First time with a helmet cam

[takitimu]

Hi All,

This was my first attempt

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& some old footage from the Tokoroa Enduro last year I did a stab at editing up for a friend.

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[flyingcr250]

just need to adjust the angle of the camera so theres not so much sky. check my videos out on youtube just type spruland into the search field.

[fergie]

Well done !, loved the enduro vid,got any more?

[Danger]

Not bad for a first go, shame our broadband sucks so much makes it a little hard to watch.
Wheres the track? I'm trying to remember the name of the farm where a mate and I got to ride a few times between Manganui and Kere Kere, some where around Hi Hi I think it was. It was used for a lot of MX in the 80's and had huge jumps, elevation changes and was whooped the whole way around. One of my best fun rides was had there. I remember now it was called Caulfields Farm. Have you heard of it?
Tell us a bit about the equipment used for the helmet cam setup.

[mattwood]

Pretty clear camera!

where abouts is that track? it looks pretty sweet!

[honda_power]

what type of cam is that? pretty damn clear

[takitimu]

I remember now it was called Caulfields Farm. Have you heard of it?
Tell us a bit about the equipment used for the helmet cam setup.
Good point on the bandwidth, I'll work on that next time, not to sure on Caulfields farm will ask around tomorrow.
The setup is kind of jerry rigged, there are a few reasons for that though, I wanted an HD camera with 50/60HZ ( got 60HZ 720p option ) & all digital, so last time I was in the states I picked this up
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7933663
It's an Aiptek HD camera ( full resolution 720p 30 or 60HZ & a kinda 1080i option ) which uses SD cards, 4GB gives me 90 minutes & I'll get more as time goes on, or more accurately they get cheaper. cool thing is it's not real expensive, the video is good enough & it's pretty robust.
The issue is that it's mounted on the side of my helmet, so I taped it as well, but still it's not exactly elegant, but I figure it's simple & cheap enough so that's not to bad a tradeoff.
The biggest single mistake I made last week was accidentally flipping the focus mode into Macro ( extreme closeup ), which is why the video is soft.
I've uploaded a few photo's of the camera "hooked" onto my helmet.
Oh in terms of editing, iMovie on a Mac, H.264 video compression all through ( including camera ) 640x360 down convert, sharpened a touch to try & fix the out of focus issue, audio AAC, vimeo.com for streaming, nicer info than youtube & better compression.


Pretty clear camera!
where abouts is that track? it looks pretty sweet!
Yeah it's not a bad camera, especially for the price ( $130 USD ), the video was clean but all out of focus, this week I hope to fix that.


Well done !, loved the enduro vid,got any more?
Not yet, got some freestyle stuff to edit up next, just playing around really.

[MikeJ]

Nigel, l hope you have that camera strapped to your helmet as you descend the Takahue Saddle and Murrays Rd tracks this thursday.

Caulfields farm is now mostly a conglomerate of 10 acre lifestyle blocks planted in olives. The rest is gorse. The track was pretty gnarly and the Caulfield brothers were extremely fast around it. It was a horror when wet, extremely slippery. One mistake off the side of the track meant hours of removing gorse prickles.

[takitimu]

Nigel, l hope you have that camera strapped to your helmet as you descend the Takahue Saddle and Murrays Rd tracks this thursday.
Would have been great, but I'll have to go for Sat ( got work sorted, but then got teenage daughtered ), here's the footage that got me trying out the side of the helmet trick, he had the focus set right to :).
http://vimeo.com/1536116
There's real scope with the cam, the lense is what you'd expect for the price, but the compression is actually not to bad & 60HZ 720p means if you can get focus sorted, the resolution is there to shrink easily.

[oldguy]

Good little clip, I would edit out the little off, some say it wearing a camera is a Jinks,

[Danger]

Caulfields farm is now mostly a conglomerate of 10 acre lifestyle blocks planted in olives. The rest is gorse. The track was pretty gnarly and the Caulfield brothers were extremely fast around it. It was a horror when wet, extremely slippery. One mistake off the side of the track meant hours of removing gorse prickles.

