Now a yearly tradition—check out my other videos. My favourite video so far. :-) Date: November 17th, 2007 (yes, we're crazy) Vital statistics: 1m38s. 22.5 megabytes! 800x600, 30fps, encoded with H.264 at 1700 kilobits/second. Pictures taken every ~7 seconds; sequenced at 8fps. Encoded at 30fps. I managed to increase the frame rate this year by knocking down the camera resolution from ~1920x1600 to 1024x768. The music isn't very Christmasy, but it's playful! 2007 was a very good year... Number of pictures taken: 745 Number of times the camera needed fresh batteries: 3 Number of times mom insisted I move the tree: 3 Number of light strings on this year's tree: 6 Number of lights per string: 100 Number of years since my sister was home for Christmas: 2 :( Number of hours spent setting up the tree while minding the computer and camera: 4 Number of hours spent with video editing & compression tools: 2 Once again, I wondered about the music but found something at the last minute that was a good fit. Most of the synchronization you see is purely accidental. I like the way the first few bars of music match the action in the movie: the furniture "clears off the dancefloor" to make way for the tree. The base of the tree also seems to bounce off an invisible wall just as you hear the strike of a tom-tom. I once saw a clip of "The Automatic Moving Company" when I was a kid which inspired the introduction. Watch for the Pac-Man reference. We switched to brand-new LED lights this year. Whee! Our living room is huge and dark enough that I needed three large extra lights to achieve the results you see here. My sister and I loathe the fake flowers that mom keeps around the house (right-hand side of the frame). We also marvel at the time it took mom to do the needlework that hangs on our living room walls. Just before the reindeer and snowman make an appearance, it looks like Mom changed the position of a few ornaments when I wasn't looking. MOM! Made with my G5 and {t|c}rusty old Titanium PowerBook running Mac OS X 10.5. Happy holidays.