Friday, March 8, 2013

Everglades Challenge Friday Pre-start Lineup

The plan was to practice with kite cam on Friday to be ready to capture the race start early Saturday.  I set up a radio controlled pan and tilt rig for the kite cam GoPro with a live video feed down to a monitor on the beach.  This is gear I use on my FPV model airplanes and it worked well on the kite.  Winds were forecast to be from the north at near 20kn strength.  A bit much but the direction was perfect for flying the kite without risk of tangling with the masts on the beach. 

I have become convinced that the weather is always bad or at the very least uncooperative for the EC. For the last 3 years a very strong cold front has coincided with the race.  This year was no different.  To demonstrate how contrary the weather really is the wind died completely for the start of the race.  No wind, no kite flying so we did not get the start on video.  It was blowing 15-20 twenty minutes after the start.

This video was taken on Friday afternoon when all competitors were preparing for the dawn start the next day.  The winds were a bit turbulent coming off the trees so the video is real shaky but YouTube's stabilizer function makes it watchable.




  Some still captures from the video.

 
 
 
 

 
 
 


 
 
 




 
 
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10 comments:

  1. Jose J. RodriguezMarch 8, 2013 at 10:36 AM

    Great Simon!
    I hope that you get the start one of this days!
    Jose

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. SimonMarch 8, 2013 at 11:04 AM

      Thanks Jose, this was a good practice run. Hopefully the wind will cooperate next year. If not, maybe I'll switch to the whirligig.

      Delete
  2. UnknownMarch 8, 2013 at 6:31 PM

    Almost to kewl great video, Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownMarch 11, 2013 at 6:56 PM

    Just two questions.
    What creates the "pulsating earth effect"?
    And what is the backround music?

    ReplyDelete
  4. SimonMarch 11, 2013 at 8:55 PM

    The GoPro camera I use is very wide angle so it has a lot of lens distortion. The wind was quite turbulent coming off the trees so the camera was bouncing around a lot. I had to use YouTube's video stabilization function to make the video watchable. This function usually works well on video taken with low image distortion lenses that you find in most camcorders but breaks down on wide angle distorted video. The pulsating beach is an artifact of YouTube's stabilization algorythm not being able to handle the wide angle distorted GoPro video.

    Background song is "Sail" by Awolnation

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownMarch 15, 2013 at 12:56 PM

    Simon,

    Cool video. I met you as you were setting up for the shot. If possible, I'd like to use your clip in my personal video I am putting together for my effort on this trip. Any chance I can get you to share original files?

    Will "HammerStroke" Schaet

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. SimonMarch 15, 2013 at 7:59 PM

      Hi Will, you are welcome to use the clip. We have a couple options. I can give you the original version of what's on YouTube. This file is 4 min and 400 megabytes. It is not stabilized as I use YouTube's stabilizer function. Or I can give you the raw footage. This is a 34 min 3.8 gigabyte file. Google drive would probably be the easiest way to share either of these monster files.

      Delete
  6. UnknownMarch 15, 2013 at 10:17 PM

    As a video novice, I would think the smaller file would serve my purposes.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousJune 2, 2013 at 11:49 PM

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    ReplyDelete

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