Bergen to Oslo from your armchair

December 21, 2009 8:25 PM

On 27th November, Norwegian broadcaster NRK broadcast a 7.5 hour documentary showing every minute of the scenic train ride between Bergen on the Norwegian west coast, crossing the mountains to Oslo. Now, after removing all extraneous interviews, music clips and fancy trickery from the documentary, they are offering the entire, clean, 7 hour continuous front-camera version for free Creative Commons download. All 22Gb of it. Here's a fantastic 10 minute taster on YouTube.
posted by Beautiful Screaming Lady (97 comments total)

Oh, man. This is totally hypnotic.
posted by SLC Mom at 8:31 PM on December 21, 2009

Neat!
posted by brundlefly at 8:33 PM on December 21, 2009

I'm downloading the whole thing now. I have an old laptop mounted on my wall as a digital picture frame; I'm going to loop this over and over. Thanks!
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 8:36 PM on December 21, 2009 [6 favorites]

Gud velsigne Norge!
posted by aerotive at 8:38 PM on December 21, 2009

Very tranquil and hypnotic. Except I feel like there is someone talking just out of the range of hearing the entire time, as a background to the sound of the train. Kinda creepy...
posted by gemmy at 8:39 PM on December 21, 2009

The train simulator route designers are going to love this. One of the hard parts of route building is obtaining reference material that shows what it's supposed to look like.
posted by FishBike at 8:44 PM on December 21, 2009

I absolutely adore this. I watch it and imagine that I'm traversing some moon landscape. And then there are signs written in moon language!
posted by TheNewWazoo at 8:44 PM on December 21, 2009

I believe the kids would sit and watch every minute of all seven hours. I probably could too.
posted by jquinby at 8:48 PM on December 21, 2009

I want to project this onto the wall of some university building or another and just have it run for the heck of it. No explanation - just beautiful scenery throughout the day.
posted by LSK at 8:48 PM on December 21, 2009

Wow, this is awesome. This kind of no-restrictions sharing is exactly what state-run organizations should be doing with their assets.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 8:49 PM on December 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

If I download all of this, is there some way I can use it as a screen saver? Anybody know?
posted by twoleftfeet at 8:49 PM on December 21, 2009

I took this train about 30 years ago, and in addition to the splendid scenery, I remember that they played "In the Hall of the Mountain King" over the PA system when we got into the mountain-tunnel-mountain-tunnel part of the route. (I think they played the rest of the Peer Gynt Suite during the rest of the trip, but I'm not too sure.) Grieg wrote the suite long before the railway was built, but this must have been the landscape he imagined for his troll king.

Amtrak has a spectacular run through the Rockies on the California Zephyr line, but a video would have to include several boring hours of sitting on sidelines waiting for freight trains to pass by. And our trolls are all online. Sigh ...
posted by Quietgal at 9:01 PM on December 21, 2009 [5 favorites]

http://www.youtubedoubler.com/?video1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com...
posted by codacorolla at 9:05 PM on December 21, 2009

crossing the mountains to Oslo

Spoiler alert!
posted by CynicalKnight at 9:06 PM on December 21, 2009 [3 favorites]

Scandinavian scenery porn! Magnificent! Thank you!
posted by blucevalo at 9:08 PM on December 21, 2009

Oh, I cannot wait for this torrent to actually connect to some users and start downloading. I mean, 22GB of data? This is going to take more than a little while to actually land on my hard drive. But wow! What a great find! Thanks so much for pointing it out!
posted by hippybear at 9:13 PM on December 21, 2009

Cat Pie Hurts: I'm downloading the whole thing now. I have an old laptop mounted on my wall as a digital picture frame; I'm going to loop this over and over. Thanks!

If anybody was wondering, a 10” Viewsonic LCD 1024 x 768 digital photo frame (with remote) is around 80$, and the 32GB SDHC card to hold the movie is around another 80$.

