David_Fincher

Fair enough. I usually don't browse/post very often, so I had to make my best guess of most appropriate category for discussing a spam issue.

Sorry, couldn't immediately find an option to report this directly to the site staff, but Orange15 sent me an unsolicited PM about buying Bitcoin which, aside from being something I detest for being a complete environmental disaster, is obviously spam.

Left half of the video at 2' 02", shortly after Hammersmith Bridge.

This was during the bridge's heavy refurbishment in 2010-2011, so traffic seemed to be restricted to using the southern arch (presumably to reduce the risk of people having spanners dropped on their heads while they worked on the northern side). I have used the Youtube stabilisation for other things once or twice, but I'd only do that if I were uploading from a mobile device that didn't have the guts to run proper video software. The results are passable at best and, as you say, often actually worse; sometimes it seems to think that distorting the entire image is a good idea. (I've never been around a Salvador Dali exhibition while drinking anti-freeze, but I'm fairly sure the visual effect is similar).

The video was compiled from the original photos in VirtualDub, using the Deshaker plug-in. Deshaker is a little technical to use, but it does offer the user a lot more control than things like Youtube's stabilisation or many other video editors. For example, it can be told to ignore certain parts of the image when doing the analysis - so here it was told to focus on the centre of the frame (thus ignoring the bow of the boat and any bridges going overhead in the foreground). It did take reprocessing some parts with varying settings and a bit of manual overriding (there was one frame at about 17 seconds in that failed to align with any settings), but given it's free software rather than some thousand-pound-per-year-licence editing suite, I can't complain too much.

How many of these cases also involved other people working the lock? While we (as in Alan, Cath and I) did hang Flamingo twice, that part of the incident would have been relatively trivial on its own. Had the volunteer either not been there, or immediately taken action, things would quickly have been under control and it would have all been fairly minor. I'd be sceptical of any boater who said he/she never got caught on a lock. It happens from time to time, regardless of crew experience, but handled quickly, it's not a situation of major consequence (some broken crockery, maybe). Getting hung on a lock is of course not an exemplary situation, but I don't think our actions in the situation were in any way amateurish. I can't speak exactly for everything that Cath and Alan did in the circumstances, as I wasn't a direct witness to it all (as has been said, this started with me inside the boat), but I have no particular reason to believe that their stories are greatly embellished, and I personally took immediate and decisive corrective action the moment I noticed the boat starting to list. Regarding the interests of the volunteer, is it not best that he gets a some reminder that "Drop the paddles" (whoever shouts it) means "Drop them NOW"? (Unless perhaps you're in a situation in which you can see that this would actually worsen things, but I can't actually think of one). This incident isn't a major black mark (as it was ultimately resolved safely), but what position would he be in if he made a similar call in the future, only with a less experienced crew who might be unable or unwilling to make the decision to overrule him? Personally, as unpleasant as I find it to be dressed down over a safety screw-up (and it has happened when I've worked as a stage technician), I would always prefer that over making the mistake again; It's not a game, and it could have very real consequences.