Embarrassing crashes

mihaibu

passing through a bunch of cows a calf suddenly decides to get with his mother and pushes me in that cow, the cow panics and kicks my front wheel, the wheel turns 90 degrees but the handlebar remains straight, jumped over and felt between cows. The shepherd looked at the scene with expressionless eyes.

Farno

Northwind wrote:

OK, here's my latest (3 weeks ago I think, knee is still sore)

http://vimeo.com/14784036

Embarassing for all sorts of reasons... It was 3 corners from the end of the last descent on a week long holiday, so "last ride crash" cliche'd... It wasn't a hard bit of trail, and I shouldn't have crashed on it in a million years but I was so infuriated by the dog-slow frenchman tripodding round all the corners that I forgot to ride my bike... And over the week I'd ridden some of the daftest, hardest stuff I ever have and come through unscathed. Oh and then I fall over again before I even get on the bike

In other words, I suck. But just look how far I rolled!

I don't think the first crash was embarassing at least! Looked pretty fast, and you flew pretty far with your bike, which is just impressive and not embarassing

You can just blame shock for the little falling over after that though!

What's the camera you used to film that? Looks pretty nifty and a good way of showing people what you do when you're cycling!

Mynameisdann

Decided to take a shortcut to tescos and headed down a long set of steps that swept left and well..fell off :oops:

Northwind

Farno wrote:

I don't think the first crash was embarassing at least! Looked pretty fast, and you flew pretty far with your bike, which is just impressive and not embarassing

What's the camera you used to film that? Looks pretty nifty and a good way of showing people what you do when you're cycling!

It doesn't look fast at all til I hit the tree, I think, then it all goes into mental turbo-vision I'm undecided, if it wasn't for the guy in front I'd have been going a fair bit faster so if I'd crashed there I'd have either hit the catchfence (suck) or the steel supporting wires that were just slightly further along (extra suck) but otoh I might not have crashed there at all if I'd been at full pace because I'd have still been focused. I like that you can see the wheel pointing in all directions as I slide along before I hit the tree though

It's a gopro hero HD on a chest mount, though as Pete says the quality's been demolished by the editing software. You should see the source file, it's ridiculously good for consumer kit.

Anonymous

Northwind wrote:

You should see the source file, it's ridiculously good for consumer kit.

Northwind, is there any way that you can put an unedited source file of that camera somewhere?
I'm looking for some footage in the woods, where it's fairly dark to make a judgement by.

I really fancy buying one of these, and everyone says the quality is amazing, but I'm just not convinced yet - and I've never seen any uncompressed footage.

I can give you log od details to our FTP server if you want, as long as the file is not too big, you should have no problem uploading it.

Northwind

Yeah, should be able to manage something though I'm not sure I've got anything suitable yet- only got enormous recordings so far. I think as long as you bear in mind what it is you'll probably be happy, I know some people were expecting film-quality output which it isn't, and there's a bit of "fisheye" on widescreen. (you can see it most clearly when I go to pick up the bike, it's not as dramatic as the old one though).

Anonymous

the fisheye thing is fine by me, it's just the apparent image quality in darker areas that puts me off.

Foobies

Got a vid of me somewhere on my pc that I might upload to YouTube oneday of me when I had just got back into mtb. Decided it'd be fun to ride through a "small" stream that I used to do every week 5 years ago. Turns out that after 5 years of not riding I had got a bit rusty on how to tackle a river... Down the approach I go far too slowly hit the middle of the stream where the water was up to my forks and being the 3rd time I'd ridden on ar off road in 3 years forgot to pull up the handlebars, so the inevadable happened. Super slo mo faceplant into the water. In the vid you can hear my mate phsl before checking I was ok. Luckily only bashed my knee a bit but pride hurts more than the knee

meso100

Last Thursday I was at Gisburn Forest with a mate.

I had got about 2/3 miles up the forest to the top and was just about to negotiate a downhill bit. As a gained speed downhill I bent my knees put my arse towards the seat only to hear a metalic sound...with that I went off the back of the bike, landed on the back wheel, got my huts caught in the guard at the back whilst also experiencing a sharp pain in my chest.

In a nutshell my seat bolt had snapped in half, the seat had fallen off the bike but the seat post remained, as I fell off the back I landed on the metal seat post which had dug into my chest cutting me.

I then had to ride the 2/3 miles back down the hill reminding myself NOT TO SIT DOWN because my seat post was ceased and would not come loose so I had the metal rod an inch from my....back passage. It was a long and leg tiring journey to the car!

After getting new parts from a shop 10 miles away I returned to the forest.

No sooner had I set off up the fire road I bunny-hopped a pothole, slipped off the left pedal (not spd) and cut chuncks out of my shin from the pedal digging in. The pain was immense!! My mate was very annoyed as all he wanted to do was start the route and for the second time in an hour, I was on the floor bleeding!

