Monday 12 June 2006

The lousy quality of Google video

I got sent this link recently:

On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart
of Paris .

The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine , through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.

The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way
streets.

Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago.

Make sure your sound is on and keep an eye out for Elvis.

I spent nearly 9 minutes of my life watching this video. It is not the first time that I have seen it - a bloke had it at work last year. The video that I saw at work was first class - crisp, clear and quite heart thumping. It was worth spending 9 minutes to watch it. In fact I think I probably spent 27 minutes watching it with a few other blokes.

I don't know why I bothered spending 9 minutes watching the Google version. It was had the life compressed out of it. It's like watching a really grainy, dark, blurry video. It is complete crap. Some things should just not be posted to the web.

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