Lake of Flowers Productions - Press release

LAKE OF FLOWERS

Lake of Flowers Productions was founded to facilitate the availability of educational and inspirational media connected with the tradition of Sri Chaitanya. Our productions are the outcome of the endeavors of individuals, who have contributed of their footage and recordings for use in furthering our cause.

Everything we produce is freely available for download as high quality video and audio files, offered in cooperation with The Internet Archive and licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows everyone to copy and distribute them for non-commercial purposes. They are also available on CDs and DVDs for a nominal fee.


CURRENT PRODUCTIONS

The Baba's Teachings series features discussions and interviews with Pandit Sri Ananta Das Babaji Maharaja – one of the leading teachers of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition – on a wide range of topics on theology, philosophy and the practice of spiritual life.

The Vraja Festivals series presents a collection of footage from traditional Vaishnava-celebrations, featuring songs of celebration (kirtan), circumambulation of holy places (parikrama) and views of saints living in the holy land of Vraja.


HOW CAN I PARTICIPATE?

There are many ways to participate in the endeavor. Here are some examples:

• Share. If you have good quality video footage or audio recordings you'd like to make freely available, we'll help you get them processed.
• Donate. Financial contributions assist in producing new material and help the staff cover other related costs.
• Advertise. Tell your friends and fellow beings about Lake of Flowers, invite them over for a visit.


Don't hesitate to get in touch with us, we'd love to hear from you. For more information, please visit our website at http://www.lakeofflowers.com/ .

I sent you truckloads of Kirtan-files a few years ago. Only a few of them have appeared on raganuga.com. You could upload them to this site if you want. It's a waste to just keep them on your ftp server all the time. I hope you have enough webspace for that of course, I remember it was a few GB....

What is the song around the 16 minute mark on the Nityananda Trayodasi video where Jagat joins in? Seems to be a raucous crowd pleaser.

I downloaded that file, which was marked MPEG, which should be fine, but when I got it was 'mp4'. Nothing in my universe recognises that file type! So it won't play.

OK I found the tech page on the lake site and I'll download the necessary players,
Thanks!

Yugal recently sent me links to video recordings he had made but that had the same result as this. Am I using the wrong player with winamp? Or is there something wrong with this mp4 file that I cannot see but only hear it. This Holi video-file only played for 4 seconds....

Winamp isn't that super for playing videos. If you're not into installing a new program, use Windows Media Player for the MPEG1 files. If you are, install BSPlayer. Read on file formats and players.


There are many kinds of MPEG. That is MPEG4 and plays only with Apple Quicktime. There are also other MPEG4 compression methods, such as DivX and XviD, that also need special codecs. However that's the Quicktime implementation and won't play without.

I recommend the VCD quality files (big MPEG1). The improvement in quality over the small MPEG4 files is worth the download.

Let me sort through them all and get back to you. I'll send you a list of what I have and you can verify whether it's all OK to make available before I upload it. I'll have to make a separate section for audio archives on the site.

Our server can handle pretty much any kind of quantity of audio. Video is a bit more of an issue, especially in qualities and quantities such as we have. What I have waiting here, just my own footage from the last trip, comes to about 20 hours, and takes about 40 GB of space when converted to VCD and DVD compliant files.

1. How do I open such a file in WMP if it is automatically opened with winamp?
2. I also have Real Player. Would that be better than installing a new player like BS?
3. If I do have to install BS, how much diskspace does it take?

1. Right click on the file, "Open with..." > "Choose program".
2. If only it works. I don't really like Real myself.
3. Installed, 4 MB. Download 2.5 MB.

1. Whats the difference between mpeg4 and mpeg1? I just downloaded the mpeg1 version and it played fine on winamp, especially the 1 mbps version.
2. Pity that you only broadcast a few snippets of each kirtan. Why not one entire kirtan, or entire kirtans?

1. They are different types of video files, different kinds of compression. MPEG1 are the most compatible that play with virtually anything.

2. a] Due to limited battery capacity and slightly limited stock of tapes this time, and b] since most people find it interesting to watch a video where the shooting angles vary, which means I have to start & stop. That's basically it.

I also realized myself it'd have been good to have whole songs as well, I'll work on that next time. There's so much more I could have filmed...

Oh, regarding Holi, I do have the following in store:

Raw footage:
At Shyamasundar Mandir (40 min)
At Gadadhar Chaitanya Mandir (30 min)
At Madan Mohan Mandir (30 min)
At Das Goswami's Samadhi (55 min)
At *Forgets Name* Mandir (40 min)

Stay tuned. (The *forgets name* mandir is the last one you see in the clip, the one with Krishna Das Brahmachari's samadhi-mandir, after Mahaprabhu Mandir on the right side on the way to Tinkadi Baba's ashram. Does anyone remember the name?

VarAkuli.

Nice attempt madhava. Good to see all these videos. Keep on uploading more stuff. BTW how we can also contribute ? Is there any FTP server available to upload?

If you have footage to which you own the rights and that you're willing to share it under the Creative Commons license we're using (basically: giving credit to you, no derivative works allowed, not for commercial purposes and free to distribute), please PM me or send me an e-mail specifying what you have.

Yes, we do have a server with as much storage as you may possibly need for having the files transfered over to me.

More detailed information on contributing:

http://www.lakeofflowers.com/index.php?pool=contribute

I believe this is what we're looking at? However most of the time all songs are extremely improvised. If you're lucky, one third of it is in the song book.