After an hour the bleeding stopped, the leg was numb and I enjoyed the next few hours of the trail.

upinsmoke

Fair play for carrying on Lucky Eddie

xendistar

Couple of weeks ago near Liphook in Hmapshire on one of those evans cycle rides. Going through some woods and you dropped down a bank (about 30ft slope) across a little bridge and up the other side, top of the up slope hit a little bump that fired me towards a bramble bush, hit the anchor and stopped, only problem was my front wheel was on high ground, my back wheel was on high ground and my feet were about 2ft off the deck.................. end result I topple over backwards landing on coxes. Still got pain now in my back now.

Tim

Nickelarse

A few years back now, my brother and I were on a MTB club run and hit a downhill section we knew fairly well. We flew off the front of the group at the speed of light down the steep gradient as the sound of squeaking brakes from the more timid riders of the group gew fainter and fainter. We hit the bottom of the hill at a stupid pace only to find the forestry commission had been doing some logging and there was a huge pile of logs on the trail. We tried our best to avoid them but on wet hardpack chalk complete with mould it was never going to happen...........OUCH :shock:

We finally got up, me with a smashed helmet and ripped shoulder strap off my Camelbak and bleeding from a variety of locations, just in time for the squeaks to get louder and the snails of the group to catch us up so we could warn them and give them a good laugh to boot. My brother came off far worse than me, he ripped a massive hole in the back of his shorts so that his butt crack was on view to all

After that incident we are became known as "The Lost It Brothers". My brother had to be banished to the back of the group for the rest of the ride so nobody had to endure following his crack around the rest of the trails He got more than a few horn beeps and laughs from overtaking cars once we hit the road on the ride back home :oops:

F@RRR

pulled off a spectacular backflip today at bedgebury on the short uphill just after the black section. pulled a bit of an uphill wheelie and in a split second my rear wheel was in the air where my head should of been and my head was where back wheel should be . bike in the air still clipped in. lucky i was wearing my lid as my head hit the floor hard . quick look round to check i wasn't spotted by anyone (except my son) only to see some girl on a horse coming down the track :oops: :oops: :oops: bruised ego bruised back

thel33ter

Nickelarse wrote:

After that incident we are became known as "The Lost It Brothers". My brother had to be banished to the back of the group for the rest of the ride so nobody had to endure following his crack around the rest of the trails He got more than a few horn beeps and laughs from overtaking cars once we hit the road on the ride back home :oops:

I've been lazy/busy lately so I haven;t gotten any crashes in, but I did manage to trip over my bike moving it around in the shed and stack it into the lawnmower :oops:

popstar

Northwind, you clearly struggle with PowerDirector. Most probably you do things other way round. The -Undo- button undoes anything you previously touched, and has a memory of 20 or so of your previous steps. Most probably your PC underpowered and is struggling with volume of HD files, I guess thats why it plays on your tits. As you may see, hardly did I loose any quality in video, and again most probably you choose wrong format to produce your movie into.

Yeehaa ... GoPro HD is very good in light to dark conditions and adjusts quite fast in those changing conditions. The only thing that may lack would be IMO additional/optional pollarizer filter on lense to counter very bright days and it may help improve very dark conditions.

To prove both points and as well embarrasing fold-tumble on the side here is the VIDEO. I know I should ride better but, I may go and get my coat.

Northwind

No, I intentionally chose a low quality output for uploading- but, size for size the quality on that file is very poor. Also, there was no prediction of final size- so you essentially have to guess what standard to use, and hope it comes out the size you want. Even WMM does better than that.

And no, the PC's certainly not underpowered, no idea what'd make you think that. Just looked at their stated requirements and my last PC beats them never mind this one . It ran smooth and fast, no complaint there.

Maybe you misunderstand my complaint on the undo function- it wasn't undoing the last change. That was embarassingly obvious when i was working on the text, I would move one, press undo, and a caption I wrote several minutes before would disappear or move, while the one I'd been working on immediately before would be unaffected. Just plainly broken. And then redo wouldn't reinstate the change that undo had undone. That's the sort of thing you expect to find in a beta.

Anonymous

popstar, I've watched 2 minutes in, and I've not seen any footage of dark wooded areas yet. I cannot bear to watch any more since your editing gives me a headache and makes me want to cry, sorry.

A polariser, or any kind of filter would not help dark areas, if the camera struggles to begin with. There is no filter that increases the amount of light available. Even though a polariser does cut down glare, it also cuts down total light transmission by around 1-2 EV, even when adjusted to pas as much light as possible.

Anonymous

Northwind wrote:

That's the sort of thing you expect to find in a beta.

Or a very poor alpha version, really.
I've never used Powerdirector, but even so, I will still put my money on the fact that Vegas will kick it to the curb in ways unimagined outside of particularly violent ninja drinking holes.

