Olympic Fencing Tapes

[edew]

I am almost done editing the tapes I received from Peter G of Sweden. I should have 5 2-hour tapes, one for each weapon. I think only men's sabre is totally complete with the two semi-final bouts, the bronze and gold-medal bouts, and both the bronze and gold team bouts. The women's foil includes the USA vs Germany bronze medal bout (minus the crucial last two minutes.

I have yet to edit the men's epee. There are 2.5 individual bouts plus some of the bronze team and all of the gold team match.

Incidentally, epee does not take any more time on tape than foil or sabre. True, there's not as much action in epee as in foil or sabre, but any action results in a point against someone, and no action kills the time, so a three minute period takes about 4 minutes gross time.

I will post information about how to get copies of the tapes. I'm anticipating $25/tape.

[Stryder]

Great news!
But no mention of our Cliffy or any less important Men's foil bouts?
And what happened to the last two minutes of Women's foil?

[edew]

Men's foil consisted of the bronze medal bout between Ferrari and Chevtchenko, and then the gold between Bissdorf and Kim, then the bronze team match between Italy and Poland, and then part of the gold team match between China and France.

The tapes end abruptly because of some taping/transmission problem on the Swedish end of things. I did not exclude anything between a "ready...fence" and "halt!".

I guess the difference between US broadcasts of shows and European broadcasts is that US broadcasts are more dependable, while the Euro broadcasts are more commercial free (Peter G basically stuck a 4-hour tape into the VCR, set it to start at a particular time, and that's it. The result is 30 seconds of commercial at the beginning, and then 4 hours of non-stop sports coverage. Very hard at first to edit out things.)

[Lumberg]

You may run into legal problems. FencingFootage.com is working something out with the USFA in order to get Olympic footage on tape because you are selling for profit.

[edew]

What profit am I making. I spell out how much I am spending and how much I am charging. I guess I might make $0.50-0.75
per tape by rounding up the numbers, but the amount of time I take in packaging the boxes with tapes is hardly made up with that amount of "profit".

I'm just providing a service to those who want to see Olympic fencing taped by professional television broadcasters (Eurosport).

I just don't want to take a bath while providing the service (nor does Peter Gustafsson, who provided me with the tapes; he paid handsomely for the digital subscription service, and should be recompensed for that).

[veeco]

I'm not sure Fencing Footage is not selling for profit either.

I don't see what the problem is with those tapes. Furthermore, Fencing Footage is serving a different purpose to my mind since they are selling *amateur* video tapes of events. Those tapes were made by professionals and are just a recording of a TV show. Totally different thing.

[damianip]

Actually, I think that FencingFootage is very much a for-profit company and therefore, has to be much more careful about what and how they sell. They do have some "professional tapes" in addition to their amateur stuff, but so far, I think it's all come through the USFA.

Eric, on the other hand, is probably netting about $.02 per hour on any money he might net after all the work he has put in.

Eric, maybe you can find a tax break in the loss you'll be taking to package and send out these tapes.


Paolo

[Lumberg]

Basically, you are redistributing a copyrighted television broadcast by Eurosport.
I doubt you will get sued.

------------------
Lumberg.
"...yeah...did you get the memo about the TPS reports?"

[edew]

I don't want to take a tax break because I don't think I can itemize how long it takes me to package the tapes (the most time consuming part), waiting at the Post Office to mail them, etc.

Please see new post about the availability of the tapes.