helmet cam/mp4/arcos 605....advice

HI

I have got a sony helmet cam, but am now looking at the arcos 605 mp4. Anyone used it/seen footage off it, or can advice on quality of picture Its quite a lot of cash, I am not a techno geek, but if I am going to use this type of gear I want it to be quality

Thank you

I can only advise you not to do what I've done.

I bought one of the more expensive dog cams:

1 x DogCam Pro 520 camera.
1 x 8 x AA Battery Holder.
1 x Fixed Mount.
1 x Stereo mic splitter
1 x 12v A/V Microphone.
1 x protective lens cap.
3 x suction mounts

cost £145 not incl p&p

To record I bought a JXD 638 http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...MEWN:IT&ih=004
as it was solid state (no hard drive to jar around in my pocket). It records in 640x480 so it won't give an optimum output for my camera (752 x 582) but it should be good enough to record bike footage.

I got th jxd yesterday and fitted it to the dog cam. The instructions with the dog cam had photos of what colour cable to attach where. The cables that actually came with the dog cam bear no relation to the colours in the photos.

I eventually get it working (without the microphone as it was on less load of wire to try to figure out). I recorded 10 minutes of footage. And I'm "disappointed* to say the least.

Tne picture quality is more grainy than brighton beach. It judders and has a slow refresh rate. You can just about make out what you're viewing. The JXD's battery life appear to be about 5 seconds.

It records in either asf or avi format. copying them over to my pc I need a codec to view them & even then I could only get audio.

I've tried to convert from asf to mpeg & I only get an audio recording (So NOTHING for 10 minutes).

So I can only view a grainy slow image on my jxd. I don't know if the problem lies with the bullet cam or the jxd (which doesn't come with instructions).

So £220 for a bag of shyte. I'm at my desk now with wires everywhere & downloading various codecs to watch a grainy image on my pc.

I'm a little bit unhappy.

[rictus01]

Just got an ATC 2000 from one of the guys (Thanks Ben), all in one bullet cam, for the price it's brillient, runs on 2 x AA batteries (about 4 hours) and a 2 gb SD card, totally shock & waterprooof, very robustly build, simple to fit and remove from bike, fits into your pocket with ease.

Has three resolusions and two frame rates, on best (640 x 480/ 30 fps) , gives just over the hour or so, one down (320 x 240) about three and a half hours.

For the money it's ideal.

Cheers Mark.

TC, I'll bring my unit to the next Border Patrol meet that I hear you're going to make it to - that way you can check it out.

Some points about the systems mentionned so far:

The ATC2000 is a very good all in one unit, which records to SD cards (so doesn't suffer from vibration much). However, the recording format itself is quite looseless (can be bad quality - but largely depends on light conditions and vibrations on the bike). That said, it's an all in one with no wires to work out. Battery life can apparently be pretty short if you're recording in one of the higher quality settings.

The bullet cam setup that Kinvig has is the same as mine, only I bought the model lower bullet cam, and a couple of models higher recorder. I love it. It does me just fine, but it is more expensive than I remember seeing the ATC2000.

In my setup, I have a couple of mounts (a suction mount with angular head so I can put it anywhere on the bike, and a sucker mount that wraps around the camera - it has to point parallel to the surface you mount it on). The first mount is great for on the bike, and I picked it up from Maplin for £15. The second mount is great for helmet work (side of lid, top of lid, wherever you like - I've even thought about below the headlights but I'm still a little wary of the suspension travelling too much).

The arcos units, IIRC, use a hard drive. Whilst you can record more, in greater quality on them, they suffer from vibrations (it can wreck the hard drive inside it with too much vibes - steady now!). They're also very expensive for what they are.

IMO, what you want to be looking for, is a decent quality camera (concentrate on the focal length of the camera - mines a little short - variable would be great). Generically any SONY CCD based camera would be fine (the bullet cams mentionned above and the ATC2000 are based on the Sony chip). That sorted, it'll record in any size you want, so then you want to worry about storage. That brings in the type of storage - IMO, solid state is better than magnetic. For decent viewing, you want something that will record in at least 640x480 IMO, with at least 25fps (otherwise it'll be jumpy). If it'll output to AVI files great, but they will be pretty big. MP4 is also ok, but that can depend on the actual codec used to make the MP4 file, so you could be taking a bit of a gamble there.

Another option to look at, is the setup that Quiff has/had. He had a ram mount (google them) on his mirror, and a common household digital camera stuck on it. The digi-cam recorded video, and it was a pretty decent quality from what I've seen of it.

Also, BluePete has a pretty decent setup, but I'm not sure what he has.

Confused?

HTH.

Baph - you got a link to your digital recorder?

Originally Posted by Kinvig

Baph - you got a link to your digital recorder?

Nope, but it's the JXD 921 IIRC. I think Blue_SV650S went for either the 7xx series or the 8xx series (one down from me anyway) and he's happy with his too (or was last I talked to him).

It's a fair wedge of money to spend on the wrong model when they're all so alike.

[Luckypants]

So far no one has mentioned the Smudge cam!



Gives excellent results and a hell of a good work out to neck and shoulders!

Seriously though I think bluepetes system works well

I've got the RAM Mount on the mirror too Esther, i can't use me camera on it now though cos i cross threaded the thread on me camera lol, so i have to cable tie it down

Sidepoint to having it on the mirror, i think it has done summit to the actual mirror or where the mirror screws in with the extra weight because it seems like the mirror moves about a lot, Quiff you ever had that?

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by plowsie

Sidepoint to having it on the mirror, i think it has done summit to the actual mirror or where the mirror screws in with the extra weight because it seems like the mirror moves about a lot, Quiff you ever had that?

Quiff's mirror broke off from being crushed by the RAM mount.

ahh right so best to get it off then