DSE

Long day of jumping, results of the HDD jumps: 6 jumps with the Nnovia, all from 13,500 2 jumps with Citidisk 7 jumps with iPod 13 flights with Rio Carbon All are HDD-based systems, the iPod and Rio are microdisks. We also jumped the new Sanyo HD1 flash-based HD camcorder. (1280x720) Observer/copilot flew with Rio Carbon, operatingall day/all flights Nnovia handled all jumps as expected. no dropouts, no crashes, no problems. Citidisk worked for second jump only, but it wasn't expected to work, the product is for crap. Files read properly and write to properly after two flights, but it never works for DV capture anyway, so it was just thrown in there cuz we had it. I'm tossing the crappy thing once I remove the 80 gig drive from it. Nothing died, all gear working as it should. Obviously, , it just demonstrates that the tolerances are probably higher than they suggest. Can't go higher than 13,500 without oxygen for any length, and it's not worth it to me to spend the bux to find out any different. So, no earth-shattering news or destroyed gear as I'd somewhat hoped to see happen.

Our DZ is at 5000 ft, we climb to 13,500 each flight. Nnovia isn't a vendor, they manufacture the device used. It's also used for the Marine Combat Camera Group, and used by law enforcement as an on-body recorder. Whilst I am reading and accepting the information your're posting and related links, we regularly are taking drive-based equipment into very high and difficult environments. Heck, Telluride is that high at the top of the ski runs (13,700) and we're shooting HD to HDD up there every year, for hours on end in subzero weather. That said, I also feel there is a margin for error that isn't accounted for here. There is a significant difference between mathematic and design theory and actual use. I'll keep jumping my Nnovia until something happens to it, and go from there, since the president of the company has assured me they'll cover it. For giggles, I'm gonna jump a POS CitiDisk we have as well. It's junk anyway and would never be used in a production, so might as well see if it survives. No shock, no strength to the plastic case, and just simple power as well. It's worth it to experiment with. It's got a Hitachi drive in it as well. Basically it's just a plastic covered drive with a Firewire connector and battery. I'll post what happens after jumping it tomorrow. The iPod (and my Rio Carbon) are both microdrive-based. I'm quite aware of what the hole in an HDD are for, our facilty operates with approx 40TB at any given time, and usually more, depending on the time of year. Our productions range from extreme snowboarding and motoX to shooting in fires, water, volcanos, etc with our gear. Whether we're shooting with our LDK5000, HDCAM, or our HDV cams, they're usually in less than ideal conditions. I'm not at all advocating that anyone follow my practice; I'm in a position to afford testing these devices without expense to myself or my company.

No, where/how the media is stored and previewed makes zero difference in quality of output, only quality in playback and preview quality. Once you render to a final output source, whatever it may be, the quality of the originally captured footage is what will be used for output.

Appreciate the explanations, guys. Just got off the phone with the engineering boys at Nnovia, they assure me I've got nothing to worry about. My A2D has 9 jumps from 13,500 so far and no issues. It's an IBM Travelstar loaded in a doubleshock mount case, with analog input over Y/C. The Sanyo HD1 only has 2 jumps on it, but it's also only a couple weeks old, so we'll jump it til it dies, if it dies. I've been totally unaware of the altitude limit on the microdrives tho. Interesting about the iPod comment, too. My canopy coach wears his often on his arm, far as I know, he's been doing it for at least a year. I've jumped with my Rio turned on in the plane, and only remove the earplugs just before the door is opened in the airplane. Sounds like I should be on the lookout for weirdness.

You can indeed deinterlace before or after. Bear in mind that if you deinterlace before, and you deliver an interlaced project on a DVD, then your deinterlaced stills will be reinterlaced. As far as Vegas, ask away. I'm one of a couple certified Vegas instructors in the world, and am one of many certified Premiere instructors. Don't let the Vegas interface throw you. I'm happy to help, either here in the forum, in other forums I moderate, or via PM. FWIW, I have several training DVDs out on Vegas as well. I HIGHLY recommend Vegas Movie Studio over Vegas 4, BTW.

Why do you say this? I've been loaning the DZ camera guys my bullet cam and Nnovia HDD systems, and have also jumped the Sanyo HD1 on their helmets, all images have been as expected. The Nnovia is entirely HDD-based, and the HD1 is Flashmem based. DVD is unstable, but HDD is actually more stable than tape, and no fear of dropout on an HDD system.

Premiere Elements doesn't do this so well, neither does Premiere Pro 2.0. there are options. 1. Download the DebugMode.com frameserver for Premiere, frameserve to Vdub and extract stills from that. 2. Write an action for Photoshop, it'll do the same thing. 3. Download Mike Crash's smart deinterlacer. I don't have the web addy, but you can google him. He's in CZ. 4. Try Sony Vegas Movie Studio, it does an excellent job of outputting stills. Vegas full version can export a sequence of stills very easily. 5. In Elements, select Quicktime for your output, and choose the sequential TGA option. That'll import to most graphics apps.

