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eddie's finals day video
Finn Iles winning Mont-Sainte-Anne in 2022, the last racer down the hill that day. He won despite his chain coming off during the race, and yet his win was laden with so much more importance and emotional content due to the context.
This video is among my favorites, partly because Eliot Jackson was the perfect narrator for the review of the day's races. (The part about Finn's race begins at 10:43, but the entire video is, I think, well worth watching.)
Elite men's highlights:
Man, I should start a new post-race show... What should I call it though?
I'm thinkiiing Bee-Line podcast? Maybeee B-Lines show? Hmmm something like that, just can't think of anything else!
Staring at my fantasy I forgot to mention... TILL DID IT! Beat Max. Consider the monkey off the back. Is this their first junior year? I really wanna see if they both keep battling each other in elite.
It’s their second year. Max had 4 wins last year and the overall
Second year for most of the fast juniors. I think Jonty is the fastest of the first year juniors.
I have been watching the races on MAX has anyone had issues with parts of each run being blurry?
When Daprela was on the hot seat all I could think about was the comment section. I am a bad person lol
Troy cementing himself as a all round GOAT, blokes a dad, should be home mowing the lawn in New Balances, instead he is taming the wildest track on earth a bees dick away from the win.
Troy looked like WTF am I supposed to do to beat that when Jackson crossed the line 😂
Well... An epic run but. I'd be scared of a bee dick that was 2.4 seconds of length long.
Where's Kilmurray when you need him to calculate the length of the time gap between 1st and 2nd, in relation to insect genitalia...
the speed clock on screen was saying approx 50kph when they crossed the line. about 100 feet in distance. fairly significant.
here's one at 45kph and one at 50kph
I know creatures are scarier in aus but 100 foot dick bees was NOT on my bingo card...
Yeah, about 1/3 the time it's blurry as if it's buffering. No other streaming services have any issues whatsoever. Did it last week, too. But no way it's buffering on my ultra-fast connection. Weird and super annoying. Is Warner Brothers actually trying to self destruct?
Yeah, and on the replay, not live so wtf? Don't think it's buffering either as I tried pausing to see if the quality would improve and nope...
Not buffering. Before I went to watch men's I went back through the women's. The blur is literally the video. It blurs at the same points each time.
So wouldn't that mean they're not storing the video on the actual camera & lag will put the rest of the data into the completely stored file once uploaded? It's as if the production booth is only storing the live streaming wireless data & not bothering to use the master video.
Good to see Jackson using those run bike skills.
Man one of these days a women will win from starting position14-7 and the highlights post race will be fucking hilarious. “Here’s 2 seconds of the winning run!”
Loved Nico’s commentary this round. Knowing the track and why things were causing issues was rad.
Maples p5! What a g!! Fucking dumb we don’t have five man podiums, dude deserves a moment.
Lastly loris near death scrub off the first rock drop was fucking wild. Don’t know how he kept going.
cute understanding of a live broadcast
Speaking of the hot seat, one thing I haven't seen mentioned is how much better it is now they've lowered it. Hot seat riders are part of the reaction at the end of runs again.
Very helpful, insightful comment. Now don't you have some puppies to kick or something?
Isn't that the same rock that took out Tahnee a few years back?
An EXTREMELY simplified explanation of why video gets blurred:
The more detail in an image, the more data is required to describe that image. There's a limit to how much data cameras can capture in real time, how much they can send in "real time," how much broadcasters can send in "real time," how much internet service providers can receive and send in "real time," and how much your TV provider can send in "real time." The downstream folks tell the upstream folks how much they can handle. The on-site broadcast is assembled in real-time and sent to the folks who will be streaming it.
The way to work inside those limits is to use a video codec (encoder/decoder) that evaluates images and decides which data is the least important and can be thrown out. That has to happen in real time before it gets out of the camera, and then at the broadcast booth, and potentially again at your TV provider's "channel."
The quickest way to reduce data required to describe a video image is to blur it. Less detail means less details to describe.
Fast-moving, high-contrast, non-repetitively-colored images require the most data. They use footage of the sun's reflection on choppy water as a test of how capable a codec is.
DH mtb - especially in dappled-light situations - is very data-hungry. It captures lots of details because of the tracks and trees and grass and riders all moving very quickly. Being best-presented in a somewhat closely-framed image further magnifies how fast all those things are moving. But we have a limit on how much data we can use to describe the images so the data gets tossed out and the images blurred. Most of that blurring happens as the broadcast is being assembled (in real time) and piped out of "the booth."
I don't know what sorts of data rates we're looking at these days, I've been out of the video world for a while now and it moves pretty quickly, but that's at least and explanation of why it's blurry.
TL;DR:
Crisp, beautiful images captured by the camera get destroyed (by blurring) because of the limitations of data throughput at a thousand bottlenecks along the broadcast chain until those images make it to your face.
Never had blurry video when Red Bull ran their telecast.
Sooo good.
I like Redbull as a broadcaster more than wbd but redbull had some issues for sure during their tenure. Biggest difference being the price was right though so it didn't matter as much and they usually owned up and apologized when something happened rather than hide it.
A rock soundtrack would really enhance this.
I had more buffering or blurry images with Red Bull than on Max. Obviously they had more chances to have issues too.
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