MetaTalk posts tagged with video

Spend 2 hrs watching the Matrix? I could read the script in 15 minutes!

straight — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 19:02:52 -0800

I think this kind of complaint needs to be retired. This thread has a bunch of the same complaints made anytime someone posts a link to a long-form video essay. "I'm not watching this! Write me an essay instead!" But it turns out long-form video essays are a genre now, and some of them are good! I think it's time we stopped derailing discussions of them with complaints about how we don't like the genre. "It's too long! I like reading better! And did you know some video essays are bad?"

7th Annual MST Club Holiday Video Marathon Social Distancing Edition

JHarris — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 16:48:58 -0800

It's time again for that weird thing we do, which is program 72 hours of specials, bad Christmas movies, MST3K episodes and other things. It's MST Club's 2020 Holiday Video Marathon! We usually put this in for intermittent yuletide jollies and destress, to help people relax at an often frustrating time of year. This year, with so many people sensibly staying home for the holidays, it promises both to be less and more stressful than usual. Anyone can come by and watch weird stuff with us, members or not! Our show runs from December 23 through to midnight December 25. Details inside! Previous years: 2019 - 2018 - 2017 - 2016 - 2015 - 2014 We have a chat room attached so people can joke along with the show, but it's fine to lurk or have us on in the background! We do this by the seats of our collective pants, but we have a vague sort of theme schedule. We are open to reading the crowd to see what people would like though. Our plans (times are Eastern) are: DEC 23: Morning: specials, riffing Afternoon: Rankin-Bass Evening-Night: MST3K and other riffing, miscellaneous DEC 24: Morning: more specials Early afternoon: Christmas episodes of old TV shows -- Jack Benny, Burns & Allen Evening-Night: MST3K and other riffing, our favorite specials DEC 25: Morning: Quiet time -- Yule logs, specials Afternoon: Our standards -- classic riffing Evening-Night: Winding down, non-holiday fare Our moderator list this year is TheSnakeOfArgument, valkane, StarkRoads, Satri and TV's Ilana. oneswellfoop might be helping too but has been having computer issues lately. Some of our items are from the Rifftrax catalog. While we have a terrific hodge-podge of material from them, we try to make sure that everything we have is bought and paid for. Please give them your support!

Election Day video destress party!

JHarris — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 18:54:47 -0800

MST Club is planning a marathon of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, shorts and other fun things on November 3 that I'm calling... ELECTRON DAY! It will be in our usual video share room for MeFi members and anyone else to watch! AND Halloween we're doing an impromptu selection of spoo[k|p]y things in that same room! Click through for the deets-- ELECTRON DAY (Nov 3): The theme is science fiction, because it's fun, distant from the electoral politics we're trying to get people to relax over, and because at 9 PM Eastern time we'll be doing our twice-weekly Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode watch, of horrendously bad sci-fi movie MONSTER A-GO-GO, which is legitimately one of the very worst movies ever made, if you have never seen it I don't even want to spoil the amazingly awful ending, possibly the worst movie ending of all time. Of course, if you're a US citizen, you are forbidden from using our programming as an excuse to not vote this year. The stakes are incredibly high! If need be you can put the show on your phone while you're standing in line! We did something like this four years ago, expecting it to be fairly low key and fun, but as the horrible news rolled in things got sadder and sadder as the full enormity of the awful thing that was about to happen settled in. Things are looking better this year, but they looked pretty good last time, and I feel like I've got some residual PTSD from it. The video room helped me out last time, hopefully it'll help this year too. On Halloween, we have a much more low-key program planned, basically just some MST episodes and shorts. We might not even have people overtly "running" the thing that night, we've had a lot of shows lately and have ELECTRON DAY three days later. Think of it as snacks and soda, relative to the other's cheese and wine. And this is as good a time as any to remind that we are still on for Turkey Day 2020 (maybe) and Christmas Marathon 2020 (which honestly is the big one). I try not to litter Talk with these posts, but I'll probably announce the Christmas show when we get closer to it. It'll be our 7th year doing a Christmas show! That's kind of worrying!

