I had the opportunity to drive at Watkins Glen for two days with Napleton Porsche Masters and Chin Motorsports. What a beautiful area of the country, I have never been to upstate New York before.
I have never driven a track with a flow like this, a lot of elevation changes and late apexes, and the "blue bushes" closely bordering the track all the way around. Tends to keep you very focused.
Started off the LAPS, Inc. season in style this year with several track sessions with my old friend Ron, otherwise known as "Buey". For years we always would seem to find each other on the track during a session and have some fun... it is now to the point we just meet in the pits and go out together on the track. We are driving the full circuit Autobahn CC course, he'll be using the horsepower of his Corvette to his advantage, I'll be using the outstanding brakes in my Porsche... so much fun.
I got a chance to go back and drive Roebling Road race course in Savannah, Georgia. This was the very first race course I drove, where I took my driving school with Z06's. This time I was driving my GT3, what a fun track. Not really the way I remembered it, but I know a bit more about driving then I did back then. Every corner there is late apex, you just have to get into a "southern' rhythm" and be patient on corner entry. The track has a nice flow turn 2 through 7, some really fast sweepers in there. And then there is that 160 mph straight to collect yourself, get some passing done, and row through some gears.
I blogged March 25th about the de interlacing being broken in the H.264 compression in iMovie '09, it seems to be fixed with the 8.0.1 upgrade that just automatically downloaded. Thanks Apple, that was quick!
I upgraded to iLife '09 last week, primarily to get the iMovie '09 upgrade. I have upgraded my iLife software since '05 and it usually is a great experience, new versions of the software I use. iMovie has always received solid improvements, so I didn't even think about it much... I installed it and went on vacation last weekend, looking forward to using it when I returned with vacation footage on my video camera.
So I start getting busy on a new project and all is well, actually, I am impressed with the software. I am enjoying the new features such as the additional transitions, title options, and the precision editing mode. In very little time, I have my first video with '09 finished, so the next step is to share it and this is where it gets frustrating.
After much trial and error on my part, and then searching the Internet for what might be the problem I think I figured out what the problem is. The de interlace video option is broken in the H.264 video compression, and since I was shooting in HD 1080i and compressing to 720p for sharing the video online, the resulting video output looked like crap. This all worked fine in iMovie '08.
I found this web page and it contains the solution. I am now post processing my raw 1080i video from iMovie '09 with JES Deinterlacer. It takes extra time, an extra step and temporarily takes a lot of disk space to share my movies now. I hope Apple fixes this soon...
CIR Late Night Racing episode 4
LAPS Hillbillies - 3/6/2009 Race 2
Skiff Frey, driver/camera man wearing a GOPRO helmet cam pointed backwards.
An appearance by Shawn Young in Kart #37 in the middle of the video. And Shawn appears again towards the end of the video, along with myself in Kart #20.
If you listen closely Skiff makes some disturbing noises while driving!
A track session at Homestead - Miami Speedway, my first time driving on this track.
Camera is a Sony HDR-CX12 with a Sony 0.7x wide angle lens. The camera is mounted on an I/O Port racing supplies camera mount attached to the roll cage between the two front seats. I was using an 8gb chip and one battery charge per day. This is by far the best video camera setup I have used in a car yet.
