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HURL Data Products

All video and data obtained through use of the deep-diving submersibles is catalogued and archived by the HURL Data Department so that it can be made available to scientists, educators and film producers. Over the years the HURL Data Dept has continued to upgrade as technologies advance. HURL’s tapes and slides have been converted to digital formats and backed up on DVD. Video equipment has been upgraded to keep up with modern technology. The DVD library has made video much more readily available to researchers and now HD video is allowing for higher precision video analyses (e.g., species identification).

Technology Improvements

From 2005 through most of 2009 video from two cameras mounted on the Pisces submersibles was routed through a switcher and recorded onto 2-hr DVCAM tapes, of which DVD copies were provided to PIs. In 2005 a universal time clock that inputs to a video overlay injected into the video stream and recorded to tape no matter which camera is switched to record was installed in the subs. The overlay, which can be disabled temporarily for an uninterrupted video scene, includes time, depth, heading, and altitude above bottom and these same values are recorded in a data file on the onboard computer for later download and inclusion in the data package.

In 2009, we upgraded to full High Definition video with the purchase of two Insite Pacific MINI-ZEUS HDTV cameras. On each sub the HD camera is mounted adjacent to the ROS color CCD camera on a starboard pan and tilt, which provides a good view of the sampling basket and starboard side when traversing along walls. The ROS video has the data overlay inserted onto it and is recorded to hard drive with DataVideo’s DN-10 recorder. The HD video is recorded to high-capacity compact flash cards with Convergent Design’s Flash XDR. Both sets of video are copied to external hard drives after the dive and provided to the PI along with all their other data. This marks a monumental improvement in video quality provided to the scientists and archived for future use. Furthermore, the video files are in a format that is ready to be imported into an editing system without any further conversion. In order to support these files, we have purchased a sea-going Mac laptop as well as a high-end Mac editing computer, both loaded with Final Cut Pro, which is the industry standard non-linear editing software. Now, instead of storing tapes and backing them up to DVD, we will be storing hard drives and backing up to Blu-ray discs and high-capacity RAID storage systems.

Data

We are working to get these available online… check back soon!

  • Video -- contact HURL's Data Dept Manager with any specific inquiries.
  • Pilot Photos -- sub pilots take photos through the viewport on every dive since 2003; some highlight photos can be viewed in the multimedia gallery. We hope to eventually have the complete set online.
  • QLR's -- Quick Look Reports offer a brief overview of each dive
  • CTD -- conductivity, temperature, depth data where available
  • NaDS -- data from the video overlay that includes time, depth, heading, and altitude above bottom
  • Tracking -- location of the sub throughout the dive

 

 

 

 

 

 

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