Predator and Rotax Videos

I talked to Dennis the other night about enabling the mpeg (.mpg) file extension for videos as it offers much better compression than .avi or .mov (Quicktime). I will be posting more video clips as I edit and encode them.

This first one took place in Sacramento last March. This was my first cut with Robert's Rotax which is half of a SkiDoo snowmobile engine. It displaces 330 cc's, weighs about 60 lbs, runs 1/2" square ground chain and produces about 70 HP.

I was pretty cautious with this beast as I'd heard horror stories about thrown chains doing nasty things to body parts even through Kevlar chaps. Nonetheless, I did a cut through this 24" fir, then Jon Rupley cut the next slice within a few minutes.

After reviewing the tape the other night, I digitally captured both cuts, edited them, then time-synchronized the two so that they were aligned exactly when each saw hit the log. I then used John's clip as the main frame and inserted my clip, picture-in-picture.

Jon's run ended up being 1.97 sec. and mine was 2.10. You can see how Jon's experience in making a smooth cut won this one. This is within a one frame accuracy which ends up being about .033 seconds.

Rather than just clicking on the attached file, you may want to right click on it and do a "save as", especially if you don't have a high speed connection.

Predator

Grateful11 wanted to see more of the Predator.

Here is a clip of Jon and myself making a cut through a 30 incher with the Pred. This was Jon's first time running the throttle side of the saw and I'd only experienced it once before with Robert at the helm. You'll notice that when we got the thing into position and Jon nailed the throttle, we just stood there for a second with the engine banging the rev limiter at 7 grand. Finally, we just figured that we ought to actually cut the log and proceeded to do so. Later, Robert debriefed us on how to coordinate the cut via mental telepathy. This wasn't a very fast cut, but it sure was fun.

Doug, Great to see you again on the site. We missed you buddy! I am one that does have the slow down load time. Can you go over that right click thing again and explain why that is best and what it should do for us that have the old slow speed? Mike

Good to see you back Doug, Its been a little boring around here.

I wanna see the top-handled version!

Hey Mike,
Well actually, after I posted the first one, I tried it and discovered that AS doesn't do what they call "streaming video" which means that the video is not played directly from the AS server in real time. Instead, the video is downloaded from the server to your computer in its entirety before it will start playing. At any rate, if instead of hitting your left mouse button, you pres and hold down your right mouse button, you'll get some options that you can select, one of them being "save target as...". When you release the button on top of this option, a window will come up that lets you select a directory of your choice on your computer where you want to store the video file. This lets you save the file and play it anytime you want without waiting for it to download from AS. The initial download will take a while, but after that, you won't have to wait for it.

Ben,
Oh, you've seen me on here lately, you just don't know it. Something about that old Multiple Personality Disorder getting the better of me again.

Here's a new friend, Paul Smith, who owns the Oroville Saw Shop near Ken Dunn's place. Paul just hosted a killer saw competition back in September which featured the Predator.

Now that's what I'm talkin' about. Cool! Made my evening, now I can go to bed.
Thanks,
Grateful