Proving the thorium that you’re never quite satisfied with the toys you’ve got, after much deliberation and discussion I’ve decided add a new lipstick helmet camera to the A/V arsenal. A few days ago after a long chat with Randy Chase of Chasecam, I broke down and placed an order for a new PDR100 Digital Video Recorder and a 520 line Bullet Camera system.
For quite some time I’ve wanted to add more video clips to the blog and while I’ve already got a helmet camera set-up, over time I’ve found that I rarely use it. Why? Well, I think there are a few basic reasons;
First, the current system has a spaghetti like mess of wires. I’ve found that if you take your time and tape them down the system usually works – but more times then I’d like to admit a wire disconnects and nothing gets recorded. Few things are as annoying as hitting a canyon road hard while thinking you’re capturing all the excitement only to find out that you’ve got twenty minutes of black on the tape. The Chasecam system does away with the jumbled mess and replaces it with one single wire that feeds video & power to the recording device.
The second – and perhaps most important – reason I’ve failed to use more video on the site is time. My current set-up requires me to capture the footage in real time in order to digitize it into the computer. Since I work with video all week, spending my weekends watching the footage roll by is just a tad tiresome. The Chasecam PDR100 unit doesn’t record to tape! It’s a compact flash based system that records roughly thirty minutes per gig of memory. That’s not only amazing, but also means that the unit records directly to an mpeg-2 video format. So from now on it’s all about copying the information and not capturing it. From my perspective this is a huge advance and I’m looking forward to seeing what direction that might lead the blog.
Finally, the Chasecam recording device has an amazingly small footprint. It’s approximately 3.9” x 5”x 1.8” in size and weighs a mere 17 ounces with batteries. That’s a significant reduction in physical space compared to my current miniDV camcorder that I’ve been using.
Because Chasecam is just starting to ramp up their product production process, I won’t actually take delivery of the two units until somewhere around the middle of August. But I’m already salivating at the idea of recording all the natural beauty and magnificent asphalt in Southern California!
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finally! like i said on the phone, i’m suprised you don’t post more video, you certainly post lots of stills from your rides, so why not short vids i say! good luck with the system, can’t wait to see its results, might want to borrow it
Keep up posted on how this system works. I’d love to have such a set-up to record some of my trail rides on the mtn. bike.
Will do. The system is scheduled to be delivered in the middle of August… I haven’t been this excited about a new toy, well since the bike