Spirit Live DVD, Worth While Project Options

[djellison]

Anyone who has the Volume 2 of the Mars Mission books will have a DVD that includes the Opportunity EDL coverage and the first post landing Press Conf - but since Spirit landed, I've never seen that footage again of Spirit's landing.

It costs money to get footage from JPL ( not an enormous ammount, but it's not exactly cheap ) but I was thinking of getting some footage, putting together as much as I could on a DVD and selling it.

Now - a DVD can only hold so much - and this may have to be a 2 disk set to make it worth while, but I was thinking of doing all live commentary that I can find, (several hours of it) and the key press confs - basically from the period from Spirit's landing till Opportunity arrived. There's probably 20hrs of footage, maybe more from that period - so to include it all would be madness - but I could perhaps include much of it as DVD, and then the rest as highly compressed WMV's or similar.

Anyway - opinions, likely sales etc

Doug

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Opinion

Great idea Doug ...
I really enjoyed watching the NOVA DVDs " Mars, dead or alive " and " Welcome to Mars " ... especially the latter one!
Anyway, I believe the MER DVD-set should have some footage of a MER being assembled, tested or being prepared for launch at KSC ... NASA must have some footage.

Likely Sales

As mentioned before, a couple dozen should sell easily here at UMSF ( I would already take 2 ) ... so the first 50 will go fast
Doing this before the other film/dvd makers do, gives it an extra chance for sales outside the forum

Questions

What contribution are You looking for from UMSF forum-members (money-wise or other)

[djellison]

What contribution are You looking for from UMSF forum-members (money-wise or other)

Oh - none This sort of project is my day to day job ( but in the medical field ) so it'll be easy once I have the footage on site

There is probably scope for 4 disks just of pre-launch testing...for instance

"AVC-2003-036-Mars Exploration Rover Raw Footage Highlights Compilation
Edited raw footage of various MER tests conducted during
2002. Includes rover assembly in clean room, parachute drop
test, DRL drop tests, airbag drop tests, cruise stage
assembly and spin tests, spacecraft thermal and vibration
tests, parachute wind tunnel tests.

There's 72 minutes of that.

And it goes on...segment by segment theres 21 mins of cruise stage testing, another 21 in the SAF, 52 minis of WEB building, 57 minutes of the convey taking the hardware from JPL to KSC, 85 mins of Chute tests at Boise ID, 33 minutes of it at Ames, 106 mins of landing site selection - it goes on and on and on.

Just from pre-launch stuff - I could easily fill 4 full DVD's and I'm not sure really how much people would want to see that. The edited 72 minute collection perhaps, but you can see the problem - it could get very big very quickly, without even trying.

Doug

[climber]

I was thinking of doing all live commentary that I can find, (several hours of it) and the key press confs

Amazing! May be, you've noticed that I posted just yesterday an audio file about Spirit landing. I'm as you Doug, starving to get videos too since they only made Oppy's available. Some video conferences BEFORE landing will be great too, even the pre-launch ones!

I'll buy whaterver you'll end up with.

[djellison]

Perhaps I could do briefings as compressed Quicktime movies, and the live mission coverage as full DVD quality - think that would work?

Tonight I'm going to have a good look at the video catalogue - see how much stuff there actually is (without duplicating) and how much it's going to cost me ( something like $40 per hour long piece )

The only downside I've found so far is that I'll have to get the footage on VHS and capture from that. You can order it on BetaSP - but buying or renting a BetaSP deck will costs hundreds and hundreds of pounds that I just can't justify for a small project like this. You can even order it on Digi Beta - at more than 10x the price. So I'll invest in the best analogue capture card I can - I have a very very good VHS deck from which I can work as well - and it's happy with NTSC thank goodness...look at that..4x the cost just to go to Pal - that's insane.

If I could get on a plane with a bag of external HDD's and capture it myself, I would...but they don't let you do that either.

http://www.dgsystems.com/jpl_ratecard.htm

I asked if they could do Mini DV - and they said no. I asked if they could dump footage straight to HDD, and they also said no - frustrating on both counts.

Anyway - as you can imagine, 10 press confs and a couple of live events is quickly going to add up to $500 or more - so I think I'll be comparatively selective

Doug

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Hum... a 4-DVD set, superb! Thinking aloud...
DVD-1
Pre-launch testing & assembly: The edited 72-minutes would be a must
DVD-2
Some launch-footage ( maybe MER animation but almost everybody has the Dan Maas already, nice to be complete though)
EDL & Landing
DVD-3
Follow-on ongoing MER-activities
DVD-4
Press conferences on the science

[climber]

There's audio too! Not so heavy and lot of emotions. I told you about what can be found on Planetary Radio (if available) and don't forget YOUR Jim Bell's interviews. There is NO place to get all of this compiled yet.

[djellison]

Well - the audio you mention from PR will be the audio that's on the EDL footage from Spirit

Doug

[climber]

Well - the audio you mention from PR will be the audio that's on the EDL footage from Spirit

Doug

Right but there's also PR interview of Steve Squyres, Rob Manning...

[Bob Shaw]

Doug:

What would be *very* attractive would be the material which we've probably all seen, but in decent quality - not little tiny movie windows blown up and pixellated to death!

Some sort of open format, too...

...and maybe a DVD which is simply made up of images, properly ordered, with route maps? Not everybody has broadband, or is an obsessive downloader!

I could go on.

And on...

Bob Shaw

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

O.K. Doug what do You think so far ?

[Steffen]

Any updates on this ?
Danke schön !

[djellison]

It's in progress.