Metatalktail Hour: Background Noise

taz — Sat, 29 Aug 2020 12:15:19 -0800

Inspired by a link from ALeaflikeStructure, we pose the question, "What's on your actual or idealized-imaginary zoom backdrop?" Do you have a credibility bookcase or similar? Are you composing a subtle (or unsubtle?!) message with your background, or just winging it? Do you have favorites or notables that you've seen from others? Or just tell us what's been up with you, what you've found interesting recently, what you had for lunch — it's all good!

6th Annual MST Club Christmas Marathon

JHarris — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 14:18:01 -0800

Hey all! The Christmas Marathon for this year is up and running! We have MST episodes, other riffing, specials and other bits of weirdness! Over 48 hours of stuff awaits you, for as long, where and when as you can stand it, at our cytu.be room at https://cytu.be/r/Metafilter_MST3KClub. We'll be showing things through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and we've even got some weird movies set up for the rest of today, so come on out if you want or need it! More details inside.... This is what I call a "no-stress" marathon. We're here if you want some fun with silly internet people, or if you need to take a break from dinner preparation or family, or if you want mildly entertaining background stuff going on during these short days or long nights. Tune in at any time in the next two days and you'll find something ridiculous, and drop out whenever you want. That's our promise to you, the random visitor! Highlights are, as always, the malevolent Ice Cream Bunny, the Star Wars Holiday Special (is it better than Rise of Skywalker? no), Santa's House of Madness and more. We're always rotating in new things, too, and we're open to suggestions if we can find them on YouTube or other compatible video site. Early Christmas morning we have a yule log or two and some timeshifts of Fox Kids and Nick at Nite programming for that pleasant nostalgic irradiated-by-phosphors feeling. As always, our riff material is bought and paid for, but if you wish to express your own appreciation to the original creators, you can do so at rifftrax.com and mst3k.com. Thanks again, happy holidays, and as foop has been known to say I believe, good night and good gravy!

MST Club Christmas Video Marathon 2018!

JHarris — Fri, 21 Dec 2018 22:58:07 -0800

"That's a number five!" As in, this is the FIFTH YEAR MST Club's been doing this! I guess the secret's out that we show far more than just MST episodes there, we have a huge collection of old and new, good and bad specials, movies and Very Special Episodes, in addition to other videos and riffing of multiple flavors. This year we're doing it for THREE DAYS, staring Midnight (Eastern time) in the morning of December 23rd and going through to the end of Christmas Day. It's all taking place here. Previous threads: 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 We do this not just for our own amusement but to help provide a yuletide mood evener. Some people have tense family situations, or a need to escape for a while, or something to have on in the background while the turkey's cooking, or want something Christmassy to do in the absence of family, or just want some laffs for the holidays. I call it a "no stress" marathon 'cause no one really expects anyone (including ourselves!) to try to be there for every moment of the thing. cytube has a pretty good automation system to keep things rolling even when modless, although usually one of us will be there, unless we're all passed out or hopped up on nog. In our second or third year we tried strictly scheduling it, but it ended up being far more more trouble that it was worth. We do try to show certain kinds of things at certain times though: DEC 23 and 24: Mornings - Bad and Weird Christmas Episodes & Specials Evenings/Nights - Riffing, mostly Christmas themed with some wildcards thrown in DEC 25: Morning - Good Christmas Specials & Yule Logs Afternoon - Our best riffing, culminating in our year long gaze-in-horror at the Star Wars Holiday Special Evening/Night - Marathon wind-down time, showing things that are pointedly not Christmas-related. Helping me out this year, as usual, is TheSnakeOfArgument, valkane and oneswellfoop. Snake particularly has been very helpful in getting this organized this year. We do show riffing from places like Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic, but all of our riffs are bought and paid for. If it makes you feel guilty to watch on our dime, you can shoot them a dollar or two (Rifftrax has a donations page). Or buy something from them, I'm sure they wouldn't mind that. We have some interesting surprised this year. I found on a random site a large collection of computer graphics demos! Snake's made us some custom bumpers with marathon info and silly Christmas music backgrounds! We've got even more weird stuff than previous years! And we'll just have to see what else there is in store.

