I love your variations. But now that I can no longer download them to my own machine and play them with my own PLAYER, they are just about worthless. Maybe when they come out on DVD, they will be of some value. But even then, I will not be able to use my computer to slow them down so that my wife and I can really learn them. The kiosk playing of the video stream doesnt let me slow it down, and the default player you require occupies so little room on my display that I need a magnifying glass to see it.

I did used to love them.

Jerry

Use the quicktime version, even the kiosk player lets you frame advance/rewind with the arrow keys.

If you want to do more, either buy the DVD or remind your computer who it works for.

I sent in my order for the DVD a long time since.

And as far as telling my computer who it works for- I'd gladly do it but I guess I just dont know how to force the kiosk requirement for the QT plugin to divert to my preferred Media Player Classic, which I can view full screen AND which permits two levels of slow motion.

If you can tell me how to do that, I will be grateful. Right now I'm just mourning the loss of the wonderful teaching tool I used to have here.

Jerry

Well, if it makes you feel any better, it's not your fault... or anybody else's who downloaded the occasional video clip to his hard drive for home use. The reason we tightened up security had to do a lot more with other websites incorporating our video as though it was their own. We also had tons of search engines pointing directly at our video clips. The preventing of downloadng was an unfortunate byproduct of the tighter security measures we took in order to protect our intellectual property.

Realize that downloading is not a feature that we "removed" per se, as it was never a supported feature to begin with. In order to get the video, one had to do a certain degree of low-level "hacking". Whenever somebody asked me how to download the video, the answer was usually something to the effect of "Sorry, we don't support it. But if you can figure out how to do it, go ahead."

The main advantage you had by downloading was the ability to view the clip offline. That's what the DVD is for. As for the other features you mentioned, you can still have them. For example, the Quicktime Player lets you frame advance even when embedded in a web page. And if you need to enlarge the video, there are tools you can download to enlarge anything on your screen. Do a google search for "magnify screen" to see if you can find some freeware utilities.

Regards,
Jonathan Atkinson
www.ballroomdancers.com

There actually is no way to really secure a video, but putting the copyright notice in it was a good idea. Might want to include the www on the name to make it really obviously the home url if it does turn up on someone else's site.

This I know... I've done a lot of research over the years, only to find that the best thing you can do is hide things really well. And that's what I've done, I hope.

Of course, there's still nothing I can do to stop a hacker from copying the video and putting it on their own website. I used to have a poster frame at the beginning and end of each video, but I've seen people clip them off. That's why you see the copyright across the entire video clip now. When I redo all of the basic steps later this year, I might actually use poster frames *and* the copyright notice.

It's a bummer all of this stuff is becoming neceesary. Now I know how the software companies feel!

Jonathan

I'm beginning to feel sorry I started this thread. I wrote a software program 20+ years ago, and sold it a bunch of times. I provide free support to registered users. It does frost me when someone who has not purchased the program is using it and has the gall to request support from me.

So I apologize, Jonathan. I'm just going to have to work faster on learning the variations before you whisk them away. And I'll live with the small screen. And April 1st is around the corner anyway, so I'll have the DVD.

Best regards, Jerry Blumenthal

And remember: everything you see on the screen IS ALREADY IN YOUR COMPUTER!