DSE

Obviously I wasn't there, but here's my take; ~FAA law says "Don't use this gear." Fine. ~Experienced skydiver tells balloon jumper, "This gear is illegal to use, don't put the pilot of the balloon in jeopardy of losing his license if you jump it." So far so good.... Were it me, the BASE jumper's response would have dictated my next move. If he was "Ahhh...f' you, man...I'll do what I want, when I want, with whom I want..." I'd probably talk to an authority whether it's the WFFC organizers or the FAA, whomever happens to be handy. If the BASE jumper's response was "Ahh...man..I didn't realize it, sorry dude, I'm staying back..." then my own feeling is that nothing more needs to be said. No matter what tho...I'm sure the FAA would love to control as much of our sport as they can, so not sure I'd ever want to talk to them about anything involving skydiving, but that's just my .02φ But since BASE jumping isn't controlled by the FAA and skydiving is...dunno that I'd wanna drag em' in to it regardless. So, is Peek being unfairly judged or maybe he judged unfairly?

Actually, the "great" video cards usually have more problems than the "cheap" video cards. Go figure. I don't use gaming cards or any high end card in our video systems at all. Matrox 550's in probably 10-12 machines, a few Parhelia cards in others, and some are just doubled up S3 cards. Old, and cost maybe 10.00.

I'm not Pat, but.. Rolls Tapco Samson M-Audio All make very inexpensive mix boards, and the top three I mention also offer battery powered if you need mobility. Tapco is now part of Mackie, and it's great, bulletproof stuff. I use a Samson as a second splitter system. Just looked on Ebay, there are quite a few Mixpads available. A Mixpad 4 or Mixpad 6 would be perfect for one vid/two CD audio inputs with master output.

I use a number of tools, but here's a couple of cheap and easy ideas regardless of what NLE you use. 1. Take a short bit of media that has something flying into and out of the screen, such as a person swooping on/off of frame. If you don't have this, you can easily use pan/scan in your NLE to create the on/off screen movement. 2. Put this on the timeline of your NLE, split it as close to half as you can. Menus are generally 30 seconds, so you'd have two 15 second halves. 3. Arrange them so that the split points become the in and out points. In other words, put the first clip after the second clip. You now have a looping section that is seamless. 4. Use blurs, color correction, sepia tones, masks, whatever, to create a unique and low-contrast look. You don't want a lot of color pop or contrast, because it will fight with the titles and any menu buttons you generate. 5. Use generated media or some form of colorful media inside the letters to give them some punch. If your NLE will allow you to use Swish files, play with some of their presets and output a 32bit file, it will key properly in most every NLE that sees alpha channels. Of course, you can do this in Continuum as well, since you have that. Another thing that can be done with the text is to keyframe a very deep blur moving to zero blur, holding the zero blur for most of the duration of the looping menu, and then keyframe a return to the deep blur. Add slight fades to the in/out points. This will make the title blur and fade in, and blur and fade out. Very trick looking. If you use Sony Vegas, I've got roughly 200 titling project files that you might find useful. Additionally, there are some backgrounds on the site that are free, and you could composite some trick titles over the existing backgrounds. Dunno if that's the kind of answer you're looking for, but HTH

PowerDive: Mental Muscle for Skydivers (written by a PhD for those that care about the letters), says the same thing. As far as studies *not* related to skydiving, you'll find boatloads of data, but that's not terribly useful for this particular topic of music being a concentric enhancer vs distraction. Additionally, if you jump with typical ear buds, you won't hear much music at all. To successfully jump with music set to a reasonable level and no wind roar, you need specialized cans. Cheapest I'm aware of are 129.00. Etymotic ER6's are amongst the best, IMO. My own belief is that anyone jumping RW, or isn't the last one out/down, could potentially create problems. Somehow, that not-small point keeps being missed. Maybe not everybody skydives at very small DZ's where there are 3 landing fields, 2 acres for tandems and D licenses, 30 acres emergency area, and 50 acres for everyone else?

Skydiving is a metaphor for any goal, position, or lifestyle that humans enjoy or endure, depending on how you consider it. I submit this is why there are so many books on the subject of skydiving as a metaphor, self-help books that refer to skydiving, and self-help psychology books and videos that relate to skydiving. Skydiving has financial, physical, mental, spiritual, social, and competitive aspects, all of which can be used as either improvements or detriments in our personal lives. Skydiving could be addiction or balance in our lives. Most people, I'd submit use it as a balancing factor while there are some that use it as their primary focus. Could anyone seriously disagree with that? How many skydivers jump to live, vs those that live to jump?