MST Club Video Marathon 2017: Christmas In SPAAAACE

JHarris — Sat, 23 Dec 2017 05:56:01 -0800

This is MST Club announcing our 4^th annual "No Stress" Christmas Video Marathon! No Stress means it's pretty laid back as far as marathons go: feel free to have it going on in the background to cooking, sleeping, football or whatever, or exchange jokes with us in the chat window. The primary site of this thing is the MST Club Cytube page, with our Rabb.it room as a possible alternate if things go awry. The time is throughout December 24 and 25, from 6 AM Eastern/ 3 AM Pacific through to Midnight on the 25th. Come by with or without your favorite nog if you like! More details are in the extended description. Previous threads: 2014 - 2015 - 2016 The MST Club Christmas Marathon is intended to be a destress hangout spot for MeFi members and people just wanting to relax and laugh a bit during the holidays. Marathon contents include:

Riffing videos, including Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes (with an emphasis on Christmas fare), RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic (paid-for copies of those).
Christmas specials good, bad and just funny.
Short Christmas-related, generally humorous material.
Miscellaneous stuff, including some new material not seen in previous marathons that I'd like to keep as a surprise. Not everything is Christmas related, but currently most of it is. I'm testing the waters concerning how much non-Christmas material we should use.

Last year we tried a strict schedule kind of thing, but it chafed a bit, especially when technical issues prevented us from watching the thing scheduled for that moment. So this year we're keeping things flexible, and going with general themes for different times. Our room mods are free to choose what exactly is airing, from our library of yuletide wonderments and atrocities, or go their own way, or accept requests from the audience. (It helps if the video is on YouTube, Vimeo or Dailymotion, and if it's not blocked in many countries.) The main advice for watching that I have to offer is to try to watch from a Flash-capable browser. Most of the stuff should be viewable from plain HTML, but in the past we've had issues with some sites, especially Vimeo and Dailymotion. Dailymotion in particular has a wealth of Christmas specials and related videos. If you're on a Mac using Firefox or Chrome should be good enough. I don't think there are good solutions for iPads and most Android, unfortunately, but give it a try even if that's your only opinion. The alternate room, the Rabb.it one, won't see much use unless something drastic goes wrong with the cytu.be room, but there is one major thing watchable there that we can't at the moment see in the main room: the Christmas episode in MST3K Season 11. If we try to switch over to watch it there, it'll probably be towards the end on December 25. Further details, updates and last-second corrections will appear in this thread. We'll be meeting in the cytube room this evening (on the 23rd that is) for preparations if you want to drop by a bit early and say hello.

I hate autoplay videos.

Shepherd — Wed, 22 Nov 2017 04:16:18 -0800

I'm 99.9% sure that there's no practical way to get the user base to stop linking to sites that have autoplay video embedded in them, but as a techno-doof, I'm wondering if there's any kind of, I don't know, pass-through or something that can generate URLs that set autoplaying videos to not play? Like an appended bit of code along with all the tracking kerfuffle on the URL? Failing that, any recommendations for video autoplay blockers for Chrome that actually work would be most welcome. My test page (which all the autoplay blockers fail at blocking autoplay on) is this one, which was linked from this post.

Jingle Rock Bell music video

aniola — Sat, 24 Dec 2016 00:16:03 -0800

Jingle Rock Bell, now with music video [via mefi projects] related

2016 MST3K Club No-Stress Christmas Video Marathon

JHarris — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 10:50:51 -0800

For the third year running, those of us in MST Club are planning a holiday marathon of video festialities. (Jonathan Harris voice: "That's not a word!") On the menu: MST3K Christmas movies, a few other riffing delicacies, a wide assortment of Christmas specials and episodes both good and bad, and some other short oddments thrown in. Once again, the purpose is to be the good-natured background radiation to your Christmas rituals, taking the edge off the hard moments and adding extra cheer to the soft ones. Come by whenever and however long you want. Official times: 6 AM Eastern Christmas Eve through to 6 AM December 26. As usual, the site of this madness is the MST Club cytube page. A lot of stuff is returning from last year, but we're aiming to have less repetition this time around. We are also planning to have a schedule, so you can see what's coming and catch your favorite things. We do reserve the right to switch things up though, if some item isn't working with the audience at that moment, or in the event of technical difficulties. As always, the motto of MST Club is "Doing things that we're surprised are even possible, with a minimum of backup failsafes." We're still working on getting everything encoded and set up, more information will appear in this thread as we get closer.

