Taiwan Odyssey

[rtk1958]

Hi all,

Finally finished a video of my wonderful trip to Taiwan last summer. It was a beautiful and friendly place to visit with lots of good food. The video footage is from my Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone and the photos are mostly from my Olympus digital camera. Some photos are from the smartphone. The video is in three segments, the first of which uses photos and images from the internet. The last two segments contain photos and video I took during the two weeks touring parts of the country. It was a great experience. Hope you enjoy.

Todd

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmLwtnmoJpo[/youtube]

p.s. Make sure the Youtube video is playing at max resolution, 480p. I've seen posted Youtube links open and play at lower resolutions, not sure why.

[Dave McElderry]

Awesome Todd! That's as close as I'll ever get to Taiwan. Thoroughly enjoyed it. The music was great, and the syncing with it was very well done. That was an interesting "reveal by thirds" that you don't see very much. This wasn't a two-wheel adventure was it?

[Steve Grisetti]

A beautiful homage to a beautiful place! Thanks for sharing it, Todd! Great job!

[Ron Hunter]

Todd that was great! The pacing to music was perfect and I loved how the sequence of shots at the end moved left to right, it was as if you were moving your head to the right and looking at all of those images. I also liked the sequence that zoomed into each image. Did you notice the woman crossing the street with the mask on? And I had no idea waves could crash like that!

It would have been nice if there were some text in lower third area to indicate what the viewer is looking at. You remember it I'm sure, but someday you might not.

Did you have the S4 in a case, or is it waterproof?

[Peru]

It was a pleasure to watch. Perfect timing of music and video. Wonderfully smooth transitions. Great job of using dip to black between video and music changes.

[momoffduty]

What a memorable trip! The streets were very crowded. One photo had someone pushing a person in a wheel chair. Wonder how they manage through the crowd. Enjoyed seeing the food vendors. Did you eat at the vendors? Any favorites? Nice edit to the music!

[sidd finch]

Todd that was a really nice video I really enjoyed watching it. I like watching your footage better than the internet pics as they were too "perfect" I like to see the real deal. Your smartphone did a pretty nice job with the video.

I will never get to Taiwan so this is a great chance to see the other side of the world. Very well done. I agree with Ron cause I was wondering what some of those places were. But still cool...

I bet their eyes would pop if you came riding along on your big bike.

Sidd

[rtk1958]

Thanks all for taking the time to watch and post comments. To answer some of the questions:

It was not a two-wheeled adventure, although there is an American motorcycle rider who moved to Taiwan several years ago that offers motorcycle tours of Taiwan. May have to give that a try next time.

While definitely in the minority, you see people wearing the little face masks almost everywhere you go. Perhaps a hold over from the Asian bird flu scare several years ago? I was standing on a street corner taking video of traffic and people passing by and along comes a woman wearing a mask running across the street in my direction. Included it in the final sequence of the video.

I definitely did a lot of eating, but avoided many things too. Like the "Pork Large Intestine" and "Pigs Blood Soup" shown on the sign of one of the food vendor shots. Favorites were the fried pork and chicken, wheel cakes (round waffle like cakes with cream, chocolate, bean, or taro filling in them), and both the fried and steamed pork dumplings.

The S4 was not in a waterproof case, nor was the Olympus digital camera. Both, along with myself, got wet in the scene with the crashing waves that got a little too close. Luckily, after meticulously wiping each of them down, both continued working okay. Think being splashed with water isn't as damaging as being submerged in it. Needless to say, I positioned myself a little further back for the remainder of the shoot. In case anyone wondered, I used a GoPro Hero2 for the white-water rafting shots. That was the only time I used the GoPro.

Like the idea of captioning some of the shots. May have to go back in and add a few.

Thanks again for all the comments, really appreciate it.

Todd