Well, the forecast was crappy all weekend and Wahoo and I had already made the drive down to Wilmington and there was no way we were going to sit this one out. A couple of our dive buddies saw the forecast and decided that an all night ultimate frisbee session would be more fun than going spearfishing the next day :crazy:.......... However, we still had a great capitan on our side and braved the nasty 3-5.

We were greeted with good vis up to 70' at times and had lots of life on the wrecks. Barracudas were everywhere. I have never seen so many. Sharks were also abundant - sand tigers, sandbars and bulls. Wahoo and I began making drops to the deck to plug the first few unsuspecting groupers only to find that the groupers were hugging tight to the sides and lower decks - not up on top like they often are at the beginning of the day. I blew a few great opportunities and air balled a few more :slap:. Wahoo shot a nice grouper amidships and it promptly took his gear deep into the wreck. After some tugging the shaft came back empty.

We decided to make a short run to another wreck. I was the first in the water and as I was loading my third band, I see two sharks charging up from the bottom. I quickly grabbed the last band, but couldn't get it pulled in time - the sharks were coming fast. I got ready as they were flying up and sure enough, they didn't stop or turn. The lead shark came right at me and BAM - I had to hit him with my shaft. The two made several circles around me as I was calling for the boat. A few minutes later, a fishing boat near us caught a 7 footer.

We moved back to the original wreck with hopes that the grouper were happy again. I finally lined up a nice grouper hanging a few feet off of the port side and took the shot. He made a big arc away and back to the wreck as I was tearing for the surface. I thought I almost had him away from the structure when his arc ended up swinging right in between two steps on a staircase. I made it to the surface and started trying to jig him out from between the steps to no avail. I made a drop down my reel line and got ahold of the shaft while the grouper was going nuts and tried to get him out. I couldn't believe how the grouper managed to get through the steps because he was way bigger than the small gap. I had to resurface after working several angles. As I was turning up from the wreck, I saw a big bull coming in........needless to say, I eventually felt the huge tug from the bull taking off with my grouper and had to settle with a retrieved shaft.

All in all, it was rough and sharky but we still had a great time.

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rZxvs6MP9E

Nice post Kolt. Cool videos.

Cool stuff Kolt. I like when you shot the grouper right in front of the shark That is always such a rush:smthumbup:

Cool stuff Kolt. I like when you shot the grouper right in front of the shark That is always such a rush:smthumbup:

Especially when you didn't know the shark was there!

I uploaded the video on youtube and it is a little better quality than the photobucket video. I edited the first post with the youtube link. Here are a few stills from the video.

Great video!

Nice Kolt, enjoyed the vid.

Kolt,
You are absolutuley nuts, but definetely a stud. I respect you above all others, you are the man!

I respect you above all others...

Easy there bud... :D Not like I speared a 200# tuna off the back of a great white.:corkysm60:

Awesome! Bad ass video :toast:

how are you gonna say "bud". Its a compliment, don't down play it. Am I wrong, that story about the sharks ready to tear you apart was completely bad to the bone. And about the great white thing, you might here in a couple months down South in the New Zealand territory.

how are you gonna say "bud". Its a compliment, don't down play it. Am I wrong, that story about the sharks ready to tear you apart was completely bad to the bone. And about the great white thing, you might here in a couple months down South in the New Zealand territory.

I think the sharks were just checking me out (maybe they wanted to taste-test) but they were just checking a little too close.

Let's hope I never have any GW stories!

nice job on the video Kolt, great footage :toast:

nice video Kolt, too bad about the groupers, you'll get them next time, still looked like a lot of fun. how deep are those wrecks?

what fins are those? did you end up getting carbon (the picasso's??)

nice video Kolt, too bad about the groupers, you'll get them next time, still looked like a lot of fun. how deep are those wrecks?

what fins are those? did you end up getting carbon (the picasso's??)

Yep, those are the Picasso Carbon-Prene - sweet fins and they fit well with my socks :thumbup:. It's about 75+ to the sand in that area with several wrecks in the 45-60 range. We usually start out plugging the dumb groups right off the top, then you have to go deeper and work harder, but this time they were holding tight and very spooky. I learned a lot about hunting wrecks that day.

Very cool :toast:

Yep, those are the Picasso Carbon-Prene - sweet fins and they fit well with my socks :thumbup:. It's about 75+ to the sand in that area with several wrecks in the 45-60 range. We usually start out plugging the dumb groups right off the top, then you have to go deeper and work harder, but this time they were holding tight and very spooky. I learned a lot about hunting wrecks that day.


that's great, I'm glad that worked out, are they stiff? how do they compare to the 2000's?

cool, those are nice looking wrecks, except the shark part. Keep the reports coming.

that's great, I'm glad that worked out, are they stiff? how do they compare to the 2000's?

cool, those are nice looking wrecks, except the shark part. Keep the reports coming.

