View Full Version : Camcorder recommendations for track use only
Any recommendations?
What's the difference between ones that cost £250 and those that cost £500? Don't want to buy rubbish, but don't want to spend more than I need to.
Don't care about special features or gadgets. Just want reasonable quality video on a camera that can handle vibration.
:)
Think its more the mount that deals with the vibration than anything.
I bought a 300 quid sony DV camera that takes the little DV tapes, cos i want to edit it after and put it onto dvd from my mac.
I nearly bought one of the dvd recording ones, but you have to finalise the disk in the camera's so it wasnt a lot of use (for my purposes anyway).
Tapes are cheaper then dvd's....swings and roundabouts....
BeerBringer
06-12-2006, 17:46
I think you should get one with manual focus. Otherwise picture might go blurry when it tryes to focus on different things al the time.
I wouldnt. Mines not expensive and had no problems whatsoever with brands hatch on monday.Changing light didnt phase it either....
I'm going to be looking for one after Xmas too. I've been told to look on dabs.com & ebuyer.com
Any other good websites?
sparkyhx
06-12-2006, 21:48
Yak uses one of the £100 ish Mustek ones - it copes fine.
i use a mustek PVR and a bullet camera as pioneered by Graham Blackwell of www.zetecinside.com :)
Yak uses one of the £100 ish Mustek ones - it copes fine.
£100! :eek:
£60 more like. I think the mount cost more than the camera did but its good enough to get vids up onto the tinternet which is what I wanted it for ;)
I use (Petrols) sony handycam.
I dont think theres a massive differance by in them by the time you have chopped the quality for interent use, home watching / DVD burning might be more noticeable.
Get something that media is easy and cheap for, that you can charge in the car / run from the fag lighter, or will take a big battery, or use lots of cheap batteries.
Maybe get something with a DV input if you ever want to add a bullet cam you can :nod:
The mini DVD disk ones don't cope well with vibration.
Yeah, that was one of the reasons I went for one that recorded strait to a SD card... that and its was cheap.
Richy_Boy
07-12-2006, 13:52
:confused: I used a new (well ebay) Panasonic miniDV camcorder on a home made headrest mount on Monday and it coped just fine. Ripped off the video and edited it yesterday without any problem. :no:
It cost me £100ish and for the money, it's exactly what I needed. (I wanted it for family video also...)
Rich
Learning lots now!
i use a mustek PVR and a bullet camera as pioneered by Graham Blackwell of www.zetecinside.com :)
Interesting you mention Bullet cameras. Just went onto karting forum to find a thread looking into bullet cams for helmets, so I'll probably go down this route.
Maybe bullet cam like this:
480 line: http://www.actioncameras.co.uk/acatalog/ActionCam_480.html
520 line: http://www.actioncameras.co.uk/acatalog/ActionCam_520_Helmet_Camera.html
Do you think 480 line ok??
And maybe cheapo mini DV camcorder or to save space and weight (will be strapped to chest when karting) something like this:
http://www.4kam.com/helmet_cam_recorder.htm
OR
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330055528583
Do you think the recording device needs to be of a certain quality to match the camera? What about widescreen? Think I need to give these people a call to explain everything to me!
http://www.practicalpc.co.uk/reviews/hard/peripherals/mustekpvra1.htm
for pic of tiny mustek PVR A1 i use (£50 ebay) .
i bought a bullet cam think it was 480lines from ebay, shipped from hong kong in 3 days only £48!!:eek:
Quality is way better than i need, save sto SD card and total weighs about 700gms. bullet cam swivel base is bolted directly to an exhaust clamp and clamped directly to rollcage, total mount cost £1.99 from halfords! there may be some vids on here of mone iirc.
I missed saying before that the one I have always borrowed, and is also the one all Petrols vids are filmed using is a Mini DV media wise (already said its a Sony Handycam) no problems with quality or vibrations.
http://www.practicalpc.co.uk/reviews/hard/peripherals/mustekpvra1.htm
for pic of tiny mustek PVR A1 i use (£50 ebay) .
i bought a bullet cam think it was 480lines from ebay, shipped from hong kong in 3 days only £48!!:eek:
Quality is way better than i need, save sto SD card and total weighs about 700gms. bullet cam swivel base is bolted directly to an exhaust clamp and clamped directly to rollcage, total mount cost £1.99 from halfords! there may be some vids on here of mone iirc.
