Bigger than Blu-Ray?

I'm back in the USA now, after a great visit to Finland. Surprisingly enough it was warmer in Finland than it was in Colorado for most of my visit. Now that I'm home I'm putting the finishing touches on various miscellaneous projects and trying to clean off my plate so I can focus on my new climbing film for most of the winter.

One thing I am exploring is the possibility of higher-quality viewing methods than DVD. While DVD's are great, they are still standard definition. Other technologies like Blu-Ray are emerging, but are costly to manufacture. One thing I would like to try to figure out is the possability of releasing my next film in a higher quality than blu-ray. I'm filming in 4K which is about 10 times higher resolution than the standard 720p HD. If I down-size the footage to 2K (2048 x 1024) I could potentially release the film via digital download in higher resolution (though, lesser bit-rate) than even Blu-Ray, and for a fraction of the cost. Plus, we dont have to use fossil fuels to manufacture and ship the discs all over the planet!

BUT, the playback systems have to be able to handle it. SOOOO.... that's where you come in, loyal blog reader.

Follow this link to download a sample of one possible release format:

NALLE DRIVES TO ROCKLANDS TEST 01

Please download the file and open it on your system. Then play it back and watch carefully to see the quality. You'll need a recent version of Quicktime to open the file.

Then please reply here with your feedback. I'm particularly interested in one main thing: Can your system play the footage back smoothly, or does it skip frames and play back choppy?

Try it at a few sizes, try scrolling around, try it in full screen or loop mode, and let me know what you think! I'll give you a "Research and Development" credit in the film if you leave a reply for me with your results.

Cheers,

Chuck

Helsinki

The bridge jumping team

Here's a photo of some of the people who came out bridge jumping with us the other day.

Finland

I've been in Finland for a few days now, doing some filming and hanging out in Helsinki. The climbing here is pretty nice, but I think it must be very hard to develop new boulders because most of the boulders here are well hidden in the thick forest. When the Finns find something new though it seems to be pretty good. I've just been out a couple days so far, to a nearby area called Sipoo, which is about 20 minutes from Helsinki. Nalle has done most of the boulders around here so it's fun to be able to pick and choose which ones to film. One problem we filmed is called Hyper Gravity and is a long problem which climbs out a horizontal roof on amazing little incut holds.


Hypergravity!

Thus far I have met about a dozen Finns. I have a hard time remembering all their names, and an even harder time pronouncing them, but they're all friendly and very fun to hang out with. We've been out to a few night clubs and overall everyone is social, happy, and eager to hear how my trip to Finland is going. Maybe the worst part is the price of beer, which is absolutely outrageous and may in fact lead to civil war. One can of beer will cost you about 4 dollars if you buy it at the grocery store. At a bar, expect to pay from 7 - 9 dollars for a beer.

Today we went bridge jumping with some of Nalle's friends. It's a fun activity and not too hard to pull off when you're hung over on a Sunday.

Finland Preview from Chuck Fryberger on Vimeo.

Nalle Hukkataival pushes one of his friends off a bridge.

Part of the mission here is to capture Nalle's lifestyle around Helsinki, and one cool thing he does sometimes is ride his longboard around town to see friends or go to the gym to train. We shot a couple longboarding scenes and here's a frame from one of the tunnels. We called the emergency number and told them we were going to be using a smoke machine for a while, and they said it was cool.



Longboarding in Helsinki

The next few days will be spent trying to send a hard trad project which lies a couple hours from Helsinki.

Until next time,

Chuck

Another weekend in Lander

Here's a shot of BJ Tilden cranking on his home turf in Lander, WY. I'm really looking forward to sitting down and cutting all the rad footage for Pure II. Wednesday night I'm off to Finland to catch up with Nalle and see what his scene in Helsinki is all about. The video has a couple sponsors on board now so it's starting to pick up some traction. Stay tuned for some updates from Helsinki!

Photos from Colorado Sandstone

Fun cranking last weekend with the P-man.