Camera

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

www.goprocamera.com

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

To be honest, as of late Google is starting to creep me out.
If it wasn't for the quality of their search and DNS I would probably use something else.
Sure Apple have some strange policies but unlike Google at least they are clear about them.

MS has a lot of bright people but they are asleep at the wheel.
Google is now working on a phone of their own which is a good idea for their OS,
the problem with WM is that they let it run on anything without demanding any
manufacturing requirements which is bad for the "user experience" between different devices.

I'd argue the same is true for windows itself.

cool

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
[/quote]

hahah... also cool that you do that

as i have to give the macbook at the end of this year i was in the market for another portable

i boiled it down to 3 options

the very new macbook for $1000, a 2nd hand 3year old macbook for $450 or a tiny xp netbook for $300

a $1000 was more than i wanted to spend and i hate the way mac have changed plugs again and outdated all my headsets with the new machine so that got crossed

the 3 year old machine probably wouldn't give another 3 years without a hardware problem and the old battery would make tie it to a desk so that got crossed too

so it was the cheapest option for me and a wii for the kids for xmas

the value is unbeatable, i do like that it has a built in card reader, the wireless connection isn't perhaps as sensitive as the macbook but seems less picky about making the initial connection

and currently it's booting in 10secs to the new chrome OS cherry from a 1gb usb drive, which is kinda cool

i'll still be able to use quicktime pro to edit video clips but the search for something as easy to use as imovie to put them together will now have to begin

any experience with Sanyo WPC WH-1 ?



http://sanyo.com/xacti/english/products/vpc_wh1/index.html

Hi Erice, can i ask what you mean they changed plugs again?

and outdated all my headsets? what does that mean as well?

it's a new combo port, combining the microphone and stereo headphones into 1 plug

i can see the elegance of doing away with the normal 2 plug system but am rough with my headphones and like being able to swap them around with mp3 player etc and replace when needed with stuff from the $1 shop

presumably headphones with the new plug won't be able to be swapped with older style units and won't be available for $1 for a few more years

Heres a review we did of this camera:
Adventure Online TV review

As far as the mac/pc editing question, if your working with HD the biggest factor is going to be your hardware: processor, RAM, raid setup (and monitors). You can accomplish the majority of the same things whether mac/pc/finalcut/vegas/premiere/etc, but at the end of the day power rules. I had a lot of crashes working with HD with my old PC, upgraded recently to the latest and greatest hardware and its much more stable.

Regular headphones still work in the same jack. iPods had the video output this way for a quite a while, until they realized they were losing money to those who just bought a cable at Best Buy, then they switched the output to the data port so you had to get a special/$50 cord from Apple.

With regard to the data transfer, I don't see why someone wouldn't want that many gigs to work with. It would justify some good editing equipment and get a really good compilation video that might even SELL (or be used as a sponsor recruitment tool)

IMHO that is what seperates high end from non... i dont have 5k to spend on hardware.. and my videos look that way...

Great info here guys. I was impressed by the HD Helmet Hero and enjoyed running through their video library. Wow. I looked into the Sanyo and was equally impressed. My quandry is this. It looks like the HH would be the best choice of gear as far as bolting it onto the end of the spin pole and getting great footage of the boat for training purposes but wouldn't be able to shoot without the wide angle (fisheye) lens effect. So shooting one boat from another boat wouldn't be that great and there is not a zoom. The Sanyo on the other hand can shoot from farther away etc but would be more difficult to bolt up to the spin pole and it doesn't look like you could adapt a wide angle lens. It would require additional waterproofing to handle spray also I would think. I'm pretty lame on the technical side of things so I'm wondering if I've got this right or not. Any help? Thanks. Ed

Gee Ed, you could be our in-house videographer! If only you were a class member.

My accountant won't let me join until after Jan 1. But watch out after that. Ansel Adems got nothin on me.

Not to confuse matters for ya, but coming soon... one more option, the ContourHD. Were working on a review of this camera that we hope to have ready in January.

Brian. Thanks for the review on the Sanyo. That was very well done. Ed

This ContourHD looks promising
The laser sensors are interesting too..

maybe we can attach it to sharks so that we can have lazer beams....

i love this thread. i'm looking for a camera and i recently jumped over to Mac. i was so tired of having to wipe my hard drive and reinstall windows to get it going fast again. i went so far as to have a laptop that i refused to install any programs onto it to avoid the inevitable slowdown. it didnt work. i was always chasing possible viruses, etc. my computer always felt like an exercise in binge and purge dieting. then i made the jump to an iMac... it just works all the time. it doesn't get bogged down over time. since then i think i have replaced every windows-like device. the router(time-capsule), laptop, phone(iphone). i'm definitely one of them now. the thing is, i used to like fiddling with my computer now i just want to be able to sit down and have a pleasant computing experience. it will never be for everyone but those who try it will take their kool-aid in an IV drip.

i also want a camera to mount to my boat just cuz it looks so cool and i want evidence of this cool sport before i'm too old to do it any more. gopro, contour, sanyo... i like the options. now only if apple would make a camera...........

". . .kool-aid in an IV drip."

The difference in platforms becomes kind of obvious when you look at the instruction manual for the GoPro. Why should I work so hard to get this done? Of course I'm writing this on a PC since I'm such a cheapo.

In WINDOWS, double click on MY COMPUTER and you will see a “Removable Disk” icon. If you do not see this, close the MY
COMPUTER folder and then re-open it and the ““Removable Disk” icon should appear.
Double click the “Removable Disk” icon. Then double click the “DCIM” folder icon. Then double click the “100GOPRO” icon. The photo
and video files will be in the “100GOPRO” folder. Highlight the pictures or video files and drag them to a folder of your choice or double
click a file to view it.
MAC USERS: Simply plug the camera into your MAC with the included USB cable and the MAC OS will recognize the camera as either
a mass storage device or external hard drive. You can also use iPhoto to import photos from the camera onto your MAC.

I've had the Oregon scientific 4yrs and it's only let me down once when I was hit by a water spout. It is waterproof, very shock proof, when we got slammed the card got corrupted but the camera works fine. They're cheap enough to mount 2 on your pole for each side and come with good mounting kits. No HD but it records up to 4 hrs on lowest quality. I put a couple of sailing vids on youtube using Windows moviemaker with no problem and you can take stills off it.
regards