?
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I'm on a phone now and will have to look on my weather computer when I'm home to see how I set that up (or maybe Blick will answer sooner).
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Dear X-Air and WeatherCat webcam caregivers, . . .
However, when I go to WU, sign in, click the "Add Webcam" button, I have a choice of FTP or URL methods.
WeatherCat uses FTP. I know this because my WC Status Growler AppleScript will occasionally report errors in uploading the webcam image as FTP upload errors.
So just get your webcamID and decide how often you want to upload images to Weather Underground. I have it set to 10 minutes.
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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...just get your webcamID and decide how often you want to upload images...
Thanks, Edouard, that's what I did. Despite the 'status' or some label saying 'inactive' or 'stupid is as stupid does', an image now shows on my WU page. I had made all the right assumptions, just needed someone to give me a pat on the head, which is still covered with hair despite its age! [cheer]
Next will be an attempt to get the template to accept the image(s)/video. [computer]
Meanwhile, the camera is humming along just fine! [bounce]
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WU will store your jpegs and will auto stitch them together to create a daily "movie", which is a time-lapse slide show. Edouard (the Magnificent) and some others have been successful in imbedding the WU time-lapse video on their web pages, but I have never been able to do it on my website. I've followed Edouard's instructions and they just don't work for me.
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Dear X-Air, Blick, and WeatherCat movie fans,
Edouard (the Magnificent) and some others have been successful in imbedding the WU time-lapse video on their web pages
Hey, don't overdo it!! [biggrin]
but I have never been able to do it on my website. I've followed Edouard's instructions and they just don't work for me.
Actually, it is supposed to be service of Weather Underground, so it really is supposed to just work. If it wasn't working for you it could have be a problem on the Weather Underground end of things. You might just try again.
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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Not sure which "website" Blick is talking about. Are you having trouble getting vids in your personal web site or the one that you upload data to at Wunderground? Please keep answers to words with no more than two syllables, thanks. (notice, I don't always follow my own suggestions!)
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Can't imbed WU time lapse video on my website. Can upload my images to WU so that WU can make time lapse video on WU's site.
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I think WC can do that time lapse stuff for you. I think it just requires telling WC where to find those mages. Mine are actually stored on a flash memory card in the camera, but since the camera is on the local net, I just put the url in the WC "Webcam" prefs. If your images are stored on your hard drive, you can insert the path to them in the "Local File" part of the same WC Pref. Lastly, if the camera shows up in this WC Pref, you can use the "Camera" radio button. Check my post #4 above for how my Prefs look.
The actual 'time lapse' .mov files will end up in ~/Library/Application Support/WeatherCatMedia/Movies.
That's the sum total of what I know! [blush] I still don't have them uploaded to my web space nor accessed by the template! "Just do like I say, not like I do!" [rolleyes2] I'm sure others can explain things better and in more detail, anyway! ;) Frankly, the hardest part, so far, was reading between the lines at WU! [banghead]
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Yes, correct. WeatherCat will pick up the image from your camera and periodically append it to a time-lapse movie. Each movie will be one hour long and can be uploaded to your custom website with the MOVIE$ tag - this upload will happen on the first upload past each hour.
A capturing period of 30 seconds provides a reasonable compromise between file size and quality.
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Thanks Stu. I should have clarified that what I am looking for is one 24-hour time lapse movie, like the one that WU creates from the images, rather than 24 one-hour time lapse movies like WeatherCat creates.
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Absolutely - we have a feature request outstanding for this. The only way at the moment is to use something like QuickTime player to stitch all 24 hourly movies together at the end of the day.
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Excellent. Thank you.
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Dear Blick and WeatherCat video fans,
WU will store your jpegs and will auto stitch them together to create a daily "movie", which is a time-lapse slide show. Edouard (the Magnificent) and some others have been successful in imbedding the WU time-lapse video on their web pages, but I have never been able to do it on my website. I've followed Edouard's instructions and they just don't work for me.
