DSE

I disagree. We're all shelling out hard-earned $$. If the manufacturer quotes a delivery date, and sticks to it, that's terrific. If the manufacturer quotes a date and doesn't stick to it and also doesn't take the time to communicate that they aren't sticking to it, then they've earned whatever folks say about them on DZ.com or anywhere else. It's our $$, and if I feel I've been mislead, I'll let the world know. If I receive great customer service and delivery, I'll let the world know. That's why PD, Rigging Innovations, and L&B will always get the first look when I'm in "buying gear" mode. They've each provided me great service. No, we wouldn't. Just as when Sandy Reid saw a huge hole in the container industry and started Rigging Innovations (inventing many of the features we see on all rigs today) or just asBill Coe, Bill Booth and others saw certain areas of the industry as lacking....enterprising people will fill holes, whether they're product holes, customer service holes, feature holes, or supply/demand holes. Just as you saw a hole/opportunity to become a gear dealer. And from what I've read, a damn good one, but manufacturing is beyond your control.

You're just standing there being your handsome ole' self. BTW, the pix of you on my personal pages are better.

If you're gonna be a skydiver purchasing new gear....plan on waiting. A lot. Don't *EVER* believe in delivery dates any more than you believe in Santa Claus. Better still, believe in Santa Claus before believing in delivery dates. Even if you pay a rush fee. It's happened on every piece of "made for me" gear I've purchased. At only 60 jumps, you'd likely have done better buying used, as you'll likely want newer gear when you've added another couple hundred to your logbook.

Only if it's a compressed format that requires recompression on modification. If you can see the diff on a high rez jpg from one rotation, I'd be stunned and demand proof. If it's almost any other format, it makes no diff. Rotate it 50 times, you *might* see some loss of sharpness. Haven't tried this with stills, but have spend a lot of time with the MJPEG codecs out there. We abuse MJPEG frames a lot in the video world, much more than you'll ever likely do in Pshop or a photo viewer. So yeah...there is truth in what you heard. But getting into ant shit never helped anyone much.

I don't have iMovie on my Macbook or desktop. sorry! According to Apple the new iMovie has MP4 output in HD.

outstanding in most every way!

I guess it depends on where you're standing... It's a safe supposition that we all know we could/will die under certain circumstances, some within and some beyond our control. When I first started, I didn't understand how the airplane might kill me, I didn't realize how another jumper might slam into me so hard I could suffer a broken back or neck, I didn't understand that a hard opening could potentially snap my neck. I didn't understand that someone could do a 270 above/behind me and take me out. I didn't know a wingsuit would tremendously restrict my movement, and I didn't understand that someone could cork in a VRW jump and take me out. All I knew when I first got into the sport was that I could die. I just didn't know how many different ways it might happen. Did you?

Is there really anything wrong with a reasonably conservative president? Any more than there is anything wrong with a reasonably liberal president?

I ordered a Blade. hell, if it makes John look sexy...then I need one of those too. Seriously, it was a hard decision, and between the roughly 50 PM's from several here, a phone phone calls there, and personalized input from a number of people at the boogie, it wasn't easy to choose. I understand that between the Ghost and the Blade, the majority of difference comes down to the pilot, not the nylon. So, I'm gonna suck for a while, until I can hang out with Ed, Monkeyboy, the Scotts.... and whomever else will help me learn to soar.

Notepad works just as well. the scripts we deliver on our Photoshop DVDs are just txt files that users convert. Xplatform, easy to read...

yes (to both) Bear in mind, there are no 1080p camcorders other than the EX1 that can be used for skydiving, but with good resampling, it's VERY easy to resample 1080i 60 to 1080p30, and it looks GREAT. This is one place the windows users have it all over the Mac users. There are currently no good resampling applications for deinterlacing 60i to 30 or 60p for the Mac, but it's coming. Red Giant's Instant HD is sorta working in FCP 6, but keeps crashing on my system. Topaz Enhance does an awesome job, but adds time, so isn't useful for tandem or quick work.

-I don't despise Mormons. All of my siblings, most of my friends are LDS. I do happen to think it's one of the most whacked out religions on the planet, but I don't despise Mormons. My disdain for Romney is based almost entirely on my personal experiences with him and his dishonesty. I can't recall who said it best, "If Romney is as true to his religion as he is to flip-flopping, then we've got nothing to worry about." -Where have I written a "half-truth?" -As part of Romney's temple covenant, he swears to unquestionably obey and sustain the prophet of the church. The prophet of the church often admonishes and demands certain behaviors, such as women not having more than one ear piercing, stating from the pulpit and in the media that certain political positions are not acceptable by the leadership of the church (and by inferrence, the membership of the church) such as the ERA, or gay marriage, list ad nauseum. At least Romney no longer has to swear to slit his throat if he doesn't obey and hold secret those covenants, including the covenant to obey every word of the prophet. Just because no one was "forced" to participate in a meeting doesn't make the meeting appropriate.

in Lightroom, select all images in the library, right click, and all images rotate at the same time. Rotate 100 (or whatever) images in one click. If I see you next weekend, I'll give you a test drive.

Edit in iMovie, render as AVCHD, create ISO in any number of products such as Toast. Burn to standard DVD 5. BD will see it, if the software is up to date. For the BD300 (older model) software only needs to be 2.5, which all shipping 300's currently are.

Aw hell, all you had to do was ask. I'd give you a copy.