I don't especially have 160+$ to toss at the moment, but I'm having a hard time convincing myself it wouldn't be a good use of the cash.
posted by paisley henosis at 9:17 PM on December 21, 2009 [4 favorites]

I took this trip in September 02 on the night train from Bergen to Oslo. It was so warm we had to open the windows.
posted by parmanparman at 9:20 PM on December 21, 2009

Way cool. Yet another thing I must own immediately yet don't really need. Commencing download right away.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 9:26 PM on December 21, 2009

Downloading at very low speeds (~90k/sec out of a maximum ~3.5MB/s). Also, it turns out that the frame I linked to above does not support video. So I'm sad on two counts, now.
posted by paisley henosis at 9:30 PM on December 21, 2009

i love how everybody's commenting on this video without having watched it all first

does anyone want to tell me when the møøse start biting?
posted by pyramid termite at 9:39 PM on December 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

Wow.
posted by rtha at 9:39 PM on December 21, 2009

I'd like to see the version with sampled every 60th frame so I can do the trip in 7-1/2 minutes.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:40 PM on December 21, 2009 [3 favorites]

That picture frame doesn't play movies, does it, unless I've missed something? It's a nice idea though.
posted by alexei at 9:42 PM on December 21, 2009

I actually took this train in 1993 oover night train from Bergen to Oslo, and this is almost better than that, in that all one could make out the window at night was the barren abstract snowy terrain and of course I was in a passenger car and not in the driver's seat as you are in this footage.

About the only thing this can't reproduce is the old drunk guy shouting obscenities at and scaring little kids who were running around the train by trying to grab them as they ran by. Finally a couple of polite cops asked him to get off (who knows where we were, there was nothing outside I could make any sense of other than the night time snowy terrain, there was no moon that night). He threw his suitcases at them roughly for them to to carry (Norwegian law enforcement is amazingly nice, in the U.S. that move would've got him tasered pronto) and they politely, if not perhaps a bit bemusedly escorted him off the train. I bet money they probably got him some coffee and a sandwich and gave him a lift back home or put him up somewhere for the night. Norway's like one big little town, like that.

Anyhow, this is gorgeous.
posted by Skygazer at 9:44 PM on December 21, 2009 [5 favorites]

I'm going to download it, and then extract some frames to make yet more virtual focus pictures like this one.

This is going to be fun! (Once it actually downloads all the way, assuming Comcast doesn't kick me off)
posted by MikeWarot at 9:45 PM on December 21, 2009

Neat!

When I was traveling through Europe by rail, I kept wanting to read my book instead of looking out the window. My boyfriend gave me a hard time about it.

I think I'll watch this tomorrow for a couple hours just to mess with him.
posted by mmmbacon at 9:48 PM on December 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

This is awesome. Tack!
posted by madh at 9:49 PM on December 21, 2009

(Also, I'm amazed Google has tried to copyright this, cos you know they own all reproductions of empirical reality, ya know? Relax, relax, I kid because I love the Android OS.)
posted by Skygazer at 9:49 PM on December 21, 2009

That was really relaxing to watch (save for the DING every time we hit a tunnel).

Except I feel like there is someone talking just out of the range of hearing the entire time, as a background to the sound of the train

You say this as if there wasn't someone talking just out of the range of hearing the whole time, which is what creeps me out. Because I thought there was. But now...
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 9:57 PM on December 21, 2009

Much better than anything on TV.
posted by kindalike at 10:02 PM on December 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Neat idea, but too late for the Orient Express (expired Oct 2009).

Imagine if we had film like this from 150 years ago. Digital has brought the cost so low, and quality high enough, that there is no limit to how long it can be with all sorts of long-format possibilities that have historical interest.
posted by stbalbach at 10:04 PM on December 21, 2009

I did this trip in October 1988 - from Oslo to Bergen, and then back again. On the way back we stopped at Myrdal and took the cog railway down to Flam at the end of one of the larger fjiords. The scenery was so beautiful. Anywhere there was a speck of soil on the cliff sides a tree grew - it was quite awesome.

