Hi there! You probably haven't hear much from lil'ol'me in a while since M8. However, I am STILL working on trying to get this DVD done. Yes, I am six weeks late in getting it finished, but I have unavoidable reasons as to why I am late. No, I won't go into them now.

However,

Here's the progress report.

The first half of the DVD has been rendered and an experimental copy burned to DVD. The second half that covers the Sunday eliminations is still in progress. I have edited, mixed, cropped, and synchronized all but the last eight races. Some of the racing action is covered by four different camera angles, so it is taking me between one hour and ninety minutes to edit each minute of footage.

The stuff that is done is unbelieveably cool to watch, and I have to keep shooing my three year-old out of my office each time the multimedia speakers roar with the sound of the V8's leaving the starting line. He's hooked, I tell you!

I hope to have the whole DVD project wrapped up by Christmas, at which time I will burn preview copies for all folks that pre-paid for their DVD's. After that, I will create the artwork necessary for packaging, make any necessary editing changes (including the addition of some M8 footage) , then send off the production copy to a production house to have fifty copies made. Full production copies will also be sent to all people that pre-paid for the DVD.

My sincerest apologies for the excruciating amount of time this project has taken. I've learned that video editing software that costs less than $300 is only suited for making simple home videos, not projects with nearly 600 scenes & transitions.

I've been spanked soundly by Pinnacle.

I do have a some preview videos on my website: They are low-bandwidth, low-quality, but show a little bit of what the video may look like. My favorite piece so far is this one:

Quick 16 Round 2 race action

Hope that helps clear things up,

--Dan Burk

 

>WHEW<

I've just finished the edit of all races except quick 16 final elimination, where Hancock blows his engine while trying to keep Hurst behind him.

Is it just me, or does it seem the nitrous engines like to let go in final eliminations when running pro-tree? Are these guys unscrewing their nitrous jets and leaving them in their toolbox, or something? It sure makes for an exciting show though, to be sure!

 

Hmm.. Perhaps we'll do an M9 DVD? I certainly will be tempted! I've just got this little 'problem'of having three little kids (#1 son is a special needs kid) that I need to cart around nearly everywhere: It really ties me down, making it hard to go places outside of my town. That's why I can only make it to one, perhaps two automotive events per year.

Next year I'd like to do a Memphis event, or perhaps the T/A Nationals.

 

Dan, The list event is in Indy this year as it was last year. Not a bad drive at all. June 3-5th 2004.

 

If Taner doesn't mind, can you post the in-car video of his run? I wanna see what the tan-man sees when he's blasting down the track ripping gears.

 

Glad to here things are coming together. There's some footage in there that I'm looking forward too.

Rick

 

Trust me Rick,
there's PLENTY of footage of you and you car that you'll want to see!

Same with Al, Taner, the Bamfords, Craig Fountain, John Hurst, Matt Cybalski, and anyone else who was involved in the actual eliminations.

By the way, there is already some of Taner's in-car footage on the internet, as well as one of Mike Bamford's runs, Scott Koresky, and Craig Fountain.

Here's the links:
Taner's in-car video of a 10.1 second run

Race 5 of the Quick 16: Dave Katt versus Scott Karesky

Dave Bamford's Grand National

Craig's holding class on how to be a burnout showman HERE

 

The DVD project has some good news / bad news:

Good news: I finished 16 of the 17 segments of the Nationals part of the DVD for a total of about 72 minutes. I still need to capture and edit some M8 footage that I have.

Bad news: I had to buy another 120 GB hard drive as my current one is FULL and I need a good 47 GB to render the whole project as a full-tilt DVD.

I'm hoping to have the hard drive installed tomorrow so that I can assemble the segments, add the final edits(music dubs mostly), render, then cut a DVD (without menus) to test the whole thing.

 

I was wondering how much disk this monster was eating up.

Rick

 

I'm not sure how long it'll take to fully render the whole thing, but I would hazard a guess at approximately eight hours of rendering time, then 30 minutes to burn a copy of the disc. That's why I plan on sending it off to a production house once I have it finished. They'll rip fifty copies and have them back to me within a week.

--Dan

 

keep us posted! how soon will they be available.... do you estimate?

 

Well, I started the day expecting to have four good hours to work on the project, but my son was having one of his bad days, so I didn't get started until 10:45 PM. The new hard drive is installed, and 4% formatted: probably will just hang it up for the night.

My plans ALWAYS have to take second place to the health and welfare of my family, which makes it hard for me to gage time frames. I'm not going to explain it in an open forum like this, though. However, here's the tenative plans:

I wish to have the project rendered into a menu-less DVD by the end of the week, and the first draft copy cut by Sunday. Then, by the following weekend (January 4?) I want to have the menus and chapters added. I'll then burn copies for all pre-paid customers (without M8 footage) and send them out.

After that, I will edit in the M8 footage, re-compile, get the artwork done (I may need some help with that), and send it out to the production shop.

If all goes smoothly, we are looking at disks for the masses by the second or third week in January. I am so, so sorry that it has taken this long. It's been a tremendous learning curve, and I'm not expecting to make much, if anything, on the deal. I've spent about $4K on hardware to make it happen, along with a couple hundred hours.

I bought the equipment for another project, but it fell through, teaching me an expensive lesson on how you MUST SECURE a hefty deposit from the customer before ordering the equipment.

 

I stayed up to 2:30 AM, and it looks like it's going to work! I'm outputting a MiniDV tape version of show right now, and it's looking pretty darned good! Of course, since I've watched this footage about 200 times already, it's going to take someone who hasn't seen it before to give me a real opinion on it.

Now I just need to add credits, and DVD menus to finish it up.

Total length is 72 minutes, without the M8 stuff I have. I'll be adding M8 excerpts as a separate menu item, kind of a 'special features' thing.

 

Way to go Dan!!!!!!!!

 

Awesome Dan.

How did the footage from Taners car turn out? I hope i didnt mess any of it up when i was starting and stopping the recorder?