Mission: to support the Wildcats
Team Wildcat: team colors royal blue and white
Website of the Booker T. Washington Marching Wildcats
| band info | schedule | photos | videos | MP3s | calendar | guest book | blog | links | home |
Mission: to support the Wildcats
Team Wildcat: team colors royal blue and white |
|
As of Nov 20th, 2008 "Cat Scan"
we have 74
videos,
3,427
photos,
33
MP3s
and 27
alumni
posted We invite you to visit all areas of our site! We can only be as good as the input we get from you!! |
| Monique: c/o 2010 | Marching Wildcat on clarinet, in band
photographer, graphic designer. Monique's bio (click here if you can't see pop-ups) |
| Jeffrey "2": c/o 2008 | Marching Wildcat on alto sax, animations, in band
photographer. Jeffrey's 2 bio (click here if pop-ups disabled) |
| Monica | band booster member, First aid chairperson! |
Jeffrey Starke |
 band booster member-financial
secretary(7/2006-6/2008), web master(2004-2010), digital imagining (photos, videos, special effects)  ! Jeffrey's bio
After 2010 I don't know who will take over as webmaster,
|
| send a photos | have any band photos you'd like to share? |
| suggestions | like to see improvements or have another suggestion! |
| webmaster | The theplayingcats.com website was designed,
created and is maintained by Jeff
Starke.
The domain name and website "theplayingcats.com" are registered and owned by Jeff Starke.
From 2004-2010 this site has been sponsored by the Starke family!
After 2010 the Band Booster has paid to keep the domain name. The expiration date is 2/25/2018
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc.
(godaddy.com) |
|
This website is dedicated to all band members wherever they may be. It is our hope that something on this site will bring a smile to your face. If it makes just one persons day, then we will have succeeded. |
2004 was our first year online & since then we have added
lot's of
photos , videos and
MP3s to
take our sound on the road
 .
|
To enjoy the vids
 we suggest that you have your
computer hooked up to some good speakers with the volume fairly loud.
You'd be surprised at the difference some good quality speakers
and a good sound card can make to your sound system. We encourage you
to download the vids and MP3s to your harddrive to share with your friends
or just to keep. If you upload them to
YouTube.com or
myspace.com don't forget to mention this
website!... thanks....!
Most vids are over 5 megabytes and run from 3 to 5minutes. A high
speed connection is desirable as a modem dial up will take a while to
download, but if you know someone with a high speed connection, then
pick up one of those USB flash drives like the one pictured to the
left
Our equipment: We use the Sony digital 8
camcorder To make the vids, we plug the camcorder to a Sony Laptop with a IEEE 1394 FireWire connection. So if you are in the market for a new computer (get a laptop (-:) make sure it has a 1394 connection. And if you are in the market for a new camcorder, make sure it has the IEEE 1394 connection. A USB connection would probably work just as well. |
| To make the MP3s, until we figure out a better way, we use the
digital audio from the camcorder. We strip the audio from the video
and create a 'wav' file, then we convert it to a MP3 file.
|
For our digital photos we again use Sony's digital cameras.
They seem to do a great job no matter what the lighting may be. Most
of the time we use the Sony
DSC-72 . It has a 3x optical zoom and 3.2Meg resolution.
90% of the photos on this website have been taken with this camera.
Included in our arsenal is the Sony
DSC-S85. This
Sony has a higher resolution and a hot shoe allowing mounting a higher power
flash. For convenience the smaller Sony camera is our preferred one.
|
| For 2006 we've added a Dslr to our arsenal, the Pentax K100D.
Having many Pentax SLR lenses it was the smart thing to do. This
camera allows you to shoot like using an SLR. If you remember using
an SLR and have had to settle for the less than optimal shooting of the point
and shoot digital cameras of today, this is the one to get.
You will note a new crispness to some of our photos as we can easily 'blur' out the background, by using a wide lens opening. And shooting with or without camera assisted focusing can rid you of having the camera focus on the wrong area of your subject. We won't be traveling too much with this camera as it is heavy, but takes fantastic photos. Well the camera is only part of the equation. A great camera will not make great photos you still have to have a good imagination for shot selection and also good technique. |
| If you are in the market for a new camera, then get a digital and email us your best shots to photos@theplayingcats.com. |
| USB 2.0 is an external bus that supports data rates up to 480Mbps.
Firewire is an external bus standard that supports data transfer rates of up to 400Mbps (in 1394a) and 800Mbps (in 1394b) Reviews and discussion at cnet.com seem to favor firewire(1394). We use the Firewire with good success and the firewire will let you control the camcorder's functions. |
If you have a decent computer then it will have it's own video Software. We use Microsoft's moviemaker as it's easy to use and free. Just plug everything together, click start capture and stop capture. If you have some tips or suggestions for us, please go to the guest book, forum or send an email!! |
We also have to also send thanks to our son "Jeff2" (alto sax-c/o 2008). If not for his desire to join the marching band, we would not have an opportunity to belong to such a great family. We have enjoyed the marching bands units in the past and never thought one of our kids would be part of a marching band. And for 2006 our very own prowler cam shooter, Monique c/o 2010, has joined the band on clarinet! |
[help us]
.
now
playing "We are family" (right click note to download midi)
 |
| veoh.com |
| theplayingcats.com pages works with JAWS (Job Access With Speech) |
|
As of Nov 20th, 2008 "Cat Scan"
we have 74
videos,
3,427
photos,
33
MP3s
and 27
alumni
posted
 |
guest
book
notes from "Star" "Key"
.
Plug into the USB port and then just download the files.
We've
made a compromise between the size of the vid and the size of the final file.
For the "techie folks" we used a 340 bit rate .... which translates
to "low broadband" speed. That size gives a nice video without
being overly large or small. For the MP3s we use a rate of 128 kbps.
That gives a near CD quality without again being overly large. With
the popularity of