A bunch of us backpackers stayed at a little hostel by the fjord, and were told we had to leave by the next tuesday, because that was when winter was coming. I presumed that our very nice hostel owner meant that it was the end of the season and they were closing things up, but he insisted that no, winter was coming at 4pm on that Tuesday.

OK, so we left, and took the scenic railway back up the mountain, past the waterfall, and waited for our connecting train at Myrdal. We were still there at 4pm on that Tuesday when a huge wall of weather came shooting in from the northwest, and we were soon in the middle of the first snowstorm of the Norwegian winter. Norwegians know when winter is coming.
posted by Nick Verstayne at 10:06 PM on December 21, 2009 [12 favorites]

Cat Pie Hurts: "I'm downloading the whole thing now. I have an old laptop mounted on my wall as a digital picture frame; I'm going to loop this over and over. Thanks!"

That is brilliant. Better than Quaid's landscape wall in Total Recall.
posted by brundlefly at 10:08 PM on December 21, 2009

More than anything I'm jealous of that damn train. So smooth and fast. Look at those rails! It's like someone carved them out of solid steel with robotic lasers!

I bet they have some really swanky cafe and bar car, too, and power outlets and an internet connection and everything.

WTF, America? We could have that here, but, no, you're all still stuck on driving across the country in your hideous belching land-yachts or flying everywhere packed like sardines in pressurized tin cans. Can you get up and walk around while you're driving or flying? Do you get to take it easy and watch the scenery roll by if you're driving or flying? How about enjoying some food that doesn't suck or some actual leg room.

Socialism my fat ass. Apparently modern democratic socialism makes the trains run on time like greased lightning on ice skates. Heaven forbid we subsidize a national high speed rail network like that instead of subsidizing bloated airline companies and bailing out fat cat bankers.
posted by loquacious at 10:10 PM on December 21, 2009 [22 favorites]

I'm downloading this so hard I initially suffered disk overload error. I'm sure glad that I'm not the first seeder, with my formidable 45kB/s max upload speed.

I used to fly from the UK to Japan every now and then, and the highlight of the journey was the JAL undercarriage-cam that was on a dedicated channel on the personal entertainment screen. While everyone else was hunched under a blanket, or slackjawed in front of the latest Martin Lawrence embarrassment, I'd be awake for hours over Siberia, watching the icy lakes and meandering rivers scroll serenely by underneath me. Even the clouds were mesmerising. I wish JAL would released HD footage of the entirety of that journey.
posted by Beautiful Screaming Lady at 10:14 PM on December 21, 2009 [5 favorites]

I want to download it, but I can't quite justify using almost all my monthly data allowance on it.
posted by sycophant at 10:34 PM on December 21, 2009

Loquacious: WTF, America? We could have that here, but, no, you're all still stuck on driving across the country in your hideous belching land-yachts or flying everywhere packed like sardines in pressurized tin cans. Can you get up and walk around while you're driving or flying? Do you get to take it easy and watch the scenery roll by if you're driving or flying? How about enjoying some food that doesn't suck or some actual leg room.

Man, don't even get me started. This country has just been so embarrassed by other countries, like France and Japan on this front, it's not even funny, anymore. There are millions of people in this country that would ditch their cars in a nanosecond if they had high speed rail for commuter and long distance travel, that leaves you right downtown of most places. Car plants and auto workers could re-tool to build trains instead. Say what you will about Amtrak, but I love the Acela from NYC to Boston. Compared to the TGV or the bullet trains, it's still got a ways to go, but at least it's something (all those advantages you mentioned, except the food car is pretty limited to snacks and snadwiches and last time I rode there was still no internet, which is just insane, but there's plenty of outlets and space to work).

