The Student Pilot Cast - Videocast

SPC-Video #004-Flight Over Hana

Bill Williams — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:37:00 -0700

I’m back with video! I’ve been sitting on this footage for almost two years now, so I’m very excited to get this one published. In this episode I take you on a flight with me over Hana, Hawaii on Maui with Armin from Hang Gliding Maui. Armin is a CFI, and took me for me first microlight ride, and it couldn’t have been in a better setting.

This flight was one of the experiences that finally got me doing something about my dream of learning to fly. Within 6 months of this, I was preparing to start my own training. I hope you enjoy it. As always, I would love to get feedback from you on this.

NOTE: I have encoded this video at a higher quality than I usually do because the content deserves it, and it is a shorter video, so the file size wouldn’t be too massive. It could, however, prove problematic on some hardware players. I have tested on iPhone, both classic and new Zune’s, and Xbox 360, and all work great. I couldn’t get my hands on a regular iPod to test, but I think it should work. It may not work on older iPods though (pre G5). In any case, please let me know if you run into any problems so that I can continue to improve my process.

SPC Video #004-Flying Over Hana from Bill Williams on Vimeo.

Direct Feed Link

SPC-Video #003-Reference This...

Bill Williams — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:50:00 -0700

It's time for another video episode, episode 3, Reference This. In this episode, I take a solo practice flight to the practice area to go over Ground Reference Maneuvers.

I'm including the smaller version again in this feed (320x240) because of the sheer size of the 640x480 versions (400 MB). I've heard from a couple of you commenting that you would rather have the larger version...and I still may consider that, but these files just seem too large for a simple podcast. The embedded video from Vimeo in this post is pretty high quality, so if you desire a more detailed version, maybe this will suffice. For those of us who watch video podcasts on a handheld device, the smaller version will suffice. Again...if I hear from more of you wanting the larger versions of these, I will consider changing this, or adding a High Quality feed for the larger videos.

Thanks for taking the time to watch. As usual, I'd love to know what you think, so shoot off an email or use the contact page on the website.

Here is the embedded version of the video.

SPC-Video #003-Reference This... from Bill Williams on Vimeo.

Use the Feed Link

SPC-Video #002-On My Own

Bill Williams — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:06:00 -0700

Hey…look at this. Finally a video episode! It’s been a long time coming, I know. I hope you enjoy it.

There are some problems with the video which I explain a bit about in this episode, but I decided to use some of the video anyway as I think it will still be interesting. Also, I rendered this mp4 video at 320x240 pixels to save space. This should work well on most portable video players…but won’t look quite as good viewing on a computer of TV screen. I do have a standard definition version (640x480), but it is a whopping 227 MB as opposed to 94 MB, so I went with the smaller one. Please let me know if you would prefer the larger, clearer versions of this and future video podcasts or the smaller ones that I’m releasing. Based partially on this feedback, I will make future decisions on the rendering of future videos (and may even change this one).

In this video I show some of the flight that I talked about in the audio episode 10, “Sometime You Just Feel Like a Pilot”. All of the commentary and insight about the flight is in the audio cast; this video is simply a compilation of parts of that flight for your viewing pleasure. The main discussions still happen in the audiocast…so simply put, the video is not a replacement for the audio…they are for different purposes.

Thanks again for listening and watching. Please let me know what you think of the video. The quality will be better next time…but feel free to comment on the content, length, flow, etc., so I can try to make my next one even better.

SPC Video #002-On My Own from Bill Williams.

StudentPilotCast-V002-20080617.mp4

SPC-Video #001-Trent on the Controls

Bill Williams — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:12:00 -0700

Here is Trent on his first single engine plane ride...and low and behold, he's at the controls. Trent may be a regular on the site going forward. We'll see. Give him some encouragement, folks!

Video: Trent Takes the Controls

StudentPilotCast-V001-20080319.mp4