lorenkb
06-11-2007, 02:18 PM
Not all There's recent post, along with Aaron's pictures of the setup he has on loan made me think I should post up my plans for in car video. So far I've toyed with a miniDV camera on a tripod in the back. It works fairly well, but it's a real pain to get anything but the one angle from the back seat while keeping the camera steady.
Enter the wonders of other hobbies... I've been doing a lot of research into converting one of my RC airplanes into a First Person Video ship. VR goggles with head tracking and a wirless link to a small CCD camera mounted in the nose (on pan/tilt servos). Really cool stuff that happens to transfer over to in-car video quite well.
Camera: http://rangevideo.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=18
Hardware encoded DivX through USB: http://www.usbgear.com/computer_cable_details.cfm?sku=USBG-VD207&cats=125&catid=125
The hardware encoding through USB is what really makes this system shine. You can have any old POS laptop that supports USB2.0 and get high quality video capture without recording at umpteen gigs per hour of footage.
Add a laptop and a home made suction cup mount and you have nearly unlimited mounting possibilites for less than the price of a camcorder (helmet mounted video anyone?). Audio is a microphone w/ RCA connector, so you can mount it wherever you want in/outside the car. This eliminates wind noise if wanted.
The picture quality out of these little cameras is quite good. DV is at 500 horizontal line resolution, and the camera in the above link is 480 lines. Pretty darned close!
Anyways, thought I'd let you all know in advance in case one of you make the plunge before I do. Cobb turboback is currently higher on the money spending list!
Loren
Enter the wonders of other hobbies... I've been doing a lot of research into converting one of my RC airplanes into a First Person Video ship. VR goggles with head tracking and a wirless link to a small CCD camera mounted in the nose (on pan/tilt servos). Really cool stuff that happens to transfer over to in-car video quite well.
Camera: http://rangevideo.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=6&products_id=18
Hardware encoded DivX through USB: http://www.usbgear.com/computer_cable_details.cfm?sku=USBG-VD207&cats=125&catid=125
The hardware encoding through USB is what really makes this system shine. You can have any old POS laptop that supports USB2.0 and get high quality video capture without recording at umpteen gigs per hour of footage.
Add a laptop and a home made suction cup mount and you have nearly unlimited mounting possibilites for less than the price of a camcorder (helmet mounted video anyone?). Audio is a microphone w/ RCA connector, so you can mount it wherever you want in/outside the car. This eliminates wind noise if wanted.
The picture quality out of these little cameras is quite good. DV is at 500 horizontal line resolution, and the camera in the above link is 480 lines. Pretty darned close!
Anyways, thought I'd let you all know in advance in case one of you make the plunge before I do. Cobb turboback is currently higher on the money spending list!
Loren