Interesting...on the rodeo boards, there is a very similar thread about how riding broncs used to be for "real cowboys" and how there wasn't all this "safety gear" and how it used to be about having fun, drinking too much at night, and was never about money... The same theme plays in the entertainment industry about how it used to be about the love of art, but now everyone does it on their computer, no body plays real instruments, etc. Seems like evolution is part of well....everything, no?

Depending on your video card overlay, PRNTSCREEN can capture the entire player, then crop. I did a review of frame-grabs for Studio Magazine back in November, here's a list: Some are free, some are shareware, some are trials SnagIt's demo is 30 days, runs great. TV VideoGrabber is very good, free demo Advanced AVISplitter 1.25 is great, but 20.00 Capturex Image is great, shareware ACS is another one XVid in the event you already have it Most DVD player software offers it iMovie has it (dunno if you're Apple) Topaz Moment IC Image Control (free) Video2Photo/Pixelchain (free) AviSynth Free Advanced AVI Splitter (MPEG and AVI only) Free EZPhotoGrabber Free HTH

Y'know, I was really done with this thread, but you keep stating I've commented on what you do or don't know about skydiving. That's pure, utter, bullshit. That's just plain fu'd up. I agree, so why do you continue attempting to tie the two subjects together? but how the music makes me feel during the skydive does indeed affect my jump. I'd have loved to buy you a beer at Rio Bravo and I'd guess we'd have had a fun musical discussion, but I've not once commented on your abilities in the air one way or another, and to say I have done so is an outright lie and a gross distortion of the dialog. It's unfortunate you don't catch the difference between "listening" and "hearing." And I apologize that my wearing cans once in an orange moon has gotten your shorts in a serious knot. Either way you win. I capitulate. Uncle. I agree, it's indeed an indeterminate value more dangerous to skydive with music once in a distant while when no one else is exiting the a/c, than it is to have the wind screaming in your ear. I've never disagreed with that, BTW. It's also more dangerous to skydive with your shoelaces untied than not. I'll keep my shoes tied, and every 50 dives or so with cans in. Congrats on touching Johnny Cash's guitar. Musta felt like placing a finger on greatness. That's really important sometimes. Very cool. “You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way.” (Johnny Cash)

I'm not a fan of the Sager's either. I use the BOXX system for some work, but prefer either the Sony or the MacBook Pro for most work, just because they're nearly 5 lbs lighter. Depending on the model, the Sagers are just too loaded/heavy for the cases, IMO. SkinnyShrek: What you need are these features: 1-1394/iLink/Firewire port. 6 pin is best, but rare on PC's. 2. P4 proc 3. Gig or more of RAM, but a gig is just fine for most uses. 4. Hard drive of at least 80 and preferably 100 gig. Figure 13 GB per hour of video, so that leaves you at least 4 hours plus of video storage after operating system, application space. Everything else is gravy. More than one USB 2 port is great. Manual audio control is great. PCMCIA/Cardbus slot is great. built in wireless is pretty important to me, but maybe not to you. FWIW, Walmart has HP laptops meeting all the above requirements for less than 700.00. Similar system in a desktop without monitor is 549.00. Once you get to around 1500.00 in pricepoint, laptops and desktops are pretty close in price/performance. Once you get above around 2500.00, the laptop performance drops off, and desktop performance begins to significantly rise. As mentioned by someone else, a linear system might be faster for you than non-linear for tandem vids. If you had an app that would allow for template building of videos with walk-in/walk-out segments, library cuts, and overlays, that would automatically fit edit points for you based on capture length, then NLE is faster, but it would take time to set that template up and script it. Sounds like you've got someone good you can personally interface with at the DZ, and that is *always* a better option if you've got the resource. BTW, if you can make it to Orlando, I'll be there doing an NLE certification course on HD in a couple weeks, would be happy to spend time with you. Maybe we could hit Deland after?

