DSE

If he made a bad decision, that's one thing (easily remedied). If the allegations made here are accurate, the bad decision isn't as egregious (IMO) as any attempt to cover it up might be. From my uninformed perspective, this is the issue that I'm most concerned about. Don't you think dishonesty to cover up an illegal act via bureaucratic means is a valid and large concern? If the USPA as a governing agency feels that a short suspension was sufficient punishment, I don't know that it's in any one's best interest to challenge their decision unless they make a different decision in a similar situation. How UPT (or any other tandem manufacturer) deals with it is their business with the instructor and USPA, not ours, IMO. What if that foolish, but deliberate decision had cost someone's their life?

A concentric ring site also helps compensate for parallax, which is why I selected a concentric over the "X" or cross-type ring sight.

Shoot HD. That'll fix your problem. Seriously, the source footage from DV is always going to be grainy on most HD displays. Turning DOWN sharpening will help a little, but the fact is...SD from DV on HD display won't look great no matter what you do. What can tremendously amplify the problem is if they've got their display set to scale the image up. This is common. Also, if they've got the image sharpened...or if it's a native progressive display...all of these functions can conspire to make for bad-looking video on LCD, plasma, or DLP display.

th platter requires air pressure in order to float between the heads properly. In rarified air, the bearings lose the support required to "float" the head in a negative air-bearing system (HDD system). This is one reason that all hard drives are ported, to maintain equal pressure inside/outside the drive. It's one of those things you won't be able to fight; just accept it as it is. I have successfully jumped a sealed drive on a few occasions, but I can also feel the drive acting strange on my helmet when I've done so, and in working with the engineer that designed part of the system, he expects it to fail if I continue to jump it.

Mine was picked out long before skydiving. Clothes I'd like to be burned in, crematorium, etc Scatter my ashes over the rez/Grand Canyon. Memorial service can't be planned, because that's for my loved ones to do, but I've made some suggestions that might make their job easier. Having had to plan a few of these, it seemed best to me to organize as much as I can so that they can grieve rather than be frustrated with my final moments. It also sets the tone for how I hope to be remembered. If nothing else, it was a good exercise during a few long flights. Since I have a locker at the DZ, there is a copy in my locker, my attorney has a copy, and a business partner has a copy...someone'll figure it out.

Let's keep the other HC3/5/7 threads going without adding a new one.

On this same topic.. http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/09/sonys-bwu-200s-blu-ray-burner-reaches-4x-speeds/ I hear rumblings that Pioneer is close behind with their announcement (Pioneer builds the Sony BD burner, I believe).

Nick, I'm no fan of the "energy drink" mindset that some of the skydivers and BASE jumpers have. Combining the overwhelming number of posts in this thread that state "Travis was unqualified for this skydive" in a variety of words coupled with your use of "gloryhound" is the idea comes from. Didn't mean to insert words in your mouth. Point is, he's a media star with tremendous talents. He didn't become what he is because of Red Bull or any other product. He's talented in physically challenging situations. Regardless of some of the silliness in this thread, some of us are more adept and able to adapt. Travis clearly is at a stage in his life where he can do this sort of thing, and he happens to be sponsored by an energy drink company amongst many others. I'm really surprised that folks aren't ragging on Red Bull for encouraging athletes to take such extreme risks, vs attacking a talented, creative kid for his adventures on the ground and in the air. Remove all the hyperbole and angst, and you end up with a spotlight on a kid landing under a parachute in front of millions of fans. I just don't see that as a bad thing. Certainly not as ugly as some of the demo videos we see posted that have bad biffs or flags being dragged in the mud, or worse. My only wonder is the same one Travis mentions in the OP; were laws actually broken, or was the FAA cool with this. Seems that's the only negative left to ponder now that the stunt is complete?

the military-grade Newton style is the best, IMO, but I don't have one. I use one of Brent's, and they're exceptionally good, whether being used for tight rock climbing shots or skydiving. Concentric rings help you learnt to adjust for parallax better, IMO, but whether it's a paper butthole or a military bazooka sight...whatever helps *you* find the target works fine. I know one guy that takes stellar pix using a popsicle stick finely honed on one end and coated with flourescent epoxy. No ring, just a straight line sight.