Northwind

Oh, yeehaa, I might have what you were after from today's ride but I stupidly forgot to charge the thing so I don't think I got any footage from the section I had in mind with the real dark/light contrasts. I'll check it out tomorrow though.

Anonymous

Don't worry, mate. Like I said it's not particularly important, it would just help me make up my mind is all.

popstar

Most probably I am on the wrong side of understanding things then, sorry for that then.

As they say -Horses for courses. Can't think of camera which would produce TV pro style footage in changing conditions better than GoPro in that certain category of cameras.

Northwind did you finally found a good movie editor? It sounds as PowerDirector gives you tonnes of headache?

Yeehaa I am not pro in movie making, therefore don't match your expectations. I am open to your suggestions how to improve movies though.

Northwind

I've not tried the Sony one yet, we'll see how that goes. Powerdirector did a godo job in some ways, I'll be honest and say I didn't like how it looked or felt initially- really didn't like the transitions and it seemed to have a few pointlessly tacked on features that got in the way- so I probably judged it harshly but the undo thing kind of broke the camel's back. I could make good videos with it if that was the only option though I'm sure, just hoping to find better. I guess I'd assumed that a paid-for software would beat WMM but other than handling the HD video which my version of WMM can't do, it just doesn't seem to compare. Ah well.

popstar

In your price bracket of movie editors it is PowerDirector vs Sony Vegas for sure. Both have 1 month free trial so you don't loose anything in trying both.

Anonymous

I'm sure you've told me before, Northwind, but is there a reason you can't use the latest version of Windows Movie Maker? It's actually surprisingly good.

Popstar, honest opinion, please don't take offence:
Less is more with the transitions. a quick crossfade is all that's needed in almost every single circumstance. The crazy wipes and stuff just scream CHEESE, or "You've Been Framed".
And the picture in picture of forwards and rearwards at the same time is just a bad idea. It causes the eyes to be forced in two different directions at the same time.

Northwind

yeehaamcgee wrote:

I'm sure you've told me before, Northwind, but is there a reason you can't use the latest version of Windows Movie Maker? It's actually surprisingly good.

Windows XP :roll: Though I've thought about just buying windows 7 instead of buying an editor.

allen.coulson

As a kid - hurtling down the hill to the level crossing where the rails were diagonal to the road and recessed so that when I twitched to avoid a dog my front wheel stuck in the track and I flew. Landed by the dog which bit me and ran off.

Anonymous

Northwind wrote:

yeehaamcgee wrote:

I'm sure you've told me before, Northwind, but is there a reason you can't use the latest version of Windows Movie Maker? It's actually surprisingly good.

Windows XP :roll: Though I've thought about just buying windows 7 instead of buying an editor.

Ah! Well, if your machine is even remotely fresh, then windows7 will be great on it.


Oh yeah, the main reason for the thread.

Another of my embarrasing crashes was as an idiotic 10-or-so year old.
There was a bit of a hill on the road past my friend's house, which ended in a sort of T-junction, except it also had a farm track directly opposite the hill, which kinked away to the right after about 10 feet.
Where the farm track kinked right, there was a slightly more open patch of ground, with a big pile of crushed slate, probably to be used as hardcore. Behind the slate pile was a fence, then a field. I hadn't really paid attention to that at this point.
Anyway, one day I desiced it would be fun to shape a jump into the pile of slate, and charge down the hill, across the junction, and launch over it.
I had not made any provisions for landing, or, more importantly, checked what was on the other side. But for some reason my young brain thoght it would be cool to try and do a backflip.
It kind of dawned on me at the apex of the jump, whilst I was stalled upside down in mid air that backflips were actually scarily hard to do. Just as well this was going through my mind really, because it meant I hadn't realised I was just about to land in a field full of thorn bushes and nettles, waist high, upside down, and have my bike crash down on top of me.

Northwind

yeehaamcgee wrote:

Ah! Well, if your machine is even remotely fresh, then windows7 will be great on it.

XP's great on it too I'm an OS luddite.

Oh yeah, embarassing crashes... Another kiddie one, I broke my wrist and a couple of fingers dropping a 6 foot wall to flat on my rigid steel carrera xc bike. And I mean flat, both wheels down like a bomb, legs and arms straight Bent steel bar, exploded wheel, knackered flexstem (because obviously the 1cm bit of rubber was going to absorb the blow) but miraculously didn't break the frame, forks, back wheel or any more bones. Still got the bike! No helmet obviously

peter413

Can you not just convert the HD files into MP4's, they work fine on WMM don't they

Anonymous

peter413 wrote:

Can you not just convert the HD files into MP4's, they work fine on WMM don't they

Bad practice to convert into another compressed format before editing.