DSE

I kinda figured we might find a way to put Argo in Scotty Burns' daughter's wingsuit. Argo in pink...that would be fun.

Not only because of the emotional value and technical skill, the composition of this shot is beautiful. It's one of my favorite skydiving photos.

did you shoot these with your Peleng?

And for some, that's the part that can make it difficult to sleep at night. The "if I'd only said..."

with 1/5 imagers and the "average" .3 or .5 lens that most skydiving videographers use, eight feet is a perfect distance that allows for a wide margin of error. You, on the other hand, don't quite fit into "average." Remember, this is for camcorders. Using this chart for an APSC or full frame DSLR could lead to a bad day.

Bloodstain isn't all that small, actually. Covers a good third of a wing. You still in the sandbox?

from a philosophical view, I believe you're 100% correct, yet society often acts to protect individuals from themselves. However, philosophy is a Bonfire discussion. Banning swooping is a silly reaction, I agree. Holding a swoop competition at 5000'MSL...maybe not so silly to consider the ramifications. If there have been four incidents in two days, and these incidents involve some of the best canopy pilots on the planet, then perhaps some considerations are in order.

OK, so you can't really capture this incorrectly; Vegas capture will see it's SD over firewire, and will open the correct capture settings. Next, you'll edit/create as desired. Then to go the "Make Movie" button, and in there, select DVD, and you should be done. There is a Custom Tab there, you can set the bitrate as high as 8,500,000 Mbps. This should be as high as you want to go. hopefully this helps you get through it.

Actually, it has been done, but I didn't know the video had made its way to Youtube (or anywhere else). Ray Stone, who jumped from a moving helicopter at Zhills and landed a wingsuit without a parachute, suffered only a broken nose and a little backache. That first experience wasn't enough for Ray. At the Tiki Boogie, he jumped from a fast moving truck at a height of approximately 10' above the water, and flew/flared/landed almost as described. He suffered the indignity of several young women's breasts pressed against him as he exited the water but was otherwise unharmed. FWIW, Ray Stone/Stoney has now twice landed a wingsuit (with video proof). He said "I'll never do that again."

Tbanks. I'd used an equal= vs a quote.

If you run into some real problems and need some live training, we have a guy in Fargo, not terribly far from you. What is the source of your vid? AVCHD, HDV, DV, MPEG camera? Importing from tape, card, or HDD?

Get it while it's hot GREAT tool for field or final output work. For encoding to mp4, I think someone has finally bested Vegas and Cinemacraft.

Pursuant to another thread, it made sense that some folks might not have a focal point on which to set their camcorder focus. Others simply might want something kinda different. Instructions for using the focus chart are printed on the chart. You'll likely need to have this printed at Kinko's or other local print shop, unless you can print 11x17 in-house. I hope it's of use to some of you.

Darin, I agree entirely. This whole argument about "too easy" and "too hard" is really silly (IMO), but it _does_ have people conversing about the weaknesses and strengths of the program. Hopefully some good will come of that. It'll be interesting to attend the course standards meeting in January, as that will help create a frame of reference (for me, personally). There are absolutely AFF instructors and coaches being passed that shouldn't be given the rating; everyone can likely agree on this. Yet every evaluator says "I'll fail my own mother." There is a disparity here somewhere.

you might want to check your focus with a focus chart then. It would be odd if it's working with the method you suggest, but...stranger things have happened.

I'm not insinuating anything, why would you think I was? The rest of your post isn't very clear to me, but thank you for the answer. See you in January.

Coupla things.... you SURE you rendered to MPEG 2 or perhaps it was MPEG 1? Laszlo mentioned the important things... You can't really capture incorrectly with Vegas, unless you're using an analog card device. The ghosting suggests a framerate resample (bad thing), the noise suggests low compression (bad thing). When you Make Movie, you want to choose DVD/NTSC, and the bitrate should default to 6500Mbps.

My question was whether you'd ever passed (given a rating to) someone who could teach well byt had poor belly skills, or passed/given a rating to someone who had you thinking "they'll be alright" after they successfully completed the course? Sorry if I wasn't clear.

