Cocos Island Short Video

OK, finally back home after my Cocos Island trip. Here's a short 3:30min highlight video that I've mustered up while I try to kick this nasty jetlag.

Despite the grueling travel involved (50+hrs from HK! ) , this turned out to be an amazing trip and was worth all that plane travel, layovers, buses, and 30hrs boat ride that had half the guest ill . Definitely a "must do" dive trip. I found the conditions frustrating for shooting vid (deep, overcast skies, rain, and currents plus just me still goofing up my camera settings!) but was able to get a few good clips. Will post a proper trip report in the travel section later. In the meantime, enjoy

Just click on any of the hammerhead sharks in the following photo... B)

or if that doesn't work, use this link:

http://stage6.divx.com/user/pakman00/video...3/Cocos-Preview

Hey Pakman,

Would love to see it but really don't want to download those Divx cookies. The Cocos is my favorite place to dive for the large pelagic life. Next summer I will be there for a full month, 11 days on the Hunter, staying on the island for 2 days with the guards, and then 11 days on the Okeanos. It will be my 10th and 11th trips there. If anyone wants to join me on the Okeanos you are all more than welcome as I booked the entire boat. You went at the right time, between late June and early Sept. The rainy season of May and June bring all the islands nutrients into the water and thus the large schools of hammers, silver tips and the whale sharks come in. Usually, I've had few rain storms during that time which mostly have dissipated in 20 minutes.

I hope it was a great trip for you and well worth the travel time. I really think that the Cocos is a diver's heaven, a once in a lifetime experience that I insisted I do 11 lifetimes worth there.

Steve B)

ps. Friends just called who recently came back from the Galapagos. She said they had 34 whale sharks at Darwin and Wolf. Unreal!

...Would love to see it but really don't want to download those Divx cookies. ....

Too bad. There are some really high resolution videos over there. Scuba related and non.

Steve, well I'm envious of you guys stateside who just have a short 3hr or so flight to Costa Rica. If I was back in the states, I'd be booking a Cocos trip every year! Looking at the few goofups I've had with my vid camera settings on this trip, I'm itching to get back to there for another chance to shoot those hammerheads!

Next time, I will definitely consider the Hunter boats. There were a few things I didn't like about the Okeanos. The Boat is in need of a serious interior overhaul... But regardless, it was a worthwhile trip. With the exception of the Manuelita nite dives and Dos Amigos, I think we saw hammerheads on everydive.

As for stage6/ divx, yeah I'm not a big fan of cookies, but find that site's cookies pretty harmless and it's one of the few free video hosting sites where you can post large high resolution videos.

Longer 13min clip now uploaded to stag6. Pardon the out of focus/ blown out exposure (user error... ) ...

File is 300+MB so depending on your DSL connection, could take up to 1hr to fully load...

http://stage6.divx.com/user/pakman00/video...and-Aug-07-Full

Great video- I really enjoyed it. I have an HC7 and about to get the Gates housing (so far I've only used it in a TopDawg). So it was great to see how the camera deals with a variety of conditions.

Going looking for whalesharks in November with it. Can't Wait

Going looking for whalesharks in November with it. Can't Wait

Where are you heading in Nov? Always interested by other brits holiday!

Going to Djibouti.....bit obscure, but if it's tricky to spell it must be a good place!

Good work Pakman.

Hope you sold a copy to all your fellow divers.

What lights and port were you using.

Looked like you had a wide angle for uptop as well.

Good work Pakman.

Hope you sold a copy to all your fellow divers.

 

What lights and port were you using.

Looked like you had a wide angle for uptop as well.

Lights: 2x 24W Salvo Video HID's.

Port: Fathoms WP25. Topside - Raynox HD-5050pro - Not sure if its the wa lens, but I think I need to play with the topside WB as the AWB on the HC7 seems to go overly green & too contrasty in bright daylight...

Nope didn't charge them for that amatuerish job. I'll leave that to you pro's. But to make you pros happy, most of them did purchase the "official" DVD from the boat...

Okay, I realize this is late in the thread but have any of you Mac people had any problems with the Divx cookies before I proceed to download? I am always eager to see anything Cocos Islands related.

Steve B)

Hi Steve

I've not had a 'problem' with the Divx cookies as such, but Stage6 doesn't seem to like the Mac and it's not just safari, but firefox as well. Sometimes it plays everything fine then other times it crashes non stop (the browser not your mac). It's worth a look though as the video quality is exceptional when compared to youtube etc.

Cheers, Simon

Okay, I realize this is late in the thread but have any of you Mac people had any problems with the Divx cookies before I proceed to download? I am always eager to see anything Cocos Islands related.

Steve B)

so far so good, Steve. I've yet to have any probs with anything to do with DivX.... get in there.....

Simon's right about the quality aswell, it really is pretty awesome (well as awesome as those PC users can get without the true power of QuickTime behind them )

chris

haha... for us PC users, QT is serious bloatware!! Talk about unwanted cookies and popups!

back to subject... actually I do recall a friend of mine mentioning she couldn't get the video running. Not sure which browser she was using on her Mac.

haha... for us PC users, QT is serious bloatware!! Talk about unwanted cookies and popups!

 

back to subject... actually I do recall a friend of mine mentioning she couldn't get the video running. Not sure which browser she was using on her Mac.

hey pakman,

maybe a stupid question, but had she downloaded everything that she needed?

though I know us Mac users are graced with a library chockfull of drivers etc (enabling a true plug & play experience with external peripherals ) DivX ain't one of them and needs to be installed in order for the computer to get things right......

I think that I'm going off topic here (sorry Mods.....)

haha... for us PC users, QT is serious bloatware!! Talk about unwanted cookies and popups!

I install Qiuicktime Alternative on my PCs instead. It cuts out all the crap but iTunes still works (install iTunes first) and a Quicktime Pro licence still works.

XP x64 Quicktime browser plugins still don't work though

There's also Real Alternative for playing Real Player stuff without all their crap too.

Anyway back to the topic...