Unfortunately, there are no dealers where I live, other than the DZ, and they are exceptionally limited. I have good trust in the DZO, have known him and his wife for a long time, and face to face is indeed better. Sure, maybe after 200 jumps I'll change my opinion, but it's unlikely. I buy my scuba and motoX gear on the web too. I no longer have a dealer in my area to be face-to-face with. I'm a reseller of sorts in my business. The *only* unique benefits we can offer our customers/clients are: 1. Experience based on a lifetime of product use 2. Trust 3. Good relationship and after-production services and information that may be used in future purchasing decisions. Our competitors offer everything that we offer outside of the above aspects. So does the manufacturer. This is true in just about any business.

I'm a very non-experienced jumper, but without naming names, I've written to four dealers in the past 10 days asking for information on canopies and pants, and not one dealer has responded. On the other hand, I sent email to Performance Designs and Freaknsuits and had a response within a couple of hours. So, while I'd like to deal with dealers, if they're not going to respond... Then they don't deserve my business, and won't get it. I'd MUCH rather consistently deal with a reseller/vendor *if* I could establish a relationship in which I trusted their advice and input, and thought they weren't just after my bucks at any cost. Otherwise, I'm stuck doing research at the DZ, here, and other places on the web. When I have to do the research, get advice from friends, DZO, instructors, the web, and anywhere else, I'm gonna buy at the best price because I've done all the legwork and know exactly what I want. In other words, just because dealers exist doesn't mean I'll go there. They've got to earn my business just like any other business that I deal with for personal or corporate purchases.

B&H and Adorama both stock PAL cams for sale in the US. You'd have a US warranty purchasing from one of them. I believe ZotzDigital also stocks PAL.

Well....given that I edit HD every day of my life (for shows you might watch) that is simply not so. And it's quite easy to demonstrate with a pixel map or a Spyder, or any other similar system. Additionally, we have 5 G5duallies, and a slew of Cinema's. And several 234b's, and at least 3 Sony laptops with 1900 x 1200 screens, all are calibrated every time they move into a new lighting environment, yadayadayada. For broadcast and film, we aren't capable of working with "blurry, crappy, messes." Did I mention I have a Wintel system as well? FWIW, even if it was scaling, there are some significant benefits to scaling down IF it's done appropriately, even tho it's not accurate for compositing and color correction. There is a significant difference in working with 1080 HD on a 1900 x 1200 monitor vs 1600. Which also has PAR issues...but that's another thread.

At the risk of taking the thread to a new direction... It's going exceptionally well. I'll have my first solo exit this morning, assuming winds cooperate. With the winds, a monster 280 canopy, and some luck, I've been able to stick every landing but one where I had to slide in on my butt due to a dropout at 20'. My instructor is already allowing me to jump with my Bonehead flattop (sans cams) so I can get comfortable with it, and I've been wearing a belly lipstick feeding an SS recorder (whole thing weighs less than .5 lbs) so I can view my face, arms, and get an idea of my positioning, plus great canopy shots that allow me to see how I'm doing with turns, stalls, etc. It's only 640 x 480, but it's not for distribution, it's for me to see what I'm doing.

I'll shut up now.

I was responding to Fast's post, suggesting a stop of F8.

given that I'm still in student status, and daily flight checks begin with testing on pulling reserve, I've been taught that 1. We must have a decision altitude of 2500 feet. Some DZ's say 2k, from what I've read and am told. 2. Procedure is: Look for pillow/cutaway handle, put right hand on it. (look to be sure you've got the handle and not cloth from your jump suit) Look for reserve handle, hook thumb thru it. Pull pillow/cutaway Pull reserve Look to see that the canopy is there and square. Perform any line twist procedures, prep for PLF. More or less straight from the SIM. Dunno if that answers anything, I'd sure like to see a response from the original poster about what happened. My first flight ever was a tandem cutaway, and it was impressive how the TM managed it. It wasn't til I saw the canopy floating away that I knew anything was wrong, his execution was so smooth.

A caveat to throw in... At F8, you're stopped down below the resolution level that Bayering applies to the cam. F4 is the max you should stop to on a 1/3 camcorder in order to achieve full chroma resolution and luma sampling. This means you need an ND filter on the glass so you can stay open on your aperture. On a 1/4 chip, you shouldn't be stopping past 3.5, again requiring an ND filter. On the smaller chip lenses, you can still shoot to infinity at 3.5 or 4, and you'll see a relatively significant greater saturation of colors, particularly reds and blues if you keep the aperture at F4 on 1/3 camcorders. This is somewhat critical for HD/HDV shooting.

