Very very nice video, i love it!
id say it was amazing, but 20 people before me already have 
please dont listen to jag, keep making these compilations! im not sure people realize how hard the stuff is that you do because so many of your obstacles seem to flex or bounce (i.e. the metal flexible rail with the large cyclinder at the end, the suspension bridge at the playground, etc)
i believe you improve faster than just about anyone else on the forums. every clip you’re doing something new and more amazing than the last. note to kris and ryan: watch out 
-grant
Re: Andrew’s 8 minute movie…
I’m not sure about this, but that feature is probably there for TV watching. I’m not an expert here, but it provides a picture that will work on both TV formats. My 16:9 TV cuts off the top and bottom for widescreen stuff (I think that’s how it works). But your project is obviously way too compressed for TV anyway, so it should be possible to make it without the unneeded black bars.
I just wanted to make a comment about somebody commenting on somebody else’s comments. Sorry Jagur. If you don’t want to get quoted, your best bet is to not post stuff worth quoting. But how fun would that be?
Now to download this new vid and give it a watch…
I really like the contrast with the “it’s a wonderful world” skinny riding. That was sweet.
Have you tried compressing into DIVX (.avi) and getting the LAME mp3 codec for sound? Both codecs are free, and I get a pretty lossless 10:1 compression with them.
Great stuff. I think I had only seen about 1/3 of your mini-movies.
Love the Satchmo.
listen to me about what? a Godzilla movie? i never said stop making vids.
That was really terrific. How do you do that? I really liked the last section with the rail riding. Great photo composition on the very ending shot.
Andrew, I was also really impressed with your riding. Amazing. It did bring to mind a few questions:
- How long have you been riding for?
- How many hours per week do you spend riding/practicing?
- How much difference is there between riding a trials uni versus a muni for over the top riding like you do?
Thanks, and keep up the great work!
Duuuuude, It’s A Wonderful World is totally the song that I’M going to use in MY movie!!
copier.
Very enjoyabloe video and great music. So many of the vids have high energy and youth oriented music. Your music choice is a refreshing change. I like the mood change (music) when you do all the rail riding at the end. Fits well.
When I grow up I want to be able to ride like you. Oh, wait a minute, I am grown up!? Bummer. Some of those skills I will never learn since I need to respect the aging process that has slowed down my body a bit. Especially the part about healing slower. Your graphic at the end of the vid proves my point. But you still inspire me to work on my riding more.
Thanks. And yes, it is a wonderful world… Oh yeah! 
Bill
the editing is TIGHT!!!
and wow! You have your own logo!!
of course the ridding is also the coolest but that’s to be expected whne watching one of your vids!
bjornthegreat,
Lots of people will disagree with me on this one, but I find knee and shin guards and gloves to be much more necessary than a helmet (although I still usually wear a helmet). Sharp pinned pedals in the legs really hurt and leave scars.
Sam,
I knew I forgot something! The first song is “Bullethead” by the Charlie Hunter Trio, the second is “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong.
Pat,
They’re both great bands/artists aren’t they! The drum solo in the first song was fun to edit to as well.
Steve,
No worries.
zod,
I wish I lived in Canada!
brockfisher05,
I don’t think I’m anywhere near there yet. I would love to go riding with those greats though…Unicon’s coming to Australia in 2010!
gasmaster,
Another thing I forgot to credit. 
That fantastic cartoon was drawn by Greg (Kayote on the forums). See this thread - http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36557&perpage=15&highlight=faceplant&pagenumber=2
Grant,
Thanks, yeah those two lines you mentioned were particularly difficult for me…but good fun. A wobbly obstacle adds so much more to a trials line!
John,
I’ll keep trying, I’ve only had the program for a couple of days so I’ll most likely figure something out eventually.
Seager,
Thanks a lot for the compression suggestions, I’ll have to play around with it. The high res .avi file is 1.82GB, it’s amazing that as you say I may be able to get that down to about 200MB still looking good. I did have a go with DivX and XVid compression but I haven’t yet figured out the settings.
Jagur,
Don’t worry, I didn’t read anything into it or take it the wrong way. When are you going to post another video of yourself doing muni? I really enjoyed that last one of yours.