Also, I believe a not inconsiderable chunk of the stimulus is going to go into new rail projects in this country. Let's hope it's the beginning of a real commitment as it should be based on the energy savings of that.
posted by Skygazer at 10:41 PM on December 21, 2009

It's also been posted to alt.binaries.norge, if you don't want to mess around with a torrent.
posted by bizwank at 10:43 PM on December 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

I was hooked on the 10 minute video as soon as we came out the tunnel and I'm all, OMG I'M ON HOTH and sure enough an annotation popped up to tell me that indeed, I was.

I'm downloading this to play at night while I sleep. I love the click-clacking, and the quiet voices. And should I wake up, I'll see something amazing before I roll back over and return to slumber.

On the few times I've taken an Amtrak trip across the USA (as if that could compare to this!), every time the train paralleled a highway you'd see, of course, the kids waving frantically and smiling and laughing. But more than a few adults also smiled, a sad wistful smile that always seemed to me to communicate a longing for the type of travel that passenger trains represent and that has somehow and woefully slipped into the dream of this country's past life.
posted by WolfDaddy at 10:52 PM on December 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

If I download all of this, is there some way I can use it as a screen saver? Anybody know?

There are a bunch of tools that make turning video into Windows screensavers. Iirc there are also ways of doing this on linux, I don't know about OS X, but I can't imagine it's hard.

That being said... I wouldn't count on all of those tools working with a 22GB file, so you may have to try a few different ones.
posted by atrazine at 10:56 PM on December 21, 2009

It's the uncreepy remix of Polar Express.
posted by mecran01 at 11:10 PM on December 21, 2009

I felt like I was dreaming /freud
posted by mrzarquon at 11:18 PM on December 21, 2009

I'm actually going to try to use this to replace the yule log video for nice things to be playing on tv for christmas.
posted by mrzarquon at 11:27 PM on December 21, 2009 [1 favorite]

Awesome stuff. Now I'm waiting for Russian TV to do one for the Moscow-Vladivostok train.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 11:29 PM on December 21, 2009

Here's a 3D stereo (sorta) version of the 10-minute ride (inspired by codacorolla's youtube mashup and last night's screening of Avatar). If you need help achieving the effect, look here.

A few tips to experience the 3D effect without blowing out your frontal lobe:
1) the second video might not load. Give it a few seconds to buffer, then fast forward to 5-10 seconds to kickstart the video stream.
2) sync the first video to the second. Since you're viewing the videos stereoscopically, you can easily give yourself a migrane (or trigger a flashback) if they aren't perfectly in sync. Use the pause/play control to bring the videos to within a second or so of each other, and then -- and this is kinda cool -- focus in on the stereoscopic image to fine tune the view. In the 3D view, you'll see a slight blur as the out of sync videos play. Focus in on a pole and observe which eye is lagging behind the other. Use the pause/play to bring the videos into synced 3D view (using audio cues, too, as the background voices merge).
3) cue up KLF's Chill Out.
posted by prinado at 11:36 PM on December 21, 2009 [3 favorites]

For a less contemplative train experience, you can also re-live the TGV speed record attempt from 2 years back... 574km/h
posted by anthill at 11:42 PM on December 21, 2009 [3 favorites]

I totally see how Black Metal came from here after watching this. I'm not really even sure why. Something to do with the fact that I expected to see a party of Viking berserkers go running across the frame at any moment, probably.
posted by DecemberBoy at 11:45 PM on December 21, 2009

3) cue up KLF's Chill Out.

that's the most important part, right there.
posted by mrballistic at 11:47 PM on December 21, 2009

Wow, I never thought to search for train cab videos before... I really wish this trip up the Spiral Tunnels in the Canadian Rockies was in HD... Listen to those diesels groan.
posted by anthill at 11:48 PM on December 21, 2009 [2 favorites]

Oh hey - anyone want to put up a torrent?
posted by anthill at 11:49 PM on December 21, 2009

Was this the same route shown at the start of O'Horten? Just beautiful.
posted by migurski at 12:10 AM on December 22, 2009

Ha ha! 3.06 seconds in, they reach a place called Kongsnut. Kong's Nut. Awesome name for a place.
posted by Effigy2000 at 12:33 AM on December 22, 2009

Easier to play than Desert Bus.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 12:50 AM on December 22, 2009

I want to download it, but I can't quite justify using almost all my monthly data allowance on it."