Of course satellite radio thins the pie too, but not by much. Billboard reports sales via Soundscan numbers (which didn't used to be accurate, but are very accurate now) and satellite doesn't appear to be hurting sales much at all. Contrary to Jack's post, the *majority* of people have selective tastes, and have always had selective taste (is there anyone who has not made their favorite party/make-out/driving/study cassette, CD, or playlist?). Listeners on the whole, like to control their listening experience. Sure, there are those content with finding their satellite or FM taste bud and letting it roll, but that's by far the minority, not the majority. I almost never listen to music when I drive, opting for comedy on the satellite radio. But that's *my* particular experience. When I'm reading, flying, working out, handworking, I don't want to be disrupted by a song I don't like, so I use my playlist features. According to Billboard and Soundscan, that's the preference of the majority. I love satellite. It's the only place I can find Howard Stern. If an artist has a recording contract, generally they cannot produce content for the web separate from the content/masters they produce for the label. I'm one of those. It's quite standard. You cannot release jointly or severally with anyone but the label and your publisher. Otherwise you're competing with yourself on their dime.

My sources point to "yes." Cool!!!!!! I LOVE females. Shemales...not so much. I also watch "The L Word" religiously. I pay attention to the drama, not the pictures.

In all honesty, the changes in the music marketplace have been a BENEFIT to me, as a small, no-name artist. Sure, being nominated for several, and winning a Grammy hasn't hurt, but... I've enjoyed increased sales due to iTunes and other download distribution, more than I expected. And as a scorist for film, industry changes haven't impacted me at all (although the damn writer's strike has). As a producer of music, it has had some marginal impact on me. I'm not a fan of how labels have done many things. I could tell you "No shit there I was" stories from Windham Hill, BMG, Virgin, Higher Octave, and Narada that would make you really hate the industry more. But...it's the model that has prevented small-time musicians from being known, but they have fueled the marketplace which has kept interest high. I love the fact that they're laying the foundation for musicians rights/protection of IP, so that when they're gone, the general public will have some concept of how IP is valued, and shouldn't be stolen simply because it's easy to do. Once my contract with Virgin is over, I'll likely be either signing with a web-label, or self-distributing (probably with a web label), as it's obvious that the labels are sinking. There are some major changes occurring inside most of them, but I think it's probably too little, too late with regards to a small-time artist like myself. It used to be that if you didn't sell 250,000 records a year, you were tossed. Now, some of the biggest names are barely cracking those numbers, so the dynamic is tremendously different, and the little guys like me are mostly just names on the letterhead. So yeah, I get it, have gotten it, and am applying myself to those changes. I honestly don't mind for myself. I do mind seeing what's happening to my friends. Some of them are huge artists that are basically reduced to nothing now, due to how A&R budgets have been slashed. Downloads fall into the "Supersaver" clause of most recording contracts, so artists barely make pennies. About 70% of the download revenue makes it to the label, and the label keeps most of that.

Thanks for explaining the industry to me. I didn't quite understand the changes or why they're occurring.[;) Other than the last line, Walt's post is pretty much spot-on. Live music is also dying, 2007 marked the lowest concert revenues in what was a hard-climbing market. No monster tours. A&R departments are not putting the $$ into artist dev any more, so bands are turning to outside funding, which is exceptionally limited. Madonna's sign with Live Nation does bode for some goodness, but mounting a tour for 50M just isn't doable by most.

Umm...I like Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls (especially with Pink) Am I becoming a lesbian?

Burning a CD on your desktop is *significantly* different than replication of Redbook-compliant CD's, which are indeed, going away. The industry is counting/planning on/expecting it. People said reel to reel would always be here too, because of the superior sound quality. Folks said the same about minidisc. And 8 track. And vinyl. And cassette. So that you can listen to it on demand. And people are very demanding today. Americans want it when they want it, how they want it. You're right. You don't *need* to buy it. You don't *need* to buy a rig, that can of RedBull, or those stylin' new shoes either. You buy em' cuz you want them, not because you *need* to.

Trick Daddy "Booty Do"

Lightroom does this on both Mac and PC as well. I've mostly quit using Pshop for lightweight image processing, and use Lightroom instead. Batch rotation of images (my cam is upside down on my helmet) batch watermark, batch color correction if I screwed the exposure... anyway, there are many scripts out there that will watermark files in PS.

Normally, I shoot HDV, and downconvert on capture to SD (DV) and edit that file, but I archive the jump in HD, not SD. I have this silly idea that next winter, I'll contact the students and say "Y'know...if you have an HD player, I can re-do your vid in HD for $XXX." When I shoot, capture, edit HDV, capture time is the same, editing time is the same, render time is perhaps 10% longer. In other words, I honestly don't care about which the customer wants. From my perspective, the experience is exactly identical, except for how I burn the DVD. If they want a Blu-ray disc that is MPEG2 at 35Mbps, then the render takes maybe 25% longer, but remember that we're talking a 6-8 minute file, so time isn't a consideration. If they want an AVCHD file on a standard DVD (have only delivered one of those) with no menus, render time is identical, or near identical, and the DVD burn is actually faster due to the much smaller file. So, at $225.00 for the HD jump/edit/delivery, and virtually no extra time...it works out very well, IMO. As far as the revenue share, the DZ and I are partners on the 4X BD burner, so the additional revenue is split accordingly. When we had just a 2X burner, most of the rev went to me, because I owned the burner myself.