Cheapo :eek:
When you say quality is better than you need... do you mean for internet use or for watching on the TV? I'll probably be copying to DVD as well.
Cheers :)
i bought it purely to impove my sprinting and hillclimbing by acting as a datalogging tool so wasnt looking to rival the BBC....
That said ive had the vids on a 8' x 5' laptop presntation projector and they are still fine. Its defo not braodcast quality, i couldnt setup to sell incar vids, but i can read boost guage and see tiny details in track surface, so good enough for me.
A little off topic, but as a data collating tool its fantastic. I have a datalogger on board and if you run the video againt the datalogger in minimsied screens on your PC, you can actuaklly see cause and effect of the loose nut behind the steering wheel. its always puzzled me that some runs that you think were really 'on it' turn out to be pants and vice versa. watching the steering inputs relative to teh G loading is interesting too, its often the driver causing the issues, not the car. Let the car do the work not you i guess is the moral.
For next season i am fitting pots to both the brake and throttle pedals and having moving red and green LEDs (think graphic equalizer styleee) mounted within site of the camera (but not the driver) so that when i play it back at an event and compare one run with the next, it should help to see where its too much throttle too early that caused the tyres to light up, or breaking to early/late/ too much etc is where i make up or lose time. Was thinking of rigging up similar for the gear lever, to show which gear im in.
http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a274/CNHSS1/?action=view¤t=IMAG0003.flv
example from wet and horrible day at Anglesey (Angle-in-the-sea...)
quality is quite a bit better on your PC tho
Just had a chat with actioncameras.co.uk.
Really helpful and knowledgable if your in the market for bullet cameras. He recommended me to go for their cheapest £100 bullet camera for general TV viewing.
They've just been doing a setup for McLaren F1 so their top end stuff is pretty good :p
http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a274/CNHSS1/?action=view¤t=IMAG0003.flv
example from wet and horrible day at Anglesey (Angle-in-the-sea...)
quality is quite a bit better on your PC tho
Can you get sound recorded on your setup too then?
yeah but hadnt got a mike fitted then. Trouble is that the mikes pick up all sorts of crap and spoil the sound. I now use a maplin electret tie mike (as in collar and tie) which only picks up the sound when the cars under way really, you cant hear it ticking over, just when its at speed which is ideal. £20 from maplins. again more info on the www.zetecinside.com site.
http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a274/CNHSS1/?action=view¤t=IMAG0003.flv
example from wet and horrible day at Anglesey (Angle-in-the-sea...)
quality is quite a bit better on your PC tho
Ooops, did you do a bit of auto cross in that?
You can get an idea of the quality of mine from the link on my sig piccy.
Sideways14a
08-12-2006, 10:30
I have the guts from a sony evid camera infront of me, i am going to nail it to the front of the car and run a composite line back to an incar camcorder to do the recording.
That way if it falls off i wont really care :D
Yak
er, emm, yes a little indescretion:o ,
entered school corner (90mph+) and track was still too greasy probably due to most of the sea being blown onto the circuit. Car started to lock up and slide and i ran out of talent! Did manage to make the car do the work and let it run off rather than put it into a spin as theres sod all room before the tyre wall and then the sea:eek:
sideways s14a
thats my idea with the bullet cam, i want to try some footage from the nose of teh car and the sides for a website, didnt fancy wiping my personal vido camera off if i stuffed the car whilst filming
A dam good catch but not as visualy impressive as my 105mhp + spin through craners in my vid though :p
lol just watched it mate! very good. Lucky you didnt roll, ive seen a few invert it in the kitty litter thru craner down to the hairpin
:nod: Hence my laughter when id come to a stop and i was the right way up. Was rolling around on the floor laughing when I watched it for the first time back in the pits. :D So glad i got it on camera.
