Which In-Car Video Camcorder To Get?

[George3]

I am shooting video of my track sessions at DE events with my Sony digital camera.  It is basically an older model still camera with video capability and saves video to a removeable SD memory card.  The cam is mounted to my roll bar.  The video quality is marginal at best, and audio is very poor with lots of wind noise.

I'd like to get something with better video and audio, decent memory capability and it must have a remote control (or remote available).  It's next to impossible to turn around to turn the recorder "ON"  while strapped in the seat harnesses, so the Remote Control would be a huge convenience.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. . . . . . Thanks !

[michael lang]

George your best bet might be to go with a portable dvr player that you can mount to the floor of your car and use a bullet camera lens mounted to your roll bar. I've seen alot of video and the ones that appear to be the best are the ones recorded on the dvr. Also the microphone can also be mounted pretty much anywhere. I'm sure you will get alot of opinions on what specific equipment to get.  I've seen alot of different set-ups ranging anywhere from a few hundred dollars to more than a $1000. I guess it's just a matter of how good of a quality recorder do you want.


 

[George3]

That's not a bad idea, but I'm short on space and don't really want to mount a seperate recorder.  I'm still leaning toward an all-in-one type of system, if possible.

 

[Wellardmac]

I like the look of this one - It's on my list of toys to buy when I can justify it.

http://www.vholdr.com/shoot/camera/overview

[Brian Minkin]

George,

I recently starting using an Olympia Digital Model DDV750.  It is a very compact DVR That writes MPEG4 files to a SD memory card. Capablle of very high resolution although I have been using it on medium quality to keep the file size smaller and the quality of the video has been good.  It has electronic image stabilization which seems to work very well.  Comes with a remote but just as my Pansonic camera before this one it will shut down to save battery power if it is not recording or put on pause after 3 minutes. The remote has not been helpful because of the time sitting on the grid waiting for the run group to start usually is longer then three minutes so I have just been using video editing software to remove that part of the recording. I have not figured out a solution to the wind noise yet but have been thinking about putting tape over the mike as see if that helps.

I think they list for $295 but I talked the seller down to $200 with a 2 gig SD card.

[George3]

Brian............ you got a nice deal on your camera.  I have the audio wind noise problem, too.  I tried taping a piece of cloth over the mic, but no good.  The wind still swishes like crazy and I can't even hear my RPM's.

The SD memory card is a nice convenience, but I'm open to DV, hard drive, whatever.

I'd hate to spend $$$ or more and still have the audio issue.  There's gotta be a better way.

[Brian Minkin]

This is the same camera under a different label.

http://cgi.ebay.com/SVP-12MP-digital-cam...dZViewItem

[bobt993]

George here is your best option:

 

http://www.goprocamera.com/index5.htm

 

I have used:  bullet cameras with a vcr, bullet camera with an Archos 40gig compact DVR, HDV sony camera, ........ and much more.  Get the compact unit, they seem to have it sorted and it is cheap.

[George3]

Bob,

I looked at the sample videos of the Hero and they look and sound pretty clean.  What the heck, for the money I really can't go wrong.  I just may give it a try.  Let's talk this w/e about a few other options.

Thanks............................. George

[STEVEMCMORN]

George3 wrote:

I looked at the sample videos of the Hero and they look and sound pretty clean. What the heck, for the money I really can't go wrong. I just may give it a try.

After seeing one of these on the back of the red & white race prepared mustang this weekend, I figured WTH ... and have just bought one - should have it in time for Pocono