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I really like the way those videos were presented. Silently, looping, laid out one on top the other, each with a one line description. If that was one long vide

I really like the way those videos were presented. Silently, looping, laid out one on top the other, each with a one line description. If that was one long video i would have kept jumping backwards to rewatch all the scenes. Final thought, drone footage continues to blow me away.

mikeash 10y ago
Agreed, this is a superb way to present this information. I hope others take note!
danbruc 10y ago
I generally tend to think AR und VR are heavily overhyped and I don't believe they will become the next big thing. But I surely hope that we will be able to use VR to better convey the dimensions of things, their size, depth, steepness, and height, things that are almost impossible to convey on normal screens.
canadian_voter 10y ago
I agree. I found myself watching some of the videos over and over, and skipping others with only a cursory glance. The text was easy to read. When I watch videos with text I find myself pausing a lot. And nothing is more annoying than trying to rewind a long video to re-watch a 5 second clip: I'm always overshooting and wasting a ton of time. Reminds me of the "multimedia" of the 90s. :)
- peacelilly 10y ago
  Life Pro Tip: In youtube, you can use the hotkeys 'j', 'k', and 'l' to jump back 10 seconds, pause, and jump forward 10 seconds. It's very convenient. If you want to rewind a minute, hit 'j' 6 times quickly.
0003 10y ago
I feel like I learned more from watching these videos than I did on many of the numerous news articles written at the time. Granted, they were after the fact, but wow.
- javiramos 10y ago
  "A picture (or a video I guess :)) is worth a thousand words"
  - quakeguy 10y ago
    A picture is, a vid not so. But you are right. It helps to explain the situation far more easy than a wall of text could.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      It really depends on the video. Some are exemplary. Some not so much.
      - falcolas 10y ago
        And the writer's skill. The writer can add emotion, the videos are sterile in comparison (though that sterility has its own beauty).
        ordinary 10y ago
        Are you sure we shouldn't take the idiom 'a picture is worth a thousand words' literally?
        dredmorbius 10y ago
        All communication takes skill. The value of the montage here is editing down a large set of images and footage to the critical and suffient element. As is writing, or audio, or anything else. I see far too many people who think recording is synonymous with authoring or creating. As Stephen Colbert commented some time back (and many others before him), steganography isn't news. I've been kicking around a lot of ideas concerning narrative, the thread that organises a story -- fictional, expository, explanatory, whatever. P.D. James' quote on what the heart of a novel is, bringing order to mystery, is apropriate as well.
- 10y ago
0003 10y ago
I feel like I learned more from watching these videos than I did on many of the numerous news articles written at the time. Granted, they were after the fact, but wow.
jlarocco 10y ago
I disagree. I found the looping animations jarring and having 3 or 4 of them on screen at once is really distracting, and the image quality is very poor. The animation isn't even showing anything informative, just rushing water. The underlying damage isn't even visible. Reuter's had a picture gallery just a couple days ago that shows the damage much better: http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/massive-damage-at-california-dam?articleId=USRTS111C4 http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/massive-damage-at-califo...
- quakeguy 10y ago
  These Pictures are stunning, i agree wih your sentiment in a way. Nevertheless both galleries show an enormous amount of structural failure.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Thanks for the Reuters collection for comparison. I disagree that that's a better collection, on a number of counts: 1. The presentation is a fixed-size image on the page, which cannot be maximised (or the controls for such maximisation are highly nonobvious). Which means that I'm seeing a roughly 1/4 size image with vastly less detail than in the Imgur collection. 2. Despite what is clearly access to an arial vehicle (probably a helicopter), the Reuters images present a much smaller set of viewpoints, perspectives, and scales. The flexibility of a drone to go virtually anywhere within the area of interest, the specific focus on both the main spillway and the emergency overflow, the massive erosion along the latter, and the ability to either move in (not just zoom in via lens), or back out for an overview, is highly apparent in the Imgur photosets. 3. By contrast, the drone images provide a range of perspectives, sightlines, an distances from the subject, giving a much better overview of the full scope of the incident. 4. The Reuters images are static, not animated. Whilst I'm among the first to agree that animations can be, and are, overused, their use to show dynamic changes or events is exceedingly useful, and used to exceedingly good effect in the Imgur set. 5. Several of the Imgur images (you have to expand to see the full set) do show the extreme extent of the damage, including the void carved out below the initial failure, the gully formed by the free-flowing water, and the damage downstream of the spillway collapse showing visible rebar at the spillway lip, erosion of that lip, damage to the water diverting teeth at the bottom of the spillway, and several sections of channel wall which have been destroyed upstream of the lip. Also shown are multiple shots with humans visible for scale (and a banana). 6. The captioning of the Imgur slides is far more descriptive than those of the Reuters shots. Passive voice is avoided in the Imgur captions. Because passively voicing your captions is not only dry as fuck but creates a massive tendency to eliminate virtually any informative value from those captions. 7. Finally, the Imgur collection can be contrasted with the imagery which typically accompanies news stories: close-in shots generally of either emergency workers, evacuees, or onlookers, with little or no contextualisation of the larger picture. If you're exceedingly lucky, a small line map with minimal detail may be provided, showing approximate locations, but virtually nothing of interest as to the situation or considerations of the scene or its larger surroundings. For broad-scale disasters (fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes), there's almost never a map showing extents, damage, or more critically, safe evacuation zones in the immediate vicinity of an event. This is where I've found Wikipedia to be almost without exception the single best source of information an overview of an ongoing event, in that it synthesises the overall understanding of an event to that point in time, rather than providing a drip of what is almost always very little news, that entirely uncontextualised, and in broadcast media, an absolutely insane amount of space-filling tap dancing and repetition. My vote goes with the Imgur collection. Incidentally, Imgur allows animations to be stopped, via most clients, by clicking the image or the animation controls themselves. You don't have to leave them running. I also find muliple simultaneous animations distracting.
libertymcateer 10y ago
Honest question - have you never used Imgur before? This is literally all that site is. Check out, for instance, https://reddit.com/r/diy https://reddit.com/r/diy. It is all just imgur albums. https://imgur.com/a/u2jlk https://imgur.com/a/u2jlk http://imgur.com/a/RvGCz http://imgur.com/a/RvGCz Or https://reddit.com/r/gifalbums https://reddit.com/r/gifalbums http://imgur.com/a/3S5Wt http://imgur.com/a/3S5Wt https://imgur.com/a/GM3Iv https://imgur.com/a/GM3Iv
- albeebe1 10y ago
  I have used Imgur plenty especially r/diy but I don't remember seeing an album comprised solely of animated GIFs. It's typically albums with captioned static images.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- bhandziuk 10y ago
  But news stories are not usually presented like this. That's really the thing being commented on is that the imgur style of presentation was an excellent match for this content, which usually is much more text.
- albeebe1 10y ago
  As a matter of fact I actually posted an album today on r/diy as a result of seeing this today. The captioned GIFs inspired me https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/5xdaqn/i_completely_destroyed_my_yard_and_replaced_it/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/5xdaqn/i_completely_de...
Ardren 10y ago
It reminds me of The Boston Globes Big Picture series. e.g. Hurricane Matthew: https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/bigpicture/2016/10/05/hurricane-matthew/DJDjqQVNisLOKWIYqJPSOO/story.html?p1=BP_Headline https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/bigpicture/2016/10/05/hurri...

