Dear All,

Many of you will be familiar with the Gadabout Coins routine from Modern Coin Magic (if not, have a re-read - it's a little gem). However, on the last move, the coins talk quite loudly as you are releasing 3 coins into your pocket at once. Has anybody got any suggestions in getting round this, or perhaps an alternative ending?
Thanks for your help.

Best regards.

Keep the hand in the pocket a little longer and press the coins against the leg and let them slide slowly 1 at a time to the bottom of the pocket. Or you can shake the hand that is supposed to have the coins, and it will appear that the noise came from it. Then shake again and there is no noise. Then show the coins gone.

Chad

Worn "soft" coins will help cut down on the noise. Also check out Ron Bauer's handling and presentation in vol.1 of his private studies series.

by the time you reeach the end of the routine, the spectators are so used to you going to your pockets so take your time in setting the coins in there and then take some more time to delay the final vanish.

Since this post was made, I had put a Windows Streaming Video of a version of Gadabout Coins on my website. It is an 8meg video stream, so you need to have a broadband internet connection to stream it, or you will have to right click on it and download it.

Anyway if you notice, my hand lingers in my pocket for a few seconds before the final vanish, this was to quietly put the coins down.

[expired link]

This has become one of my favorite routines and I was also concerned about the noise at the end. However, you have to remember that because you know what is going on you are more sensitive to the sound. I've found that the noise is not nearly as noticeable to spectators as I thought. However, my solution was just to have a few other coins in the same pocket, then every time I go into the pocket I jingle them a bit and the spectators get used to it so the final noise, if they hear it at all, sounds normal. Hope that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense.

Dan,
Have visited your <very nice> site and also viewed the Gadabout video. This is kind of off topic, but don't know a better place to put it:

How did you create the video and get it in a format that can be emailed about? I gather it takes a digital video camera that creates MPG movies, is that right?

Thanks, and sorry for the off topic post.
Cordially,
tr

Thimblerig,

You asked a question which I will probably have to be a little lengthy about. I will post it here in case others are curious about the same thing.

You don't necessarily need a digital camera. You do need a way however, to capture video into a digital format.

The older way to do it is to buy a PCI computer video capture card that has analog inputs (composite video or S-video – much like hooking a camcorder up to a TV or VCR to view it). You can still buy these capture cards, but lately for analog to digital conversion to capture into a computer, there is a surge of USB based adapters.

Let me use a well known consumer electronics store like Best Buy to point at a few items.

Their line up of computer video editing stuff can be found at this link
expired link. Click here to search the main site

To just take a regular old camcorder or VCR and hook it up to a computer and capture some video, you can do that as cheap as $50 bucks with a product like this one:
expired link. Click here to search the main site

Video is captured at about half the size of a regular TV video image, which is fine for stuff on a computer on the internet. These low priced solutions usually provide simple video editing programs that let you convert your video into various formats such as Windows AVI, MPEG, Quicktime, Streaming video such as Real Player and Windows Streaming Video.

If you have a digital camcorder, they have an interface called IEEE 1394 (also known as Firewire or i.Link). Since digital camcorders record in a digital format called “DV” short for “Digital Video”, there is no analog to digital conversion needed to capture it into a computer. You just need to buy an IEEE 1394 Firewire board for your computer. Plug the cable between the camcorder and the computer, and record to your hard drive. The advantage here is that you can capture full speed full screen digital video with no quality loss. It's not that important for making video for the internet, but if you want to digitally edit your video then export it back to tape, you need to have the full motion, full size video.

I personally have a Digital Camcorder that I use with this package…

expired link. Click here to search the main site

It's one of the more expensive consumer video packages, but it includes Adobe Premiere which is typically sold at over $500.00. I like Premiere, it is really flexible with how you can edit the digital video, add different types of transitions, different sound tracks, export back to tape, or export into most known computer video formats. I chose Windows Streaming video for my website.

After I create the video file, I upload it to my website. Once it is there–I can email the link or post it in a forum such as this. If you click the link, you open the file which resides on the internet on my website.

There it is in a nutshell – it's almost magic

Dan

Dan,
Thanks so much for the information. I just got a digital video camera and am experimenting with it. The software you suggested sounds great. I will be buying a new computer in the next 3-4 months and will include in my budget the ADS software you suggested. Had used analog video previously to mail effects to my friends and improve my work, but this is way better (besides the analog camera died!).

Best regards,
tr