Yes, they are nice. But...the resolution sucks at only 1680 max. Can't do full rez HD on the display. In the broadcast/corporate/event editing world, everyone is complaining about it. Sad that they make such a big deal about FCS realtime HD, but then give us a non-HD capable screen to work with. I'd like to think they didn't do this just to sell more displays. I have a 15" already, and while it runs most of my Windows apps wonderfully and fast, the lack of resolution makes it exceptionally difficult to work with, particularly for C/C and compositing.

DVD Architect can do this, Encore 2.0, iDVD, DVD Studio Pro, Nero Digital/home, and Ulead DVD Workshop all perform this. It has little or nothing to do with the DVD player itself. Only very high end DVD players won't do this as they are usually T/C based. In your authoring app, simply set the video you want to loop with an end action that will fit back to itself. In DVD Studio Pro or Sony DVD Architect, set the desired video as the "First Play" video with nothing else there, and it will auto-end action to itself. If you want to post the app that you use, I'll gladly reply with specific instructions.

Welcome to the forum. 'Nother noob here, but the program is pretty specific. 25 jumps to your A license assuming you pass all course level jumps with your AFF instructor(s). Remember, you can fail a jump or technique, and the instructor gets to determine whether you must re-do the jump. I'd highly recommend you download the SIM (Student Instruction Manual) from USPA.org, take the downloaded PDF file to Kinkos, and have it printed and bound. Live it, breathe it, talk to your instructor about what's in it. Learn everything you can outside of jump school and that'll help not only prep you, but help your mental attitude too. Ultimately tho, your instructor determines most everything you'll do in the initial stages. You'll love going through AFF. I'm nearly through, would have been today had winds been below 15mph on the ground, and I can't get enough. After you complete AFF, you're still a novice, and won't move to an A license til you've got your 25 or however many jumps your instructor feels you require up to your last AFF. You should also consider a canopy coach following your last AFF jump.

Technically, this is so. Realistically, it rarely is. USB2 shares system resources with the CPU determining priority and traffic flow. If you've got controlled fans, antivirus, heat sensors, Outlook, NIC, etc all on and seen by CPU, the chances of the USB2.0 bus being given priority are rather slim. Firewire is it's own resource, doesn't rely on the CPU for priority assignment, and is ALWAYS speed-stable. Many NLE apps will not support USB2.0 capture for this very reason. Even tho transfer from a cam to an HDD is just a data transfer, it requires a sustainable transfer rate of at least 3.6MBps or 25Mbps. USB2.0 can't guarantee that rate simply because your CPU might have another priority come up. Use Firewire/ieee1394/i-Link whenever possible for consistent positive result. HTH

Wanted to thank Dropzone.com. Today, I took my FF4,5, and 6, aced all written, oral, and jump exams. Instructors all wanted to know where I was getting my information from, even ended up correcting an instructor when he kept referring to the "SRL." None of them are computer geeks, so had only heard about Dropzone.com. When I showed them some of the pix from the site, and showed them some of the sites linked from here, they were pretty shocked at the amount, quality, and depth of information this site offers. The DZO was saying that he'd like to add this site to their "highly recommended" list. No way in hell would I have aced the written or orals without the information I've absorbed by lurking in the community here. thank you!!!!!! (Also FWIW, I moderate several broadcast and film fora, and have always found it marginally amusing to see a "thank you" post because the information I share is information that I live and breathe. It feels great to find myself on the other side of the post)

ACDSee can arrange/name by date/time, and Windows can too, if you sort by name, CTRL+A for all, then right click the first, choose rename. Forgotten how to do this on Apple.

Also be sure that any firewire card you get has an OHCI (open host controller interface) rating, or you'll have a hard time regardless of the NLE you use. http://www.vasst.com/article.aspx?id=cdd50a62-9261-4e64-a26c-fb0ce9c1c478&type=1 has a brief discussion if you don't know the "whys."

You can take a still via their IR remote, but I'm not sure if you could make a LANC that would do this for you. There is only a small advantage to actually taking a still vs extracting a still from your NLE, but if you're not using an NLE...then I guess you'd need the still, eh?

\ Color: -2 Exposure: Sand/snow Zoom:All the way wide, and then slightly zoomed in. This not only eliminates vignetting, but also allows the sensor to see F4 or wider, which is VERY important in small chip camcorders. Steadishot: On The HC3 does offer a 45 degree field of view, so it *almost* eliminates the need for W/A adapter. The Sony .7 is a pretty good lens; gaff it to the cam. Be sure to gaff the previewscreen shut, with only a small 1" piece of gaffers tape, the screen still opened in flight. Oops.