Although these are my first pair of carbon fins, I think they are fairly stiff for this type of fin, which is just fine. It takes a different finning stroke to get the most out of them for sure, but I could tell immediately that I was moving fast, up and down.

You know what Oto, I should have given you credit for those fins already - thanks for the awesome hook-up!:toast:

Nice. I like:ezpi_wink1:

Kolt,

How do you have the camera rigged and what kind of camera is it?

Never mind, I just saw the other thread, thanks for sharing.

Chad

Although these are my first pair of carbon fins, I think they are fairly stiff for this type of fin, which is just fine. It takes a different finning stroke to get the most out of them for sure, but I could tell immediately that I was moving fast, up and down.

You know what Oto, I should have given you credit for those fins already - thanks for the awesome hook-up!:toast:

don't mention it, no credit is needed, I'm happy a good deal didn't go to waste. I hope she gave you the same price she was giving me. It looked like you were moving pretty good in the video.

I'm getting my new C4 30s this week, looking forward to a new world of diving :smthumbup:

what kind of camera is it?

Canon SD600

awesome report and vid kolt. keep posting the goods.

jeep

Thanks for sharing the report and vid. Nice choice of music for the vid! Looks like NC is a place I'd like to visit, minus the shark part.

Canon SD600

Kolt, I use a similar camera, how big is the SD card in there? I think that you can get higher quality on your video footage by changing some settings, do you have it all set to the maximum? With a 2GB SD card I only get about 16 min. of footage but it is all high-quality.

Kolt, I use a similar camera, how big is the SD card in there? I think that you can get higher quality on your video footage by changing some settings, do you have it all set to the maximum? With a 2GB SD card I only get about 16 min. of footage but it is all high-quality.

My raw footage looks great (so does the edited video on my PC), but the uploaded videos don't :confused:. I'm shooting 60 frames/second and get about the same time on a 2 GB card.

Youtube compresses the shit out of an uploaded video to make the file size smaller. Watching the video on youtube does not give you an indication of the quality of the original video. If you want the uploaded video to look better you need to do the compression/transcoding yourself and then upload. It will still be compressed further but will look better.

I have to say again that I really liked the video. I'm not sure what it is about it as I have many spearfishing DVDs, maybe the fact that it's close to home, geographically and gear wise. I also like the missed shots, that keeps it real, and the sharks add another element.

I'm still playing around with the video quality. Thanks for the compliments on the video - this was my first time taking video underwater and my first time putting it together on the PC. I hope to get some good video this weekend, hopefully with bigger fish, less missed shots, and more complete coverage of the harvests. Stay tuned.

Youtube compresses the shit out of an uploaded video to make the file size smaller. Watching the video on youtube does not give you an indication of the quality of the original video. If you want the uploaded video to look better you need to do the compression/transcoding yourself and then upload. It will still be compressed further but will look better.

I have to say again that I really liked the video. I'm not sure what it is about it as I have many spearfishing DVDs, maybe the fact that it's close to home, geographically and gear wise. I also like the missed shots, that keeps it real, and the sharks add another element.


Youtube has their settings in flash set to 12fps, You will never see a quality video on Youtube. There was one site that was allowing 18fps on their video uploads but they went down due to the cost constraints to having that large a file downloaded so many times. Also Youtube has to compress so that it fits in the size window they allow, I dont' recall the actual dimenstions off the top of my head.

Great video btw, I was impressed with how you held the barrel of the gun so that you could see your ascent.
Were you using a breakaway or was that just the angle?

Youtube has their settings in flash set to 12fps, You will never see a quality video on Youtube. There was one site that was allowing 18fps on their video uploads but they went down due to the cost constraints to having that large a file downloaded so many times. Also Youtube has to compress so that it fits in the size window they allow, I dont' recall the actual dimenstions off the top of my head.

Great video btw, I was impressed with how you held the barrel of the gun so that you could see your ascent.
Were you using a breakaway or was that just the angle?

Reel gun - I recently switched to Bill McIntyre's preferred setup with the shooting line attached directly to the reel (not through the line anchor). So holding the gun vertical allows the line to play off the reel much easier - the cool shot was just a coincidence. The reason I didn't want to just swim up holding the handle was because I was trying to keep the grouper out of the wreck by holding and putting tension on the reel line. It didn't work though:mad:.