This will probably be well seeded for a good long while so it would be safe to download half of it, hit pause, and then finish up next month.
posted by Mitheral at 1:59 AM on December 22, 2009

I've travelled that route :)) never in Winter though. Reminds me how lucky I am to be in Norway.
posted by sysprv at 2:53 AM on December 22, 2009

This was just posted to mock the English and French for their Eurostar trains which are disabled by "fluffy snow".
posted by srboisvert at 3:18 AM on December 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

It took a long time to connect to the tracker, but finally got it all this morning.
It's completely awesome. Having traveled that route, I'm hoping the next time they take a side trip down the Flamsbana.

I'm also seeding for all I'm worth.
posted by madajb at 4:05 AM on December 22, 2009

For all my Internet-induced attention-deficit problems, I still love Tarkovsky, and I surely could stare out a train for days — I just spent five hours staring at snow-white Sweden passing by with the burdened trees and the cavalier horses, and the whistlestops where people get off to hurry into their families' apartments to watch comforting TV and joke away the sublimity, the cold heaviness of dense nature, the Lovecraftian stirrings of ancient death!
posted by mbrock at 4:17 AM on December 22, 2009

That was oddly compelling. And soothing. I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did.

So may questions... Where are the roads? How do people get to the stations? Are any of those buildings houses? When the train passes a group of people in the first few minutes, where they cross-country skiing for fun, or were they walking home across the snow?
posted by diogenes at 4:26 AM on December 22, 2009

Steampunk Starfield Screensaver
posted by DU at 4:52 AM on December 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

But, how true to live is it? The German public television often broadcasts train rides each nights -- just Google "Die schönsten Bahnstrecken" -- but always cut out the parts in the tunnels. Apparently because showing just a black image triggers all kinds of safety mechanisms.
posted by ijsbrand at 4:53 AM on December 22, 2009

Mmm, yeah, given the annual public transport clusterfuck every time a flake of snow lands on the UK, my first reaction was "OMG HOW THE HELL IS THAT TRAIN MOVING THROUGH ALL THAT SNOW!!1!"

Poor Eurostar.

Then I watched it and it was nice.
posted by afx237vi at 5:26 AM on December 22, 2009

I did this trip in October 1988 - from Oslo to Bergen, and then back again. On the way back we stopped at Myrdal and took the cog railway down to Flam at the end of one of the larger fjords. The scenery was so beautiful. Anywhere there was a speck of soil on the cliff sides a tree grew - it was quite awesome.

A thousand times, this. I was there in mid-summer of 2001, and it was jaw-dropping. The runoff from the fjords contains a lot of cobalt, so the water is this stunning azure blue that I'm convinced doesn't exist anywhere else, and the cog railway gives it a Diamond Age feel that makes it particularly surreal (doubly so when you get to the end of it and everything looks like a ski resort). I'm just sad I was there before they finished the Stegastein, which I'm sure would have put me off of heights for the rest of time.
posted by Mayor West at 6:01 AM on December 22, 2009

The original file was 165 GB, too much for most people to download.

We'll be the judge of that!
posted by BeerFilter at 6:52 AM on December 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

I have to figure out just how I'm going to download this.
posted by yeti at 6:59 AM on December 22, 2009

PLEEEEEEEEEEEZ SEEEEEED!!!1!!!!
posted by i_cola at 7:15 AM on December 22, 2009

I made this trip in 1984. To Bergen by day, back to Oslo at night.