I just checked again, and as before, Weather Underground supplies the URL and even a snippet of HTML to make this work. Here is the web page for my webcam:
http://www.wunderground.com/webcams/elagache/1/video.html?month=07&year=2015&filename=2015071.mp4 (http://www.wunderground.com/webcams/elagache/1/video.html?month=07&year=2015&filename=2015071.mp4)
To get to this page for your webcam, log into Weather Underground, then select your account webcams. Click on the webcam you want to use for a movie (most of us only have one webcam.) Finally click on the link to the video on today's image. That should bring you to the page with the URL and HTML. After that it is supposed'ta be just an easy cut and paste.
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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If I'm understanding, Blick correctly, Evocam can also create time lapse movies.
I'm running Evocam, but frankly don't know if it's even being used by WC! [blush] But it has dozens of "Actions" (similar to pre-defined AppleScript actions) that you can setup with simple menu choices. The following text discusses 'timelapse' actions:
| Add image to timelapse archive | ->Adds the image to a named timelapse archive document in a specified folder, creating the archive if necessary. |
| Export timelapse archive as movie | ->Exports a timelapse archive as a named movie in the specified folder, optionally uploading the completed movie to the FTP server and optionally deleting the local movie file. Leave the movie name blank to use a timestamped movie name. |
One advantage of this app (?) is that you can create a very long time lapse movie by taking the individual images quite rapidly. OTOH, you can probably make a much shorter )smaller file) movie by creating images much slower than you probably are for WU. I think every 5 to 10 minutes is 'normal' for the WU images; you could make a shorter movie by having Evocam grab an image every 15, 20 or any other time frame.
Hope I'm not just adding confusion to your needs! [banghead] "I'm not a real expert, but I play one in front of my computer!" :P
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To get to this page for your webcam, log into Weather Underground, then select your account webcams. Click on the webcam you want to use for a movie (most of us only have one webcam.) Finally click on the link to the video on today's image. That should bring you to the page with the URL and HTML. After that it is supposed'ta be just an easy cut and paste.
Yes, I have tried this several times and it just doesn't work for me. The file link displays a video icon but it will not play the video, just gives me a spinning icon.
The html snippet does not do anything either.
I have tried to debug this on my site several times and just can't seem to make it do anything useful. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
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OK. How does your url 'code' compare to Edouard's? I can cause Edouard's "image" to appear in my in-progress, new domain, test site using the 'embed' code from WU. However, I cannot cause my WU 'video' to appear.
As a matter of fact, I can't even display a simple jpg, right now. But that's another matter...Fixed, I think, disabled caches while working on the site... [banghead]
However, I note that Edouard's url only text refers to.../1/video.html?month=07&year=2015&filename=2015071.mp4&MR=1
.
Mine is simply.../1/video.html?MR=1
Similar differences appear in the embed code files:
Edouard's...elagache/1/2015/07/1435788343-20150701150543PDT.jpg?e%3D143...","autoPlay":false,"autoBuffering":true},{"url":"http://icons.wunderground.com/webcamarchive/e/l/elagache/1/2015/07/2015071.mp4?e%3D143...","autoPlay":...
Mine:...xAirbusdriver/1/#WEBCAM.VIDEOPATH.epoch.date.year/#WEBCAM.VIDEOPATH.epoch.date.mon_padded/?e%3D143...","autoPlay":false,"autoBuffering":true},{"url":"http://icons.wunderground.com/webcamcurrent/x/a/xAirbusdriver/1/current.mp4?e%3D143...","autoPlay":...
The differences may be in what (and how?) Edouard and we are uploading to WU? Although I have Evocam running, I think my WU images are coming only from WC.
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Just a thought, Blick, are you using the WU page with the "Link to / Embed this Webcam" text on right-hand side?