Taken out of context as you've quoted, of course it's a "bold statement." I said, "In many cases, desktops are now slower." And that's true For 1.5k$, you can't buy a desktop as fast as as fast as a dual core, AMD proc laptop. not yet. And 7200rpm drives in laptops aren't anything new at all. Have been using them for at least 2.5 years, I've got an old P3 that even has a small 40GB drive that is 7200. No, I'm not talking about Alienware or anything else other than a CompUSA-available computer. Not BOXX, not Sagers, not Alienware(who use Sagers shells anyway) not a Ferrari/Acer, or other custom build. Standard, off the shelf systems, for HDV. Period. Have you edited HDV? Do you understand the bitrate of 1080 HDV is exactly that of DV? (25Mbps) Same with size of file. It's all about the HDI, codecs, and workflow. DV=13GB of storage per hour. 1080HDV=13GB storage per hour. Additionally, several of us here are editing 4:2:2 HD (not HDV) on a standard, off the shelf K37Laptop, which is not at all a custom build laptop. about 1500.00 at your local computer store. Again, it's all about HDI, and management. (If you can't do this, it may well be a result of PP2.0, it is more bloated than any app other than Avid Liquid. Good app, but hell on procs) Sure, we love using our RAIDs in the studio when we're not traveling, but when we travel, our projects don't sit idle. We travel with them. And we finish our work for our clients on them. And burn proofs for clients from them. HDV: what you need to know . And at 4800 or 5400rpm, those drives are perfectly competent for DV regardless. With a thruput of 3.62MBps, the drives have oodles of horsepower beyond what DV requires, even for compositing. BTW, there is NO PC desktop sub 2K that can touch my MacBookPro 2.16 at the moment. That'll change soon, but for the moment...It's the most powerful computer in it's class and in it's price category.

Your post was specifically addressed making videos with soundtracks "so everyone can enjoy it." I'm not going to go down the road of changing the context or attitude of the thread, but will explain that I work in the entertainment industry, I take exception to people who steal music and put their own videos to the songs and put them up on the web or worse, make DVDs of them and sell them. As far as the rest of your post, maybe you feel better by attempting to insert new meaning words I wrote? I didn't in the LEAST hint anything remotely connected with your skydiving competency. Maybe you went to the bar to have a drink? To see a friend? Get away from the wife? Sorry, out of guesses why you went to the bar. I understand Brent Mason was playing. And maybe you like him, but watching him play/hearing him perform sure as hell doesn't mean you "understand music." Gee....I produced segments of an international race last week, does that qualify me to "understand" a professional race competitor? Not to my knowledge... ...I performed with Elton John in January. Does that qualify me to "understand" his level of stardom? Of course not. It's about as irrelevant and irresponsible reply as I can make. I'm a multi-Grammy and Emmy recipient. Are you seriously somehow suggesting that because you're AFF/Tandem/Static Line rated that you understand music the way I do?? How you drew those parallels is bafflingly beyond me. [side note, I can see how you'd consider Brent Mason a "distraction." "Hot Wired" is very in-your-face excepting "Lil' Ballerina."] I wonder if the tandem instructors should worry, because the packers wear headphones while packing tandems. Do you (improperly)equate headphones with not being able to hear what's going on, or see what's happening around you? In *your* view I increase my risk. In my view, I reduce it, and equally importantly, I enjoy the skydive more than I would have otherwise. If and when on a very rare last-out, pull-high sunset dives with headphones I happen to damage myself, you can recall my posts and tell the world "See! See! I told you so!" You're even welcome to my MP3 player if you want it (if you enjoy Mason, you'll love my music library). Until then, enjoy your angst. I choose to appreciate music instead.

You're right no risk of death, just copyright lawsuits. Sorry, ain't going there. Stealing music just isn't in my lexicon. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. You apparently are one of those folks that doesn't understand music and what it means to some people. And I'll never understand the folks that don't understand what music does for others. Music *isn't* a distraction unless you allow it to be, but I dont' think you'll ever get that. Is music a distraction when you're watching a movie? Or is it part of the experience, driving the moment forward? FWIW, it's been proven over and over again that music improves muscle memory, provides cognizant associative feedback, and is a valuable tool for sports training. On the other hand, you'll have a hard difficult time convincing me that I'm putting myself or others at greater risk by listening to music when I'm alone on a skydive, with no one else behind me, and me pulling high to enjoy my tunes that much longer.

