Ten... active camcorders Focus in on the camcorder market and you’ll find a boom in active compacts underway. Despite the ubiquity of video in smartphones, there’s plenty of demand for pocket shooters that are more rugged and versatile than the average mobile. Typically, these compact cams are used to create clips for YouTube and social media sites, but …
If you record in the HD mode which is 127 degrees FOV, it's a lot better than the other modes, which are 170 degrees. There's a lot less distortion. I use it as a helmetcam on my motorcycle literally every day, and it's survived a hell of a lot of abuse, and the original battery is still going strong. I have the older one, not the new "2" with the improved user display & UI. It's quite sharp and crisp.
Since it's become so popular, there's a LOT of mounting and lens options out there now.
(My coat's the armored one, with all the branding ripped off)
Can't believe that in 2012, Sony, Panasonic and others are still flogging cameras that shoot in interlaced 50i format - other than some advanced intelligent de-interlacing filters, the first thing thats gonna happen when you import the footage into iMovie, vegas, or whatever you use is that half the frames will get chucked away - unless the user edits in 50i in which case that is very rarely ever what is wanted - and they end up posting an interlaced video to youtube, etc which looks terrible.
Sony in particular's continued use of interlaced AVCHD (even now that P is supported in the format) is a a great example of what is wrong with Sony as a company there days.
Vegas can do a Bob and Weave deinterlace to produce double framerate footage.
Agreed though, anything 25 based needs to be shot. Let us move on from differing framerates, nonsquare pixels, PAL and NTSC as quickly as humanly possible. It was a horrible nightmare best left in the past and made things confusing for non-savvy consumers.
Is there a model for filming riots in low light conditions? i.e. with an exposure control impervious to police strobing flashlights, with a strong strap for resisting assaults, and "hidden" internal buffer memory so no one can erase the last ten recorded minutes (or continuously uploading a lowres stream via 3G or 4G to a cloud backup site).
Sounds like a job for a smartphone app, with the phone in something like an OtterBox securely tied to you.
Start with something with a decent camera, like a Sony Experia S. You'd need to lock the exposure, or have it adjust slowly, if the camera API on Android allows that. Buffer the writes to SD via the internal storage with random file names, and/or dump the video to DropBox.
If you already using a big case, you could duct-tape a big LED bike light to it for more light, and choose one with a flashing mode for a bit of "get-your-own-back"...
I'd like to have known how bad the rolling shutter issue is with these. As Jan 0 says, some sample video from each camera would have been useful.
For what it's worth I've got a Kodak PlaySport Zx5, it's completely bomb-proof, no discernible rolling shutter problem, standard tripod mount. I'd replace it with something similar with better low-light performance though.
I have a Zx5 too. It's been fine too, plenty of 'active' use including quite a bit of snorkelling.
The only issues I have with it are that the tripod mount is at the bottom so it stands up tall with the lens at the top, no use for a handlebar or helmet mount as it waggles about too much.
The other thing I really miss is a decent optical zoom, but then again it's cheap and bombproof, what more do I expect?
the objective lenses on the DEV-3 seem very close together. I would have thought that to get a decent stereoscopic effect, especially at distances that would prescribe the use of binoculars, would require the lenses to be further apart. That being one of the reasons why binoculars have the objective lenses wider apart than the eyepieces.
Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080i
When using the format XXXi/30 XXXi/60 (At least in Europe) the last figure means FRAMES a second not FIELDS per second.
I seriously doubt that the Panasonic HX-WA20 does 1080i/60 as this would be 120 FIELDS per second (Which could be turned into 1080p/120 using a bob+weave deinterlace) and is data-rate wise comparable to 1080p/60, which the camera does not do.
Doubling the last number in case of interlaced is only confusing the issue - even if manufacturers quote it in literature, please do not follow suit.
I feel I should maybe quantify this.
If using the format you have, please omit the slash.
eg 1080i60 = 1080i/30
But I stick to my guns in saying 1080i60 meaning 60 fields a second is a stupid system. Probably invented by americans :P
I'm surprised another company hasn't bought the Flip line to continue it. It was the idea product in many ways and the only explanation is that Cisco wanted to keep parts of the technology to itself for use in other parts of its business,
Shame really. I once worked at an event where 30 Flips were given out for groups to record stuff to be edited later. They actually seemed to be idiot proof as there were no cock ups at all by any of the groups. Quality was OK given the size and the price but the main thing that impressed me was the fact everyone came back with footage.
