Video: RXV 550 at Dumont Dunes

[SLORider]

There were some good comments about my Dumont Dunes photos, so I thought I'd share some video also. Nothing fabulous, just me doing some dune climbing with a paddle tire on my RXV 550. Oh, and a couple shots of my buddy's KTM in there... both bikes are SAND MACHINES!

RXV 550 at Dumont Dunes


The video is posted on my web page at: http://slorider.com/Aprilia/

The video was shot with a Sony HDV cam (1440 x 1080i) and was transcoded to Windows Media Video at a fairly high quality (640 x 360 at 1.08 Mb/s), thus the file size is large (57 MB). I may lower that quality very soon if my bandwidth gets hit hard so you might consider downloading and saving it. Enjoy! Comments invited!

[RXV_Poor]

Cool video.

[cyborg]

Got your vid SLO. Very nice. Thanks for sharing. Couldn't help but thinking, I'll bet you have the only RXV out doing sand on the West Coast, so far... looks like so much fun I may have to go have a look at the paddle tires at the dealer down the way...

Filter question, did you have the reuseable AF1 air filter in during the sand riding, oh, and did you have to oil it before use? I just got mine and it came with zero instructions and it's hard to tell if it's been pre-oiled or not... if I end up not being able to figure that out, I'll probably re-oil it with the K&N kit just to be safe.

[SLORider]

Oh my, sand is SOOOOO much fun!!! Get a paddle!

It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up!


The reusable filter is pink- or reddish when oiled; otherwise, it's plain paper. Get the K&N Recharge Kit and oil it up.

[NeoGeniX]

Very nice! I recommend flash video if you are getting bandwidth problems btw...very small file sizes..or youtube ofcourse

[SbikeMotard]

great video!!

high quality and sound too !

what a fun isn't it?

lol the fan sound

[altaic]

SLO, that looks like awesome fun!

[e46mthree]

nice camera - especially impressed by the zoom range. & cool u can c each discrete paddle "scoop" in the rooster tail . but i am a bit surprised u didn't have more company there - soooo much sand and so few people (weekday maybe?).

i had ridden Silver Lake on our "north shore" in Michigan years ago on my KX250 - and still have that paddle tire somewhere... think i need to dig it back out - it looks like fun! jealous u have so much good riding nearby - not so in dallas

keep up the good work

ps. a bit of trivia: according to michigan.gov "...There are about 250,000 acres of sand dunes in Michigan..." - who would have thunk it?

[RXV_Poor]

I just got mine and it came with zero instructions and it's hard to tell if it's been pre-oiled or not... if I end up not being able to figure that out, I'll probably re-oil it with the K&N kit just to be safe.

The filters come pre oiled. If I were going sand riding I would add a little more just in case.

[SLORider]

Very nice! I recommend flash video if you are getting bandwidth problems btw...very small file sizes..or youtube ofcourse

WMV is perfectly capable of any bit rate. I haven't researched, but I'd bet it could equal or surpass Flash. I left it high because of the HDV source. The video is already on Google Video if anyone wants to see the low-res version.

Questions: Do I have to purchase Flash to get the encoder? Does Flash come with a video player solution right out of the box? Does Flash use standard compression (H.264, MPEG, etc.)??

I really like the WMV format for so many reasons--multiple bit rate streams in one file, high-quality, plays on many DVD players..., BUT, Flash is just slightly more portable. I have a streaming video project coming up and I have to decide between the two...

[SLORider]

So, no one picked up on my Ferris Bueller reference???

Yes, Dumont can be nearly empty on weekdays--this was a Monday. We ran across zero traffic in the dunes! Hence, I didn't bother with a flag (which I have no mount for yet on this bike).

[SbikeMotard]

hi SLORider! could you call some SXV guys near you and do a similar thing on the track?

it would be a very very good video

[SLORider]

It's not my camera. But if someone can provide a camera, bike, time and place I'd be happy to capture and edit the video and post it!

I think I need to buy a new laptop, though, it chokes on the HDV bitrate!

[altaic]

WMV is perfectly capable of any bit rate. I haven't researched, but I'd bet it could equal or surpass Flash. I left it high because of the HDV source. The video is already on Google Video if anyone wants to see the low-res version.

Questions: Do I have to purchase Flash to get the encoder? Does Flash come with a video player solution right out of the box? Does Flash use standard compression (H.264, MPEG, etc.)??

I really like the WMV format for so many reasons--multiple bit rate streams in one file, high-quality, plays on many DVD players..., BUT, Flash is just slightly more portable. I have a streaming video project coming up and I have to decide between the two...

I'm not fond of microsoft formats/protocols/codecs, or anything, really. How about good old avi? Or if you want a better container, there's ogm. And, the snazziest, awesomest container format is mkv (matrioska). However, the container format doesn't matter nearly as much as the codec you're using: WMV3. There are no open-source implementations of it, and it's only available through windows media player. Bleh. It has nothing on XVID or H.264. H.264 has may have surpassed XVID by now (H.264 is a newer format and less processor efficient, but has lots of promise), but XVID is still leagues better quality+efficiency than WMV3. *steps down from soap box*

[SLORider]

Here's the main reason for going with WMV--just look at my web server log stats:

Browsers with Flash Support - 97.9 %
Browsers with Real audio playing support - 57.4 %
Browsers with Quicktime audio playing support - 81.3 %
Browsers with Windows Media audio playing support - 95.8 %

Flash has just now barely surpassed WMV (probably because of YouTube and Google).

My main concern in choosing a codec is audience reachability. Everyone with a Windows machine has WMV capability automatically without a download or technical know how:

SLORider.com audience
Windows 93.6 %
Macintosh 3.7 %
Unknown 1.3 %
Linux 1.2 %

WMV compression and quality are good if not excellent. What else is there to consider? Flash may be a better replacement, but I have no idea what codec it uses, do you?

I'm not a Microsoft lover, either, but I do think IIS/.NET is a way better programming environment than Apache/PHP. I hate proprietary formats and non-standardization (i.e., IE!! <-- hey, that's funny!) I actively push FireFox (seen my webpage footer lately?) and I deliver W3C valid XHTML on my site. Also, you might notice all my web pages use friendly extension-free (no ".aspx") URLs! If you believe that WMV9 is not an open standard, though, you need to read this. WMV9 will be standard on all new HD DVD and Blu-Ray players and more.

I'll admit, that I'm not very familiar with the other containers and formats out there. I use XVid all the time for watching torrents and burning to DVD, but that's about it. I have a major web project coming up where I need to download broadcast video to customers at professional post studios and broadcast news agencies. Choosing a widely acceptable broadcast codec will probably be the greatest nightmare! Any suggestions, because I only want to support ONE!