mikeash 10y ago

Agreed, this is a superb way to present this information. I hope others take note!

danbruc 10y ago

I generally tend to think AR und VR are heavily overhyped and I don't believe they will become the next big thing. But I surely hope that we will be able to use VR to better convey the dimensions of things, their size, depth, steepness, and height, things that are almost impossible to convey on normal screens.

canadian_voter 10y ago

I agree. I found myself watching some of the videos over and over, and skipping others with only a cursory glance. The text was easy to read. When I watch videos with text I find myself pausing a lot. And nothing is more annoying than trying to rewind a long video to re-watch a 5 second clip: I'm always overshooting and wasting a ton of time. Reminds me of the "multimedia" of the 90s. :)

peacelilly 10y ago
Life Pro Tip: In youtube, you can use the hotkeys 'j', 'k', and 'l' to jump back 10 seconds, pause, and jump forward 10 seconds. It's very convenient. If you want to rewind a minute, hit 'j' 6 times quickly.

0003 10y ago

I feel like I learned more from watching these videos than I did on many of the numerous news articles written at the time. Granted, they were after the fact, but wow.

javiramos 10y ago
"A picture (or a video I guess :)) is worth a thousand words"
- quakeguy 10y ago
  A picture is, a vid not so. But you are right. It helps to explain the situation far more easy than a wall of text could.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    It really depends on the video. Some are exemplary. Some not so much.
    - falcolas 10y ago
      And the writer's skill. The writer can add emotion, the videos are sterile in comparison (though that sterility has its own beauty).
      - ordinary 10y ago
        Are you sure we shouldn't take the idiom 'a picture is worth a thousand words' literally?
      - dredmorbius 10y ago
        All communication takes skill. The value of the montage here is editing down a large set of images and footage to the critical and suffient element. As is writing, or audio, or anything else. I see far too many people who think recording is synonymous with authoring or creating. As Stephen Colbert commented some time back (and many others before him), steganography isn't news. I've been kicking around a lot of ideas concerning narrative, the thread that organises a story -- fictional, expository, explanatory, whatever. P.D. James' quote on what the heart of a novel is, bringing order to mystery, is apropriate as well.
10y ago

0003 10y ago

I feel like I learned more from watching these videos than I did on many of the numerous news articles written at the time. Granted, they were after the fact, but wow.