On a video-challenged machine now, so can't comment on these images yet, but a favorite memory for me (besides the scenery) was the crystal-glass decanters of drinking water placed in a little niche at the end of each car.
posted by Rash at 7:33 AM on December 22, 2009

My torrent client thinks I've got three more days of downloading. In the meantime, I'm hoping somebody will find a digital picture frame that plays video.

Just for laughs--what's the oldest computer that could reasonably play a 22gb video file? I've got an ancient iMac that I'd love to give a new eye-candy life.
posted by box at 8:17 AM on December 22, 2009

I made a similar trip in August '08, except we took a boat from Bergen to Flam, then jumped on the train and rode to Oslo. The boat goes through some incredibly narrow, steep fjords, and in Flam there's an incredible sense that the rocky hills are right on top of you. Highly recommended.
posted by erikgrande at 8:44 AM on December 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

I'm hoping somebody will find a digital picture frame that plays video

There are plenty of digital picture frames that play video, eg. the Optek 15"; I think that the real problem will be finding one that supports flash cards with a filesystem capable of handling such a large file. All the ones I've seen expect a FAT32 filesystem.
posted by spasm at 9:37 AM on December 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

you can also re-live the TGV speed record attempt

Whoooooooooaaaaaaaaaaa!
posted by CynicalKnight at 9:45 AM on December 22, 2009

loquacious: "It's like someone carved them out of solid steel with robotic lasers!"

They kind of did, actually. The tracks are forged, but they come in bendy 1/4 mile lengths, and are aligned with computerized laser-toting machines after welding.

I used to run a survey crew for one of these operations, and I'm still fascinated by what a great job those machines can do (better than we could with regular non-digital survey gear). They're very cool to watch as they pick up the track they're sitting on and move it to line up with a target buggy down the track.
posted by sneebler at 10:37 AM on December 22, 2009

Sneebler's link, fixed
posted by anthill at 10:40 AM on December 22, 2009

I found some better footage of the 2007 TGV record attempt... but it's definitely not the tranquility of Norway. Better (english) newscast. Officially cheesy SNCF documentary.
posted by anthill at 11:11 AM on December 22, 2009

Surely the 22G 720p file can be recompressed and/or converted to a lower resolution for playback on a picture frame; that would result in a much smaller filesize.
posted by mrbill at 11:22 AM on December 22, 2009

So.... who wants to compress this to DiVX and seed it somewhere?
posted by griphus at 11:43 AM on December 22, 2009

I took erikgrande's variation about a million years ago. I wonder if there's any chance I could download it in time to watch tomorrow while I'm spending the day contending with various airports and planes between SFO and YUL.

Speaking of which, I wonder why more airlines don't offer the undercarriage cam that BSL mentions. I've only seen it once, a few years ago from Brussels to Stockholm, and I couldn't take my eyes off it.
posted by tangerine at 11:59 AM on December 22, 2009

Man, I am so making an appliance that just loops this on a monitor.
posted by everichon at 12:15 PM on December 22, 2009

Aw yeah, Scandanavian Star Guitar. Although you can't seem to fullscreen it. Suck.

For reference, Star Guitar.

I like codacorolla's one too.
posted by Dandeson Coates, Sec'y at 12:21 PM on December 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

it 'pings' right on the entrance to Kongsnut, Effigy2000
posted by Dandeson Coates, Sec'y at 12:23 PM on December 22, 2009

I wish somebody would do this for an Indian train.

Only, the net nannies would probably suppress it, because of all the kids' bottoms - taking dumps by the sides of the tracks.
posted by UbuRoivas at 12:38 PM on December 22, 2009

Alright, who ever did the Sigur Ros dub w/ this footage is a Gaddamn genius, especially the way it's matched up perfectly with the train piercing the gloom of the tunnel into that spirit-lifting landscape.