Paris because she appreciates an easy to use video camera with good low light capabilities.
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Off track but can we have a review of reasonable video editors that can handle AVHCD without needing a Cray.
I'd go for Serif Movie Plus but for two things, their purchasing system refuses to accept my debit card and now even if it did I've since learnt that when you use a new format you need to activate it either by phone or over the net. Can you imagine driving down the road in your new car and before you can stop you have to call Ford or whoever to be able to use the brakes.
Other more powerful suites either wouldn't start or were too slow on my humble PC.
Maybe I haven't looked hard enough and someone will come back immediately and suggest a no brainer answer.
Thanks, I'll try the platinum demo, there's so much about on the pro version that I didn't realise there were other flavours. Vegas Pro wouldn't load, I don't know what processor I have other than it's a quad core probably an intel because I seem to recall that being my first intel machine and the first I'd bought ready built.
What also got completely missed was the Sanyo Xacti series. I've still got a (non HD) one, which has worked brilliantly for years. I've got one of the waterproof ones. They pretty much started off the "pistol" grip format, eight years ago.
In fact, I've just had a look on Google and the HD versions are selling for under a hundred quid. I'd still recommend them...
What also got completely missed was the Sanyo Xacti series. I've still got a (non HD) one, which has worked brilliantly for years. I've got one of the waterproof ones. They pretty much started off the "pistol" grip format, eight years ago...
Hah, read my mind, man. I was about to post a "Where's The Xacti?" post myself, and stumbled over your post as I was scrolling down to the post form. It is interesting to see how many of the entries in this Top Ten are pretty much straight knock-offs of the Xacti configuration.
My "main camera" is a Canon HV10 miniDV, which is a really sweet camera. It's getting to be about five years old, though, and is nearing the point in its life where it could start getting a bit creaky, like my old Canon ZR250, which I bought in '02, and wheezed out around '07. Money being tight lately, I knew I couldn't afford to replace something like the HV10 (at $US800-ish), and started checking out some of the ultra-compact tapeless digital cams hitting the market. I'd checked out the tapeless cams a bit around the time I bought the HV10, and had ended up going with the HV10 then because the tapeless cams with decent picture/sound quality actually cost more than an equivalent miniDV, and the ones in my price range had really crappy picture/sound.
I ended up buying an HD Xacti a couple of years ago on the recommendation of a friend who owned one, and it was one of the best decisions I've made. There's a few features the Xacti doesn't have, such as auto-stabilization, but this was outweighed by the advantages: no wasting time while playing back a whole cassette into FinalCutPro, no dealing with the issues that come with "contact media" and a tape transport with hundreds of moving parts -- and really tiny ones, at that -- and no extra-cost issues that come with having to stock up on blank media (even when I can find them on special, miniDV cassettes run me anywhere from $5 - $10 each). My total expenditure for blank media last year was about $35, for a 16gb SDHC card (the Xacti shipped with an 8gb card). With the Xacti, I load the card into a card dock, pull the shots I want to use, throw out the rest, erase the card, and it's ready to roll again; no sitting around for an hour cooling my heels while I wait for the HV10 to play back a whole cassette into the computer.
Along with the tech issues, there's also the issue of shooting street protests and such, which another poster touched on earlier. When not designing for a living, one of my avocations is shooting "underground newsreels" of protests and civil disobedience for the local Indymedia site, and up until I got the Xacti, I'd been shooting all those events on the HV10. The advantage of the Xacti made itself clear when the Occupy movement was emerging last fall, and the police started really freaking out on people with cameras. I've been very lucky so far, but, still... in any given situation in the streets, if the cops start freaking out, I'd rather have the Xacti snatched and/or smashed up by a cop than the HV10; at about $130-ish, the Xacti would be much easier to replace than the $800 HV10.
These days, I pretty much use the HV10 only for times when I need the best picture/sound quailty I can get -- usually music festivals, my wife's band's gigs, stuff like that. The rest of the time, it's the Xacti.
I didn't know that Panasonic had taken over the Xacti stuff, I've got an old 1.5 metre water resistant Xacti and it's perfect for snorkeling, I've managed to get rays (very jammy with a manta), sharks, turtles and very other coral and fishy type stuff and it's only packed up once in 5 years ( a day in a bowl of rice sorted that out). Hopefully Panasonic have improved the video in low light as it's bloody useless above ground unless it's sunny. Saying that, my main compact's a TZ12 and it's great in low light.
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