Yeah I remember the gorse! Did you ride it Mike? Only got to ride it twice but have always had great memories of the fun of blasting around on our TT600's on that track. It was a great workout! Would have been around the summer of '84 and I believe the track was closed to having further events there at the time but we were told to ask for permision to ride there which was granted by the Caulfields. Wish there were still tracks like that around.

[krad_nz]

Nice work, thanks for sharing. Rep for you!

[oldskool]

Good point on the bandwidth, I'll work on that next time, not to sure on Caulfields farm will ask around tomorrow.
The setup is kind of jerry rigged, there are a few reasons for that though, I wanted an HD camera with 50/60HZ ( got 60HZ 720p option ) & all digital, so last time I was in the states I picked this up
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7933663
It's an Aiptek HD camera ( full resolution 720p 30 or 60HZ & a kinda 1080i option ) which uses SD cards, 4GB gives me 90 minutes & I'll get more as time goes on, or more accurately they get cheaper. cool thing is it's not real expensive, the video is good enough & it's pretty robust.
The issue is that it's mounted on the side of my helmet, so I taped it as well, but still it's not exactly elegant, but I figure it's simple & cheap enough so that's not to bad a tradeoff.
The biggest single mistake I made last week was accidentally flipping the focus mode into Macro ( extreme closeup ), which is why the video is soft.
I've uploaded a few photo's of the camera "hooked" onto my helmet.
Oh in terms of editing, iMovie on a Mac, H.264 video compression all through ( including camera ) 640x360 down convert, sharpened a touch to try & fix the out of focus issue, audio AAC, vimeo.com for streaming, nicer info than youtube & better compression.


Yeah it's not a bad camera, especially for the price ( $130 USD ), the video was clean but all out of focus, this week I hope to fix that.


Not yet, got some freestyle stuff to edit up next, just playing around really.

Good stuff. Hey I'd be quite keen on getting some XXX footage for my motion simulator once you got it all sussed. Format uncompressed at PAL res if poss but I'm not fussy as long as the footage is 'first person' high octane stuff. PM if you're keen and full credit to yah if the sim footage ever goes beyond DIY.

[REDRIDER]

Nice vid bro, I bought an Oregan Scientific camera a while ago with the intension of sticking it on my helmet for obvious reasons, however... the resulting video is very very shaky no matter were it is mounted. I guess you get what you pay for. Does anyone know of a way round the shakes or is it a technology anti shake thing.

Does anyone know the guy that video'd himself down at thunder (on youtube) and or what camera he was using.

Id like to get a descent helmet cam, but all in one ie records to 4gb card not to video camera that Im liable to squash. Thoughts anyone...

[oldskool]

Nice vid bro, I bought an Oregan Scientific camera a while ago with the intension of sticking it on my helmet for obvious reasons, however... the resulting video is very very shaky no matter were it is mounted. I guess you get what you pay for. Does anyone know of a way round the shakes or is it a technology anti shake thing.

Does anyone know the guy that video'd himself down at thunder (on youtube) and or what camera he was using.

Id like to get a descent helmet cam, but all in one ie records to 4gb card not to video camera that Im liable to squash. Thoughts anyone...

The all in one cheapy I have can only record max 2gb, not sure if that is the same across the board.


But if you want full frame video perhaps a CCD Bullet cam with 420/520 line resolution
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Security-locks-alarms/Security-cameras/CCTV/auction-190606024.htm
coupled to a portable SD card recorder such as
http://www.alibaba.com/catalog/100063680/Portable_DVR_Solid_State_SD_Card_Recorder_For_Extr eme_Sport.html
sometimes you can find similar but lower quality devices on trademe.

You could try and make a DIY gyro stabilised mount using a recycled cordless drill and mount it where a headlight would normally go.

