Looking for Analog to Digital Tapeless High Shock System
 

I am tring to do tapeless digital recording from 2 analog lipstick cameras mounted on a racing motorcycle.

I need a small, 12volt or less, Low power. Accepts analog input. and records to Hard drive.

Must withstand lots of vibration, and high shock environment.

Hopefully have some sort of wired remote for start and stop of recording, so that I can shock mount the recorder in a safe place (under seat) that will survive a high speed crash. Mounting in a safe place precludes the use of front panel controls, so I need some sort of remote trigger.

Cameras are high res 500 Lines, output through a digital video switch (digital relay). as the original magnetic relay vibrated so much that it didn't pass any video. The relay is controled from a handle bar mounted switch to select forward or rearward video sources.

I have tried Neverst Solo recorder by Volicon www.volicon.com
but software issue kept the recorder from working for me.

i think that sort of thing is typically done with a helmet cam and a recorder mounted in a backpack or beltpack that the driver carries.

do you know of anyone who has actually done the recording with a hard drive? i'd think that it would need to be really well padded to survive.

what i did was use a solid state mpeg2 video camera with analog inputs... nowadays i'd be looking at those two jvc mpeg2 video cameras, i think that they have analog inputs(?)... the biggest problem might be how to hook up a remote trigger, i don't know if it'll be possible to do that.

Can't use them and pass tech..
 

Don't like the view from the helemt cam, you see way out in front of the bike, when you are looking through the the corner, and loose the lean of the machine. You typically hold your head level, and are looking way around the corner. This means if you are following a bike very close, you don't even see it.

The New JVC don't have analog inputs, I already checked them out.

I have already been able to get it to work with the Panasonic Dsnap AV-100. At this point I am just looking for longer recording time. I can only use a 1gb SD card with the D-snap.

I run 4 and 6 hour endurance races, and would like to not have to mess with it.

you can find a mpeg2 recorder with analog input, used for formula 1 race.
it is recording on memeory and got no mechanical or moving parts.
unfortunately it is very expensive.
http://www.stackinc.com/dvrharsh.html

optex is doing the same kind of device on a microdive disk.
you can probably replace the drive with a high capacity compact flash.
http://www.optexint.com/sales/covert/sting.html

The Stack stuff is Great, But way too pricey.
 

Aim sports makes a system I want to get, but no recorder.

So I am looking for a good recorder, and will probably ge the Aim Sytem later

http://www.aimsports.com/products/david/index.html

http://www.aim-sportline.com/MOTO/pl...htm#MXLbecause

After I have made some money with the system, I plan on buying the Aimsports MXL Pista Data aquisition, and Video overlay slave kit. Witch will take two camera inputs, and overlay them with data aquisition displays.

About 2800 for the whole package, but I would still need a good recorder. The stack is awsome but goes for over 5000 alone. then my video system would cost almost as much as my race bike... Hard to justify.

Does this fit the bill?

http://www.markertek.com/Product.asp...&search=0&off=

I imagine you could use the Laird shock mount with it.

Very interested in the Nnovia A2D
 

I have read the reviews and the thread on the Nnovia A2D on this site.

I am very interested, and have e-mailed the Nnovia rep, and asked questions about the remote trigger, and shock issues.

I hope it works, because it looks pretty good so far.

Thanks for the link to a good price for one!

Dan

it will be very difficult, nay impossible, to keep a hard drive alive when it's mounted to a dirt bike.

i also used the av-100 for onboard camera recording, in fact i was the mod for the av-100 forum that is now offline :-( i don't recall any 1 gb limitations on the memory card, but then there weren't very many big memory cards available at the time... there would also be heat issues with running that setup for such an extended period of time.

here is an example of what i recorded to the av-100, give it a minute to download: http://www.oceanstreetvideo.com/import/import.html

that's bad news about the jvc... but there are better alternatives: www.ffv.com ...analog inputs, variable bitrates, etc... call 'em up and see what they are doing with flash drives that plug in like hard drives... bitmicro and others are selling this ide flash drive technology to the government, and the price just keeps dropping.