We edit/composite/output from laptops every day for broadcast or distribution. DV, HDV, and even off-line HDCAM edits. Premiere, Avid, Vegas, Edius, etc. all run great on laptops. HDD's can be just as fast these days, 7200 RPM drives have been available for nearly 3 years in laptops. Drive options are somewhat smaller, given that 120GB is about as large as you can affordably stick into most laptops, although Sagars and others are sticking in triple 7200's for half a TB in a single laptop. The weight will break your back though. Vid cards for video editing are every bit as up to speed for laptops as desktops. If you're a gamer, it's a different story. I don't recommend internals for laptops, heat becomes an issue, and the added weight causes the carriage to fail early. Use Firewire for external work, and the big benefit is that you can also easily transport a project from place to place or just carry the laptop. Screen resolutions on laptops are also now at the 1920 x 1200 stage if you want big, but again, weight is a factor. Desktops aren't much faster, and in many cases, desktops are now slower. Industry dev is heavy in laptop procs and parts, as desktops don't change much in size. Used laptops are always a great option if you can find a trustworthy source. In about a month, we'll have 30 K37 Sony VAIOs for sale after we finish our certification tour for Sony Vegas software, if you're interested I'll post a link in Classifieds. They have 100DB HDD's, 1 gig RAM, and are being used for DV and HDV, both formats playing back full framerate and full rez. They also have built in DVD burn for +/-R DL media. You can pick up a brand new model for around 1700.00 at CompUSA or similar, with a faster proc.

True. Why fly CRW either? Or tube-dive? or... Now I'm starting to sound like the idiots that say "You don't skydive with me, so you don't know..." And that's not me. I'm exceptionally conservative in this sport for the most part. Music is not "BS" to me, it's the industry in which I make my living. BTW, I also wear headphones when scuba diving/snorkeling as well. It's a soundtrack to the experience. I just looked at my logbook, and less than 4% of my jumps have included headphones, all are with me exiting last, and all but one are sunset dives. On all of those jumps, I dumped at 4k or higher. For me, the risk is worth the reward, in the few times I exercise the option. Just as I imagine CRW, Mr. Bill's, and big ways are worth the rewards to others.

That is your POV, and you're very welcome to it. On the other hand, I find that listening to the music in a skydive can affect how my dive goes if I'm considering the jump prior to boarding the a/c. Jumping with a camera increases risk Jumping with smoked eyewear increases risk Jumping with a mini bottle for your 100/1000/whatever increases risk Jumping with others increases risk Jumping from a 182 increases risk Swooping increases risk Hook turns increases risk No AAD increases risk Having an AAD increases risk Lack of bridle cover increases risk Stacked exits increase risk Wingsuits increase risk changing the dive plan after leaving the ground increases risk. Being overweight increases risk Being underweight increases risk Sitting at the far back of the aircraft increases risk Jumping on a hot day increases risk Jumping in zero wind increases risk Jumping in greater than zero wind increases risk Turning points increases risk Not tying up long hair increases risk. Not wearing good footwear increases risk Not wearing a hook knife increases risk Wearing a hook knife increases risk Keeping your reserve/cutaway handle increases risk Exiting too close to previous person increases risk Some say that jumping on Sunday increases risk Search the words "increased risk" and you'd likely be surprised at how often this is a response to sometimes complex, but often simple questions. What *isn't* an increased risk in an already risky adventure? Hell, the S&TA at a DZ had a fit because I was wearing a red T-shirt shirt with a red cutaway pillow, and insisted that I wouldn't be able to see the cutaway should I need it, so he taped black gaffers on my pillow for that jump. In other words, whilst I'm not recommending that people jump with or without headphones, making the statement that "it increases risk" is an impotent response in comparison to what many people do each and every day to 'increase risk.' Isn't it all about properly managing the level of increased risk?

I guarantee you your Sony earbuds aren't air tight. Sony doesn't make an air-tight or sealed system. I have a pair of custom-molded in-ear Etymotics, and THEY are air (and water tight). Even with these, air rushing by gets into the ear, you'll hear a dull pounding. The cable also transmits a certain level of bottom end directly to your skull, and if you have bass-heavy buds such as the Shure i-Series or Etymotic white series, it's just mud in the air. I wear mine on occasion, and it's never been an issue of not being altitude aware and "getting into the music" but I can certainly see how it might be for some people. I wouldn't make a habit of it, never do it when with a group, and I won't do it when I'm not the last guy out. But on a last-out sunset dive, with Creed, James Horner, or Simple Plan playing at a good level...it's heaven. If you set levels correctly and have genuinely sealed cans, then you can have conversations albeit loudly, and you can easily hear any commands or concerns at the door. My method however, is to have my Rio in mute mode until I'm actually leaving the plane, hitting the mute-off mode once I'm out the door. Not because I'm worried about not hearing instructions, but because I prefer to hear the prop blast. But once in freefall, there is nothing like loops, barrel rolls, and transitions in time to punched up rhythm. Eminem's "Lose Yourself" is another great one, I usually start it about half-way into the song before exiting the A/C. It's just plain fun and a good experience, but has to be well-considered prior to the jump. Bear in mind as well, I jump at a very small DZ and there are never more than 3-4 fun jumpers landing in the same field as me, and if I'm last out, I'm usually pulling around 4k anyway so I can enjoy the music longer. If the loads were bigger, more people landing, or a bigger DZ, I'd probably be afraid of music for all the reasons listed above.

