2004 Olympics DVDs

[Zilverzmurfen]

Eric, providing it would be available in PAL I'd be interested in the Womens Individual Épée.

*sits back and awaits the growing request*

[edew]

I got the DVDs back from the duplication shop. Some bad news:

1) They got a mix up and duped the MFI as MST. Ok, so they don't know enough of fencing (or German) to distinguish one from the other. I will have to re-do them.

2) The MFI had a problem at 5-5 in the gold medal bout. On the original disk, it froze (and on my computer, it immediately shut down the application and was spit out of the CD-ROM drive). In this case, it just froze. So there appears to be a problem with the disk.

Sabreur, if you read this, please make a dupe of MFI (and the others I've written to you about) from your original stash and let's see if things work better this time.

MSI is all right. Has two prelim bouts (Lee vs Podz, Couvaliu vs Nemzsik) both semi-final bouts and the bronze and gold. Six bouts. Not bad.

As for quality, it's broadcast quality with good footage, camera angles, slo-mo and scores printed up. The prelims are good in that you can see the ref make the hand gestures to see how the action was called. (In the Lee vs Podz bout, unless Ivan got single lights or very clear touches, he wasn't getting anything. It seemed like there was no way Podz could lose that bout unless there were 15 one-lights for Ivan.)

In a nutshell, copies of some of these may take another week or so. Some of them might not be available for me to bring to Chattanooga. Those who were planning on picking them up there, please email me you address in case I have to mail some of them. I would rather send the complete ordered set at one time so I don't lose track of what a person has received or plan to receive. (Look, I'm not netflix here, just some schlub with a box full of DVDs.)

[edew]

Just to reiterate, for those who've sent in an order and for those who are planning to send one in:

Several disks are bad, usually just at the best part (last few touches of the gold medal bout/match, but some occur earlier). Will need new ones to replace. That will take several weeks to obtain. After that, several more days to make the dupes. I will most definitely NOT be able to bring anything other than WSI/MEI to Chattanooga. I personally would rather not send disks piecemeal to people. I will just forget what I've sent or not sent. So hang on for a while.

I can't even ship the bad ones, as the duplication company wants the disks back (perhaps to claim as defective for expenses).

[whtouche]

To clarify?
In your previous post you said MSI was Ok, but now only WSI and MEI are Ok?

What I'm really curious about I guess is: are the MSI discs defective as well, and will I have to wait another few weeks to get it?
I'm perfectly Ok doing this, I really appreciate what I see as a service that you're providing. Just like to know when approximately to expect it.

[blue_falcon]

Originally Posted by edew

Forgot to mention:

Additional disks that I have, but am waiting to decide whether to make duplicates from are:

* Women's Epee Individuals (semis and finals)

* Women's Team Epee (featuring the Canadian team -- unfortunately, getting spanked by the French team; the German/France match with Duplitzer defeating Flessel-Colovic in overtime, very exciting)

* Women's Foil Individual (semis and finals)

* Men's Team Epee

* Men's Team Foil (did that Hungarian referee make bad calls? You make the call...; also see the flying Tiomkin attack against Ganeev [resulted in a yellow card, though] I did wonder why they put Jed as anchor.)
Women's Epee Individuals, preliminaries and quarter-finals (guess Women's epee is exciting in Germany, but that's probably because of Britta Heidemannn).

If people clamor with interest for these disks, I will make dupes of them as well.

I, for one, would be greatly interested in the Women's Epee Individuals -- at all levels (prelims, quarter-finals, etc.). I'd also buy (if it was available) the Women's Team Epee (again at all levels), the Men's Team Epee and the Men's Epee Individuals. Let me know when the Women's Epee DVDs are available and I'll put in my order then.

[edew]

I went through the whole set. Only the WSI/MEI, MET, MFT disks are defect-free. All others end somewhere around the gold medal bout/match at the worse possible time. I had recall seeing the gold medal bout Montano and Nemcsik to conclusion, but that's not the case. Maybe I saw the clip from somewhere else.

In any case, I will need to get replacements for the following:
MSI, MFI, MST, WFI, WET.

The MET is also only about an hour long and has men's gymnastics afterwards. They also drop the middle five or six bouts of the gold medal match between France and Hungary.

According to the duplicating house, DVD-Rs are very finicky. A little scratch or whatever and it's broken. I'll see what I can do. I think VHSs still have a life around until they can make recordable disks with better error correction.

[Inquartata]

Originally Posted by edew

According to the duplicating house, DVD-Rs are very finicky. A little scratch or whatever and it's broken.

Another reason ( after not owning a DVD player ) why I wish that you ( or someone ) were doing tapes still, instead of ONLY DVDs.

Yet a third reason is this:

MSI is all right. Has two prelim bouts (Lee vs Podz, Couvaliu vs Nemzsik) both semi-final bouts and the bronze and gold. Six bouts. Not bad.

