Heya, had my first attempt at making a video of a caving trip and it's hosted on the google video service @ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5268087450874878181&q=caving

It's the 4th Caving video now online up there now and think they are all a little odd but worth a look anyway.

From a technical point I know the filming is pretty rubbish. It was recorded on an old analogue camcorder hence the large amount of compression artefacts as it's be re-encoded about 4 times now. For light we brought a 3.5million candle power torch with 2 reflectors down but the charge had disapated within a couple of days and it didn't take long for the light to be comparable to that of a normal headlite halogen. The bulk of the light was done with a tikka xp which I don't think has done too badly.[/url]

Cool video, shame about the picture quility but good edits and music otherwise grunting and swearing your way though doesnt look pritty on camera. I'm planning on some video syste, to mount on the helmet using a bullet camera to feed a digital camera.

Good video, quite enjoyed watching it.

What kit did you use to film with ?

Stu.

I think the picture quality is particularly bad when viewed through google because of the compression they use to view it, but seeing how it's only been online a little over 24 hours and has already been watched over 100 times i can see why they would want the file as small as possible. I can't be mean about them though as they do provide a link to download the whole 64mb mp4 file.

On a side note if anyone does do any video-ing I'd really recommend uploading it with google video. They have a scheme where you can set a price for people to pay to watch your video and you get a cut of the money. I'm always walking into the popular caving shops and seeing caving videos on DVD i'd like to see, but being a poor student I'm reluctant to pay £16 for them. With no distribution costs the price could be much cheaper and I'd be much more inclined to pay. Just my $0.02.

Does anyone know any other links to videos about caving online? I haven't come across many.

As for mounting a helmet system wouldn't you have real problems with steam and it's tendency to rise and it's proximity to your mouth? Either way it sounds like a fun project.

If you're going to break the party size limit it's usually a good idea not to film yourself doing it!

To film I used an old Sony Hi8 Camcorder liberated from parents as it hasn't been used in over a year. Half way through the trip I remembered it has a lamp on it which worked pretty well.

Once back in the comfort of my home it got converted to digital with a USB dongle to MPEG. Then transferred to my mac mini (which doesn't support said dongle) then converted to MOV so imovie could recognise it. Then after editing was re-encoded to mp4 before being re-encoded again by google.

As for the party size limit we read it was four, that was all we had down little crapnel while the other four went across the field to the other one... hence the ladders.

Well done on the video and the choice of music. It made it have a real adventure feel.

Reminds me - we've got some good stuff on vid - will have to dig it out. no pun intended

Beer said:

Heya, had my first attempt at making a video of a caving trip and it's hosted on the google video service @ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5268087450874878181&q=caving

It's the 4th Caving video now online up there now and think they are all a little odd but worth a look anyway.

From a technical point I know the filming is pretty rubbish. It was recorded on an old analogue camcorder hence the large amount of compression artefacts as it's be re-encoded about 4 times now. For light we brought a 3.5million candle power torch with 2 reflectors down but the charge had disapated within a couple of days and it didn't take long for the light to be comparable to that of a normal headlite halogen. The bulk of the light was done with a tikka xp which I don't think has done too badly.[/url]

Click to expand...

All I get from that is I get redirected to www.google.co.uk it obviously works for some. I've been able to access vider.google.com in the past any ideas anyone?

... my apologies