HD Sports Video Camera

[boxertwinjeff]

A mates riding his R1100S up to Cairns for a weeks holiday shortly,
and I thought it might be novel to Video some of our Runs, across the Atherton Tablelands
& down the Gilles Range which entails something like 260 Bends over 17kms,
and also the Kuranda Range which is winding climb up through Wet Tropics Rainforest.
Thinking I will secure the camera to the handle bars rather than my Helmet.
Its a HD Camera so it should have very good resolution, ( $ 189 ) off Ebay.

!B-V)r-wCGk~$(KGrHqMOKi0EzS49Gk4)BM8,-yUgD!~~_12.jpg (55.21 KiB) Viewed 1373 times

[The Veg]

Nifty idea, although helmet-cam will give you MUCH more faithful perspective than handle-bar mount, as well as probably being more resistant to vibration. Also bike-mounted cams often make the image lean and pitch about much more than what a rider is used to seeing, so as a result often seem a bit weird or disorienting to watch. The effect isn't always bad however. Here's a video made with the camera mounted solidly above the tank, and the riding is nice and smooth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEpZGan-EM8

The pitfall of course with a helmet-cam is that you must be very conscious of your head-movements. Helmet-cam videos made by novices can be almost nauseating to watch. This guy doesn't start riding until 4 minutes into the clip, but you'll see what I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5LtG_OiF9s

This one is better...the rider still needs some practise with the cam, but you'll get a sense of what's good and what isn't:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myTLj6biYys

Also be mindful of microphone placement. Avoid locations where the mic is out in the wind, like the front of the camera. Placing it behind the windscreen or somewhere on the back of the bike tends to work well.

Here's another bad use of helmet-cam that also illustrates the point about wind noise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcse0DNP ... re=related

Sounds come up again in the editing. Most bike-vids I've seen have had a music-track added to them. Nothing wrong with this in general, but the music shouldn't be the star of the show (the video is about the RIDE, right?). If your target audience is fellow motorcyclists, don't delete the bike-sound and don't drown it under the music. Choose music that goes well with the scene but doesn't wind up sounding like garbage with the bike-sound over it.

Best advice overall: watch A LOT of on-bike video with a critical eye and decide what you like and what you don't before you start shooting, and work toward those objectives.

[boxertwinjeff]

Thanks for the advice Veg!, much appreciated. Unfortunately no windscreen on
the 'ol girl so might have to experiment with Cam placement, though mounted
on my helmet wind noise is gonna be unavoidable. I'm a newbie to Video cameras so
tell me, how do you add the Script to Videos?, whats involved in editing footage?,
and is it easy enough to erase practise footage?

[ME 109]

Some good points there Veg, the wind noise as you say is quite annoying. Just about every bike video I've taken suffers badly from it. But that is due to the camera I use.
I'd like a camera that could fit on the front of my helmet, but not up on top of it.
Having remote microphones permanently set up on the bike would be good too. One near the rear, maybe under the seat and one under the tank. Some experimenting with mic positions would be needed.

Sufficient storage is another consideration, some cameras like the POV (made in usa) have a separate hard drive which allows for heaps of high resolution footage.

Motion stability, whatever it's called would be good to have.

It all comes down to $$$$

[Deleted User 287]

Thanks for the advice Veg!, much appreciated. Unfortunately no windscreen on
the 'ol girl so might have to experiment with Cam placement, though mounted
on my helmet wind noise is gonna be unavoidable. I'm a newbie to Video cameras so
tell me, how do you add the Script to Videos?, whats involved in editing footage?,
and is it easy enough to erase practise footage?

I have a video editor program called Cyber Link. It allows you to easily remove anything you don't want from the original "footage", as well as add extra soundtrack. You save the modified version separately so that you save the original in it's own file.
http://www.cyberlink.com/index_en_US.html?r=1

[Deleted User 62]

Just another thought regards high definition video. I tried to download a 3.5 minute video recorded on 1070p to YouTube and was told it would take 350 minutes to download. I'm sure there are ways to speed this up. The handlebar mounted view is pretty cool too. I've got mine mounted left of center so the /5 speedo shows in the bottom right of the screen.

[boxertwinjeff]

Just another thought regards high definition video. I tried to download a 3.5 minute video recorded on 1070p to YouTube and was told it would take 350 minutes to download. I'm sure there are ways to speed this up. The handlebar mounted view is pretty cool too. I've got mine mounted left of center so the /5 speedo shows in the bottom right of the screen.

Thats a great idea with the Speedo showing Tim, a Classic touch the cam I'm buying has
2 settings apparently, HD & Standard. Standard I imagine would still be of a high quality
and would use considerably less space on the SD Card. Handlebar mounting might be the
best option for me to kick off with being a novice movie director. I'll work out some extra
anti-vibration dampening, anyways, should be alot of fun. Any other hints are more than welcome.

[Deleted User 287]

I consider this one pretty successful. The author is one of the regulars on the R65 forum.
Low vibration, and excellent sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTI0RhJl ... re=related

I asked how he mounted it. This was the answer. And just a plain old digital camera!




And psst - Timo, a little computer lingo for you: when you copy something from the net to your computer, that is downloading. When you put something on the net for others to see, that is called uploading. Maybe someday you can teach me to make chocolate.