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The advantage of having WeatherCat create the movie for you is the weather overlay - here's the current movie here, captured at 30 second intervals:
http://live.trixology.com/custom/WeatherCatDailyMovie.mov
(from the all tags page at: http://live.trixology.com/custom/ )
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Here's a <temporary site (http://mid-southweather.com/midsouth/WX_index.html)> that shows what I get when attempting to view my WU and Edouard's. Is this anything like what you are seeing?
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Just a thought, Blick, are you using the WU page with the "Link to / Embed this Webcam" text on right-hand side?
Yes.
The advantage of having WeatherCat create the movie for you is the weather overlay - here's the current movie here, captured at 30 second intervals:
http://live.trixology.com/custom/WeatherCatDailyMovie.mov
(from the all tags page at: http://live.trixology.com/custom/ )
Yes Stu. I concur. I want the overlay. And I can get it to work just fine in WC. I just want a 24-hour time lapse rather than one hour, as we have discussed previously.
Here's a <temporary site (http://mid-southweather.com/midsouth/WX_index.html)> that shows what I get when attempting to view my WU and Edouard's. Is this anything like what you are seeing?
Yes, I can see Edouard's video fine, but not yours. I have been looking at Edouard's video on his website for months. But when I copy that imbed url from my webcam at WU it does not give me any actual video. It's just an empty 0:00 file.
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Dear Blick and WeatherCat web spinners,
Yes, I have tried this several times and it just doesn't work for me. The file link displays a video icon but it will not play the video, just gives me a spinning icon.
[wink] . . . . sufferin' succotash! don't you understand I'm suppose to be soldering a parking light wire cross-connect right now! . . . . [biggrin]
Well, you got me to make the mistake of looking at my own website and my Weather Underground link was just as broken as anybodies. I went back and they have added a totally different sequence to get the movie to work. When I paste the current Weather Underground HTML snippet and edit it carefully it does work for me. Here is a link to my repaired website:
http://www.canebas.org/Weather/Canebas_webcam.html (http://www.canebas.org/Weather/Canebas_webcam.html)
Scroll down to the end to get to the Weather Underground video.
One thing to keep in mind is that Weather Underground uses Adobe Flash to animate this video. So it won't work on any iOS device or any Mac that has Flash disabled. That could be a problem.
Cheers, Edouard [cheers1]
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What did you have to edit in the html snippet? I have just been trying to get it work by pasting it in - not sure what to edit.
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Yes, I love getting to click a Flash trash movie two or three times just to see some stupid cats... I also like using "Flush" to remove the ".sol" files Adobe puts in unusual places, just because they don't want to do things the Apple way. [banghead]
Your new embedment (is that a real word?) does, at least play. Frankly, the middle one (a QuickTime movie!) plays much smoooother. It may be my Click2Flash plugin. [rolleyes2] I really don't care! :P
I copied/pasted the 'embed' code fromWU just this morning, so I don't know why it still doesn't work. This is all I am getting with that code:(http://i1327.photobucket.com/albums/u666/xAirbusDriver/Mid-South-Weather_zpsb6kviwck.gif)
I don't think I'm sending a "stream" to them, just an image every so often?
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Dear Blick and WeatherCat web spinners,
What did you have to edit in the html snippet? I have just been trying to get it work by pasting it in - not sure what to edit.
I still use the venerable Seamonkey HTML editor:
http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ (http://www.seamonkey-project.org/)
Unfortunately, you've got to try "read" the code as best you can so that you can break it up into chunks. I don't understand all the HTML, but I made enough sense of it to apparently give it what it wants. Here is the snippet as I cut it up:
<div style="text-align:center"><object
id="undefined"
name="undefined"
data="http://icons.wunderground.com/swf/flowplayer.commercial-3.2.8.swf"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="480"><param
name="movie"
value="http://icons.wunderground.com/swf/flowplayer.commercial-3.2.8.swf"><param
name="allowfullscreen"
value="true"><param
name="allowscriptaccess"
value="always"> <param
name="flashvars"
value="config={"key":"#@8d339434b223613a374","clip":{"autoPlay":false,"autoBuffering":true},"playlist":[{"url":"http://icons.wunderground.com/webcamramdisk/e/l/elagache/1/current.jpg?e%3D1436820647","autoPlay":false,"autoBuffering":true},{"url":"http://icons.wunderground.com/webcamcurrent/e/l/elagache/1/current.mp4?e%3D1436820647","autoPlay":false,"autoBuffering":true}],"plugins":{"controls":{"all":true,"mute":true,"play":true}}}"></object>
</div>
What I didn't understand as HTML formatting I left alone. I tried to adjust so that it would fit into the table I use to display the video.