Six bouts?! The tapes you put out a couple of years ago had a LOT more than six bouts on them. Is this all that will fit on a DVD? If so, with the fragility of the things why on earth did they supplant videotape as the medium of choice?




I'll see what I can do. I think VHSs still have a life around until they can make recordable disks with better error correction.[/quote]

[edew]

Originally Posted by Inquartata

Another reason ( after not owning a DVD player ) why I wish that you ( or someone ) were doing tapes still, instead of ONLY DVDs.

Yet a third reason is this:



Six bouts?! The tapes you put out a couple of years ago had a LOT more than six bouts on them. Is this all that will fit on a DVD? If so, with the fragility of the things why on earth did they supplant videotape as the medium of choice?


I'll see what I can do. I think VHSs still have a life around until they can make recordable disks with better error correction.

[/quote]

The 2000 Olympics had both semifinals, bronze, gold and both bronze and gold medal team matches all on one tape. But it was also $25.00 (approx twice what I'm charging). Also, unlike tapes, I don't have the luxury (yet) to edit or combines portions from one disk with portions from another. I'm sure if I have the luxury to delete filler scenes (no commercials, for the most part, but a lot of unnecessary panning of the audience and celebratory depictions and whatnots).

I can't even make chapter headings on the DVD, although the duplication house automatically inserts chapter headings at every 5 or 10 minutes.

[mackillian]

I just wanted to throw in another thanks for doing this.

[edew]

I recently received a package from Peter G (from Sweden) with more Olympics coverage. This package is in the form of VHS videotapes, and certainly has plenty of overlaps with the DVDs from Sabreur, it has some footage not included in the DVD versions. I'm just going over them at the moment.

Good news: they're videotapes, so there's never any bad bits to cause the disk to auto-quit the application (or stall in a set-top box).

Bad news: there's lots of dead time. The MSI has just the end of a semifinal and then the bronze and gold. All for about 55 minutes. Then, 25 minutes of dead-time (says, need confirmation key to receive signal or something like that...in English), then it's boxing. I didn't bother to FF through to see if there's more fencing.

Good news: WSI includes the semi-finals btw Zagunis and Gheorgitioia, and Tan and Jacobson.

Even better news: The WSI tape includes the semi-finals in MEI and while the Fischer/Boisse bout starts off at 1:00 into the first period, it's complete. The fencing there is very good. Even non epeeists will enjoy the tense, drawn out drama of that bout. Fischer is certainly trying to make no mistakes like he did in Sydney, in order to get into the semi-finals. You can just see him shake that monkey off his back when he scores a very nifty back-heel shot for the winning touch.

Great news: The Wang Kolobkov semi-final bout in epee. This is just one amazing bout. Here's Lei Wang, some overweight-looking guy (think chinese version of Doug Thisthleswaite) but nimble as Jackie Chan. He takes a smackdown on Kolobkov like you've never seen. Starts off 4-0 on Kolobkov with some serious cans of whup'***. And continues there with amazing beat-down on Pavel. The final was 15-10, but that has no relationship on the dominance of Wang over Kolobkov. Pavel was rolled up and smoked. I would highly recommend everyone get whatever tape or DVD that has this. You will not believe the fencing on it. Unfortunately for us, the tape has the "need confirmation key to receive signal" message just as they go for the final point, a double-touch. But, there's plenty of instant replays to include in it.

I will edit the videotapes (which I can't do with the DVDs) to remove the dead-times, combine the sabers together, move the epees together and so on. I think people prefer to see just saber or just epee (and just foil) rather than see what happened that day.

I will also put them on DVDs because if I ever have to re-produce them, the fidelity will remain. The duplication company should be able to dupe them onto DVDs. Don't know the charge at the moment for VHS->DVD transfer. Probably the same $50/disk mastering and the $10 or whatever I quoted for DVD duplication.

Get the MEI and watch that Wang/Kolobkov bout.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

Originally Posted by edew

I recently received a package from Peter G (from Sweden) with more Olympics coverage.

Bad news: there's lots of dead time. The MSI has just the end of a semifinal and then the bronze and gold. All for about 55 minutes. Then, 25 minutes of dead-time (says, need confirmation key to receive signal or something like that...in English), then it's boxing. I didn't bother to FF through to see if there's more fencing.

I had reason to beleive that the fencing would start, stop and restart at unexpected times, so I let the tape run. Once Eric has edited everything, this will not be an issue anyway.

Eric: what did you think about the Challenge Bernadotte coverage?


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson

[edew]

Haven't seen the Challenge Bernadotte yet. Just got through two tapes so far.

[Mauler]

Any updates on what's going on with the Olympic DVDs?

[edew]

Funny you should ask. I just received in the mail today the replacement disks from Sabreur. So far, MST and MSI are not corrupted. Checking on the other disks.

I'll bring them in for duplication and replacement of the prior duplicates (hopefully, I won't be charged for the replacement...).

Should be able to send out disks to people by the start of next week.