I completed PBP, and I've now made a film, it's available on DVD and Blu Ray. click on the above picture to see a sample of the material.

Paris Brest Paris 2011.

The film is in a number of parts, the first nine chapters are a 50 minute film from the start to the finish of PBP. It’s not strictly in order, it’s more an impression of some of the different aspects of Paris Brest Paris. I’ve ridden it four times, and this is the third time I’ve filmed it, so this film is a distillation of some of the ideas I’ve had about the subject. Chapters 10 and 11 are about what happens at the start and finish. When you are riding the event you see a limited number of other people again and again. You are more likely to see yourself at the start and finish, but it’s harder to keep the pace of the film moving if you spend too much time at St Quentin. After the start and finish sections there is some bare footage of finishing riders, this is in case you might see yourself. It’s difficult to film, so it might be just a glimpse. I’ve gone through the two hours+ of finishers that we have and filtered the riders of obvious nationalities. So there’s a version for each set of riders of about 15 minutes. There was still some space left on the disc after that, so I put on the story of Drew Buck and his 1901 bike, the Tandem Trike of Mark Brooking and Arabella Maude, Sophie Matter and her Dutch Bike, Aldo Mangione and the Swiss Army Bike and the Triplet of the Claass brothers.

It’s intended that the first 50 minutes is for interested friends and family, and the later sections are for committed riders. the Blu-Ray is particularly useful for showing to clubs as the detail is better, you'd need a HD projector probably.

The film costs £15 including postage and Packing in the UK for DVD £18 for Blu-Ray HD.

Cost to elsewhere will depend on postage and how much of a cut Pay Pal take for exchange costs.

DVD-Europe £16,  Elsewhere is £16.50 equivalent to about $26.50. just choose GB Pounds in Paypal.

Blu-Ray -Europe £19, Elsewhere is £19.50, equivalent to about $31.

You can send me a cheque made out to Damon Peacock, at 7 Fowler Avenue, Farington Moss, Leyland, PR26 6RL. or you can pay by PayPal my address there is damonpeacock@lineone.net

If you don't have a PayPal account I can e-mail you a Pay Pal invoice where you can pay with a card. Just email me as above. I'd put a Pay Pal button on here, but this is a cheap website that doesn't allow me to do that.

 Blu Ray Compatibility.

I've had reports of  some Blu-Ray players not handling the disc I produce. it's a two stage problem, some players in the USA don't like 25 frames per second discs, so I've made a 30 frames per second disc to accomodate that problem. other players don't play BD-R discs produced on a computer. I found a list of compatible players. http://www.summationtechnology.com/blu-ray-player-compatibility-chart.htm

if you are in North America and want a Blu-Ray disc chech that you machine is compatible.

I've had no reports of problems from Europe with Blu Ray discs. 

More on Compatibilty

Blu-Ray disc compatibility is a fairly obscure subject. I only encountered it because I’m trying to get a disc I produced to play in North America. What you need to know is that when formats are new there is a desire to use that novelty as a way of limiting piracy.

So the first generation of players will only play discs of the home region, or no region, made on glass masters by the major studios, this is driven by the power the studios have due to the content they can supply, without which the players can’t be sold. The first machines came from Japan, so the default is the 30 frames per second standard that is shared with the US and Canada. Europe uses 25 frames per second, this is due to the frequency of the mains electricity which is 60hz in North America and 50hz in Europe, this provides the time base for scanning in cathode ray tube televisions. There was no reason to make 60hz machines play 50hz content, but DVD and Blu-Ray players in Europe tend to be able to play 60 hz content, because the chips have the 50hz capability added on, but retain the 60hz bit. With DVD players the newer machines, especially the cheap ones, use a universal chipset with no customisation, so a recent cheap player in North America will play any format. TVs are now digital displays and it doesn’t matter to them what the frame rate of the input signal is. If the player has an HDMI output it is functioning as a purely digital device, the only reason that it won’t play both formats, and indeed 24 frames per second is because the maker of the player wants to restrict access to content.

Another problem is also related to copyright. That is the production of discs on computers from blanks. If the machine plays those there is a chance for piracy, so early DVD players and Blu Ray players won’t accept them. But the makers of the players also make HD cameras and Blu-Ray writers, so later machines allow you to play the sort of disc you might make of family events. The cheap end of the market also play such discs, because they can’t be bothered to customise any settings. Beyond being able to play the Blu Ray discs there is the question of menus. Some players won’t play films with menus made on blank media if they have a menu, because those are the likeliest to be pirate copies. There are lists of machines which show compatibility for blank media. http://www.summationtechnology.com/blu-ray-player-compatibility-chart.htm and I have made the film for North America, so the only unknown is if the player likes menus or not.

The problem is likely to diminish as people buy newer Blu Ray players, it’s the early adopters who will have difficulties. I’m keen to make more Blu-Ray films, it’s a format which repays a more ambitious approach, and has the potential to recoup some of the production costs. Send me the details of your machine and I will research as much as I can to see if it may be a problem.

Regarding DVDs, a guide to whether your machine will play my current DVD in the 25 fps version is whether the official PBP 2007 DVD runs in your player. Because there are fewer frames, the overall quality is slightly better in the 25 fps version.