What is the current favourite for a spi pole mounted camera? I want to obtain one less for making an entertaining film than to monitor the procedures of my crew and myself. Therefore, it should be a wideangled camera which covers both hulls. And easy to mount and detach ...

Thanks,
Kai

pentax optio w-series w20, w30, w60, w80 etc

http://www.youtube.com/user/eric3810101#p/a/u/1/u-kFg4cncnA

http://www.vimeo.com/5075989

can you fix the w80 on the boat somewhere ?
Is the view wide enough ?

The GoPro HD Hero is just the best sports camera out there at the moment and it can shoot 30fps @ 1080p and even 60fps @ 720p for slowmotion, which could be good for recording training sessions.
It comes with a 170 degree wide lens which is great for sailing.
http://www.goprocamera.com/hdheropreview/

w60 and w80 optio have 28mm wide angle equivalent

which is 75degrees field of view i think and more than enough for a spin pole or mast top position. bigger field of view needed if you want to capture all the action from the mast base or a tramp position

earlier w series option not as wide

under 30mm good

new olympus　waterproof action cameras also 28mm i think

after field of view the next thing to check for is good video performance, for action stuff like cat sailing you need high frame rates like 30frames per sec at whatever size you think is adequate

go pro stuff very nice if you can afford it for pretty much single use. hardly the stuff you'll pull out of your pocket for kids birthday pics

spoilt for choice we are

The GoPro HD seems to me to be the best solution - especially when you take the price in account. We're talking of $300 (incl. mounting gear) against €270 for a naked camera where you have to think by yourself how to get in mounted. Hey, at last there is a benefit in the low $/€ exchange-rate!
Thanks you all!

be sure to post your results

and as a win xp supporter it hurts me to say i couldn't have made anything without the imovie software built into a macbook

I was a multimedia art student for 2 years. after 8 years of dealing with problems with audio/video software on pc's i got a macbook and was multitracking and video editing in minutes.

The version of windows movie maker on Win 7 is, in every measurable way, just as good as the imovie crap - and you don't have to consign yourself to satan by purchasing apple products.

http://download.live.com/moviemaker



Wow....

I picked up Adobe creative suite 4 and managed to put together a quick clip in about an hour that used flash, multiple videos and soundtracks. I haven't been able to work on it for a couple months but here's what I made so far (crappy compression for file size purposes) I knew nothing of video production when I started. Just taught myself how to use the tool.

http://www.velocitysailing.com/images/so_far.wmv

(the video is longer, I just haven't encoded it in its entirety yet because I'm not happy with it. Need moar footage)

your suggesting your soul is better off in the safe hands of MicroSoft? (i think you may have been assimilated)

Glad to hear after 20 years they are finaly making progress...







I do love adobie products (and macromedia), and have used After Effects and Premiere for years (13 or so).. i think we had this discussion before, but they are rather high end software and really not the same can of worms as your "built in media software". Your Adobe creative suite 4 cost about $1600.. this is double what the avg pc costs (or close).. it better "work out of the box"

PS most (not all) the problems were with the audio hard/software, and mostly latency issues (delay) that made live (real time) multi tracking impossible.

I have found in general, (very general) that Macs handle audio files / hardware better than PC's have in the past and almost every artist i have worked with (100's) that is multi-platform will swear MAC's crash less, process faster and they prefer a MAC to a PC even though MAC's generally have less "speed keys / shortcuts" for many repetitive actions... (i am talking about photoshop, illustrator, quark style programs), and cost more than pc's

On the "need more footage" thing, is there a way to easily send raw footage to someone who could edit it all together? Like flash cards or something?

That way, everyone could give a designee all their raw footage of a certain event, so a nice highlight video could be put together to add some marketing material to teams, events, etc.

Yes flash card or cd/dvd
technically you could also transfer the files using a file sharing program as well..
the issue is raw video is typically huge files (easily 1 gig or more) and if you have 10 people send you this much info.. you may spend a few days loading and reviewing it before you even start to edit... also files this huge can require a pretty powerful workstation to edit...

that being said... 5 and 10 minute movies are doable without special soft/hardware (on a mac or windows)

Open ended useless grovel like "xxx is crap" by someone who probably never even tried the product in the first place and can't spell it properly (dude, it's iMovie, with a capital M) is frankly disgusting.

Factual criticisms, fine. Difference of opinion on how a UI should work, great. But comments like the one you made are offensive to the people who, like me, worked on this application for months.

Yes, once upon a time I was an Apple employee. Part of that time was in the OS division, another in the application division, the people making not only the iLife suite but also all the pro apps: if you are using a Mac today, you probably use some stuff I wrote...

I'd appreciate some apologies.

Did you have to sell your soul to get the job?
Did they return it when you left?

Actually thats pretty cool (that you worked on such worldwide used products)...

I was always a bit of an Apple skeptic (turtleneck mafia )but fed up by MS's crappy mobile OS I bought an iPhone
Unbelievable how good that thing is! Its very clever and everything just "works", I use it a lot for business as well.
My work phone run the latest offering from MS (WM6.5) but it not even comes close to the iPhone.

Undecided:
What I really dislike about the current MS apps is that you are forced to use a Live account and the software quality is not always consistent (Although Win7 and Office2010 are OK).
Remember BKs review of the Sanyo a while back? I am hearing bad things about it (leaking etc).
http://www.kiteforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=2361366&p=630806

Apology not warranted. If you feel that my OPINION is somehow mis-categorized or ill-informed, thats fine. Its not, but thats your prerogative.

I'm not going to apologize.



Thats fair.

Also, Windows Mobile is a travesty. I'll agree. I actually had a treo 700w that did everything that the later iphone did and did it faster - but it wasn't as "pleasing" to use as an iPhone. Eventually, windows mobile media player made me ditch the Treo for a crappy LG phone - and now I have a droid - which I feel is a bad thing, getting into bed with google but its honestly the hottest thing going. I love making my own apps for it.

I went to mac recently, and i wont be going back any time soon.
Love your work Pepin, imovie is the best.

what kinda apps have you made?

i use the tides and weather apps mostly (besides communication apps) and actually purchased my iphone spacificially because at the time it had the biggest and clearest screen for seeing weather/radar which is very dynamic here in the summer.

I have found ALL the GPS apps (that i have tried) on my iphone basically worthless on the catamaran.

The one I use the most is a widget I made that opens up the weather channel animated weather radar from the homescreen for my current location.

The apps I made are tools that I use for a geeky MMO that I play that would have absolutely no usefulness in the real world