Id fallen off the outside of Holywood before in the day and skipped craners all together doing a bit of grass tracking... but my batteries had run out on that one :(
i remember seeing the bikes there years ago (anglo-american team event iirc) and watching Kevin Schwantz semi fall off before hollywood and run alongside the bike across the grass before jumping back and blasting up towards macleans:wack: bikers are sooo much more nuts than car drivers:nod:
cossykiller
31-12-2006, 22:50
give MARK a call
http://www.dogcamsport.co.uk/DogcamPro.htm
sound bloke, no crap straight to the point nuf said
i got a 480line bullet with mic off him and am using a sucker mount (very small) and even done 3 laps of the ring with it on the roof before they told me to remove IT or my car.
im using a sony DCR ip1e and it is the worlds smallest tape camcorder and is digital as well, comes with a docking station, firewire etc and if your skint buy a 2nd hand one off ebay or around £300 (£1000new!!)
ive used it on my mountain bike down the french alps, come off and no problems at all with vibrations, ive used slow dvd camcorders and digital only and found them shite.
if im using a camera on a rainy day i use 2 in the car (1 front 1 rear) sony p200 digital cameras on movie mode (super HQ) and they are 99% perfect blown up onto my tv, i get 25mins with a 2gb card on HQ and 33hours on LQ mode, does sound a treat no problems there but the DCR ip1e really is the daddy. IMO
the camera is no bigger than a pack of fags, battery lasts 2 hours, tapes 1 you can get more but they are quite expensive but it is a very small touch screen, AV camera input, remote control, firewire camcorder and its SONY!!
i can post pics of bullet cam and mic but better pics are on the dogcam site.
i might be selling mine as it happens!!
Very intersting guys. I'm just wandering, how to do a dboule camera or PIP setup, as I would love one camera by my wheel and /or one by the front/rear bumper.
One option is probably 2 camera's + 2 recorders, or is there some kind of device for PIP or dual camera
recording?
/Edit, found my anwser:
1. Buy a Multi-camera-switch-processor that can do PIP and stuff, costs between 100 and 300,- .
2. Switch manually between camera's, cheap, 30,- .
This thing looks awesome, its a ATC2000 camera with a built in recorder that saves on SDRAM or something for Oregon Scientific, costs around 100$.
This is the video made and I find it pretty good, no HD-recorder needed or anything!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ398OFHWZg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wPnqR6jedk
Two things mate I've got the ATC cam.
1) The mic overloads to FECK I'm assuming its on the front under the screw in plate. Tried putting tape over it didn't help.
2) Mounting it on stuff ! ok with my roll cage and putting it there but yet to find options for other mount points were did you get your suction mounts and shiz from :)
:)
I don't have one, I just found the vids on 'tube. I noticed on bike-videos the sound indeed sux, way overloaded but wouldn't it be possible to record sound from a external mic into the camera? If not, you could always record mic with something different and (as good as you can) sync them.
I think there are a fair amount if suction mounts on the net that do a good job, I'll google some and if I'll find will post :)
My bad :wack:
I've trawled the net for mounts but the ATC is much fatter than a standard bullet cam you see so there doesn't seem to be any compatible mounts out there :)
Think theres just a TV out on the ATC no mic port so it would have to be sync'd as you say.
Hmmm..what if you put the cam inside the car, does the mic overload than as well?
danny-mac
03-02-2008, 13:06
I've just bought one of these. http://www.cameras2u.com/Products/ProductDetail.aspx?SkuId=62786
The picture is superb for the price.:nod:
Tapes are £1 each for quality Sony items from amazon.
Ask here for some great advise. http://www.avforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=61:thumbs:
Hmmm..what if you put the cam inside the car, does the mic overload than as well?
Ooooh yes :)
:wack:
@ Lenagh
Damn, that mic is c-r-a-p², I won't take the ATC by the looks of it :no:
@ Lenagh
Damn, that mic is c-r-a-p², I won't take the ATC by the looks of it :no:
Better to find out before you spend your money I say hehe :) that was with duck tape over it too !
cossykiller
03-02-2008, 21:18
dogcam do a unit that stops the mic from being loud
a biker even put the mic beside the exhaust and it worked great
ive stuck mine under the bonnet beofre and it works well
have a look on google for dogcam
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