Now that the automation is all working, I had been waiting for son in law to come and film it.
I finally realised that I have a video camera in my Panasonic Lumix.............Duh. It uses MOV files and eventually I found a free programme to convert to WMV called Prism Video Converter.
So for those interested, here is my hand held attempt at County Gate movie making.
http://www.009.cd2.com/automation_movie.wmv (http://www.009.cd2.com/automation_movie.wmv)
best
JdF
John,
The link you posted does not work, would you please check that you have typed it in correctly.
I got to your movie via your County Gate website and the movie starts to load OK, however I had to abort as it was taking a long time to download - I'll have a look a bit later when I have more time. Please be aware that the download is 60.1Mb and even on my quite high speed broadband connection, it was telling me that it would take 8 minutes to download. Those that are still on dial-up (and there are still a lot of people on this) would have experienced seized up computers and/or large phone bills by now. Can I suggest that it might be a good idea to post the size of movies when uploaded so that those who activate the link to them are pre-warned about how long it will take, or if on a dial-up connection, they don't lock their machine up after clicking on the link.
Otherwise, thanks very much for sharing, don't give up on us!
Best wishes
Mick
Later.........
I have found why the link initially comes up as "void" - it links you to a non-existing site that has 4 x ////'s in the address:
http:////www.009.cd2.com/automation_movie.wmv
However, for reasons unknown, even after manually correcting it, and waiting for the download, the movie would still not play. So I went to John's Yahoo Group and tried the link posted there - and it worked fine! (still a 60.1Mb file though - warning to dial-up users!)
Anyway, the effort was well worth it in the end and I was treated to an excellent little 5 minute video show of the harbour branch railcar "racing" several other trains on the mainline! Well worth persevering to see it, very realistic with the sound effects and very enjoyable, so thanks once again to John for your efforts.
Mick
The correct link is:
http://www.009.cd2.com/automation_movie.wmv
I have absolutely no idea why the original link set itself up in the way it did...must have been one of my bad hair days.
The movie was made with our ambient sound turned on at the station (the harbour sound was not due to the mad seagulls) and the loco sounds were initiated by Railroad and Co. I apologise for those who still have dialup....had no idea it still existed, but then again, I generally live with my head up my own a*se.
best
JdF