Accessibility suggestion for the deaf/hard of hearing

AFABulous — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 07:31:13 -0800

I am hard of hearing and it would be helpful to have notations on videos about their level of accessibility. For example, if they include speech, is it captioned? Are there captions, but only auto generated? Does the speech contain information necessary to watch the video? Does it add some other value (e.g. humor)? Is it music only? Ambient noise? This would also be useful for people who cannot listen to the video because they are at work or school because then they know whether or not to bother watching it now, or save it for later. Remember: almost all of us are going to become hard of hearing if we live long enough. I am open to suggestions about notations so it doesn't add a lot of clutter to posts. See my recent post for an example, although the speech in the cheetah video is not necessary to enjoy it. Some possible notes: CC - closed captioned (not auto generated) CC AG - closed captioned, auto generated only (these tend to be very poor quality unless there is no background noise) Narration - (person speaking is off-screen - documentaries, movie trailers, etc.) Speech - (e.g. a conversation, most movies, vlog, political speech) Music Only - I suppose Music w/Lyrics is needed if the lyrics are necessary for enjoyment, e.g. that one musical y'all keep banging on about Ambient Only - wind noise, engine noise, etc. Final note - Vimeo does not support captions, so if the same content is available on both Vimeo and YouTube, please use YouTube.

Election Destress Video Marathon

JHarris — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 13:21:25 -0800

Over in MST Club, oneswellfoop had the idea to show MST3K (especially Pod People, the one with Trumpy, a much less dangerous version of the one that currently afflicts our nation) in an election day marathon over on the MST3K Club video page, running all day November 8. Sounds good to me! Details below. It's the same "rules" as the Christmas shows, that is, we're here to decrease stress. Engage with us in chat and mock movies along with us, or have it running in the background all day long, or drop on for a few minutes here or there, or don't come by at all, or any combination of the preceding, or anything else. No guilt, no fuss, and that's for all of us, viewers and show maintainers alike. (Our viewing site is a lot more robust this year, over our old one, so technically I don't think we even need a channel op in during the whole thing.) We usually only do this for Christmas but this year I think we can handle a special showing. These are the prospective episodes being considered, list open to addition: MST3K: Pod People (Trumpy!), Rocket Attack USA and Invasion USA (good ol' cold war paranoia) and Parts: The Clonus Horror. (A US Senator secretly running a clone farm as an organ bank! Ripped [not] from today's headlines!) Other videos and stuff, like the Monty Python election special sketch and episodes of awful 60s cartoon Super President, will be interspersed among the others. And we're always up for throwing stuff in based on suggestions from the audience! Finally, please do not let our little show distract you from taking some time out from your day to vote! I voted several days ago so I can stick around. Be sure to vote some time tomorrow, so that you can say you did your best to ensure we only have to suffer through one day's worth of Trumpy instead of four years.

Where is star trek episode ii eggs

FirstMateKate — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 21:06:32 -0800

Somewhere either on the blue or green someone linked to a YouTube video of a 6 year old playing with their star trek action figures. Spock is wearing an apron. Kirk goes on a mission to trade a hash brown for some eggs. Everyone is in a band. I quote it daily. This is literally the only thing that matters to my whole family right now.

Trying to find an old post about a fake commercial

KChasm — Mon, 11 Jul 2016 18:50:10 -0800

I'm trying to find an old post that appeared on MetaFilter some time back. It was a YouTube link to some kind of fake commercial, though I don't remember at all what it claimed to be selling, just that there was a woman doing the whole testimonial and it went slowly off the rails. Does anyone else remember this? The two bits I remember: "When I heard [the such and such] ... I just fucking lost it," and "and then I kept driving and I was going 'turn around,' and I couldn't." Thanks for the help.

