Day: December 20, 2008

Astrid’s View

Once again I am pleased to feature photos of gorgeous Prudence Bury, a classic British beauty and ballet dancer, and by far my favorite girl on the “Hard Day’s Night” train with the Beatles. These were taken by none other than Astrid Kirchherr.

Pru Bury with Ringo Starr
© Astrid Kirchherr

Pru Bury with Ringo and George
© Astrid Kirchherr

And this is, of course, Astrid with Stu Sutcliffe. An iconic couple, who had a brief but powerfully resonant relationship. Their story is, by itself, almost as compelling as that of the Beatles. But, then, it was love, after all.

Stu and Astrid
© Astrid Kirchherr

Studio 100, Je Hebt Een Vriend

I’ve just made a visit to the official K3 website…

http://www.k3.be/

… and look what I found there. At last, a high quality copy of “Kusjesdag” that blows away what’s on YouTube, and it doesn’t even need the aspect ratio corrected. I’ll scale it up from 480×270 to 640×360. Even the best of the Belgian brewmeister monks can’t bottle something this good.

[flv:http://s3.amazonaws.com/dogratcom/Video/K3/KusjesdagHQ.flv 640 360]

This is more like it! If it were in stereo I’d say it’s as good as can be for streaming FLV. But, sad to say, not all of the K3 music videos that Studio 100 has posted in flash format are of this technical quality. Most are unwatchable. Why? For that matter, this is the size of the player they used for “Kusjesdag”.

Studio 100 flash video player

Why reduce it? The bandwidth required by the video stream is the same regardless of how big the presentation.