Man, I am so making an appliance that just loops this on a monitor.
posted by everichon 34 minutes ago [+]

I can't get over you guys obsessing over having all 22 GB on a dedicated frame/computer what have you. Really bless your innocence on this, but dudes and dudette's, the landscape except for leaving Bergen and cominng into Oslo (and Flam) does not change at all. LOL. It's all white pristine, beautiful landscape and I would think any coupla Gigs on the trip would be more than enough for this inspired little artproject.

although anyone finds a frame that can do all 22 Gb let us know....

Wink.
posted by Skygazer at 12:58 PM on December 22, 2009

But, Skygazer, I would know. I would know that I have 7 hrs of footage playing on that thing. Because it would be awesome.
posted by brundlefly at 1:12 PM on December 22, 2009 [2 favorites]

I accept your designation of genius, Skygazer, only pausing to acknowledge my collaborator auspicious serendipity. I just picked the youtube videos to input and let their inner beauty flourish. Or something.

When I have good money, I will pay good money for a frame/storage solution that lets me do this, moreso if I can add the complete works of Sigur Ros.
posted by Dandeson Coates, Sec'y at 1:46 PM on December 22, 2009

I accept your designation of genius,

I get the chills, everytime.
posted by Skygazer at 2:24 PM on December 22, 2009

Another variation from Scandinavian serenity is some steam. wooooOOOooooooooooooeh.
posted by anthill at 3:32 PM on December 22, 2009

well, this plays like crap on my 3ghz P4...time for an upgrade...
posted by Confess, Fletch at 4:37 PM on December 22, 2009

this is fun - I'm downloading now.

when I took the skytrain the first time, a few times, to go to my new workplace, I did a video of my commute. Sat in the front seat of the skytrain from waterfront all the way to edmonds. It was a cool track to film on a beautiful summer morning.

My 20 minutes does not compare to the landscapes and quality of the NRK 7-hour video, but I wonder whether there is a train travel video subgenre, parked away somewhere in a corner of the internet. I sure would like to visit and view these other videos.
posted by seawallrunner at 8:20 PM on December 22, 2009

But, how true to live is it? The German public television often broadcasts train rides each nights -- just Google "Die schönsten Bahnstrecken" -- but always cut out the parts in the tunnels.

I assure you, they have edited NOTHING out. I have fast-forwarded five times at random points in the first hour and hit tunnels 4 of the 5 times.

Serious amounts of tunnels. But the transition from autumn to snowy wintery goodness begins right around 1:45 and boy is it gorgeous.

LOTS of tunnels though, especially at first. I guess that's what you get for taking a train through the mountains.
posted by disillusioned at 12:40 AM on December 23, 2009

And many of them aren't tunnels, technically; but snow sheds built over open-air tracks in order to minimize snow cleaning.
posted by Rash at 10:49 AM on December 23, 2009

Wow. Someone turned on the firehose and I've leapt from being 7% complete with the torrent to being over 34% complete overnight. I might get to see this before 2015 after all!
posted by hippybear at 8:21 AM on December 26, 2009

A 7 minute time lapse has been
made.
posted by magnusbe at 4:54 PM on December 26, 2009

hippybear - so I'm not the only one still downloading then. I'm at 68% after a day. 22GB is a *lot* of data for this first-time torrenter.
posted by seawallrunner at 8:19 PM on December 26, 2009

I had some problems playing the file, the video codec might be a little wonky. Anyone else?
posted by anthill at 12:46 PM on January 11, 2010

With VLC 1.0.2 on Windows Vista, I don't have any problems playing the file.
posted by PaulZ at 1:31 PM on January 11, 2010

With VLC 1.0.3 on Windows XP with a triple-core Phenom processor, I found the playback very choppy. It might be that one processor core on its own can't handle 1080i.

Getting the movie playing smoothly took two things:
1) Installing the multi-threaded ffdshow codecs
2) Fixing the (slightly non-standard) headers by trimming 1 second from the beginning of the video with YAMB

Now it plays fine in Media Player Classic.
posted by anthill at 1:53 PM on January 11, 2010