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What: “Mavericks: Condition Black.” (Video)

Price: $26.95, plus $4.95 shipping and handling, available by calling (888) 345-6484.

There are plenty of videotapes and photographs of the massive waves at Mavericks, the extreme surfing spot 25 miles south of San Francisco. A growing number of sites on the Internet, surfing magazines and videos show the power of the ocean at its meanest near Half Moon Bay.

But the opening scene in “Mavericks: Condition Black” takes big-wave footage to a new, almost terrifying level. The camera has captured a heavy wall of water and stays with it as it crests. Crashing with an explosion that feeds off itself, the wave turns more violent and massive as white water three stories high churns toward the rocks a quarter-mile off the coast. It’s a vivid depiction of the awesome power that has given the area its notoriety, the kind of power that killed famed big-wave rider Mark Foo in 1994.

With Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” as background music, this shot sets the stage perfectly for 28 minutes of wipeouts, high-speed rides and informal interviews about California’s premier giant-wave surfing spot.

Most of the footage is from the El Nino winter of 1997-98, when 25-foot swells regularly pounded the area. But there is also material from the previous eight years or so, including Foo’s last ride, when he pitched into the face of a wave the size of a falling skyscraper and was buried under an avalanche of white water. (His body was found two hours later.)

The video, produced by Alexis Cottavoz-Usher of Santa Barbara, includes a tribute to Foo and features the usual cast of characters appearing at Mavericks when it is breaking--big-wave surfers such as Peter Mel, Daryl “Flea” Virotsko, Jeff Clark, Evan Slater and Grant Washburn. They’re the guys who head out when the seas are rated condition black--the most dangerous. Swim into the water at Newport Beach when the black flag is up and you’ll get arrested; at Mavericks, that’s when things are only beginning to get interesting. As Slater, managing editor of Surfer magazine, says, it’s “a wave like no other wave in the world.”

You’ll find yourself tensing up as you watch surfers crash under a two-ton roof of water or paddle out wildly to keep from being launched over the falls backward. But you’ll catch your breath after half an hour . . . and be ready to grab your longboard and go tackle the four-foot monsters breaking down by Old Man’s at San Onofre.