He's using motorcycles, rally cars, monster trucks, skateboards, surfboards, BASE, skydiving(and combinations of same), in a similar manner and relying on the same crowds as anyone who has ever worn a Red Bull logo in a stunt or sport displayed to the general public. Does Red Bull sponsorship="unqualified gloryhound?"

We have gambled the HD delivery portion of our business on BD. Has nothing to do with Sony vs Micro$oft. The BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association) is significantly larger than the Microsoft/Toshiba alliance, has a much larger "future" given the size and seek times of the disc, has much better code support, and has a set standard (although it came -very- late). Microsoft and Toshiba have twice changed their standard. However...if sales of the Xbox rise like mad this holiday season, HD DVD has a chance to even the odds at the consumer level. BD has support from consumers and professionals, content creators and data archivists. HD DVD has only consumer support. In the end, it'll boil down to who sells the most machines and DVDs this holiday season and in the first two quarters of 2008, IMO. BD outsells HD DVD discs by more than 2:1. HD DVD sells more players than BD by about 35%. But BD also has significantly greater PS3 support. It'll be impossible to predict the winner with any certainty, but we need authoring *right now* for a few of our higher end clients, so it's been worth the roughly 10K investment we've made in supporting BD. *if* HD DVD gains legs, it'll be second generation burners, and so they'll be relatively cheap, and the support structure for HD DVD is identical to BD other than the burner. FWIW, I believe we're the first DZ in the world to have delivered a BD DVD to a student. We charge out the wazoo for it, but...we do have the ability and the technology already.

I know what it can shoot, but it's so bad, it requires downscaling to look decent. A cell phone can shoot 2megapixels too, but it needs to be viewed very small to look good. The number of pixels and frame rate have zero bearing on the final output. Compression is everything. As mentioned before, if it's for your own use, and blocky images in high motion don't bother you, then it'll be fine. It's less than half the quality of DV, so perhaps that offers you a reference point?

You shouldn't have had a "transcoding wait" except on the clips/files you'd modified ie; color correction etc, and/or any graphics, overlays, etc. To deliver right now in HD; these are your choices/options: 1-HDCam, Blu-ray, HD DVD. All three require either an HDCAM recorder (cheap at 50K) BD burner or HD DVD burner 2-Burn HD DVD discs on a standard DVD 5, but still requires HD DVD playback unit 3-HDV tape, playback from tape unit over component to HD display 4-Burn MPEG2, AVCHD, DivXHD, XVidHD, NeroShow, MPG4, or VC1 to a standard DVD, playback via computer 5-Variation on #4, render to HDD, playback via computer 6-Render as a WMV/VC1 file and stream it. I think that's it, although I may have missed one in my addled response. #'s 3,4,5, 6 are the most cost-effective. A laptop connected to an LCD, DLP, or Plasma display will be just fine. Or, connected to an XGA projector. Or a large computer monitor. Or, just edit the HD timeline and output a standard NTSC Widescreen SD DVD so anyone can play it anywhere, save the project for the day BD is standard.

I've seen one person jumping with it, but he's not doing video for anything of value, other than recording his jumps and proximity to others. The codec used in this camera makes it useless for anything but very small format web video (320 x 240). It shoots HD pixel counts, but the compression @60:1 is lousy.

There *are* other ways of getting a record indicator, ranging from a cheap mirror to a cable that uses the LED light when in RECORD mode. It's not nearly as convenient, but budget usually dictates the amount of hassle you're willing to endure.

One some capture software/hardware, quicktime is actually the format in which is captured.. Just don't convert anything to anything and capture in the best possible resolution then In most cases, Quicktime conversion doesn't do anything to the media itself, it merely repackages it. Kinda like buying apples at the store and they give you a plastic bag, but you prefer paper. Moving the apples from the plastic bag to the paper bag doesn't affect the apples, only the container used for transport.

If the discs have been left in the sun or heat, they'll lose a lot of their life. If you don't see peeling on the disc, you can usually gently run a DiscDoktor over them, and that helps. I'd be getting the content off from the DVD ASAP. Bear in mind that in the case of many of these sorts of DVDs, the cheapest store-bought DVDs were used as opposed to high quality media that costs double a "Walmart" brand. They're not nearly as well-made and do die much sooner.

