Jürgen Platzer

[Deutsche Variante]

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As I started my IT studies at the Vienna University of Technology (VUT) in October 2000, I wanted to be able to create images and animations with my own programs. I learned to work with Java, a programming language that allowed me to implement such applications. In the lectures of the department of pattern recognition and image processing I gathered experiences, how to work with images and image sequences. In the lecture Fractals of the computer graphics institute it was possible for me for the first time to create completely computer generated images with my programs. (This influenced on the one hand Projekt XXIII, but also the layout of this homepage!)

At the same time as I learned those techniques, I first met Christian Wagner. In the summer term 2001 we worked the first time together in a group lecture for our studies. As it was fun to work with Christian and in addition also very successful, we had further collaborations. I was impressed by his knowledge concerning filming, digitalization of videos and his skills when working with video editing software.
As a consequence I told Christian about my ideas for a first field work for my studies at the VUT. I wanted to film videos, enrich them with cg effects and capture the results on a DVD. As history showed us, Christian liked the idea and we started this work together.
The following list shows some topics that I was working on for our project:
  • I worked out the ideas and topics for most of our videos. For example I created a choreography for a light saber duel with my fellow student Reinhard Pitsch. I also went up on the mountains with my friends Andreas Zottl and Stefan "Django" Meisterhofer to film video material of great countryside sceneries. Regrettably those videos did not make it into the final result.
  • I enhanced my Julia set program that I created for the lecture Fractals, so that it was possible to save animations. Additionally I also realized Julia set renderings with high resolution. With those results we created a movie poster for our Projekt XXIII videos.
  • I created the sound for most of our videos. For the majority of those clips this meant to have songs edited nicely to the content of the video. (This is also the reason, why we cannot publish our videos on this homepage.) For a light saber duel video I also edited the light saber sound clips so that they fit to the saber moves.
  • In a different light saber movie we used a song with a prominent drum sequence. For this I programmed a vibration effect to translate the audio effect also to the video content.
  • For the animations of the DVD menus I created renderings with PovRay. We had the concept, that the whole DVD menu is a kind of a planetary system. Each movie has is represented by its own planet. As we had 3 types of movies (light saber duels, fractal renderings and trailers), I grouped the planets. When a group is selected then you go into this video category by zooming into this planet group. For us this resulted in an interesting effect, as you can see the whole planetary system from different perspectives.

It was really great to see, how our ideas from the beginning of the project came to life. I learnt many things about video processing and programming applications for such projects.

Even today I am still proud when I can present our DVD to others. But above all I am proud to know Christian as a reliable friend, with whom it is fun to realize such projects.
 

Jürgen Platzer, in March 2016