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'STOP GAP' DVD NEWSLETTER 5The latest news of the 'Stop Gap' DVD, celebrating the 2010 visit to the UK of Arthur Goddard — the last-surviving member of the management team who designed, built and developed the Land-Rover in 1947-48. |
We visit the Goddard family factory in Brisbane with an Australian online magazine, and I'll explain why I've (reluctantly) withdrawn the NTSC version of the DVD.
Sales of the DVD are going well, and I'm very grateful for the kind things that many of you have said. I've always found that the best programmes produce themselves — 'First Overland' was a case in point, and 'Stop Gap' was another. With a subject like Arthur, and the places we visted, and the stories Arthur told, it would have been very difficult to go wrong. It was an honour to be able to do it.
As I type this on July 26th, it feels like winter on the Yorkshire Coast, with gloomy, damp weather blowing in off the North Sea and threatening our hay crop. I understand just a few miles inland it's been a lovely day! But in Australia, of course, it is winter... hence the show scene at the top of this video clip from Channel 7 Australia. Nice to 'meet' Arthur's son Chris (who I've had many email conversations with in the past 12 months), and to see inside the Vehicle Components factory. Rather amused to see some of the still images that were included — I definitely recognise a still shot from the DVD where they morph Arthur's 2010 face into his official photo from the Rover days. That's my radio mic he's wearing, and it's from the MIRA sequence!
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And well done Mike Bishop for managing to get a plug in for his 'They Found Our Engineer' book, which is available from www.260ac.co.uk. His home page also has a snow scene in the background... but in this case it's a Worcestershire one from last (UK) winter. The book is based on the conversations that Mike's had with Arthur over the past 18 months or so, and goes much more deeply into the nuts and bolts of the birth of the Land-Rover than I was able to in the DVD. It's a perfect complement to 'Stop Gap', and I thoroughly recommend it. |
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I'm afraid I've had to withdraw the NTSC version of 'Stop Gap' from sale. This will only affect potential customers in Canada, the USA and Japan, but I thought I'd let everyone know.
In general, the rest of the world uses the PAL television system, but the majority of PAL DVD players (at least in the UK) will handle NTSC with some degree of efficiency. That's not usually the case the other way round. Getting a professional standards conversion made is quite expensive, and as 'Stop Gap' is never going to sell in block-buster quantities, for the small number of NTSC-area sales likely it's just not realistic to get it done.
But my video editor has a trick up its sleeve that can be useful for simple productions — it's possible to copy a PAL production and fool the software into thinking it's NTSC. Not anything like as good as a proper standards conversion, but affordable. 'Quick & Dirty' is another expression for it!
The trouble is, it's impossible to test one of these 'fake NTSC' discs thoroughly here in the UK, because our PAL players are very forgiving of NTSC. So I sent an early copy to the Series One Club's USA representative, Tom Bache. Tom beavered away, using a number of players and computers, and found a lot of glitches and missing sections. I made a second copy, and sent that... it was quite a bit better, but still not reliable. There were also issues such as the edges of the frame being cropped on some players, losing the first few letters of the name captions. As I don't want to sell copies that I'm not confident about, I decided it best to withdraw the 'fake NTSC' copies from general sale. They are still available to special order if anyone really wants one, but they are at the purchaser's risk, and not refundable.
So does this mean that N.American and Japese Land Rover enthusiasts can't get to see 'Stop Gap'? I'm pleased to say they can, as it's fairly clear from Tom's researches that PAL discs will perform OK in most computers (both PC and Mac). Not perhaps the same as sitting down in front of the fire in your comfy room to watch the birth of the Land-Rover on a big flat-screen TV, but at least the footage is viewable. In front of the fire in your comfy room on your laptop, perhaps?
As ever, you can order PAL copies online on the 'Stop Gap' Website
GRAEME ALDOUS
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