Kolt, you sent me this PM but I thought I would respond here as it might be useful for others:

My raw video: 88kbps, 320x240

Edited: saved as high quality - 3555kbps, 720x480


Here are simple things that will drastically improve the quality of the video:

shoot in 30 fps instead of 60, that is enough speed

choose a higher resolution for your video, 640x480 instead of 320x240, that will improve the quality A LOT! I know your camera has this option as I have the model just below yours (sd500) and it has it.

finally, don't save the video at any higher resolution than what you shot it at. if you shot it at 640x480 you can't possibly make it have more pixels as they just don't exist, so don't bother saving it with any more resolution than 640x480 and the correct fps that you shot it at. Saving it at an artificially high resolution will make the youtube compression not work right and you will lose a lot of the real pixels. You might even see an improvement if you save the video again at 320x240 and upload it again to youtube.

I hope that helps. If it does I expect to be mentioned somewhere in the credits on the next film :D

I'll check on improving the res. I actually saved the file as 320x240 and I beleive that is the one on YouTube. I have two other vids on there right now - both are raw video and have the same compression problems when viewed online.

finally, don't save the video at any higher resolution than what you shot it at. if you shot it at 640x480 you can't possibly make it have more pixels as they just don't exist, so don't bother saving it with any more resolution than 640x480 and the correct fps that you shot it at.I'll second that, save it as it was shot. Then for youtube it can be made somewhat smaller, and if you want to put it on DVD it can be properly transcoded to 720x480.choose a higher resolution for your video, 640x480 instead of 320x240, that will improve the quality A LOT! I know your camera has this option as I have the model just below yours (sd500) and it has it.I'm not familiar with the raw format on this particular camera but raw usually means not compressed thus taking an incredible amount of space. Maybe 640x480 would be too much for the raw format.. Does your camera capture in a format other than raw?

by "raw" I mean they are AVI's directly from the camera - not saved after working with Movie Maker.

When I saved the movie as a 720x480 it came out much clearer (close to the original, but just not quite as good) than the same movie saved as the original size - 320x240. It has to be Windows Movie Maker that is the culprit.

This thread gave me the impetus to find and download the manual for my SD1000. I received the camera a few days ago but had to get the charger separately and I'm still waiting for it so I haven't been able to use the camera yet.

Anyways after checking the manual I can see that it uses one format for video, AVI motion JPEG (BTW RAW is an actual format). The best way to shoot would be in standard mode which is 640x480 at 30fps just like surfunc said.

I'm not sure what you did to access a dialog that asks you how to save the file, I've never used movie maker. Simply copy the file to the PC, then use an encoding program to make it into a DVD resolution or youtube resolution. The best program for this which I use regularly is TMPEnc. Here is the free version http://www.tmpgenc.net/en/download.html Lots of settings when you first look at it but it is really worth it to spend the time and figure it out. With this program you can download avi movies and encode them to DVD with very watchable results. Looking forward to more videos from you..

I used Movie Maker to take several of the dives and put them all together with music to make my little video. The program imports all the avi files and after you edit them the way you want, it saves them as a wmv.

I'm providing this information cause I think you're interested in the best results possible but I don't know how much you know about video editing.

Your starting point is just getting the footage to your PC in the same format as you shot it. Then you need to decide what you want the end product to be. Do you want it in DVD format to burn and watch on your TV, to watch on your PC, or to upload to youtube. Each of these requires it's own resolution and frame rate for optimal viewing.

You can edit, and this in your case would be cut and paste, add text screens and a sound track using any number of programs including movie maker as you already know. But for optimal viewing results you should save the resultant file in the original format without encoding. Then you should use the best tool for the job to separately encode the video to any of the 3 formats I mentioned. If movie maker does not allow you to save in the original format I would use a different program.

I should mention that the reason for this is that every time you encode from one format to another you lose quality, never gain.

Very cool vid, Kolt. :cool:

very cool video Kolt. Some big guys hang out at the bow right at the sand, along with the sand tigers.

Kolt, you are the man!!!! For booking information feel free to call 910-262-8501. Dive with such stars as kjflyfish, and Wahoo. Call now, trips are booking fast.... Special group packages are available. This could be my next gig guys!! Does it sound good? Watch my phone start ringing...:slap:

Kolt, you are the man!!!! For booking information feel free to call 910-262-8501. Dive with such stars as kjflyfish, and Wahoo. Call now, trips are booking fast.... Special group packages are available. This could be my next gig guys!! Does it sound good? Watch my phone start ringing...:slap:

that thing rings off the hook as it is! I'm sure people would love going out with you Ren. We always have a blast.