JXD and other cheap Video options

[Mark_h]

I tried the search but JXD is too short so please forgive me.

I've been looking into the cheapest way to get me video enabled on the bike. The £300+ Dog-cam route is way too expensive for something I'm not likely to use too often. Then I found the JXD devices. Looks like you can plug an external camera into the AV-in and use them to record and play back.

I need to to record riders I am following to show them their road positioning. So does not need to be magnificent quality but must enable recording and play-back, be able to get a reasonable picture of a bike that is about 30 feet in front of you, needs to be able to record 30-40 mins and play back bits of it (unlikely to want to watch it all, but scan through to specific bits). Not worried about sound.

Anyone used the JXD kit that is advertised on e-bay, got a recommendation for a cheap, good enough, bullet cam or any better ideas.

Cheers,
Mark.

If you can do playback through a PC/Laptop have a look at the ATC 2000.

Look here for one site

And at ~£85 it wont break the bank. With a 2GB SD (Biggest it will take) card you can get an hour of reasonable quality vid, it's waterproof and shockproof as well.

I think Seggons has a video setup that`s quite nice , cannot remember what it is , but he has loads of vids up on YouTube as well so you can see what his is like .

I've had a few setups in my time. I started off with the 4Kam setup and it could record, playback the footage, play audio books.... Basically it did everything apart from make a brew. The problems I had with it was reliability and getting the files to play on the PC, it was a nightmare. Anything longer then 30 mins and you could bet something had gone wrong or the unit had froze which meant all of your footage was lost.

I sent the DVR back, they sent me a new one, that was no better, I sent it back with the rest of the stuff and asked for my monies back. They have since released the DV3 XT but I've not used this so I don't know if it's any better then the counterpart I was using.

I then went on the look out for another setup and soon went with the one from DogCamSport. My first impression of it was good, it had one function and that was to record which I liked. But since I was using it day-in-day-out problems started to come up such as the connections falling to pieces and the connector on the DVR wearing and then finally not working.

That went back and since I didn't learn my lesson I then went looking for another setup. So instead of choosing a ready made setup package, I made my own in terms of the Chasecam PDR100 and a Sony HQ1 550TVL camera.

I wont say that I haven't had problems with it because I have, the difference this time being the problems were due to me being rough with it. Although the setup is quite expensive it also comes with rock solid reliability, better quality over the others (DVD quality) and it uses a compact flash card instead of a SD card.

The difference between something using a SD card and the PDR using a CF card is the PDR constantly writes to the card. That means if there is any problems or the PDR loses power for whatever reason then all the footage up to that point is safe. Where as with the DVR's that use SD cards then normally only dump their files every 1GB or 1 hour which means an awful lot of footage can be lost if anything goes wrong.

The pro's and cons of other options.

ATC2000: The quality on these are not bad when your doing under 10mph but the footage starts to suffer when you get to higher speeds. The microphones are built into them so unless you can find a place that will give a good view and be out of the wind then the audio is going to suffer.

On the pro side it is a low cost way to get some footage.

The JXD's: I believe these can be a bit hit and miss from what I've heard. Some people find they work great others not so. IIRC there was one or two on the Scottish trip just gone and I believe they both corrupted the recordings.

At the end of the day you get what you pay for, you pay £100 for a ATC2000 then your not going to get DVD style footage. But if you go out and pay ~£600 Like I did then your going to get the benefits.

Here's a video I did comparing the 4Kam, DogCam setup and the PDR100: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=QDDI0RXzrl0
The Dogcam setup I had: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K5GhLTRygqA
My PDR100 setup: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RL4KbKlx9c0
What I've just typed in video form: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4p844q7QzLM

There's a user on youtube called AdvancedBiker, he does exactly what your after but has a different way of going about it. A video of his setup:

I've tried to contain as much information as possible without ramberling which I hope I've achieved.

[Mark_h]

Thanks for the comprehensive response. Food for thought but I would still be interested in anyone with recent JXD experience.

[SoulKiss]

Get a Cowon A3 and plumb it into the bikes Battery

Then connect any cam you want (with a composite video out) into it.

Its what I did, and I am VERY happy with it.

[Mark_h]

jxd is about £30. All the others c£300. Are they really 10 times better?

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by Sid Squid

Re: Bulletcams/recorders again I know precisely sod all about this subject, so I'm posting simply to vouch for the excellent quality of the camera and recorder/player that Dave has. Having seen a few other such cameras and related devices I wasn't expecting much - when I first saw it I was surprised at the picture, it's really very good.

from the last cam discussion thread @ http://forums.sv650.org/showthread.php?t=112242

Right, Im sat here and seriously contemplating going down the soulkiss route, Ive already got a 4KAM and now just wondering whether to go for the cowon A3 .

JXD is fine. Use the SD card instead of the onboard, as the onboard memory is not too quick and will glitch every now and then. this seems to clear up when using a decent make sd card.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfy3dut4Po8

this was one of mine, taken on a JXD to the onboard memory. That was with a cheap 380line camera, i was quite pleased with the results, but then when u look at my other video's, you can see the difference in quality (using a 550line cam)

I smashed that recorder up in the crash in that video. The screen broke. But, the footage was still saved on the device and i was able to retieve it ok.