Picked one up at the mall of all places today. If it wasn't for all of this white crap on the ground I'd put some video up. Is there an official thread for the camera? My searches show nothing. I'm currently playing with Sony Vegas 9.0, attempting to burn some BD's to try out down in the home theatre. Wes
I haven't seen a detailed review thread on this forum on the HD version. Just be sure you have a compatible SD memory card, i.e. a high speed one or your HD video will be jittery. Looking forward to seeing sample videos.. This camera is on my want list.
Lets rename this the official thread then. I'll take some shots of the contents of the box and upload some video tonight as well as my first impressions. Some outdoor video on the dog sled is in order. Yes, all of us Canacks have dog sleds. I was successful in authoring the 1080p content to a 1080i BluRay (on DVD) that will play in both my PS3 and BD player. This is gonna be good! Wesley J
The sample videos on their website look much better (sharper, more vibrant colors) than the sample videos on VHoldRs website. Ive almost ordered a VHoldR but now I think the GoProHD Hero is the much better camera Looking forward to your review. Regards Frank
OK, so here are some pics of what came out of the package. Waterproof case to 60 m Different case door to facilitate better sound w/o wind noise Suction base 3 - Flat bases 2 - Curved bases 2 - Camera bases 1 - Side of the helmet thinga ma jig Cables Supposedly you need to use a class 4 or better memory card in order to record the 960p or better as the data rate is too high for the slower cards. I tested a class 6 Patriot card (el cheapo) and it work swimmingly. I haven't used one of these before but changing the settings is like masturbating with a cheese grater, you're happy when its over for a variety of reasons.... I'll try to memorize which video settings I want and leave it at that. Actually, there is one really cool feature, it'll take pictures continuoulsy at a prescribed interval. With my luck it'd take a picture before, then after a crash and miss a shot of that really hot chick that caused it all..... The video quality is actually quite good. With 1920x1080p actual pixel resolution you'd expect the sharpness to be good and it is. The colors are fairly well saturated, almost as good as my Sony HDV camera (1080i). Motion artifacts are minimal as well. FYI, I'm reviewing the unedited video on a speedy machine attached to a reasonably good 1200p 24" LCD monitor as well as my 1080p DLP highly calibrated home theater projector (110"). I'm a bit of a video geek and like to think I know what to look for. Tommorrow I'll go dog sledding with my helmet on a come back with some video. I'll shoot some in the different resolutions and frame rates and find a place to upload them. I'd flash them and put them on my blog but you guys would murder me with bandwidth charges..... Oh ya, I did a test shoot in the house just to play with the format. I had it set to 1080p and ended up with files that were 1.2 MB/second so my 16 GB card will hold ~ 16000/1.2/60=3.5 hours. I know, I know, some geek will correct my math but its close enough for me. Also, I'm not sure if the encoder chip with increase/decrease bit rate based on encoding complexity (most do) so file size may vary with increased motion. We'll see tomorrow. Anyway, shoot me questions and I'll do my best to answer. Wesley J Pics: Contents Front Side Rear Da udder side Lithium Ion Rechargable!!! Curved helmet mounts Flat Mounts Suction base Rear hatch to let more sound in
This camera is definitely on my list! The quality of footage seems unreal. Should add a whole new dimension to many rider's Ride Reports.
Is this the motorsports version? Besides mounting it on the helmet, which mount would you use to mount to a bike? Something else, what does one do with the HD content? I suppose you need a blu-ray burner which is currently big bucks. You're saying you can burn HD content on a regular DVD-R? Where did you buy it?
I'm waiting for them to announce the promised "LCD Bakpak" or whatever it is called. Supposedly it is an add on that will allow you to actually see what you are recording, which is a great help. Using the ridiculous "viewfinder" is also as painful as the aforementioned self flagellation exercise mentioned by the OP. Then, of course, I will have to buy a new $1200 computer and multi terrabyte RAID system, to actually be able to edit the HD files. I'm still waiting for the ice floe in my street to thaw so I can try out my iPod Nano 5G video, attached to my helmet with an iPod armband.
Most of the clips that I've seen or taken i the past are relatively short, say 10 minutes max. You can easily author it to a regular DVD in BD format. The players dont look to see what kind of media it is, just the file structure so my players simply think the disc is a BD. Alternatively, you can record in the lowest res (16:6 480P) and rip to DVD. You could do this from within Winders movie maker. Windows 7 does a very nice job of it. Sony PS3 plays in nicely off of my machine upstairs over the network. The junktastic POS AppleTV would likely let out the magic smoke if I tried to get it to play the 720p, but I'll give it a try. Any excuse to rid my house of crApple hardware.... Storage and PC power: Drives are virtually free these days, heck I cant even give away a few 300 GB IDE drives I have.... I keep them around for off site backups now. 1TB = $80 CND. Lets say I take and hour of video per ride, or about 5 GB. That'd be 200 rides before it'd be full prior to getting rid of all the bad footage. Although it is h.264, my machine (3 years old) sits at ~30% when playing back the 1080p files. Wes
I was at the new mall in Calgary and there was a little KIOSK selling them. The parent company is fusionracing.com (http://fusionracing.com/index1.html). $369. Wes
One of these times I'll actually answer all of the questions in one post... Mine is the motorsports version. I'm going to build a bike mount once I get my new bike next month. They do sell a handlebar mount though. Helmet mount for now. Wes
It looks very compressed amirite? The samples on their site and on Vimeo look much cleaner. Sweet ride btw
Does it have the standard camera mount at the bottom? Like most any camera has? It seems it doesn't ...
Not sure what amirite means. Vimeo compresses whatever you send them, as does Youtube. Looks great on my 60" plasma at 1080i. It has a proprietary mount, but you can buy an adaptor for a standard tripod mount.
Ive been playing with one for a couple weeks now. Pretty good unit, but very basic. No adjustments for Exposure or White balance. The website sample videos are shot in bright daylight, which is why they look so good. The performance in artificial or low light is relatively poor, but no surprise given the tiny sensor it has (and is the same as the SD unit). Where it excels is the wide field of view. Advertised at 170°, matching this with a std cam would be difficult and expensive. The distortion is pretty reasonable too. This huge field allows you to get by pretty well without a screen or viewfinder. Usually you end up including too much rather than missing your target. There is no tripod mount, but you can buy one separately from gopro. The housing seems reasonably good quality, but Id be careful with maintenance if you were to use it underwater. 60 meters seems to me a pretty generous depth rating given the housing construction. One disappointment, is that the domed lens sticks out unprotected and will definitely get scratched, but they do sell replacements. I use Final Cut for editing and the file structure the cam creates does not allow for the Log and Transfer action, you need to import the files. Also, as far as i can tell, final cut still does not support 60p, and will not allow you to import the sequences shot in 60p. I have had success exporting from these files from Quicktime as a .mov with the settings set manually to 60fps and then importing that file to FCP, but ive yet to determine if it retains the 60p.
You can burn in a format known as HDDVD using Compressor (a component of Final Cut) and maybe others, and fit 30 minutes of HD on a std dvd. Ive yet to see a std dvd player support it and im unsure whether a Blu-ray would.
Nope, it's an option. $5 or $10 on the website The video posted above has artifacts (horizontal tearing) due to what I assume to be a rigid mount (high frequency vibration). So far I've seen no tearing with a human mount. Wes
