Discussion: Orienteering Video Archive

I am trying to create an extensive archive of Orienteering videos that can be easily downloaded from the web. I have set up a new section at TheWaterStop where users can submit videos to the archive. If anyone knows of any cool Orienteering videos that are online, please submit them here.

I think that this could be an important tool to show new people what Orienteering is all about. Tero's Video gave me the idea to set up this archive so that we can just refer new people to a spot where they can see what Orienteering is all about from the comfort of their home.

The Video Archive is here.

Good stuff, John. That's a great idea. It'll be a good resource to help explain that yes, orienteering is a sport.

I'd love to add to your collection, but I'm hardly a filmable orienteer. Nor do I live near any. Maybe I'll make a video of me playing Catching Features. ;-)

john, a while back i recall spike listing a couple european O video archives on his blog - dig around there you might come with some other good links.

I put a copy of tero's vid on my pda that I can show to people when they give me that blank stare when I try to explain orienteering to them

Hah! That's a great idea Clint. I wonder if I could get a cell phone with video capability to run it. I'll talk to Spike to see if he can remember any good links.

You should try to get the news piece from this year's Tio Mila. Wow. The mass start was insane. It was streaming video, so I wasn't able to save a copy. I just checked, and it's still working:
Stolen from Spike's Blog, April 25

Thanks Matt, I'll add that one. The video archive is just a collection of links to files that are located elsewhere, so I am not actually putting them on the site. I'll add the link though.

What do you think of this video? Reminds me of that Attackpoint T-Shirt.

I think it's very cool. I love the way they keep making you think it's the cliff when it's really not. I wondered what the disclaimer said...

What's the file format? What player are you using?

disclaimer translation:

this video clip was directed/produced by ultra-professional stuntmen.
do not try to reproduce this when orienteering.

The Team releases itself from all responsibility in case of accident.


(any way you would be wrong... choosing to contour along the cliff would be much faster.)

"Crazy Choice" is great, particularly because it makes the runner look fast! Much more than Tero's video, in which he looks completely relaxed and casual, even though the wise among us know that he's actually moving too fast for us to keep up. Crazy Choice may be unrealistic (and I'm talking about the part before the punchline), but it gets the point across that orienteering is about running.

I showed "Crazy Choice" to a friend who has so far refused to go orienteering (he's a runner and a navigator...) and his first response was, "What I want to know is how the **** does he read a map while running so fast?" I sensed a feeling of awe. Maybe that'll convince him.

Does anyone happen to know what kind of camera Tero uses for the portion of his "Follow Me" videos from a first person perspective? I am trying to get a bit more information about hands-free running/O-cams.

This is about the only link I could find that had any perspective on a camera in a headband, but in comparison Tero's video had less bouncing and created less nausea in the first person view. http://o-gear.blogspot.com/

Any insight would be appreciated, thanks.

There's a selection of good videos on the Orienteering Australia site http://orienteering.asn.au/promotion/devel/videos/

none of the "thewaterstop..." links works for me :(

There are some good video's of the previous Finnish WOC's on the WOC 2013 website, click on Previous WOCs. Can't download them, but good watching.

TheWaterStop website doesn't exist any more since jfredrickson no longer maintains it.

28 minutes video about 2-days rogaining in Moscow region (some kind of). Video in Russian but all is clear.
http://vimeo.com/5397203
I belive that Tundra/Desert was in 4th place in this event.

D'Oh! Next time I will look at the date of the original post!

Yet for junior orienteers, this video of one brave girl against 6 young guys in Ireland might be appropriate.

I can't help but notice that a couple of those people have joined (or started posting on the public sections of) AP since that video was first linked...

I've always liked the many instructional videos of Simone Niggli. Yet for junior orienteers, this video of one brave girl (Denise Healy) against 6 young guys in Ireland might be appropriate.

[Rewritten]

2 years ago i started a portal like thewaterstop. i never made this public. here is it: http://otube.eu
if there's sombody who like to work on the project, let me know.

here are some orienteering commercials: http://o-wiki.net/index.php?title=Commercials

Here's a somewhat anachronistic question:

Is there an archive of video files that can be downloaded?

I'm giving a presentation to 100 high school cross country runners (July 18th afternoon), and I had planned to show a few online videos then found out that there is no internet access in the meeting hall.

The core of the session will be to actually let them do one or two introductory orienteering courses, but a few short video clips would be the icing on the cake and would be more entertaining than just me talking.

Hi Eric,

I don't know of any archives, but you can hunt for freeware / shareware apps that let you save YouTube videos locally as mpeg, avi, mp3 or whatever.

I *think* this is the one I've used before: http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/

I've used http://keepvid.com/ to save videos. Just enter the URL of the vid on the site and you can save it in a friendly format. Uses a Java applet. (I think the one Brooke posted works the same way.)

One trick that works with Firefox (and maybe other browsers) is to load an online flash video, (let it load fully), then without closing the browser window, navigate to the cache folder (location is system dependent) and you generally can just copy the video file from there to a permanent location for later viewing. You can then use various software to convert it to a different format if required. I generally use VLC player (all major platforms) since it plays nice with most any video format and can also record from live streams.

I'm on linux too - hence I didn't delve into details since most others are on windows or mac and I'm not really sure where to start exploring...

Thanks, everyone! The presentation and orienteering courses were enthusiastically received. The best time on the first course (2 km, 8 controls, ~35m climb, less strong handrails in places than on a typical novice course, but with lots of open land for good visibility) was 11:14, I think, and everyone was under 20 minutes.

Hi. For saving vids from youtube you can use following method too..

1. Find the video of interest, for instance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HogpF3Q6gpU

2. Add word "kick" before youtube and navigate to following address

http://www.kickyoutube.com/watch?v=HogpF3Q6gpU

3. The page wil present you with choices of different formats/resolutins you can save video (3GP, MP4, FLV) . Tada.