It’s been 3 months since work moved from Hammersmith to Beautiful Slough - and Hammersmith has already become a distant memory. On the bus home the other day I remembered the Goodbye Hammermsith pop video that I knocked up some time back - and reminded myself that I should load it up onto the streaming server in order to make it more accessible.
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(Taken with my Lomo last summer.
You can see the old art-deco “Palais De Danse” lettering on the wall)
The more I mess about with the video streaming technology - the more I begin to understand how bit rate and file size affect the output quality of the stream. Unfortunately - this means that the lower the bitrate of the encoded stream - the lower the quality of the video. The lowest quality that I could take the video to without rendering it useless still requires a bitrate of 273kbps - which if you add in the IP and TCP/UDP overheads will require a connection where sutained throughput rates of around 300kbps can be supported on the downlink. Thus - the video is really only suitable for viewing if you are on broadband (ADSL, Cable or Satellite) connection. Also only suitable if you have Windows Media Player on your system. If you are on dialup - or you don’t have Windows Media Player and you are patient - then you could always download the video to your computer for offline viewing by going to this download page.
Click on the “MORE” below to view the video stream …
Press the play button in the media player below to play the video. Turn up your volume.
The pop video is made up from footage that I collected over the years in Hammersmith (all of it taken by me with my Sony Handycam) - both inside the office and outside. You will spot that some of the clips are from the “Genie” era - which is when I used to work for Genie Internet Ltd before the company got merged into O2. The soundtrack to the video is Inner Smile by Texas (which also features on the soundtrack to Bend it Like Beckham - and it’s “feelgood & tears” factor is one of the reasons why I chose that track to celebrate images of Hammersmith). The video finishes up with depressing images of Slough railway station - which is what I now live through every day! (It’s not really that bad though in reality.) Enjoy.