We cam: Simple steps for the newbie... again

[Blicj11]

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.

[WCDev]

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.

[Blicj11]

Excellent. Thank you.

[elagache]

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

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 

[xairbusdriver]

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! 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! "I'm not a real expert, but I play one in front of my computer!"

[Blicj11]

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.

[xairbusdriver]

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...

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.

[xairbusdriver]

Just a thought, Blick, are you using the WU page with the "Link to / Embed this Webcam" text on right-hand side?

[WCDev]

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/ )

[xairbusdriver]

Here's a <temporary site> that shows what I get when attempting to view my WU and Edouard's. Is this anything like what you are seeing?

[Blicj11]

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> 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.

[elagache]

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.

  . . . . sufferin' succotash!  don't you understand I'm suppose to be soldering a parking light wire cross-connect right now! . . . .

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

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 

[Blicj11]

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.

[xairbusdriver]

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.

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. I really don't care!

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:

I don't think I'm sending a "stream" to them, just an image every so often?

[elagache]

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/

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:

Code: [Select]

<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={&quot;key&quot;:&quot;#@8d339434b223613a374&quot;,&quot;clip&quot;:{&quot;autoPlay&quot;:false,&quot;autoBuffering&quot;:true},&quot;playlist&quot;:[{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;http://icons.wunderground.com/webcamramdisk/e/l/elagache/1/current.jpg?e%3D1436820647&quot;,&quot;autoPlay&quot;:false,&quot;autoBuffering&quot;:true},{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;http://icons.wunderground.com/webcamcurrent/e/l/elagache/1/current.mp4?e%3D1436820647&quot;,&quot;autoPlay&quot;:false,&quot;autoBuffering&quot;:true}],&quot;plugins&quot;:{&quot;controls&quot;:{&quot;all&quot;:true,&quot;mute&quot;:true,&quot;play&quot;: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 . . . . 

Cheers, Edouard