Good things come to those who wait, so they say, and in this case I would have to agree. Duff TV took on a huge job of recording the 2007 Australian BMX Championships to sell the DVDs. There were some delays in the release of the DVD, which caused some irritation amongst those eagerly waiting their pre-ordered copies of the DVD, but it’s available now and from all reports all are happy with the final product.

Duff TV aren’t new to recording BMX racing, they regularly record the Tasmanian State Championships, in fact they did the production for the 2003 World Championships in Perth (and the 2002 and 2003 Nationals as well from memory). There have been a few changes in the format of the racing on the bigger stage which created a few glitches for the production of the DVD. The biggest hurdle was the fact there were two races on the track at any one time. What this meant was the cameras were capturing the action 100% of the time, but then going into the editing room was a nightmare. Each race had to be pieced together so you could see if from the drop of the gate the whole way to the finish line. The commentary was for only half the race then the team had to move on to the next rack of riders, which is why you will hear music at the start and end of most of the qualifying races. That said I for one think that Duff TV did a great job. If you were in the mix in the races you will be seen on the DVD. If you had a big crash it’s more than likely that was captured too, and probably played back zoomed in and in slow motion.

There are a few classes on each DVD as well as a nice highlights package which includes the opening ceremony. Each moto is a separate chapter to make it easy to jump races, the main menu has options to jump to each specific class on the DVD, I would have to say that navigation is perfect, and with the slow motion controls built into your DVD player it makes for a great analysis tool, you can check where riders went wrong, or alternatively where others may have got it right. A nice extra touch is after some of the races (at least the races with big crashes and finals) there’s a short highlight at the end.

I’m not going to say the visual is perfect, it’s not like this was expected to go to TV like some of the UCI broadcasts we have seen, but it’s of equal, or maybe slightly better, quality than most of the Transit DVD’s I have seen.

If you hear sound on the menu but not on the race footage, it’s just the audio settings on you DVD player, most DVD players switch automatically, however some of them require manual intervention. I have come across it before with some of the earlier DVDs I had put together myself. Just check your DVD player manual on how to change the audio configuration to PCM sound. Remember to change it back afterwards or you will only hear sound in stereo.

I have watched the DVD a few times now, usually if I watch something more than once it’s an indication that it was worth the money spent on it.

Australian Championships DVD Statistics:

• 324 GIG of raw footage on the Duff TV hard drives
• That’s 24 hours of unedited footage
• 12 Edited masters created from the 46 classes ( plus all finals disc)
• Average running time of 1 hour 50 per DVD
• Average of 4 classes per DVD
• 700 of the 750 races chaptered for almost instant viewing of race
• Approx 350 hours in post production.
• 200 individual sales compared to about 280 at the 2003 Nationals in Adelaide
• Every moto race extended in editing due to dropping of the gate meaning start and finish of race is seen in full  screen. In Adelaide 2003 the dropping of gate only happened as program was behind and stopped once caught up.

Rating 20/20:
(I have had to change the rating system for DVD’s I hope
this works for you)

Comments:

• Memories captured like this wil last forever, how could you even put a price on that?
• All the action from the weekend is captured on these DVDs
• Lots of fun for everyone
• It’s not perfect, but it’s not too bad. Considering it’s got all the action from the Australian Championships, it’s easy to navigate, and it’s not that expensive I’ll give it full points.

Check out www.dufftv.com.au/bmx for more information, check out the downloadable video clips, or see how you can order yourself a copy.

Reviewed by Shane Jenkins November 22, 2007