The 9th part video of my singlehanded Round Britain trip last year has just been loaded to YouTube

[Concerto]

The 9th part video of my singlehanded Round Britain trip last year has just been loaded to YouTube. It is slightly shorter than my earlier ones and covers leaving Gigha for Ballycastle, then to Rathlin Island, Bangor, Belfast and Carricfergus.

 

[steveeasy]

Hi Concerto,
Just watched your latest film and just wanted to say your filming is very good indeed. So many different shots and short clips, it must have taken a long time to film, if not edit. Ive tried and a total disaster.

Steveeasy

 

[Concerto]

Hi Concerto,
Just watched your latest film and just wanted to say your filming is very good indeed. So many different shots and short clips, it must have taken a long time to film, if not edit. Ive tried and a total disaster.

Steveeasy

That video took about 12 to 14 hours to edit, whereas the filming and photos took for this section is about 2 hours. Most video clips are cropped to 5 seconds and cut from videos of up to a couple of minutes. A panorama is in 5 second sections with jumps between each section. So a 15 or 20 second panorama would be cut from a video that could be from 30 to 60 seconds long after end triming and cut out sections. For sailing videos you need to try using different positions to capture what you would see if you move around the boat. Photos of the log and chart plotter also act as a very accurate record of position, better than any written log. One final comment, I try to use every video and photo in the order they were taken.

All the photos were in the wrong format for YouTube so every photo was cropped, a few were also corrected for getting the horizon level. This takes a lot of time to ensure the corrected/twisted photos are then cropped to the video format. That means looking at the pixel width and then using the calculator to divide by 16 and multiply by 9, the resulting number is the pixel height. Normally I now display a photo for 2 seconds, where I used to use 1½ seconds which was too short.

Adding titles in the editting process can also make the video more informative. I do not add any speech as I hate the sound of my voice, but can add extra information quickly. Personally I do not like adding music to any sailing video. It is possible to add sound to photos, but I try and avoid the extra work involved.

Having a pretty good idea of keeping the phone level is not easy in rough weather, but I use a handle which assists in better stability as I can have one hand still for my safety. To ensure I did not drop or loose the phone I used a safety line to the handle from my wrist. At times in very rough weather I missed filming as I was too occupied sailing. So the extreme conditions like entering Scapa Flow were missed, which was a big shame.

You should give creating a video another go. If you look at my first videos and those I am creating now, there has been a big improvement. If you want some creative critism of one of your videos I am happy to do that by PM. The way to do this is to load it to YouTube and keep it private and then supply the link to me. My preference to to keep a YouTube video under 10 minutes, as not everyone watches to the end. A trial video can be just a few minutes long.

Now for a big problem. On the first day of the trip as I was heading towards Harwich after rounding Gunfleet Sands. The wind was force 7 on the beam and Concerto was tramping along at 7 knots. The video at this time was difficult to obtain due to the waves on the beam. I had an arm round the lifeline whilst I sat on the cockpit coaming. A rogue way caused me to loose my balance and I got dumped into the bottom of the cockpit. This was the spectacular bruise caused by my arm dragging over the lifeline. I did not spot the bruise for 3 days as nothing hurt. Problems like loosing my balance are rare, but can happen occassionally.