One on one,
Thanks for noticing.
uni_bear,
- About 2.5 years (learnt on the 2nd of May, 2002)
- It varies hugely…in the holidays (now) maybe 5-10 hours a week usually in one of two 3-hour-ish trials rides and a 3-4 hour muni ride.
- It makes a HUGE difference for me. I’m terrable at trials on my muni which is what I used to do before I could afford my trials uni. I find rails on munis really challenging…good riders like Kris Holm obviously don’t (you’ll know what I mean if you’ve seen One Tired Guy, or any of his movies for that matter).
James_Potter,
Sorry.
Andrew
Whoa you two are reasonable people right? Then why are you jumping unreasonable conclusions? Jagur never said that the recycled footage was bad. He just said it reminded him of the godzilla movie. He also never said he disliked the godzilla movie either.
Andrew I was waiting for you to put all them together. It came out to be very good. The part where the scene changes to the music was great.
Andrew,
.avi in raw form is uncompressed (hence the 1.82 gigs) It’s the simplest media (as far as I know) and is basically streaming jpegs with uncompressed audio. From what I can tell the DIVX style codecs simply optomize the jpegs and and the streaming procedures, and then the you run the audio through MP3 compression. (probably is uncompressed otherwise in an avi).
Someone else could probably nitpick my explanation, but the results are good reguardless of why it works. Check out this thread: AVI to DivX Conversion Guide | Articles - Digital Digest for a really good tutorial. Ideally you should be able to use your existing program once you have the codecs installed instead of the suggested Virtualdub (which is what I use and have great results with). Divx.com has a good tutorial for how to use their codec, and the lame mp3 codec is really simple.
It’s the compression of choice for large video files. If were to say, backup a DVD you own by downloading the movie from the internet, you can be sure it’d be compressed in DIVX instead of .wmv.
ooops sorry jagur and tim, i misinterpreted what jag said. i withdraw my comment
-grant
Mine stays. I just don’t agree that it is unreasonable to conclude that his original comment was anything but a critique. And my point was while I’d acknowledge that some of the footage has been posted and seen before, it didn’t lessen the coolness of the movie for me now that all those clips have been put together.
I thought it was GREAT, a comment which hopefully isn’t subject to any mis-interpretation.
I had the DivX Pro codec but it needed a serial number. So today I followed your links and downloaded the DivX Pro Trial codec. Does DivX only really work for the better quality stuff? I saved a 13MB version using DivX with a bitrate of 150 and still preferred the .wmv that I have posted. They were both 320x240 also, I reduced it and deinterlaced it with VirtualDub. So is DivX only good for the higher bitrates? How high will I have to go for an almost lossless-looking movie? Should I be playing around with anything other than bitrate?
Does anyone know of a way to put a 100MB or so version of the movie up here at unicyclist.com? I have seen files that big here haven’t I?
Thanks,
Andrew
I use the completely free standard divx codec at http://www.divx.com/divx/download/ . Virtualdub and any other program should notice it’s installed for encoding as well as decoding once you have it installed. I just checked to see what I usually encode with and I use a bitrate of 780, apparently. I compressed a 95meg movie down to 11 megs with this bitrate and the using the mpeg layer-3 codec for sound (should show up in virtualdub once you have lame installed). The videos I was compressing were 640x480 and 15 frames per second. You COULD try playing with your framerate, but that may make your video choppy. As for the other divx options, I don’t know 'cause they aren’t really options in the free version I use. Their site gives a pretty good tutorial, however.
Maybe use wmv for your low res versions and divx for your higher res? I swear divx should work better than wmv for both, but my knowledge is limited. I don’t know anything more than what I’ve already said. Sorry.
As for hosting the file, if you have a good connection at your house and static IP consider installing your own FTP server (something like warftp) and hosting it yourself.
Either way, keep playing around. I look forward to seeing your kickass videos in high def and 6.1 surround sound in the near future. (Have you considered recording in IMAX?)
I believe there have been recent problems with the gallery here choking on files over 15MB. If you need a fast server for a larger file I’d be glad to host it. We have a dedicated server set up for our game company and don’t use anywhere near the bandwidth quota (and won’t for at least a year or two).
i dont know… i havent rode off the pavment for 3 months or since the 2004 muni week-end, i think its been about 3 months.
ive been riding my street 26er from point a to point b mostly and a little freestyle in front of the house but the muni thing just got old.