HaleRacing.com (Main)

-May 1, 2009-
Adding A Past Video To Video Gallery
5:51 PM Mountain Standard Time

I was going through some videos on my hard drive today, and came across a classic from 2005: The July 4th, 2005 race at Rocky Mountain Raceways. You'll definitely want to watch the whole race as things get VERY interesting within the last 7 laps. The article is here if you feel like reading about it. It was definitely an exciting race, and Michael scored victory so be sure to check out the video as soon as it becomes available. I've posted a little information below on how the video process works to give you a bit of an idea on what it takes to get these videos online.

Step 1: Record video from the stands using a Sony HDR-SR5 HD/AVCHD Camcorder

Each time I press the record button, a new video file is created. This camcorder, when using standard quality recording, creates a .MPG file for each segment recorded. So when the green flag flies up until a caution, that is one segment or .MPG file.

Step 2: Importing video files into Corel VideoStudio 12 and combining them into one video.

A race with a lot of cautions can end up taking a lot of time because I have to manually create the "fade in/fade out" effect for each video as the camcorder does not do this automatically. So combining the videos into one single video, or "race video" as you might call it, can be very time consuming.

Step 3: Saving the combined videos, or "race video" to a new .MPG file.

This process usually takes about 10 minutes and once it's finished I can now work with my single "race video" and work on compressing it to be more user-friendly for the web.

Step 4: Encoding the "race video" TWICE. 1 for high speed connections. 1 for low speed.

This is by far the lengthiest process. The high speed connection version usually takes between 2 and 3 hours depending on the length of the race. The low speed connection version takes approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes. Keep in mind this is with a quad core processor at 2.9GHz. Your basic dual core processors would probably take close to 5 or 6 hours for the high speed version.

Step 5: Uploading the video to the web and updating the video gallery website.

Uploading the high speed connection version takes between 45 minutes and a hour. The low speed is usually 30 minutes. Updating the website can take some time if I have to create a new section (i.e.: whenever a new month begins), but I can usually have it together in about an hour. If I don't have to create a new section, I can have it updated in about 20 minutes.

Hopefully this information gives you a better idea of what it takes to get our videos online. It is a lengthy process, so I appreciate your patience as I try to get them online as quickly as possible.