A video at last

GrahamMills

GrahamMills

Many & various. In G scale it is American Diesel.
There was a topic last October started by robsmorgan that mentioned a very small video camera that could be purchased for £12.95.
At that price it seemed an obviouis acquisition so I bought one and found that it seemd to work but I had no opportunity to try it out for real until this year. It has then taken me more than 3 months to get my first video. I will give details of my tribulations below but first:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myKq78A9lMI

So if you watched the video you will have been very impressed by the flatness of my track ;)

My problems were in two forms.
Mecahnical
The lights are very hard to see in daylight so many times I thought that I was filming only to discover that it was not.
It only seems to hold about 5 minutes of charge before needing charging again.
Most importantly it kept turning itself off after 30 seconds of running. Indeed I tried again after the successful video above and it did the same again. If anyone knows from their experiences what might be causing this I would be very appreciative.
The manual which is in a very poor translation of the presumably Chinese original is in such small type that I have to use a magnifying glass to read it.

Software
The resultant .avi file was displayed correctly by Quicktime but not by Windows Media player nor Real Player. It also did not work on the video editing programme I use. So in order to get the resultant image I had to:-
Convert it from .avi to .wmv
Which allowed me to edit it
Convert the resultant file from .wmv to .flv to allow me to put it on the web.

I'm pleased that I got my first video but I think that I need a better camera.
 
Sorry, not techie enough to be able to comment on the filming, but what a great ride - and a fantastic garden.
 
Very good - nice pic quality too! And I'm definately not a technical person - it all way above my head.
 
Hi Graham
It looks like the same camera I used for my video (ie the date and time showing on screen and the incomprehensible instructions):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2QveMFF4zM

There's a reset button which can be pressed by poking a pin through a hole - I think it's at the base (sorry not at home at present so can't check). When mine went peculiar I reset it and thereafter it worked fine. The only limitation I found was that the 2 gig card which came with it filled up after about 20 mins of filming.

Nice video btw. Like you, I didn't realise how undulating my 'perfectly laid' track was until I watched the video.

Rik
 
Rik,

I can see that your track is much better laid than mine but that you have an even bigger vegetation problem. I have to prune before every session at this time of the year.

I also see that you changed the date on your recording. Did you happen to find a way to remove it altogether?
 
GrahamMills said:
Rik,
I can see that your track is much better laid than mine but that you have an even bigger vegetation problem. I have to prune before every session at this time of the year.
I also see that you changed the date on your recording. Did you happen to find a way to remove it altogether?
Click to expand...

Nope. Tried all sorts to get rid of the date but not succeeded. The date/time seemed to set itself. It says you can change it by editing the text file stored on the card, but when I tried that it didn't seem to make a difference. I tried removing that file completely to see if it would get rid of the date stamp, but it reappeared. Bit of a nuisance but livable-with.

Yes, Cheshire gets more than its fair share of rain - your garden looks positively tropical by comparison. I'm constantly pruning. Those hedges seemed like a good idea when I first laid out the garden!!

Rik
 
Hi Graham

Glad to see you've obtained pretty good/clear quality with these cheap cameras - the charge/filming period problem may be related - suggest you leave the unit charging for a few hours before filming again.... but if you have already tried this and the memory card is a decent size, I would suggest contacting the supplier. The first one I bought from 7dayshop (not the keyfob type) only filmed for around 17 secs in one burst - I emailed them and returned it for a perfectly functioning replacement.
My other thought is that a sequence from one viewpoint for much over 15-20 secs can be less interesting. If you look at my first one (link below) although I probably overdid the editing on the approach to the suspension bridge, it is quite easy to swap points of view and then edit them into a better film.

Re: editing with various software packages - I use several format conversion programmes to access different formats myself.

Date/Time - think I covered that some time ago (as did several others) it's basically a case of either transfering the correct date txt from your PC or overlaying a banner to hide it.... again, see my first film :bigsmile:
Best of luck

Rob
 
Nice video....The quality seems very good....
 
Nice vid Graham....
 
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