Sorry, but perhaps that will give you an idea of what to do.
I copied/pasted the 'embed' code fromWU just this morning, so I don't know why it still doesn't work.
I'm getting the same error message from one of the links that Weather Underground provides. However you can use another link that works. Hunt around the Weather Underground website until you find the page you want to display and substitute that link for the broken one. It appears to me that the guys at Weather Underground are also doing their coding . . . . a little fast and sloppy . . . . [rolleyes2]
Cheers, Edouard
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My problem is that I'm not sending any kind of video, streamed, Flash, or stereo. This bit of text above my WU Web Cam image explains it better than I can:"Updated: 9:28 PM GMT on July 13, 2015 (7 minutes ago)". There ain't no "stream", nor even a faucet!! [lol]
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I avoid WYSIWYG editors for the exact reason that they make it difficult to see the raw code. ;) Generally, you can help see what they generate by breaking things between every pair "><". Then, indenting is important to help see the blocks of code. Naturally, if the editor color codes things, that's also very helpful.
The major changes I see in your new WU code and the old one that I had copied is in the last, extremely verbose "<pram...> line.
Changes I see:- ...wunderground.com/webcamramdisk/e/l/elagache/1/current.jpg... becomes
...wunderground.com/webcamarchive/e/l/elagache/1/2015/07/1435788343-20150701150543PDT.jpg
- ...wunderground.com/webcamcurrent/e/l/elagache/1/current.mp4?e%3D1436820647... becomes
...wunderground.com/webcamarchive/e/l/elagache/1/2015/07/2015071.mp4?e%3D1436794115
In other words, they've changed the path to the images! [banghead] webcamramdisk is gone, replaced by webcamarchive. That same newly named folder also replaces webcamcurrent!
Apparently, they don't bother telling anyone about these changes! They just wait for Blick to post here! Bet the Trixology Forum Admins didn't know their baby was so important! [cheer] [bounce] [rolleyes2]
I am now unable to get to the page that offers the embed or direct link code snippets. Possibly, WU has added some intelligence to verify that there is actually a stream/video that could even use that link/code. It may be nothing more than the change in the path mentioned above. That new directory may be added when one "Adds a Web Cam". I may go back and delete/edit/add my 'web cam' again. I don't have enough to keep me busy... except the 100+ heat index! [sweat2]
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Dear X-Air and WeatherCat code tinkerers, . . .
I avoid WYSIWYG editors for the exact reason that they make it difficult to see the raw code. ;)
Seamonkey has a HTML editing mode just like the original Mozilla editor. However, if indeed you want to be careful, TextWranger will give all the code and only the code.
The major changes I see in your new WU code and the old one that I had copied is in the last, extremely verbose "<pram...> line.
. . . .
I don't know what you are complaining about . . . . I get back to my website today and it looks . . . . . . great!?!?? [goofy]
(http://www.canebas.org/misc/Voila_images/Flash%20warning%20page%202015-07-14.jpg)
With lousy software like this, . . . . we don't need any evil hackers!! . . . (http://www.canebas.org/WeatherCat/Forum_support_documents/Custom_emoticons/D'oh.gif)
*Sigh*, . . . Edouard
P.S. Flash cannot die fast enough for me! [banghead]
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I thought Flash was/is a security problem! [rolleyes2]
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However, if indeed you want to be careful, TextWranger will give all the code and only the code.
For this reason, I use TextWrangler. Also, I use it because I am cheap and it is free.