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| Mr Smiffy sets off |
I've recently acquired a Toshiba RDXV60KB VCR DVD combo. I admit I originally bought it as a means of transferring video from my old video recorder to digital but soon realised that I could also use the machine to transfer VHS tapes to digital. Now we've got a couple of drawers full of old tapes, and a quick search turned up "Burghley 2000", "Olympic 3DE 2004" and Olympics 3DE which I assume is going to be Sydney. So I've obviously got a lot to go at!
This blog features 90 minutes of Eventing from the BBC Grandstand coverage of Burghley 2000.
The Eventing Stuff
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| Clare on her course walk |
As 2000 was an Olympic year then a number of the British Team were already in Sydney waiting for the start of the competition. The commentary makes reference to this describing Bartle and Fox-Pitt as unfortunate to have missed selection and others taking advantage of some of the stars being missing. Not missing are New Zealanders Andrew Nicholson and Mark Todd both for whom this turned out to be a memorable Burghley. One for an unforgettable moment of perseverance and recovery and one because this was supposed to be his final competition in England (and one because he won the competition!).
In the video we see Vere Phillipps riding his late wife Polly's horse Coral Cove to finish in a creditable fourth place, and when interviewed by Clare Balding Vere admits he's beginning to enjoy dressage. The format is familiar today with a mix of course walk, dressage and cross country
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| Meeting his Waterloo? |
action to start interspersed with interviews in the lorry park before switching live? to Clare for the final of the show jumping. There's possibly more in the show jumping section than we'd get today and we do see the winner pick up his prize. There's a nice moment when you can see Toddy having a fag in the background with his mates and another moment when Chris Bartle looks a little lost; perhaps he was looking for the German team?
Clare pulls the whole thing together professionally and apologies that it looks like she has a fly on her nose at the beginning, it's just a trick of the recording. As this is Olympic year we are treated to an introduction to the 3DE by Michael Peschardt with a story which covers the transport of the horses and the water complexes.
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| Final day |
The coverage is all you would expect from the BBC; the course is described as not as tough as previous years. The riders are open and honest; Merran Wallis admits she wouldn't have wanted to go any faster, Fox-Pitt is forgiving of Moon Man's stop and knows there'll be another day and Vere Phillipps efforts are both moving and commendable.
Perhaps the competition will be most remembered for Andrew Nicholson's amazing recovery in part 3, but I hope you will view the whole 90 minutes as a great reminder of a golden age of Eventing coverage on the BBC.
The Technical Stuff
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| Dubbing |
The Toshiba RDXV60KB is a very sophisticated machine. As well as transferring from VHS to DVD it also allow transferring (or dubbing) to an internal HDD. For greater flexibility I chose to dub from VHS to HDD and then transfer from HDD to DVD. Because I wanted everything to be at the best quality possible then I was limited in the size of file that would ultimately fit onto a DVD. This came down to trial and error which resulted in a limit of 30 mins of video at a time. This gave me a more manageable file size to work with on the PC. I ripped the DVD into the PC using Nero Platinum Recode (again at maximum quality) and produced the videos using Serif MoviePlus X6 with minimal editing. For saying the original tape would have been recorded on a straight forward Philips TV/VCR combo I'm extremely pleased with the result and so pleased I didn't decide to wipe it all those years ago!
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| Mr stickability meets Mr Smiffy |
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