Dunno what to tell you is "normal," I'll leave that to the 4-digit jumpers cuz I'm a triple digit midget. But I'll tell you that having a premie opening that slammed me into the body of the plane had me thinking "what the hell am I doing here?" for the next few jumps. Then there was the day that I didn't correctly thread my chest. Another several jumps of "Hey stupid, do you really think you should be doing this?" Look below, and see the thread of "Should I take up golf?" I also had a mal on my first tandem ride, but that didn't scare me, it just taught me respect for EP's. If it's fear, then maybe rethink the activity. If it's apprehension, I'd submit it's completely normal. Most folks know that touching a hot stove is painful after the first time, but given a few experiences around the stove, they learn what to do in order to enjoy the stove, but avoid the pain.

Same in Utah, at Skydive Utah the day temp is 107, with off-tarmac heat hitting well over 120. No winds make for difficult landings. Dunno if y'all have the same weather expectations we do, but it's supposed to be "cooler" at 101 for the remainder of the week and then pop back up again next week.

This subject seems to come up

Digital camcorders don't shoot CMYK, but you can of course, use a CMYK profile. I'm not sure where you'd want to unless you're going for news or book proofs. Desktop computers by far and wide, are RGB. Using a calibration device as mentioned above, assures that the system regardless of which color management profile you might be using, will match across the board. This is the predominant benefit of using an EYEOne or even the cheap Pantone Huey. They take a couple minutes to use, but they lock up your monitor, printer, and application profiles to one setting. You can change it, of course. Additionally, if you're spec'ing the work for professional print/offset print, or for negative print, you can embed the calibrated profile information in the document for sending to the print house. HTH

I think the opposite applies. Kirz is saying that XP is taking too much space, and wants to change the partition to use it as a Mac-only, no? "I want to give XP less gigs because I have no intention of using it." suggests that BootCamp was installed for no reason, if XP isn't going to be used. I for one, love mine. Both fave PC and Apple apps on one computer, no more carrying around two. My shoulders are very happy.

lucky doggie! Those of us on the west side of the country would love a factory tour. Didja get any vid? What was the sweetest thing in the factory?

The Chase system is reasonable, but still pretty low in resolution and MPEG 2 compression. They are indeed very tough, having been made originally for racing use. One other option to examine if you're into solid state is the Sanyo Sanyo HD1 camcorder. It's 1280 x 720 and progressive, and looks about the same as DV when downconverted to SD. Records about half an hour on a 2 gig card, or an hour on one of the new 4 gig cards. I jumped it once, but was quite unhappy with it as an HD camcorder, but if I was delivering SD, it would barely scrape by. Super light weight, super battery life without the preview screen open, no LANC, very impressive stills from the lens it offers, very good electronic stabilization. Output via USB 2 only. Not my first choice, but not my last choice either.

You can change the color temp on *most* laptops, but I doubt this is your issue. It could well be that something got screwy at Target. On the occasion that we need workprints, I've taken a thumbdrive to Walmart, and they've always been pretty good in color repro, although green is always intensified. Maybe they had a bad profile stored? Anyway, your description of what you've got, what you're getting at home, and what tools you're using would point me more towards Target being the problem. Try sending them .tiff files with no compression, or TGA for more accurate result. I don't know if Target takes TGA? It also could be that you stored the .jpgs with odd compression or header information, so before I'd get too worked up, I'd try a couple more test prints. Take in a print from your computer, and compare it with them standing next to you when you make the comparison. Hard to beat the Kodak paper and a good desktop printer these days tho, unless you're going to a photograph processing facility and they treat it like a photo image. We use Nichols for high end work, my understanding is that they take images over the web from anyone and send them out. They do a lot of movie line prints for us. But again...before worrying too much, I'd run a disc of the same image in a few formats, and see if you or they made an error. Finally, if you plan on doing a lot of prints, it's pretty important IMO, to calibrate your monitor profile, and there are a lot of great tools for doing just that. Plan on spending a couple hundred bucks for a good calibration tool.