Anyone using a HD1/HD2 as an action POV?
 

or in place of a bullet camera?

I've got a HelmetCamera.com bullet cam, and want to replace it with an HD camera. Thought one of these might be the ticket...

any footage of high action pov type stuff?

I'm thinking of placing on my road race motorcycle, on mountain bikes and the like.

I have used it in car, vibration can be a problem.

I need to get a mount that has less flex. Or strap the camera down some other way.

I am also afraid the plastic tripod socket is going to strip, and I'm gonna get hit in the face with a camera while driving, so I've wrapped a strap through the wrist strap hole as well. Although the idea of the camera floating willy nilly by my safety strap a couple miles into a 20 mile rally stage still freaks me out.

I am going to try strapping it to my helmet (Mountain bike) here soon, vibration should be less. I will upload footage.

Oh, the other bummer is the LCD HAS to be flipped out, so on a MTB bike or something it is going to get torn off at some point, or poked by branches and things..

I too have been using lipstick cams, and will continue to do so because they are so light and small. The only problem is integrating their 4:3 picture with my other 16:9 stuff.

One of the best pov cams out there. The lcd rotates 180 and lays flat so no worries. It's super light so it works great with a good mount, the manfrotto 241fb works really nice in conjuction with a 12lb 3d head for cars. Use a superclamp for bikes. 1 Hour recording with a 4gb card and a trusty remote which is way more necessary than you might have thought. The plastic threads are the major weakness but I've had one on the hood of a car at 75mph without failure. Good Luck.

Thanks for the feedback. I had wondered about the LCD... knowing that it wil do a 180 and lay flat is a big +.

any footage?

How does the compression handle high action in the frame?

+1 Anyone have any good high speed footage using either the HD1A or HD2?

Well... I just ordered one, so the high speed footage will be up in about a week or so.

I look forward to the sample videos. I am looking for a good solution for HD POV cam on a sport motorcycle for track and street footage.

come on out to a ZoomZoom trackday !!! :D

I'll be at T-hill May 7th and Reno June 2nd. Maybe in between I can zoom over to a Zoom Zoom day. I bought the HD1a and took some footage. It's a great little camera when used properly on the bike. I'm looking for alternative mounting methods, as the plastic mount hole will most likely not last the abuse.

Any updates of footage from anyone?

I have some footage. I do not understand how anybody is making this usable. Any amount of vibration ruins the footage, and I have found it impossible to elimate ALL vibration. It seems the combination of vibration + movement overwhelms the codec, and it all goes to crap.

I have taken some clips to show here, to see if anyone can help me. First, I have two framegrabs. One with the camera mounted to the hood of a vehicle on a solid suction cup mount, first shot is with the car stationary, no vibration. Shot #2 is with the car in motion, look at the drastic degradation of quality due to camera vibration and action. This is a smooth road, 15mph.

Still:

http://www.mattjohnstonrally.com/top.../Hd1aStill.png

In Motion:

http://www.mattjohnstonrally.com/top...HD1aMotion.png

And here is a 90meg video clip. I did nothing to it except chop it shorter.

http://www.mattjohnstonrally.com/top...StickyTest.mp4

If you are getting decent results, I would love to know how. I really want to mount this to rally cars, and that is one of the roughest, vibration prone environments around. Unfortunately right now, a ebay bullet camera looks lightyears better than my HD1a.

Try setting the shutter to an very high value (1/1000th), it was an trick used on the HC1 HDV camera to get better images from the codec.

Another day, some more tests.

This time I set the shutter to 1/1000 in shutter priority mode. Seemed to make a LITTLE difference, but the real killer here is fast motion + the tree's. I have posted two captures. One with dense foliage, one without. Same exact camera settings, just about a mile farther down the road.

Foliage messing up the compression:

http://www.mattjohnstonrally.com/top...1000sticky.png


Less foliage, less crappy picture:

http://www.mattjohnstonrally.com/top...a1000nofol.png

Bandwidth constrained. No motion blur makes image more predicable, also you see crisper GOP frames in action, but still bandwidth constrained, 18mb/s+ h264, would do wonders.

Here's a short clip of some motorcycle footage I took with the HD1a:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TTM6MA1W

Set to "sport" mode
white balance set to "sunny"
focus set to "infinity"
image stabalization "off"
image mode "normal"
recording at SHQ
49mm filter ring adapter w/ enhancement filter and MC UV filter w/ lens hood

Clip trimmed with AVS trial version software (hence watermark). (If someone knows a better/another mp4 editor, let me know.

Without me downloading over my modem, can you briefly describe any improvements?

wow... that is HORRIBLE.

Pretty near unusable in my book.

Anyone have HD2 footage? is it the same?

Right now I'm REALLY glad the order I placed with WiseTronics turned out to be a bait and switch scam and I didnt end up getting one of these cameras (and didnt get charged for one).

T-Hill !!!! yea-ha !!!

Now that footage didnt look bad. A little softish but bearable and MUCH better than the blocky compression of the previous footage.

I'll post some footage that is not against the sun. I think it looks great for what it is, and much better than any SD camera I have seen. Next will be to compare the 60fps setting, albeit it's in SD.

My shots without foliage and lots of stuff in the frame dont look bad either. When I strap it to my car and blue sky it looks ok (see my other post). When I'm in the tree's, it goes to crap.

Unfortunately, not many rallies take place where there are no trees :(

Eventually downloaded, and got player working better (after either k-codec or Cine-form Neo player codec pack). Yes, workable, but still needs, probably, 18mb/s.

Help?
 

Hey guys, first post here. I'm really interested in seeing that motorcycle footage Michael Lenzi posted, but Megaupload doesnt work for me - cannot download from that site. Can anyone help out and upload somewhere else? Thank you in advance,

Kosta

I don't own this camera but I saw in a video review that you can flip the LCD around and then tuck it back against itself so that the LCD is now facing outward instead of inward. Wouldn't this keep the power on and allow you to keep recording. You could then just tape up or cover the LCD somehow so it doesn't get scratched. At least that way it will be tucked against the body and not sticking out?

Alan, it's only really good when most of your composition isn't moving and it's terrible when it's moving a great deal.