Street Bikes, not dirt.. No jumping
 

I am actually running street race bikes, not Dirt, no Jumping requirred, just higher speeds, and more vibration.

The FFV looks good, but they want 5k+ for it. Just do damn expensive for what I am doing.

I bought a 2gig card for my Panasonic, with 150x read write. won't go to mpeg2 mode.

Called Panasonic, they said 1gig max, and must be Panasonic, won't support non panansoni Cards.. that sucks!

So I am looking again, if it would take 2gigs, I would be done, and forget about looking for more.... My damn delema!

There is a firmware update for the panasonic. They just don't want anyone in the U.S. to know, I guess.
I bought two 2 gig Sandisk SDs from memoryonthemove.com and told Michael that they wouldn't run mpeg2. He kindly forwarded the zip file with the update. If you can't get it from him, I will find it and email it to you. It's about 2 megs.
With 2 gigs I can get 40+ minutes of full resolution or over an hour and twenty minutes at half resolution.

Richard Townsend

that firmware upgrade for the av-100 is on the panasonic website somewhere... there is actually a half-baked factory support page for the av-100.

good to hear that the bigger cards work, thanks for the feedback.

dan, i don't think that the ffv is anywhere near $5k, depending on which model we are talking about... where did you get your pricing at? i've seen european price lists at $1,7xx-$2,4xx, but that was in british pounds(?)

I called FFV about 6 months ago
 

I talked to sales guy at FFV about 6 months ago, he qouted be some were in the 5k area retial, didn't do a lot of discount shopping since I didn't think there would be a 300% mark up to a retailer to make it affordable to me, so I dropped it.

It looks awsome though, wish they were less $$$

Looks like the AV-100 firmware upgrade will be the ticket for me.

Please send to

dan@carlburger.com if anyone has it

Thanks

Dan

I bought the mini-dvr from FFV couple of months ago. Cost was about 3500.
plus I added two 6 gig hitachi microdrives. The quality is great. Compression at 6or7 is what I use for normal stuff. runs a little over an hour. For long shoots as back up where I can drop the quality without too much loss 8-10 to one I get two hours of run time. The hitachi microdrives cost about 400 each.

Richard

Found the SV-Av100 Update
 

I did a liitle googling last night, and found the update, here is a link,

Installed in my Recorder, and viola 41 minutes on high quality MPEG2 for 2 gig card..

Happy happy, thanks every body, I appreciate all the help!!!!

http://zyvid.com/smf/index.php?PHPSE...c757&topic=7.0

I am going to be racing next weekend, will post a link to some footage, see what you all think!

Dan

Is this the kind of racing footage you'll be doing?

http://www.pashnit.com/cam-mount.htm

http://www.sportbikecam.com/

Check out the video samples. http://www.sportbikecam.com/pictures.htm

However, they are using regular camcorders instead of bullet cam/pvr.

I wouldn't mount a PVR on the bike - maybe mounting it on the body would protect that component from vibration. But I'm not sure whether a wire hanging between the rider and the bike when the bike is going at speed is a danger or a mere nuisance or not a factor at all.

I know tapeless is wonderful, but in this situation I don't think you can beat a couple of cheap camcorders for simplicity, durability and compactness.

Last thing, I'm not sure about the resolution of the bullet cam. I suspect shooting with a low-end camcorder would yield a better picture.

Happy racing!

Here are some Pics of my setup
 

Here is my setup,

And the D-Snap recorder is mounted inside the front fairing so that just before the race, I can reachinside and hit the recorde button.

As soon as a have a place to host some footage, I will post a link.

http://www.fototime.com/3C8C9CDF88F6307/standard.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/4FAE947B1FE29DB/standard.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/30FFA21650F0174/standard.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/396482EF6A908C3/standard.jpg

http://www.fototime.com/511C85C65891D4E/standard.jpg

PS, they would never let me race in a sanctioned race with two camcorders hanging off the bike.

