Videos now updated!! Password FireSerpent - Gooodbye realplayer.

[Mystress]

  I think this announcement got missed, being bundled with my birthday message. A birthday gift to myself really, the quality of the old realplayer videos has been a bad embarrassment for a decade, and stopped me promoting FST at all. I would cringe at every new report of someone having problems viewing them. 

  I am happy, grateful, relieved to announce the long promised updated tech version of the lesson videos is now live!  High def, resizeable to full screen, great sound, and with a built in player that works on all types of computers and os. No more realplayer!!

  This has not been a simple accomplishment~ !  My original business partner when FST was made, converted the raw TV tapes to realplayer before editing them, because computers were not as smart in 1999 and smaller files were easier to work with.  When he closed his business he gave me the original master tapes and copyrights to them.

   Finding the exact same snippets on the 8 DVD tapes of clips was the second problem, the first was to get the raw to Gustaf in Sweden. I was not going to let go of the master tapes, they are too valuable to let out of the house. Irreplaceable. I got a DVD player-writer for the TV and recorded them all on DVDs and shipped them off. G gave them his best shot... quite some time later he expressed frustration, the conversion to DVD had introduced a time lag in the soundtrack and repairing it by hand was awful work... he suggested software.  Using sony vegas and a new firewire video card I re-recorded all the tapes from a camera to a portable hard drive in their original format and hand delivered it to him when he hosted the Sweden FST intensive weekend in 2006. 

Now he had decent quality to work with, but this is not easy material to edit. The videos are high test Shakti! I get noticeably hyperactive if I watch more than a few clips at once, and I am in them! No way I could do the editing myself.  He had to pace himself carefully. Finding the exact clips in 12 hours of video meant a lot of watching and going back and forth,  getting buzzed into overload repeatedly.

  I suggested transcribing them with timestamps, audio only then searching the text based on the transcripts on the website. Some communications difficulties with his now-ex wife (also my student) ran things off track, and knowing how highly charged the videos are, I felt I could not push them.  The project got set aside for some years, G kind of wandered away from FST though not out of touch.

  During those intervening years, technology changes made it impossible to protect a video from being downloaded and shared. Youtube download hackers tech spread and nobody had come up with a reliable way to prevent it. Realplayer itself, advertised the new version being able to download anything. (Though that version could no longer play my videos, thank Goddess! )

  It is extremely important to me that the videos do not get out in the world, and woe to the karma of anybody who tries it.  All the karma stuff the videos trigger in people might land on them instead.

  Then I discovered Vimeo Pro, got an account, resolved the communications issues (half the transcription job is already done, by percyval in 2000 and is at the bottom of the lesson pages) and with a good text transcription with timestamps, the remaining editing work went much more smoothly. (My gratitude to Lady of Quills)

  Three of the 56 original videos could not be found on the old master tapes, I do not know if a tape is missing or they were somehow recorded over, but there was no replacing them and we had to convert from the realplayer versions instead. (Sorry their quality is crappy and no resize, but at least they do not need realplayer.)

  The rest of the videos are WOW! High def picture and sound, they can go full screen and I am very proud, and delighted to announce they are now live on the website.  Password is FireSerpent

  This completion is such a weight off my shoulders! I have left the original realplayer versions up, for the time being. If you click on the word Realplayer you can see them, but if you click on the FST logo, the lesson title or the word video next to realplayer you will get a pop up window with the new video player.  There is nothing to install or download, and they should work the same for every type of computer and os. They will only play from this website, and cannot be downloaded.

  The video player will ask for a password- the password is the same for all the videos and may be changed annually. Right now it is

   FireSerpent   

   just like that, case sensitive, hopefully very easy to remember and quick to type.  The videos for the public preview pages (not updated yet as the pages are being rewritten) will not require a password. 

  Additionally, the audio only versions are now a simple black oval player at the top of the transcripts. The link at the top remains, and takes you down to the transcript player. No more audio window popups, and convenient to start the audio and read the words.   

  More updates to FST are in the works, both cosmetic and content.

   I really want to thank you all, for your patience and forbearance in dealing with the old realplayer technology.  I hope the new videos delight you as much as they do me. Two students have told me they intend to start over from the first lesson, to experience FST anew with the new videos because the crisp full size image and clear sound gives new radiance to the energy.  So cool.   

[WillyT]

Awesome!

More updates to FST are in the works, both cosmetic and content.

Please let me know if I can help in any way. I'm a graphic designer and coder by trade.

[fewtureJ]

This is so great to hear!