Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, or you’re the sole robot left alone on a planet, you know that Pixar’s latest animated extravaganza, WallE is hitting theaters today. If you like animated movies, I invite you to check out the Animated Trailers channel in our Animation Network. It’s frequently updated with clips and trailers that run the gamut from big-budget computer animated flicks to independent stop-motion films.
So head on over and see what’s coming to a theatre, or DVD player, near you.
There was some interesting world health news. If you’re an American, you’re probably aware that many Europeans have better health care. Insurance companies even pay for miracle treatments and religious pilgrimages. Try getting pre-approval from your HMO for that. Speaking of healthy, Japan is going to extremes to fight fat and avoid following in our footsteps. Japanese companies are also pushing a robot “hottie” on men over 20 and high-tech toilets on everyone. These things might just might just replace a girlfriend, fight loneliness, and improve your health. If this angers you, go express yourself with a bumper sticker.
Today we’re talking about the big screen. Some of the most popular videos we post on Yahoo! Video are movie trailers. So we want to know: What have you been watching in theaters? Between superheroes and ‘Sex and the City,’ the cineplex has had a lot to offer this summer.
But don’t just tell us. Show us. Go to our movies network, and grab the embed code for the trailer, then post it in the comments. And then let us know what you thought of the film. You can even record a mini-review and post that too.
First, a general disclaimer: Fringe Fridays is not responsible for your nightmares. It is, however, responsible for drawing your attention to Creepy Doll, an animated music video by John Ink, featuring the music of Jonathan Coulton. Whether you choose to watch Creepy Doll is, of course, entirely up to you:
It’s official: 16:9 is the aspect ratio of the future. And here at Yahoo! Video, the future is now (at other video sites the future is still just in the future, but they don’t have a suped-up Delorean like we do). We embrace the wide-screen aesthetic, so how can video uploaders make the most out of the 16:9 experience?
The general rule is: export the video in its native aspect ratio, and be sure to enable any function that preserves that aspect ratio. If you look at your original movie file and see black bars on the top and bottom, those black bars will be encoded, and your video will shrink. Just check out these illustrations (using Blender Foundation’s Big Buck Bunny):
It’s the difference between this:
and this:
The first one was exported as 4:3, even though the video was in 16:9. Hence the squishing.
Secondly, for best quality your video should be at least 576 x 324 pixels. This is the size of our player. Uploading at that size means your video won’t have to be scaled up, and you’ll maintain optimum resolution. After all, no one likes a chunky video.
If you’re not making videos at 16:9, that’s totally fine. But the same ideas apply: export the video in its native aspect ratio (be it 4:3, 2.39:1, 1.85:1 or whatever)), and keep the video as close to—or even larger than—the size of our player. Any letterboxing or windowboxing will be applied automatically at the time of playback.
You might want to sit down for this. It turns out that this week’s uber-popular popcorn-popping cell phone video is, in fact, a hoax, a viral ad. Oh wait, we already said that on Monday. What we didn’t say, and no one knew, was what it was ‘advertising.’ Turns out, it’s bluetooth headsets. The full scoop is at the Yahoo! Tech blog.
