Reefton Spur Video

bob said....

bo> The little camera cost me $219 the Voltage Reg $30, the sig light socket
bo> $10 all from JCar

Will that camera work with a DV camera? From the image it appears that
it has straight analog A/V inputs into the camera.

 

With the camera I have I notice no lose in quality between the original and
the Mini Cam was a slight drop in resolution which you can't tell unless you
put it on a bigger TV over 68cms and really look. The video I posted online
is allot lower quality than the original, I just don't know how to compress
it and keep the quality. If you have seen footage from a Digital handycame,
that's the quality I get around about..

$309 USD is way to much

http://www.eyespyshop.com.au/HelmetCameraK2.htm if you must buy online in
Australia, my camera is $225, I got mine for $219 at JCAR. Don't bother
about batteries, trust me on this. That big lumpy battery is the last
thing you would want to carry around and is heavy. You will probably end up
having to buy a tank bag if you do buy the kit.

..

 

The Sony Camera is DV camera in the picture. You have to make sure your DV
camera has AV inputs, not just AV outputs. I know all Sonys have it, not
sure about other brands. If your not sure, just plug your VCR or DVD player
to your Cam and try and record something through the AV ports.

You will find all theses types of cameras are AV 12v cameras

 

My Panasonic DVD camera can only accept an input via its Fire port (used for
dubbing from camera to camera), But I expect if I plug in an external camera
into this plug it will accept the images. So I have to figure out how to
wire the RCA plugs into a Fire plug. I have searched the net and can't find
the wiring pins of a Fire plug.

 

You *could* wire it up that way, but it won't work. Firewire is a
serial digital link, so you'd need a digital video camera with a
firewire out (like another panasonic dvd camera!) to feed something
usefull into it. Some of those will also act as a tape drive or a
dvd burner, accepting digital video from a computer to write to
the media in the camera.

The RCA connections on the other hand are for an analog signal.
That's not a signal that will do anything meaningful if shoved
up an firewire port.

G

 

Damn,

So I take it I need to get an external camera that feeds digital signals so
that I can put into my Firewire port on the DV Camera.

I was going to buy an external camera of Ebay, won't bother now.

 

bob said....

bo> The Sony Camera is DV camera in the picture. You have to make sure your
bo> DV camera has AV inputs, not just AV outputs. I know all Sonys have it,
bo> not sure about other brands. If your not sure, just plug your VCR or
bo> DVD player to your Cam and try and record something through the AV
bo> ports.

Yep, mine has this function. It's a small 2.5mm jack that takes A/V
stereo in/out. If I select "VCR Mode" I can tape to the camera from say,
a VCR. The camera acts as a passthrough, and via Firewire I can then
write the vision to hard disk for editing, etc.

Handy if you want to create (S)VCDs of television shows.

The AVI file(s) can then be written back to the camera if so desired. We
(or rather the missus) uses Adobe Premiere. The software that comes with
the Sony is rather woeful and only allows MPEG-1 (VCD quality) files to
be created.

 

If you want something for editing DV, try Sony's Vegas. I've just
switched to that after years of Premiere and it rocks. Sony have just
bought the software from Sonic Foundry and I'm hoping they'll add some
hardware support for it so I can switch over here and edit to DVCPro
with Vegas as well. At the moment it only works with DV but doesn't
need any additional hardware other than your camera.

Cheers


-------------
Kevin Gleeson
Technical Director
Blue Rocket Productions
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
www.blue-rocket.com.au