Bullet Cameras

[marshall_mosty]

Don't know if this is good stuff or crap. Mitch, JB, Glenn... you ever heard of this type of setup?

Came off of the nasaforums AI board...


I have run across a bulk purchase that I have made on some bullet style cameras. These are well suited for racing, very durable. Power requirements: 12 VDC @ .250 ma. Video cable end is a BNC. I do stock BNC to RCA Cable connectors. Cameras are selling for $100.00 ea and connectors are $.50 ea. These are high resolution camers 420 TVL. Dont miss out guys take a look on the internet these cameras sell for twice the price.
OH YEA CHUCK TAYLOR TOLD ME TO POST THIS HERE
You can email directly at LVIINC@Verizon.net
Thanks Guys Ray.
I also have some mini 1 gig DVR's for sale also. They run in the $200 range and are light weight. They have an SD card slot for more memory and an AV input. DVR is on a lithium internal rechargable battery. It will run for 8 hours of recording. The DVR has a 2.5" screen and you can downlaod the video to a PC or watch it directly on your TV. All cables are included.

[Wirtz]

I have tried both lipstick cams and camcorders. At least with my experience, the problem I had with lipstick cams is if you want to put it on the main hoop, or somewhere inside the car, I've had issues with the camera seeing too much roof and dash (which are dark compaired to the view out the windshield). So some of the video gets washed out. There might be a way to adjust some of the lipstick cams, at least I saw some info in the net about doing that, but I do not yet know the details. At least with my camcorder, it's easy to adjust the apature manually to get a good balance.

I do like the all digital lipstick cam and DVR in that they weight nothing, no moving parts, and easy to transfer the movies to a PC. I think you just need to be careful with the DVR, alot of them out there are junk and not up for the vibrations in a race car.

Jeff

[Jeremy Gunter]

I agree with the DVR comment from Jeff. I don't know that I would trust them as they are usually a laptop hard drive inside of a plastic box. If they are high quality and run from non moving parts (CF Card Style of memory) then I don't see a problem with them as far as getting the image recorded.

The issue I have with low quality recording devices is this.

If you are going to compress a file, or rip (encode to a different format) a file... then you want to start with an uncompressed format. When you capture a Mini-DV tape to the computer at 13g per hour, that is uncompressed, meaning at its best quality. then you go about your editing in this uncompressed format until you are ready to compile the DVD/web video/other source... By compressing a clip once you loose no data (quality) except that which the compression causes. so you get the best possible output for the compression type you are using...

On the other hand, if you record/capture a video in compressed format (anything other than AVI uncompressed [PC world]) on to the computer and recompile this footage, you will end up with a double compressed video. Often times when capture compressed video, you don't output that same type of compression, and even when you do it's still double compressed. You loose massive amounts of data by double compressing footage. Data not necessarily meaning amount but quality. Compression can happen in a number of different ways, which can cause serious quality issues on your final product.

Compression can happen in a bunch of ways, here is one way. There are Key Frames, Those which record ALL the data possible for that specific frame (1/30th sec. in AVI) then say the following 60 or 120 frames will only record the changes that happen to that key frame. Then another key frame... etc etc etc... but what happens when you compress that multiple times? where are the changes? where are the Key frames...

Thats why some of you were saying, WoW thats a great camera he is using... I wonder what kinda of Camera that is... True he could be using a higher quality camera, or he could have just sent the data to Donivan uncompressed. Then again Maybe his compression format matched up well.. but if Donivan had to go through all your footage uncompressed he would need one Hell of a machine to do it on... so it all depends on logistics...

My suggestion on Bullet (lipstick cams) buy a good cam, and plug it up to your mini DV recorders.

My 2c...

[GlennCMC70]

wasnt there some "Racers for Racers" shop that was working on something like this?

[AllZWay]

My cousin just bought one of these videos to use at the dirt track.

It is pretty cool looking and weighs nothing. The videos on the site don't look to bad for web posting.

http://firehelmetcam.net/