jlarocco 10y ago

I disagree. I found the looping animations jarring and having 3 or 4 of them on screen at once is really distracting, and the image quality is very poor. The animation isn't even showing anything informative, just rushing water. The underlying damage isn't even visible. Reuter's had a picture gallery just a couple days ago that shows the damage much better: http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/massive-damage-at-california-dam?articleId=USRTS111C4 http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/massive-damage-at-califo...

quakeguy 10y ago
These Pictures are stunning, i agree wih your sentiment in a way. Nevertheless both galleries show an enormous amount of structural failure.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Thanks for the Reuters collection for comparison. I disagree that that's a better collection, on a number of counts: 1. The presentation is a fixed-size image on the page, which cannot be maximised (or the controls for such maximisation are highly nonobvious). Which means that I'm seeing a roughly 1/4 size image with vastly less detail than in the Imgur collection. 2. Despite what is clearly access to an arial vehicle (probably a helicopter), the Reuters images present a much smaller set of viewpoints, perspectives, and scales. The flexibility of a drone to go virtually anywhere within the area of interest, the specific focus on both the main spillway and the emergency overflow, the massive erosion along the latter, and the ability to either move in (not just zoom in via lens), or back out for an overview, is highly apparent in the Imgur photosets. 3. By contrast, the drone images provide a range of perspectives, sightlines, an distances from the subject, giving a much better overview of the full scope of the incident. 4. The Reuters images are static, not animated. Whilst I'm among the first to agree that animations can be, and are, overused, their use to show dynamic changes or events is exceedingly useful, and used to exceedingly good effect in the Imgur set. 5. Several of the Imgur images (you have to expand to see the full set) do show the extreme extent of the damage, including the void carved out below the initial failure, the gully formed by the free-flowing water, and the damage downstream of the spillway collapse showing visible rebar at the spillway lip, erosion of that lip, damage to the water diverting teeth at the bottom of the spillway, and several sections of channel wall which have been destroyed upstream of the lip. Also shown are multiple shots with humans visible for scale (and a banana). 6. The captioning of the Imgur slides is far more descriptive than those of the Reuters shots. Passive voice is avoided in the Imgur captions. Because passively voicing your captions is not only dry as fuck but creates a massive tendency to eliminate virtually any informative value from those captions. 7. Finally, the Imgur collection can be contrasted with the imagery which typically accompanies news stories: close-in shots generally of either emergency workers, evacuees, or onlookers, with little or no contextualisation of the larger picture. If you're exceedingly lucky, a small line map with minimal detail may be provided, showing approximate locations, but virtually nothing of interest as to the situation or considerations of the scene or its larger surroundings. For broad-scale disasters (fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes), there's almost never a map showing extents, damage, or more critically, safe evacuation zones in the immediate vicinity of an event. This is where I've found Wikipedia to be almost without exception the single best source of information an overview of an ongoing event, in that it synthesises the overall understanding of an event to that point in time, rather than providing a drip of what is almost always very little news, that entirely uncontextualised, and in broadcast media, an absolutely insane amount of space-filling tap dancing and repetition. My vote goes with the Imgur collection. Incidentally, Imgur allows animations to be stopped, via most clients, by clicking the image or the animation controls themselves. You don't have to leave them running. I also find muliple simultaneous animations distracting.

libertymcateer 10y ago

Honest question - have you never used Imgur before? This is literally all that site is. Check out, for instance, https://reddit.com/r/diy https://reddit.com/r/diy. It is all just imgur albums. https://imgur.com/a/u2jlk https://imgur.com/a/u2jlk http://imgur.com/a/RvGCz http://imgur.com/a/RvGCz Or https://reddit.com/r/gifalbums https://reddit.com/r/gifalbums http://imgur.com/a/3S5Wt http://imgur.com/a/3S5Wt https://imgur.com/a/GM3Iv https://imgur.com/a/GM3Iv

albeebe1 10y ago
I have used Imgur plenty especially r/diy but I don't remember seeing an album comprised solely of animated GIFs. It's typically albums with captioned static images.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
bhandziuk 10y ago
But news stories are not usually presented like this. That's really the thing being commented on is that the imgur style of presentation was an excellent match for this content, which usually is much more text.
albeebe1 10y ago
As a matter of fact I actually posted an album today on r/diy as a result of seeing this today. The captioned GIFs inspired me https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/5xdaqn/i_completely_destroyed_my_yard_and_replaced_it/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/5xdaqn/i_completely_de...

Ardren 10y ago

It reminds me of The Boston Globes Big Picture series. e.g. Hurricane Matthew: https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/bigpicture/2016/10/05/hurricane-matthew/DJDjqQVNisLOKWIYqJPSOO/story.html?p1=BP_Headline https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/bigpicture/2016/10/05/hurri...