In the past 3 weeks, I have been busy with my teams in the office coming up with our group's entry to a music video contest. The competition is part our company's numerous activities for the season which will culminate in our Christmas party on December 12.

The contest produced a total of 14 music videos created by 14 different teams. We created the one on top. A handful of the short productions turned out to be well made considering that the people who acted, shot, edited and directed the films were all amateurs.

I posted 13 of the 14 videos on YouTube. There were song copyright issues (Closer and Dangerous) on 2 of the videos so the audio was muted. You will find all of the videos here.

When I uploaded it to YouTube, I was pleased to find out that the site already stretched the aspect ratio of the videos from the "traditional" 4:3 to "widescreen" 16:9. Many of the consumer electronics now have jumped to the widescreen aspect ratio in the last few years, including all HDTVs, most camcorders, many laptops, and some digital still cameras.

You'll immediately notice the difference when you visit the site now: The playing window is considerably larger than it was before and this is definitely a welcome development. I however look forward to the time when we will already be able to watch videos in YouTube in High Definition.