Videos and transcripts

Dashy — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 10:02:01 -0800

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who would much rather read a transcript than watch a video. Some kind posters do include a link to a transcript, but it doesn't seem to be a convention. Could the New Post page include a nudge to do so, like "If you're posting a video, please also post a transcript if possible"? Obvs, this is not applicable for cat videos ("meow, meow, prrrr")

Auto-generated Named Birthday Videos?

comealongpole — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 13:14:12 -0800

I'm looking for a link in a comment (which I thought I'd bookmarked/favourited) to an auto-generated overblown "Happy Birthday" video on YouTube. There were innumerable near-identical further ones for a wide range of names and also relationship-titles (Brother-in-Law, Daughter, etc). I think it was posted on either MetaTalk or MeFi, and certainly in the last 3-4 months. All help appreciated. Both memory and google-fu are failing me terribly today.

A Patrick Swayze Christmas: all day Mystery Science Theater 3000 stream

JHarris — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 05:39:41 -0800

Every week I put up a post about an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 over on FanFare. In conjunction with that, we've been having group watchings of the episodes online Thursday evenings through a stream syncing site. This year however, Thursday falls on Christmas Day. So instead, we're going to have an all-day marathon stream of MST-related Christmas artifacts. We have the newfound ability to stream things other than YouTube videos through sync-video, so some of the things we'll be showing are more out of the ordinary. So this time only, I'm also going to be offering many other MST-related items, in addition, of course, to the two MST Christmas episodes. These are not technically FanFare showings -- I am going through the Mystery Science Theater episodes in order, and we're not up to either of them yet. That's why I'm announcing it here rather than over there. The room will go up some time on Christmas Eve. I'll post a link to it here when it's ready to go. The whole thing will cycle, and a complete run will probably be many hours, so any time you drop by you should find something interesting. Of course this is Christmas Day, people will be busy (even I probably won't be in the room that much), but if you need some help getting through the day, we'll be there for you. No stress, no mess.

Seeking ragga video

grouse — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 08:26:46 -0800

I seem to recall several years ago a post to the blue that featured a YouTube video of some ragga/dancehall song from the 80s. The song lyrics and video featured a dreadlocked Jamaican who encountered a policeman. I think the policeman called the first guy "Dreadlocks." Dreadlocks claimed to be transporting vegetables to town, but the policeman thought he had marijuana and arrested him. I have tried many Google search strategies and haven't found this. Did it really appear on the blue or am I imagining things?

Genre name for the glitch/repition video art involving spongebob/sonic

aychedee — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 06:29:50 -0800

Genre name for the glitch/repition video art involving spongebob/sonic Hello, I'm trying to find an old metafilter post that was all about a genre of youtube videos. They were very glitchy, repetitive, I remember Carlton from the Fresh Prince dancing inappropriately to Spongbob videos being shown on the television. Spongebob was a recurring theme in fact. They used a lot of scenes from that cartoon. It was quite dirty, and funny. It had a particular genre name but I just can't remember it and I can't hit the right set of search terms in Google...

Mormon temple ceremonies

XMLicious — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 09:37:09 -0800

I think other versions of this post linking to a video of Mormon temple ceremonies ought to stand if they're offered. The text embedded in the video is a bit silly - gasp, some elements of this are from Freemasonry! Shocking! - but for anyone who has been to a variety of religious ceremonies in different faiths this is kind of interesting. Maybe a similar post with some editorial caveats? I suppose that some people are going to be dicks about it and act as though what's going on in these ceremonies is radically unusual or barbaric and unlike most of the other religions on Earth, which it isn't. But since the next U.S. President may be a Mormon and many of the members of the country's national legislature already are, I think it's worthwhile for readers to gain some direct insight into the religion rather than just what non-Mormons say goes on in the Mormon faith. I for one would be quite interested in hearing the commentary of Mormon and ex-Mormon MeFites on what's depicted. On the other hand, if this isn't really never-before-seen footage and anyone has links to similar video without the embedded text commentary, maybe someone could do a post on that? And a'course I'd request that commenters not turn such a thread into the usual Mormonism-bashing session if one appears.

video

rebent — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 06:45:56 -0800

Why don't we have in-line video for non-members? I typically avoid sending posts with great videos in them to (like this) to non-members because they will just see a wall of text without being able to play videos in-line. Would it be possible to add the in-line video player for everyone who visits metafilter?

