Which one of these three clips looks best to you?

[The Last Laugh]

Hi!

As some of you may know, I'm working on producing clips so that I can eventually open a clip store (while still selling physical videos). I'm making progress, but I still have some experimentation to do.

Among other problems, I'm having a hard time deciding how much I need to modify the clips so that they look ok on most monitors. I'm especially worried that my clips may be too bright or too dark for most people. That's because different users have different monitors, personal monitor settings, video card settings, etc. What I see on my own monitor may be quite different from what you see on yours.

The three links below correspond to three different versions of the same short tickling clip. I'm sorry it's only 5 seconds long, but the main purpose of this clip is to get an idea what its various versions look like on other people's screens.

I would really appreciate if you could take a look at all three versions and indicate which one you like best, without changing the video settings you use for your system. The only difference between them is the level of contrast I used when creating them, which also affects brightness. If it's not too much trouble, I'd be curious to know if the versions that you like less are too bright or too dark for you. Also, do they look very bad or just not quite as good as your favorite?

I'm not sure how much of a difference the results of this poll will make, but it's possible that they will help me produce better clips. And for that I thank you in advance.

<a href="http://www.thelastlaughinc.com/g1.wmv">VERSION 1</a>
<a href="http://www.thelastlaughinc.com/g2.wmv">VERSION 2</a>
<a href="http://www.thelastlaughinc.com/g3.wmv">VERSION 3</a>

 

[Darkknight]

Version one was better than the others.

DK

 

[Traveler]

Yeah,I agree the first one.She has a great laugh.

 

[toneus79]

Cmon man, I would need to see at least five minutes worth before I could answer a question like that. Also making them three different clips would help my judgement.

 

[The Last Laugh]

Cmon man, I would need to see at least five minutes worth before I could answer a question like that. Also making them three different clips would help my judgement.

Um, you seem to be missing the point of this post. I'm trying to figure out how bright or dark I need to make my clips so I can make them look decent enough for most people when I finally start selling downloadable clips. To get a general idea I posted three different versions of the same clip (three different levels of brightness) so people can compare them and let me know which one looks best. So of course all three clips are the same. Also, I don't think one needs more than a few seconds of footage to decide which picture they like best.

 

[TickledToDeath]

Using WMV. 1 was overall of better quality.

 

[Tess Harper]

Definitely number one. Love the clip.

 

[ktickler]

Video 1

Well, it is always an issue of brightness and contrast and, most importantly, the display medium. Everyone's monitor will show the video if a different way because each person has set the brightness/contrast settings differently. There is also the glare, the amount of ambient light, the age of the monitor, LCD vs. CRT, the ColorSync calibration, the Gamma, etc.

I personally prefer Video 1 because it has the right amount of brightness and contrast to see the background, the skin, the clothes, etc. It is soft and pleasing to the eye. In Videos 2 and 3 the colors start getting saturated. Especially the black. In Video 3 you can't distinguish the shadow from the wall.

I guess I see your point of preferring darker and more intense colors, but considering that the average viewer has "cheap" and uncalibrated monitors, the softer (duller) version is better.

Just my opinion... 🙂

 

[toneus79]

Um, you seem to be missing the point of this post. I'm trying to figure out how bright or dark I need to make my clips so I can make them look decent enough for most people when I finally start selling downloadable clips.

Um you seem to be missing a sense of humour!

 

[The Last Laugh]

Um you seem to be missing a sense of humour!

Sorry, but the sarcasm wasn't obvious in your post.

 

[trepak]

....

I liked numder 1 best either.
By the way - I think it's a very nice clip. And it's great that you're planning to sell downloadable clips so I can finally become a customer of yours.

Keep up the good work

 

[inthenameoffun2]

Version 1 gets my vote.

 

[Aznagoel]

I hate to run with the mass ... but in this case I too liked version 1 the best 😉

 

[toneus79]

Sorry, but the sarcasm wasn't obvious in your post.

Humour darling, not sarcasm; must be something that doesn't translate across the Atlantic (the darling bit is humour too).

 

[SYELLA]

Im looking forward to this clips becoming downloadable.Thanks ! 🙂

 

[The Last Laugh]

Well, it is always an issue of brightness and contrast and, most importantly, the display medium. Everyone's monitor will show the video if a different way because each person has set the brightness/contrast settings differently. There is also the glare, the amount of ambient light, the age of the monitor, LCD vs. CRT, the ColorSync calibration, the Gamma, etc.

I personally prefer Video 1 because it has the right amount of brightness and contrast to see the background, the skin, the clothes, etc. It is soft and pleasing to the eye. In Videos 2 and 3 the colors start getting saturated. Especially the black. In Video 3 you can't distinguish the shadow from the wall.

I guess I see your point of preferring darker and more intense colors, but considering that the average viewer has "cheap" and uncalibrated monitors, the softer (duller) version is better.

I understand. I now agree that I should aim for something that's roughly the equivalent of Version 1, or at least somewhere between Version 1 and Version 2. A large majority of people who've answered the poll here on the TMF prefer Version 1. Oddly enough, Version 2 is more popular among the people who answered on the TickleTheater, but I don't think aiming for a Version 1 look would be a mistake.