1 Lap of Willow Springs
 

Here is a link to a Single lap of willow a t recent event,

There are lot of artifacts in the video, this was created by the vibration in the video switch. Hopefully I have this fixed, and nex ones will be much better

Dan

http://www.fototime.com/1E3A2F2B006C8F4/conv.wmv


If anybody has a good video hosting source, and can recomend the proper Size, and Quality that I should render in please let me know

love those bike shots dan! it's much better than car racing.

i sure hope that picture interference can be cleared up on the switch end... i wonder if you are also picking up some rf interference from the ignition or something.

it looks like you have external power available, so you probably won't need the battery.

the clip you posted was encoded at 3106kbps, you should be able to get acceptable quality at ~1200kbps, if you use windows media 9 with vbr and two-pass encoding... encode it to match the frame size that it was shot in, which for the av-100 is a dvd-spec of 704x480(??).

thanks to richard for the feedback on the ffv, sure wish that i could afford one.

Thanks for the video sizing tip. Here is another clip
 

I tried this one in the size yuo recomended. This clips 3 laps at a button willow WERA race in July. I onlt had one working camera, so I bypassed the switch, and you will see the quality is awsome. That is how I figured out that the switch was the problem. I worked sitting still intesting, but not on the track running.

http://www.fototime.com/02572FB1ECF3FF0/conv.wmv

77MB a little over 6 minutes of video

Since you are only in Carlsbad, Would love to get together, adn buy you a beer, and pick your brain on Video stuff

E-mail me at dan@carlburger.com

Dan

that's pretty sweet dan! love those kneedraggers!!

don't even put that on the web until you brand the entire length of it with your url, maybe in letters across the top(jtmotorsports.com?)... people will steal it and post it as theirs... i'd also lose the music if i was you, because of copyright issues, plus the gearheads will want to hear the motor.

i'm working hard on a web video site for drag racing, i'd love to host a bit of that bike stuff as well if you need a place to put it... my new site is still a few weeks off at this point, but it'll hopefully be ad-supported at some point, to pay the bandwidth costs, probably have to rent a dedicated server to handle it all tho.

just an addendum to this thread... panasonic has released a successor to the av-100, but it's a 3-ccd camera! it records to mpeg2, but it now also has vbr capability: http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...der-Review.htm

New Video from this weekend
 

I got the switch working pretty good now.

Check it out

http://www.wsmc530.com/vids/conv.wmv

And the new panasonic digital recorder has no analog inputs, so it is useless for me ... :-(

Dan

Great job, Dan. Really beautiful - and to me almost sensual in the way the camera tilts into those turns, and how the riders seem to hang onto the horizon.

That's great footage, Dan. Using this kind of setup is a whole new way of shooting video. It really pulls the viewer in so he feels like part of the action. Way closer to playing a video game than watching a sporting event. And smooth too, for what it is, a bike at 100mph +. Gotta' love the corners. I'd love to watch the Patriots from this point of view (a couple on linemen, two for the QB's, and two on receivers). So just to be sure, the medium used to capture this clip is a 2gb SD card?

2gb card is all
 

Yep, I am using a 2GB card in my D-snap, with the firmware upgrade mentioned above.

I get 43 minutes of recorde time at 704x480 6MPS Mpeg2

I than used Cyberlink's Power Director Editing software to title, shorten footag, and add sound, then used Power Directors built in encoder to put out that clip. The full MPEG2 file is awsome, you should see it on my 32 LCD screen. BAD ASS!!!!

All my race buddies are going googoo over the footage

Dan

Dan,

You need to contact me. I build kits using the nnovia A2D for all sports. I have a sports bike setup in beta now that records both cameras without switching at full SD resolution.

