RichM

I managed to capture NTSC using Pinnacles DV Tools - I was using a DV500+ capture card at the time. I found the only way was to use the following order exactly: Set camera settings to to NTSC 4.43 Playback (I use a PC100E) Start the camera playing the NTSC footage (it must start and be playing NTSC footage) Start DVTools, set the capture settings to NTSC capture Capture the playing footage Any variation of order and the capture would fail, and require a system reboot before it would work again. I hope this helps. Rich M

Fine for me too. In windows right click and select save as. Rich M

Thans Kris, I didn't know it did that. *sigh* I should RTFM I guess Rich M

I use a .5 with no vignette and the distortion is only really apparent with straight lines at the edge that are slightly warped Rich M

Ive tried NTSC to PAL conversion and gave up, its a nightmare. There's kit you can buy (rent?) that will do it, but there is no easy way. Good luck Rich M

I'm a boob man, all shapes and sizes, I love them all Rich M

220 ish, about 30 as SL instructor, some RW video work, but most paid for by a fat redundancy cheque. Which is now spent, and I'm skint again :) Rich M

I stashed a 120 sabre on my warddrobe for a full year while becoming familiar with my 135 sabre. Rich M

Get a solid briefing from another TM before you do :) Rich M

Damn, that sux. Rich M

Awesome, humbling, warming, you touch me across the ether. I wish you well for the future. Rich M

Ditto, if I were you I spend some time with a rigger analysing your check procedure, because it clearly isn't working. Rich M

Man that's a scream, they'd have probably whipped him :) A few years ago they had a new Minister for Sport on the island, and he was new to the island. Early one morning in practise week he reversed a bloody great dumper on the road during closed roads while practise was on, luckily he didn't kill anyone, but they fined him quite a bit. Jeez, what a dork, how can you be Minister for Sport on the IOM and not know about the TT. hehe Rich M

That's a bitch. My year of racing burned it out of me, I don't have a bike anymore, and don't particularly feel the need. Skydiving is way safer Mad Sunday is a good day to find a pub on the circuit and watch the nutters going round the track. About 11 miles of circuit over the mountain is made one way, and there are no speed limits on most of that. It can be fast and furious and exhilirating, but it isn't because you're about 5 abreast all the way, hardly anyone knows how to go round corners properly, and they let coaches and grannies in 4x4s drive round at 20mph. Silly sods I took a 500cc softtail chop over there one year and had a ball with pretty boys in colour matched leathers and pristine knee sliders sitting on the lastest Jap missile by screaming round them on the outside of corners with my wife on the back *sigh* Fond memories

Treat yourself, you won't regret it Rich M

Hehe, don't forget the very solid telegraph poles and dry stone walls :) And it 37.75 miles of twisty country roads so you've gotta be really sure which way the next corner goes before you barrel into this one :) Over 10 years I did about 150 real laps, in the last 3 years I did an additional 250 laps watching a 22 minute video of a Joey Dunlop lap so I could learn the circuit in the weeks prior to going out; I knew the circuit better than at least 30% of the racers Love the place, the racing and the atmosphere, it kicks. Rich M

That's a new phrase on me Rob, what's a 3 of 3's check? Rich M

I raced motorbikes at club level for a year until I was introduced to skydiving - couldn't afford to do them both :) I got more adrenaline from motorbike racing but I hated getting up early and all the spannering that goes into it during the week. For example: you have to change the front brake fluid after every meeting, it just boils up and turns to spongey shit after a meet. But it was awesome. I went to watch the TT 10 years running. Me and a mate, several times during the 10 day hol, would stay sober and sleep at 9pm so that we could get up at 0430 and have a couple of laps on an empty circuit with no speed cameras, ignoring all the traffic lights and speed ristrictions. It was awesome. I clocked a 27 min lap on an FZR250 at my peak, and if you know the TT circuit you will know that is fucking good :) After that I took it to the race track - I was too fast on the roads for safety. Now I skydive! What else is there :) Rich M

That was a good friend of mine. He was jumping camera and the video is awesome and very scary. He dropped quite a few floors with his semi collapsed canopy rubbing against the building, then managed to kick off and the canopy twisted away and reinflated. He was bruised and cut but physically ok. Rich M

Of course the same advice can(and should) be applied to all jumps. Gotta disagree with this one. It depends on where you're at in term of experience and currency. You can expect CReW dogs to be reasonably experienced skydivers and more capable than most of dealing with mals as they are desperately trying to mal each other on every jump You tell a student or a 19 jump skydiver to wait to be stable before they deploy and some will wait until the end of their life. 1. Pull 2. Pull at a safe altitude 3. Pull stable Rich M

I'm glad you're here with us to share your story. I would be careful about what stage in your skydiving career you start moving toward thinking about situations rather than just doing the drills. During all this line entanglement and sorting out (which you did well) did you look at your alti at all, and what did it read when you looked at and what were you doing at the time. If you don't know then you were not altitude aware during the malfunction and you need to ask yourself if you are 100% confident you will be altitude aware in the next. Too many people have fought mals into the ground and got badly hurt or killed because they didn't check their alti while trying to deal with the situation. There will come a time when you can start to seperate out different situations, the most basic one is the difference between a low speed mal and a high speed mal. In high speed mals (total, pc in tow, bag lock, etc) you have only seconds to decide and act, but in low speed mals (line over, minor canopy damage) you have much longer. When you are capable of differentiating and dealing with situations appropriately will differ from individual to individual, but I would suggest that at 19 jumps you have a lot more jumps to do before you should consider detailed analysis of a mal situation. Well done for dealing with this one quickly and successfully, I'll have a beer tonight (virtually) with you :) Rich M

If you're buying a container and know yuo will want to downsize in the future get a container one size smaller than your current main. Your current main will fit in it. And then you can downsize with no problems, and later downsize again if you want all on the same container. But generally speaking I agree with the others in that most containers can take the next size up and down without problems. Rich M

A simple way would be to stick the DVD in a computer player, pause the player on the frame you require, take a snapshot of it either using the player options or by pressing CTRL & PRT SCRN which will copy it to the clipboard on a Windows machine. You can then paste it into Photoshop and make it a negative. If you want hardcopy transparency just print it to capable printer, or if you need an alpha channel for video editing convert the image to a 256 greyscale and import it as a transparency layer into what ever software you are using that needs it. A more accurate method for locating the source frame would be import the MPEG2 stream from the DVD into an editor capable of editing native MPEG2, but I'm guessing this is not available to you else you probably wouldn't be asking :) Hope that helps. Rich M

Ive jumped choppers and balloons and Ive never had the falling sensation on any jump. The balloon jumps were the biggest thrill since skydive #1 though as its totally quiet and still and its even scary to climb on the outside of the cage. A BASE friend of mine on the same jump said its as close as you can get to BASE without actually doing it. I gotta do that someday Rich M

That sounds like a shaft setup.. not sure, but i'm interested in finding out what happens :) And seeing the video Rich M