DVD video camera

[Sam Buchanan]

The "DVD" in the title of my previous post about the Canon ZR40 was an error on my part. It does not use a DVD to capture images; the camera uses the mini-DV cassette. It has a firewire output that has worked very nicely with the firewire card I added to my PC. Overall, the interface with ULead VideoStudio 8 has been smooth and the only fits and starts have occurred as I have ramped up my familiarity with the many features of the software.

Sam Buchanan

[Marc DeGirolamo]

Hi Sam.....I haven't checked this thread for awhile as there were no posts, until now ! I should have looked.......I like the ZR camera which you have in your car (nice car and video btw). Does it have a remote (I thought this might be handy for turning unit on and off ? I have not figured out how it will mount on my rollbar yet either....but I like those two ideas you guys posted.....

signing off for now
Marc

[Sam Buchanan]

Hi Sam.....I haven't checked this thread for awhile as there were no posts, until now ! I should have looked.......I like the ZR camera which you have in your car (nice car and video btw). Does it have a remote (I thought this might be handy for turning unit on and off ?

Thanks Marc.

The camera has an IR remote but it seems to be quite directional and only works if you are in front of the camera and can aim the remote directly at the camera remote port. This may or may not be suitable for your installation. Since a cassette is good for an hour, I just start the camera, do some driving (flying) and edit out what I want later. That also allows me to verify the camera is running and check focus, zoom, etc.

Sam Buchanan

[Marc DeGirolamo]

or Fwhat it's worth I found a fairly cheap clamp on camera mount. Will fit up to 1.5 in tube. I'm going to try this on my rollbar.

Hi Scott,
Let us know how that DVD clamp works on your rollbar.....
Marc

[svanarts]

I just received it today and am going to try it out in the morning. It seems pretty well made, similar to a RAM mount. I'll post a picture of it and try to capture some video tomorrow as well.

[svanarts]

It took longer than I thought it would but here are a few pictures of the video camera mount I bought.

I'm just pasting the link to the images on my website because they are huge. I haven't learned to tweek my camera yet. I need to get some good image manipulation software too.

Video Camera Mount #1
Video Camera Mount #2

[Marc DeGirolamo]

Scott,
It looks sturdy enough.....Let us know how it is in flight. Does your head interfere with the camera or visa versa ?

[svanarts]

Actually, it doesn't interfere with my head in flight but I am a rather short sh... guy. I've taken some video and digitized it and it looks pretty good. The only problem seems to be that for this location even my Sony Digital8 Handycam is a bit on the bulky side. I have to angle the viewfinder up to close and open the canopy. I have to angle it back down to latch the canopy. I wish my camcorder was just a bit smaller, that would make it just about perfect.

The video I took has the side of my head, with headsets in view. The view is pretty much "over the shoulder." I'm going to have to play around with angles and zooms. Overall it's a pretty good angle though. I'll post my video on my website in a day or so.

Any advice out there... at the standard zoom, the image appears to be farther away than normal eyesight. Is there a standard zoom so that what you see on the screen will match what you saw with your eyeballs. I hope that's clear.

[svanarts]

Okay, I got the video posted. Aside from my ameteurish editing (it was my first time! ) does anybody have any advice as far as camera angles or focus?

It's kind of long at 15 minutes so it's a big file. But it was fun learning to do the editing. It's here: Sunday Flight

[dan]

Originally Posted by svanarts

Okay, I got the video posted. Aside from my ameteurish editing (it was my first time! ) does anybody have any advice as far as camera angles or focus?

It's kind of long at 15 minutes so it's a big file. But it was fun learning to do the editing. It's here: Sunday Flight

I got the "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded" error.

Everybody who is doing online videos should download Windows Media Encoder. Google it. It's free, and it will convert to and from various bitrates and deinterlace and stuff. It's a great way to turn a big unwieldy file into a much smaller one that can easily be downloaded and viewed...and streamed using any web server.

Also grab VirtualDub -- also free -- if you need to convert between wacky formats, like MPEG to AVI or whatever.

For what it's worth, I capture my videos to my computer in AVI format, encode the edited version to a fat AVI. Then I use Windows Media Encoder to encode to WMV. The WMV is what I make publicly available.

Free stuff, works great.

)_( Dan
RV-7 N714D
http://www.rvproject.com