Bonus, I'm in San Marcos just north of you =]

~PH

I have been looking for ages for a flash drive mini DVR that will take analog (composite) video in and can output same to a monitor, as well as being able to play back within the unit (rather than requiring files to be played externally). I'd be using it on my Steadicam to play back takes for reference purposes, so it needs to be light and have easily accessible front panel buttons or LANC control available.

There are a lot of "spy" mini DVR's around, many are meant to be used as portable media players and you have to cycle between video, MP3, photos and whatever else modes when moving between record and playback. I need mine to act just like a digital version of a tape deck; you hit record, stop, and then play to access the last clip (or cycle backwards through the clips). Many of my colleagues are using the Archos for this purpose but I find it still annoying to have to cycle through menus, too many steps.

The FFV Mini DVR Pro is a great unit but I think it is still priced for the timeframe when it came out, which was 2004--we've moved on and this should be a lot cheaper now, considering it is SD. Speaking of which, I do need 720x480 resolution and at least 30 fps.

I recently looked at the Vio POV1 which is a good looking bulletcam/DVR combo, but it won't take a composite input.

If anyone has any more thoughts on this, please let me know--new stuff coming out all of the time.

there are now tons of DVR on the market, but they are all derived from the same base, so it is hard to find the right model.
The first concept is DVR only, like the Bullet DVR :: Bullet DVR Portable Video Recorder ::, and i am pretty sure that all models you can find are derived from the Zowietek http://www.zowietek.com/html/products.htm (i got three of them).
the zowietek offers even several cam recording, so you can get a front and rear view.
The others are more complex, often including monitor and ability to replay, but often these are relatively expensive and use proprietary devices. for example the POV-1 V.I.O. -- The Leader in Wearable Video Technology, Digital Helmet Cameras and Cam Accessories has no video input, the camera use a special cam and cable, so there is no option there if the cable is too short or if the camera does not fit your needs.

Zowietek would be perfect, if only it had playback!

I'd be OK with paying up to $1000 for the right unit, but the $3K+ of the FFV unit is prohibitive.

Maybe one day one of these units will "slip up" and offer the features I need!

For 5 years I have been researching and building sportscams. The ballance in these systems is quality/price/ergonamics. How good does it look, how much does it cost and how easy is it to use.

Mini DV based systems work great, the drawback is 90 minute recording max and the reliability in harsh conditions. The plus is they are cheap.

Mpeg4 based DVR's are compact and can sport long recording times. The drawback is quality, 1.5 - 2.5 mbps recording in my opinion is poor. I've purchased on the order of 10 of these units, none of them performed for quality, pixilated and lost frames. The other drawback for me is ergonomics, proprietary in nature creating control systems for these recorders are difficult.

DTE systems such as nNovia QC decks sport the highest quality and with some modifcation high impact capability and long record times. Using common control rs232 or LANC formats make for easy control. The nnovia A2D is specailly good for this sporting onboard analog conversion. The drawback is cost and this is the only drawback.

My current kit for vehicles contains 4 recorders, 4 580 line bullet cams and a cockpit controller which displays all cameras via LCD. This is why I perfer the DTE systems. I do still have DV camcorder systems to cover the low cost spectrum of customers.

~PH

A2D is a bit on the heavy side for my application (would prefer .5 lb or less) and the hard drive vs flash is unfortunate. Have you had issues with hard drives being affected by G forces, Pat?

$1500 is hefty, but still half that of the FFV unit...

You can install a SSD 2.5 drive in the Nnovia. By doing so you increase the battery life and free up some weight. I also remove the front LCD panel. Older units tend to go for 600-800$ for a 40GB version which doesnt matter to me since I upgrade to SSD.

I don't run any A2D's with hard drives, just SSD and droped one from 5 feet onto carpet while recording, didnt phase it.

~PH

Pat, can you recommend an economical but well performing 2.5" SSD drive? Sounds like you have had plenty of field-test time with these. I'll be looking for a pretty low capacity size for my needs.