File:Spinning Flickr Smiley Wink Emoticon - Flickr HD Video Aspect Ratio Experiment (3360397896).jpg

Duration: 5 seconds.

This is an experiment to see how flickr HD deals with larger videos in non standard aspect ratios. (See also my <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dominicspics/2927507021/">non-HD experiment</a>.)

The video uploaded was 1000 x 1000 pixels in size. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec">codec</a> used was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H264">H264</a>, at the highest quality setting available in Quicktime. No interlacing was used.

In HD mode it is presented in flickr at 800 x 800 pixels.

Previously, before the introduction of Flickr HD, the maximum size / dimensions were 500 x 500 pixels - which is still the default non-HD size. (That is to say, 500 pixels is the length of the longest side.)

So Flickr HD continues the creative tradition of <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dominicspics/2927507021/">preserving customised, non-standard, aspect ratios</a>, a feature that other video hosting services (YouTube, Vimeo) do not offer.

The video is a CGI animation (created using <a href="http://www.maxon.net/pages/dyn_files/dyn_htx/htx/welcome_e.html">Maxon's Cinema 4D</a>) - an Emoticon of a smiling wink adapted from the default flickr "Buddy Icon". The face has been mapped into a transparent (and non-reflective) sphere, which spins and then slows to a stop. "Flickr blue" and "flickr pink" coloured spotlights illuminate the face, casting appropriately coloured shadows. The shadows have been slightly softened with a blue grey "fill" or "area" light. Reflected light does not normally illuminate in the world of CGI, because of the monumental computer processing that would be required to do this. Naturalistic lighting usually needs to be "hand crafted". This is one one of the many reasons why - despite being fabulously profitable - they don't make a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrek_(film_series)">Shrek</a> movie every week.

(For me, where I am located) the playback of the video is very jerky, nowhere close to the 25 frames per second of the original. This is possibly because I live in the third world (the United Kingdom / Great Britain), with a stone age internet infrastructure. Unfortunately, the smoothest playback may be experienced in the smallest, thumbnail, photostream view.

Because <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee">Tim Berners-Lee</a> is considered <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/12/subscription_only_internet/">by some</a> to be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Neutrality">some sort of Communist</a> (with his ideals of Universal Web Access), this may be the case forever...