August 13, 2011 - I finally have everything I need for the in-car video system.
It's taken a long time to get to this point! In 2008, I had an old Canon camera that recorded on to DV tapes. It took pretty good video when it was working. But I did lose the video from a few stages as it started to inexorably zoom in and eventually lose focus. The other problem was the soundtrack - it was ambient noise only, and you simply couldn't hear Janel unless it was a relatively slow stage.
This year, I've got the new intercom with an audio out. That'll feed in to one channel on the camera. An in-car microphone will feed in to the other side, so we'll have the choice of playing the ambient noise, Janel's instructions or both blended together. This means a collection of adapters. I managed to find the only Radio Shack employee left in the world who knows his way around the stacks of bits and pieces in the back instead of just trying to sell me a cellphone, and he provided the last couple of parts I needed to adapt the microphone output to my various patch cables.
The camera itself is a Kodak Zi8. It's a "Flip style" camera, with the added bonus of being able to record to SD cards. I can also power it off the car's power, so this means we never run out of recording time due to space or battery. Excellent. It's got an audio input, which is pretty unusual in this type of camera. And I've even seen in-car video footage from a rally car, proving that it gives a good picture and does everything it's supposed to. Woohoo! The real test will come in a couple of weeks when I return to the track for the last time, but so far so good.
tags: video |
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