As inconvenient as the situation is for me (considering that, in my case, Version 3 is easily the best-looking, at least when playing the clips in Windows Media Player), I'm not really surprised that what I see doesn't correspond to what most people see. You're right, the type and model of monitor, one's monitor's settings, one's video card settings, the age of a monitor, etc., all influence the picture one sees. The monitor I owned when I started this project and used until about 6 months ago was a standard monitor that I got all the way back in 1998. Obviously, it gave a much darker picture than a brand new LCD monitor like I own now. In fact, back then I had to brighten the footage, or at least the stills I made from it and the MPEGs on CD-ROM I used to offer. Now I need to darken the footage for it to look good on my new monitor. It's not like the footage has changed since my old monitor, so it's pretty obvious that what I see has very little to do with what I used to see, and what most people seem to see as well. So I have to work around the fact that even though the clips may look pale and dull on my monitor, it actually looks reasonably good on many people's monitors.

What I'm doing now is using the feedback I got about the three versions of the clip and determining how much I need to adjust brightness in Windows Media Player for something that looks like Version 1 to look good to me. Pretty easy to do. It serves as a good reference point for future clips. Also, while Version 1 looks very washed out in WMP, for some reason it looks pretty good in other programs. It looks just fine in Premiere, which I use to edit my videos, and ironically enough, in Windows Media Encoder as well, which I use to encode into WMV. I've no idea why WMP and WME give such different pictures on my screen. Frankly, WMP seems to be the problem, here. My monitor may be brighter than I used to prefer, but I'm getting used to it, and it's not like Windows itself and most other programs look all that bad to me. It's really WMP that's giving me trouble, like it doesn't accept the settings I use for my system. Since it's generally the most convenient player to use to evaluate my clips, I have a problem.

But like I said, with the feedback I got, I can make an approximate correction in WMP, as well as use some other programs as reference points. I'm still only half-guessing what my clips will look like on other computers, but it's better than nothing. I just hope people realize that if my clips look so-so to them, they can always make some adjustments, which can be as simple as using the brightness slide-bar in WMP. I might mention something about it on my website when I start selling clips (as I hope to do eventually).

My my my, look at me go on and on about stuff that bores most people to tears. Sorry about that. In any case, I really appreciate your comments and advice. Of course, I'm also grateful to all the people who've answered the poll. The info I got may not provide me with an easy, obvious answer, but it does help. Thanks!

 

[Abellytickler1980]

Version one was definitely better.

 

[Newcastle Uni]

I agree with Toneus - I would need at least 5 minutes (preferably 45) of each clip and I would also need each clip to be different. Three different clips of 45 minutes should do the trick - although there is a point that Toneus didn't raise. Perhaps his expert eye is better than mine, but I don;t think three clips is enough.

 

[The Last Laugh]

I agree with Toneus - I would need at least 5 minutes (preferably 45) of each clip and I would also need each clip to be different. Three different clips of 45 minutes should do the trick - although there is a point that Toneus didn't raise. Perhaps his expert eye is better than mine, but I don;t think three clips is enough.

Very funny.

 

[ktickler]

Thanks for the effort

Dear François,

I know first hand how hard and painful it can be to edit video and make clips. So, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate that you are going through the pain of making downloadable clips of your movies. I am sure that after you make the first few it will get easier.

Thanks for asking for and listening to our feedback.

Bye,

 

[SYELLA]

Hey Francois, I was over at the clips4sale site,see that youre getting ready to post clips over there.Great! Been waiting for this for some months now ,Im happy for you,gonna be a regular customer.Cant wait! 😛

 

[Tcklsh_Kandy]

I could not get them to open


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[The Last Laugh]

Hey Francois, I was over at the clips4sale site,see that youre getting ready to post clips over there.Great! Been waiting for this for some months now, Im happy for you,gonna be a regular customer.Cant wait! 😛

Ah, you noticed it. I'm indeed getting ready to open the store, and last night I started adding clips. This is still very new to me, so I was kind of learning how it's done. Pretty easy, really. However, I didn't intend to start business right away. The store wasn't supposed to be active yet, and I was simply adding the clips to get an idea how it works and what the store would look like with clips. However, about 15 minutes after I uploaded the last clip I intended to add for now, I was very surprised to find out that three people had already bought some clips. I haven't made any official announcements about the store on the forums, it's not mentioned on my website, and the store wasn't even supposed to be functional yet. But a few people still managed to notice it and the freshly aded clips within a period of about 30 minutes in the middle of the night. Very impressive. For now I've removed the clips from my store. Not to worry, I'll put them back up very soon, plus several more clips, but I still have work to do on my main website to support the clip store. I want to make sure people can easily find the clip store from my website and have access to relevant information before I really get started. Then I'll add the clips and post on the forums about it.

While it's not about tickling, I'd like to mention that I'll also open a store for my foot clips, if anyone is interested. I'll provide the URLs to both clip stores when I start for real. There'll be links to them on my website, anyway,

 

[The Last Laugh]

I could not get them to open

The page cannot be found
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

I assume you got the URL from the main Clips4Sale.com site, because I haven't announced my clip stores (one for tickling material and one for foot material) yet.

The pages are there, but they seem to be a bit finicky. Even I need 2-3 attempts from time to time. I don't know if this is just a temporary annoyance.

In any case, the stores aren't officially open yet. In fact, I removed the first batch of clips I added last night. I'm not quite ready to start selling clips. I was just doing some tests. But I didn't realize the store was already active and didn't expect a few people to have found out about the store. Nor did I expect to make sales right away, which actually happened. When I'm ready to start selling I'll add the clips again and will post on the forums about it.

 

[SYELLA]

Im not the only one looking forward to your clips Francois. Im glad to hear this.I would have downloaded a clip if I knew you was up.Not a big fan at all of sites with a billing name that mentions tickling like Tickle Heaven, but you could have pure tickling of the feet and pits as your billing and I would still buy all your clips.Can't wait! 😀