Right click audio track, choose Properties, then check the "Normalize" option, and rescan level/volume (going from memory here)

Working on the other side of the camera from you, we see a lot of :"professional stuntmen." You might take umbrage with the term, but there are people trained in falls, firesuits, fight choreography, taking hits, drivers, "fall guys" if you will....They are physically, emotionally, mentally more able than the average actor in challenging situations (aside from the insurance issues). These people are called "professional stuntmen," not actors playing at their own little stunts. Travis is trained to take a fall, be mentally alert and aware, and physically/emotionally at the top of his game regardless of what challenging situations he may be placed in either by his own mental mechanics or those of the stunt coordinator. In many cases, Travis is his own stunt coordinator relying on others to oversee and find flaws with his stunt designs, such as the one he performed in Puerto Rico. IMO (just as flying camera ops are often viewed as "professional stuntment), the fact that Travis is trained in the physical, emotional, and mental disciplines that allow him to take the risks he takes, would designate him a "professional stuntman." Dave Major is a skydiver who refers to himself as a "professional stuntman" and skydiving is one of his "stunts" on his resume. We're discussing semantics, but given Travis' unique training for performing "stunts", it's a semantic somewhat worth debating.

The thread for lens attachment isn't all that big a deal. I assumed by mentioning stabilization, that might give you something to search in the forums. So...reasons to not buy Canon; Newcomer in the camcorder world Poor stabiliztion in their camcorders Weak/lightweight bodies OEM transports that aren't terribly tough Some have LANC, many don't There are more reasons, most of them trivial, but reasons nonetheless. For example, their A/V output is different than Sony or Panny. Many of their cams are bottom load, which is a PITA for skydivers. Many of their low cost cams are not glass, they're plastic lenses. They have fewer warranty centers in the USA vs Sony and others (for camcorders). Canon is the bomb when it comes to still cams and lenses. Sony sucks at still cams/lenses (old Minolta=new Sony). In other words, being a Canon still fan shouldn't make you a Canon camcorder fan, if that's the motivation. Buy whatever you want, obviously, but when it breaks...don't expect much sympathy from this crowd.

I use drives that are configured for both 1394 and USB2, for max compatibility. The studio/post systems we have don't care for USB (Avid doesn't approve of them) and so I need 1394 in the post rooms. At the DZ, I usually use a laptop and USB2. The MyBook, LaCie and Seagate (among others) offer both. The bigger drives only have a higher propensity for failure, I've not had problems with them. However, heat kills HDD's faster, it used to be in years past, we'd keep SCSI RAID systems in wine coolers at 65 degrees for optimal operation. We no longer need to do this, but the axiom of "heat is bad" still applies. Big/multiple drives plus small, portable enclosures=heat. Not to mention they're heavy as hell. I don't have a problem slinging my 500GB drives around in my backpack; they're reasonably light.

LANC is probably how Sony really gained a foothold in the skydiving world, although Sony was a very early supporter of skydiving as a corporation. There are a couple SONY logo'd parachutes floating around in Parkridge, New Jersey (rounds), and some very old photos of monster Sony-branded lenses at early competitions. Sony makes most of the DV tape transports out there; they are tough. Sony also has had good stabilization for a long, long time. Canon is a relative newcomer to the video camera game by comparison. Panasonic and JVC don't offer LANC, and Panasonic has never been known for their tough drives, only tough laptops. JVC has never been known for their camera quality, IMO, either at the high or low end.

I use external HDD's for almost everything that isn't an uncompressed project. All my skydiving footage goes to an HDD the moment I'm off the jump, cataloged by: Month Date Name/event All stills are saved either immediately after the jump or at the end of the day, cataloged the same way in the same folders. I used all of one 500GB drive from April-August, and have about 60% of another 500GB drive from August to present. Phree is right about price, but also consider that the bigger drives are heat monsters that have a higher potentiality for failure.

I'm the low number guy. Two rigs have em'. Used to jump one rig with a Cypres, one without. Found I was constantly confused about whether the one was turned on or not. Found a great deal on an older Cypres, installed it for the next 3 years. I've got many jumps without them, but like to have the added safety. It's personal preference and being self-responsible to make a decision one way or another. Your ego and wallet should be small components of your preference, IMO.

does this count?