My Bullet Cam solution

Very interesting. Watched a chunk of the video. Not quite what I was expecting. Look forward to seeing more. Might look to join the "Cam' club" at some point in the not too distant future, but no money to do so now, need tyres next month and by then something else will no doubt have surfaced it's head.

Mods, this is here because the cam will be used primarily on my bike, and not much else.

A while back, there was a thread on the "cheap man's bike camera" sort of thing. Well, using information in that thread, and a little searching, I got myself a solution.

The recording device I opted for, was the JXD-921, direct from Hong Kong. This thing has 1GB built in and it both records and plays ASF/MP3/MP4/WMA/WAV. It has a 2MP digital camera built in, and shoots JPEGs. A 3.6" screen on the back of it. It has the option to add memory via SD cards; the menufacturers state 2GB max, but I've successfully tried a 4GB card in it. It has an internal Lithium-Ion battery. Most importantly, it records via AV input, and comes ready supplied with an AV cable. From ebay, including shipping, £101.86. Not too shabby. The menu's are in jap, but I can live with that.


The camera, is from www.sport-cam.co.uk, their 480 line PAL camera. A pretty basic unit, but has proven it's worth. There's a traditional
tripod mount screw hole in the back of the bullet cam, and again, it comes with it's own Li-Ion battery. It also has a mic inline (in the wire) for audio recording. This cost £86 or there abouts.

I've found that if I want to, since the bullet cam mic is only mono, I could jump in here and record vocal audio too if I wanted. Something I haven't tried yet, but it's an option.

The quality of the recording is pretty damned good. I'm in the middle of uploading to putfile, and I'll post the video when that's been processed.

The mount, I bought from Maplin, for something like £8. It's a suction mount, which I've attached on to the front side bikini fairing. It works well, and has proven stable at speeds I'm unable to confirm (yes officer, 69mph, honestly ). The camera just screws into this, and it has a quick release mechanism.

On the whole, I reckon the quality is much much better than the PSP one uploaded by SoulKiss the other day (sorry mate). Audio can be a problem though, the mic is a little sensitive, and my bike is a little loud. Leave the mic outside anywhere and you get a lot of wind noise. First run it was in my jacket pocket, which worked well. Then I left it sticking out of the tank bag, and it was useless for audio. Anything above 20mph is just wind noise. On my 50min journey that's a lot of useless audio. Again, I'll link when putfile tells me it's sorted.

So far, I like it I'll link to video when I can. I'll be taking the recording setup to the MIGTs ride this weekend, and up to AR as well.

Now I just need to sort some decent video editing software, anyone any recommendations?

[ethariel]

I must admit I like Soulkis's fix for this.

A Sony PSP with the £30 camera on it !

Colin

Video sorted now. Check here. Putfile's compression is crappy, the local files look a LOT clearer than that.

That video won't be staying long though, for a couple of reasons. I'll replace it soon.

Is there a reason that its in squashed widescreen?

Originally Posted by Grinch

Is there a reason that its in squashed widescreen?

Wasn't when I viewed it... I'll look again.

EDIT: Nope, looks fine on my office computer too. Perhaps your codec's that it's picked to display it? Putfile converts to a .flv.

Oh must be my Codec then, screwed up work laptop.

I'm trying to lay my hands on a cheap Hi8, with AV in at the moment.

[Luckypants]

Replay on my computer is very jerky. CPU running at 85%, 75% real memory used and 2Mbs download speed, so it could be resource shortage but I don't think so.

Is it the putfile compression causing the jerky images? Sound is good (can sounds ace mate!).

Originally Posted by Luckypants

Replay on my computer is very jerky. CPU running at 85%, 75% real memory used and 2Mbs download speed, so it could be resource shortage but I don't think so.

Yea, the local file is much smoother. I still have it on the recorder, so I'll show you the difference tonight if you like (recorder is in my tank bag). The speaker on the JXD is pants though.

I stuck it on putfile as it was a pretty large file. In future, video's will be converted (to enforce image dimensions, refresh rate, codec pack to use etc etc), so hopefully the upload will be smaller, and much less jumpy.

The sound of the can, was taken whilst the mic was in my jacket pocket. Wind noise is too much from other runs I have.

I had a blinding run over Pen-y-pass the other night, everything nice & smooth. I stopped to check the video, and the cable had come out about 30secs after I set off