Can we maybe start trying to label video links in posts?

Scientist — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 10:56:11 -0800

Could we maybe try to be a little better at labeling links that go to videos? Not everybody is in a position to view video content at all times and it might be nice to have a little advance warning. This isn't a callout or anything (though this is the thread that inspired this post) but I was wondering if we could maybe try to label links in posts that go to videos. I've noticed that over the years more and more content that's linked to from the front page of the Blue is video-centric, even stuff that I would normally expect to be in a written format like news stories, gadget reviews, op-ed and philosophical commentary, etc. This is slightly problematic for me and perhaps for others as well. I know that it's totally OK for people to post video content and I'm not asking that people throttle it back, but more often than not I find that I'm either uninterested in viewing or unable to view videos. Maybe I'm at work, or in a public place, where the sound would be inappropriate. Maybe I'm at home listening to music or enjoying a little quiet reading time with my partner and don't want that interrupted. Maybe I'm browsing on my phone and viewing videos would be somewhat cumbersome and inconvenient. Maybe I just don't want to totally devote my attention to a video for ten minutes, but would be willing to casually browse through a a written piece on an off over half an hour. Now, I'm fully aware that the designers of my web browser have helpfully provided it with a back button, and I'm not shy about exercising that option. I also try to avoid going into threads where I've decided I'm not going to view the content and then making my opinion known anyway -- I'm not a barbarian, or at least I try not to act like one. ;-) But I quite often find myself excited about a link in a post, only to have my excitement turn quickly to disappointment after clicking on it and finding that the link goes to a video. It would be nice if that could be avoided, I think. So what I'm asking is just whether or not people would consider voluntarily labeling links that go to videos in much the same way as we try to label links that go to PDF files (which are another content format that many people find unwieldy and not worth bothering with) so that folks can know what they're getting into before they click. I'm not proposing that we make this official policy or try to get the moderators on board with labeling links that posters don't label themselves, but I think it would be nice if more (even if not all) video links were labeled so that people such as myself don't have to deal with the feeling of vague disappointment that comes of having a promising link dead-end at content that we are unable or unwilling to sit through. I know it's a small problem, and that's why I'm only making a small request. Is this something that people would be willing to take under consideration?

Pop-up YouTube HTML5?

pashdown — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:28:59 -0800

Would it be possible to make the pop-up YouTube player have an HTML5 preference? Under the current Linux implementation of Flash, red and blue are swapped if you are using hardware acceleration. I wish I could get rid of Flash completely.

I'm suffering from a painful goiter

carsonb — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:25:42 -0800

Thorn: "Ask Metafilter: Thousands of life's little questions, answered."
"I'm suffering from a painful goiter."
Thorn: "Even the weird ones."
A short commercial appears on the front page of AskMe if you're, get this, not logged in. Neat, huh?

Painting with slices of video

kilo hertz — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:30:07 -0800

Does anyone remember a post (from the past year or so, I think) about some digital art that was made by taking (pixel-wide?) slices of video and sort of "painting" with it? To clarify, these were still presented in the form of video (except all abstractified and texturey), and weren't static paintings in the traditional sense, and may've included (equally abstract) audio. Thinking about it a bit more, I think there was some sort of programming aspect to it, rather than this being a thing that was done manually (I looked through posts tagged with max/msp/jitter as well, but couldn't seem to find it there either). I'm pretty sure the art itself was hosted on vimeo, although I could be mistaken. I have searched and looked through various combinations of tags and the like, but it seems my google-fu is not up to the task. So, does this ring any bells or sound familiar to anyone?