[honda_power]

Nice vid bro, I bought an Oregan Scientific camera a while ago with the intension of sticking it on my helmet for obvious reasons, however... the resulting video is very very shaky no matter were it is mounted. I guess you get what you pay for. Does anyone know of a way round the shakes or is it a technology anti shake thing.

Does anyone know the guy that video'd himself down at thunder (on youtube) and or what camera he was using.

Id like to get a descent helmet cam, but all in one ie records to 4gb card not to video camera that Im liable to squash. Thoughts anyone...

when i wsa at school i did film and tv there, had some budget left over, so the teacher bought a helmetcam. it was a "NZ Helmetcams" model. Pretty much bulletproof, awesome quality. a tiny lens to put on your helmet. the only downside was you had to carry a videocamera in a backpack. Quality was way better that any sd camera thing. i think they are around $600.

just wrap in shitloads of bubblewrap.

[noobi]

I have one of these for recording our riding, sits on top of my helmet etc, doesnt fall off, get lots of funny looks riding through the car park

http://www.vsport.com.au/gopro_camera/gopro_camera.php

[portokiwi]

Mate that was good footage

[flyingcr250]

I have one of these for recording our riding, sits on top of my helmet etc, doesnt fall off, get lots of funny looks riding through the car park

http://www.vsport.com.au/gopro_camera/gopro_camera.php


ive got one of these.

[oldskool]

ive got one of these.

That's awesome, hey if you have any good footage I'd like to try it out on my sim.
Guy's I'm pretty serious about this. Heres a link to a vid of my older version sim. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq2cKjEnRlA
Supply me some footage and I'll motion cue the video up to the ride simulator and add force feedback impacts to the vest (another vid under same profile) if you can off.

[takitimu]

Okay, this time I set the focus mode correctly, there are two lots of footage, one HD, the other rescaled down to 640x360. Big thing is making sure the camera faces down more, the last 20 minutes were a writeoff as to skyward.

SD
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HD
http://vimeo.com/2420962


Mate that was good footage
Thanks :)


Good stuff. Hey I'd be quite keen on getting some XXX footage for my motion simulator once you got it all sussed. Format uncompressed at PAL res if poss but I'm not fussy as long as the footage is 'first person' high octane stuff. PM if you're keen and full credit to yah if the sim footage ever goes beyond DIY.
Interested, but all my footage is 60HZ 720p H.264 compressed, not to sure how it'll hold up blown up will try tonight.


Good little clip, I would edit out the little off, some say it wearing a camera is a Jinks,

It doesn't help, this week was better, I basically forgot I had it on, unfortunately the best footage would have been later in the day when I was not wearing it :(, so I'll skip the first few sessions & get the later ones next week.
What are you using for playout for PAL uncompressed, back in the day used to have a Abekas A60, but that is a few years back now.

[oldskool]

Interested, but all my footage is 60HZ 720p H.264 compressed, not to sure how it'll hold up blown up will try tonight.


NTSC mpeg4 format won't hold up for serious visual screening but should be okay for me to play with embedding a motion cue synch track so I can tune my motion chair to simulate a bikes snappy G forces. If you send me a copy of your original stuff I should be able to do a dirty PAL reformat.

I used to use a matrox rt2000 before computers got quick enough to do real time software rendering on the fly without the need for additional hardware cards. Most decent vid editing software supports realtime scrubbing nowadays. When I say uncompressed in reality theres still a compression factor of around 6:1 ...for a PC to cope.

[tommorth]

takitimu thats great footage I've gotta get up there for a ride sometime

[QUOTE=REDRIDER;1834807]Nice vid bro, I bought an Oregan Scientific camera a while ago with the intension of sticking it on my helmet for obvious reasons, however... the resulting video is very very shaky no matter were it is mounted. I guess you get what you pay for. Does anyone know of a way round the shakes or is it a technology anti shake thing

I've got one of those an at3k the footage is actually pretty good when mounted properly. Although not as good as takitimus . I made a mount from some ally plate and dowl ,cable tie it onto my helmet easy peasey can't feel it at all just have to point it the right way got an hour and a half of the trees last time I used it.