You sure it wasn't a Saturday? One friend started jumping with the 82nd. He says "back in the day" all the time and for him it's very meaningful. He's 27 years old with 6 years in sport. Another friend has 44 years in the sport, and for him, "back in the day" means rounds. IMO, "Back in the Day" is relative to each person's experiences and time in the experience. I don't think it's a fixed period of time. Another example; I think "back in the day" of RW is different than "back in the day" of lace-up wingsuits.

It would sound as though you're not a fan of the coaching program? Have you ever passed someone through a coaching course that has very weak belly skills, but can speak/teach well? Or passed a student that met the technical requirements, but left you with a feeling of "they'll be alright" when they finished the course?

The Century 55 is built for macro-imager HD camcorders. It's as much an HD lens as any camcorder adapter lens is going to be. depending on the camcorder, it can resolve triple the line count of most lenses made for small format camcorders. Is it "true HD" in terms of something that can resolve a full 1080 lines of information? Nope. Nothing in a threaded adapter approaches that level of resolution, in part because of the design of small imager systems and lenses. Hopefully this helps sorta answer the confusion?

IIRC, the PC 109 is 45mm(?) at it's widest point, and on a 1/5 imager vs 38mm on same size imager. A .5 should be fairly close, although not exact.

I wasn't able to be qualified to the event due to being in a hospital for most of the summer, and was told by a team captain that I had to be re-qualfied due to my injuries. Keep in mind, i'd only been in the air for 2 weeks before the event, and only in a wingsuit for one week before the event. However, I'd also done 30 WX jumps in that one week. Not bad for a guy who was told he'd "maybe get out of a wheelchair by Christmas." The bigway was the carrot dangling at the end of the stick for me during my recovery period. Only one team captain was on-premises prior to Friday night and he was coaching someone for the event. I was "qualified" on the sunset load on Friday night (after registration had allegedly closed) and I tried to register at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning. I had no interest in donating a chunk of money to a charity if I wasn't going to be qualified. In honesty, I *did* expect some level of exception, because several of the team captains knew I was working very hard to be a part of the formation, A couple had sent me encouraging emails, not to mention that the blogs all mentioned that making it to the bigway was my goal. And even though I was prevented from achieving that goal, the bigway gave me the impetus needed to get out of bed and work as hard as I did to make it to the event. I had a great time hanging in the evenings with friends, and Scotty Burns was very cool about bucking the "no fun jump" rule and doing a coupla jumps with me during the event. It was a good time (heck, we even got some fun pix out of it). This issue aside, the event was a good time thanks to friends like Greg, Marko, Tero, Andreea, Michal, Scotty, and a few others.

Glad to be of help. Thanks Teigen, for posting the link.

The grid was a great first step, especially considering that it was generated entirely out of an emotional reaction to an objective criticism. The problems I have with the grid; -Lack of flexibility. -it forces skydivers to fly in a slot determined by the creators of the grid, vs slots determined by skydivers and the never-ending desire to be creative. -The grid has never been properly discussed nor criticized in an objective manner, by the people whom it binds. -The USPA's ignorance of wingsuiting allowed the board to vote on a system under the guise of it being accepted by the "entire wingsuit community." In other words, they were hoodwinked, and many of the board have now come to realize this. It never should have gotten beyond the 71 way for which it was intended, IMO. How does the grid support multipoint formations? tight flying such as head/toe or closer? Non-diamond or wedge-based flying? Do we need a judging mechanism that applies to all sub-disciplines in wingsuiting? Or do we ignore the direction that wingsuiting is going and keep flocking 3 meters apart? In the news media, Taya commented that "Soon we'll see hundreds and hundreds of wingsuiters in a flock." Do we really want that? Or do we want to build wingsuiting the way RW and FF were built? Small, clean formations that grew to larger, more complex formations as the skill levels increased? This year's formation had a lot of low-number people, and the formation was easier than last years. Does this seem like devolution? FWIW, even though I can't agree with the grid, I do support whatever formations people put together. I was in Elsinore to fly any assigned slot, and was ready to support a system I can't agree with.