76mark

A nice easy ride through Brandywine Creek State Park in Wilmington, DE.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QQoSFu8SUio

Mark

salsa

thats a pretty cool helmet cam

looks like you have fun trails

bac

Hey Mark. What cam set-up are you running??

... Brad

76mark

Just a digital camera (Canon SD400) mounted to the handle bars. I was VERY surprised that the video was as smooth as it it with no type of shock protection.

Mark

bac

Well it was mounted to the bar. I'm looking at a helmet cam, but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

... Brad

76mark

Considering the mounting point and the camera, that was MUCH smoother than expected. We're working on a helmet cam/DVR setup now.

willtsmith_nwi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-eAsjX4xa4

dminor 

^^ No, no . . . tell us what you really think, Pete.

highrevs

This thread just brightened my day... Thanks, i'm now going to lunch with a smile on my face.

AlucardZero

Low quality and a bit shaky. How did you mount it on your handlebars? Also, it looked like it's a bit stretched, was it set in 320X240 or better?

BLIZZ

Looks like the trail is pretty manicured.
We had a problem in our area, where some people came in with pick axes and dug rocks out of the trail, pulled small trees off the trail and cut sections out of larger downed trees.
They did a fair amount of damage before we were able to stop them.
We told them if it was to hard for them, then go ride the Rail Trail or MUP. Don't make our single track into a highway.
We were especially mad about a hand-cut section we had just done for an upcoming race.

76mark

The camera is mounted in an old cyclometer bracket...total of about 6 cents in parts.

I never said this was great quality video or nasty trails...I said "A nice easy ride...". This was something I was messing with to see how it worked. I'm looking to setup a helmet cam & dvr soon to increase capacity/quality.

76mark

Didn't mean to bore ya...

AlucardZero

There's anti-shake or camera shake removal software somewhere, I think it crops out the images so it doesn't look like it's shaking. Look into it.

BLIZZ

Thanks for sharing with us. I always enjoy seeing other areas of the country. Looked like a lot of fun.

ZeCanon

re the anti shake thing: it's built into final cut but only sort of works.

troutbreath

That was pretty cool. Thanks for posting.

76mark

No problem...I'm glad a few of you enjoyed it. Maybe the more critical members can post their wonderful productions

76mark

If you want to tell me how I should do it, yes. You added ZERO to this post...just ****** bag comments.

willtsmith_nwi

That all depends what your purpose is and where the video came from. I did watch the videos on your sites and they are well edited and presented in a resolution that one cannot accomplish on YouTube. The original is slightly less then TV quality.

My video is a clip from "Virtual Outback" video that basically shows the entire trail. The clip is of basically chopping it all up and serving it up on You Tube. Intended as a "online presentation" of the trail I work on. This is basically so people can see what it's like. We shot it partially to give to Park Board members and city councilman who ultimately control the land we work on. The other benefit is to people who ride our trail and want to carefully scope things out.

Sorry you did not like it Pete. I was just throwing it in.

santiago

Pete - are those settings pretty universal or specific to Premiere? I'm on a Mac and will bring my video camera to the pump track next week to take a bunch of footage. I'll play with this stuff and try to get a decent YouTube output.

willtsmith_nwi

No a LOT of attention was paid. YouTube rejected the original (and rather nice looking) MP4s I sent them. The files were sent as .avi encoded with the DivX 320x240 at 30 fps. The video I sent them looked a little better then the one that they converted to.

You can compare this to that Northshore video. You're right it DOES look better. Part of the reason is that the video is shot from a 3rd person. MPEG attempts to only encode the things that change in a scene. The problem is that shot from the 1st person, pretty much EVERYTHING is changing. I did a test shoot and tried to record it to a DVD using a Panasonic set top. Every time we ducked into the woods the encoding crapped out and it would only render any available skyline.

I have to try a few different things with smaller film lengths. I'm going to try to send a 640x480 to You Tube and see if their transc-oder does any better with it since it will have more information to start with. However, you can't get around You Tube going at your film with the H.264 codec on EVERYTHING you send.

If anyone has a sequence that yields good results for this type of film a (first person moving through the woods) video, I'd be appreciative.

willtsmith_nwi

The video I sent You Tube had approximately the same quality. I agree there is a transcoding issue along the line. I have to send You Tube a video which will it's transcoders won't choke one.

The TYPE of video DOES make a difference. Encoding a cartoon is a breeze there is much less information there. They compress quite readily. Encoding a moving rider on a static background is easy as very little is changing. Even panning is slightly more difficult. When the entire scene is changing in the way it does in my video, it requires a higher bitrate at the same resolution. If you exceed that bitrate, the encoder will start pixelating things.

The best hint I caught there was encoding directly with H.264 which is what YouTube uses in a hope that YouTube will accept the file as is without re-encoding.


Again if anyone has any DIRECT (as in, you actually upload it to YouTube, not host your own video files) experience uploading this type of video to YouTube with good results, I'd really appreciate it. Again, it has to be 1st person perspective through the woods, otherwise we're talking about apples and oranges.

willtsmith_nwi

I never said it was not possible. I'm saying that it's not trivial and you have to find the right "formula" to make it work. I followed YouTube's own advice on encoding and the blur is what I got out of it.

I'm not sure if you're aware that YouTube re-encodes EVERY video that is sent to them so that it is compatible with the Macromedia Flash player. Again what I SENT YouTube was better then I got out.

Again, if you have a SPECIFIC sequence for getting good results with this type of footage on YouTube, your input would be greatly appreciated. The sequence should not involve the use of $600 Adobe software. I'll let Pete have the last word since once again, he seems to know everything but has nothing useful to say.

dminor 

You should be able to lay your hands on it for much less. Especially since you're a grad student; education discounts abound for Adobe stuff.