Wetlook World Forum

thanks for your comments... as you probably know, I started this forum to replace the previous one hosted on Bravenet.  Relying on a 3rd party host was always full of dangers, and the forum was pulled several times.

It has always been my intention to provide this forum as an 'open' place for general wetlook, rather than as one big advert for Minx Movies / Sunsplash Pictures / Wetlook.com . Appart from the banner ads just below the forum introduction, which as you say, most people will scroll past, I specifically decided not to put links on the message pages themselves.

I also decided not to sell advertising space in the forum, and fill it with more banners.  UMD is bad enough for that these days.

Although I normally manage to read most of the messages, to check for content, I generally do add comments to other peoples posts, there are plenty of people here to do that.  If I do make a comment, then I try to be careful in what I say.

I only really post here when I release a new tape, or add pictures to the Minx / Sunsplash websites.  I'm very glad that you enough my video sites, and the number of images there.  I'm sure you'll be relieved to know that I have absolutely no plans to making them paysites... from what I've seen, selling videos gives a far better return, most paysites struggle to cover their costs, and have constant problems with people complaining.  Instead, I'm able to use the income from the videos to fund further filming trips, whilst I rely on my full time job (electronic engineer) for my income.

I'm quite happy for the 'newcomers' to fill the forum with stuff, that's one of the reasons I kept it going: like many other busy people, I wanted a central place to come to for my daily wetlook 'fix'.

As for DVD's, I've had a multi-format burner for a while, but as I often sell 100 videos each month, I'm not keen to rush all my videos over to that format.  My later videos are still selling well on VHS, so it will be some years before I release those on DVD, risking easy piracy.  If a producer is only selling 10's of copies of a video, then releasing on an easily copied DVD is less of a problem.  The other big problem with DVDs is the 2 formats (-R and +R) in the very limited tests that I've done, I've found that most PCs can play either format, but with domestic, set-top players there is a much greater problem.  My own player can't use +R at all, one friend's player can't handle -R, and another friends player (a couple of years old) only playes +R, but gives up after about 1/2 hour, as the disks appear to be overheating - presumably down to the fact that 'real' DVDs ae silver, and reflect all the laser heat, whereas the -R/+R disks are tinted, and will absorb some of the heat.  Presumably some of the earlier players didn't allow for much heat disaipation, as writables weren't around !  So apart from the time and PC time spend burning the disks, I'm anticipating some returns !  This very rearly happens with VHS tapes.

Anyhow, I digress, I've not posted any new pics for about a month, as I'm rushing to get my printer flyer and mailshot for M15 - Wet Me Now  done by next week, in time for Xmas.  This means processing the pictures for all the remaining scenes, which is a time consuming process.  In the old days, I just grabbed a few pictures live from the master tape, now, with PC editing, I grab 2 frames per second from the footage, then run through several thousand pictures per scene, picking out 300 or so intersting shots (shots that are good in the video don't always make good stills), these are then further filtered to 50-100 to go on the website, and then further filtered to 4-6 to go on the printed flyers.  These are then mailed out to the 600 or so customers who don't have email addresses. Online people are not missing anything - these only contain the printed text from the website, and small versions of some pictures, so don't worry!

Anyhow, must get on, and look through another few hundred pictures of Chantal and Sara pouring water over each others bits through their workout gear...  (website updates next week !)

Nigel