I like my Tachyon very much. Its cost was lower than contour and hero at the time and its case is weather / water proof meaning I can take it in the rain or even underwater if I want.

^^^ Can your Tachyon do 720p at 60fps? Is it the HD edition?

nah its 30 fps. Didn't want to spend the extra money to get and HD hero. It is the 2010 XC HD edition. The price and that it runs on AA batteries is what I liked when I bought it.

Contour HD at REI for $149 today. I bought the only one they had. Can't wait. I'm a hiker and motorcycle rider too.

Hello all,
Quick question. Where would be the best place online to order another battery? Is this battery proprietary or can I buy mainstream?
What size memory will the Contour HD accept? Is there a limit?
Lastly, where does a guy buy mounts for the camera. I want a mount for my bicycle and one for my motorcycle.
Thanks a bunch. I want to do a report of the River Mountain Trail in Las Vegas.

I try to buy locally unless the price is ridiculous, like it was on the Contour ($300 locally, $145 from Amazon). Amazon seems to have all the accessories at reasonable prices. I got the univeral mount for $9.99, which allows you to mount the Contour on anything with a standard 1/4" tripod screw. I also had to get the external charger from Amazon, since the only one available at REI was the $29.95 charger with all the international plug adapters. The regular US charger from Amazon was only $15.

I got the batteries for $29.95, the vented helmet mount for $20, and the handlebar mount for $30. All of these were purchased from REI. I have stores near me, so I didn't have to order the items.

The batteries are proprietary.

This was much help and I thank you very much. I used the goggles adapter that came with the camera but it was a tad shaky. I think the helmet mount will help. I ordered the handlebar mount but am skeptical about its stability as well. I'm trying really hard to invent something that will nail my camera flat the the bike frame to further minimize vibration. I can't find anything but the helmet mount for my motorcycle but it has a high windscreen and the helmet is heavy. It should do fine. I plan to do some serious documentation of some serious bike routes in which I use several camera types. I hope this works out well.

You can find ContourHD batteries on EBay for around $10. I bought a couple of them from a California vendor and they seem to work OK. I don't trust the direct-from-China vendors.

The ContourHD manual says it can use memory cards up to 16GB, but I don't know if that is a real limit or if the manual was just written before 32GB cards were available. Some PCs do have problems formatting cards larger than 4GB. There is a better formatting utility on the Contour web site.

Sorry I forgot about this question in my original reply. :o According to this thread in Contour's FAQ section, the ContourHD will accept a 32 GB card, which just happens to be the limit for SDHC cards, both micro and regular size.

Contour recommends using SDFormatter to format memory cards. It is a free download, available here.

I copied the program data that was on the two GB car that came with the camera and transfered it to a 4GB card I had laying around. It worked great but I'll make sure to properly format the next cards. I couldn't make up my mind how much I wanted to spend so I ordered a 16GB card but decided that wasn't enough so I ordered another one 30 minutes later. LOL.
I'm a still photographer but am just now playing with video.

You don't need to copy the data to the new card. Run the PC program again to configure the camera and that will put the needed files on your SD card. If you don't format the card correctly before using, you may not be able to record more than 4GB of data. 16GB cards cost around $20. High-def videos need lots and lots of space.

Boy do they, I've just about filled a 2TB hard drive, and my second 2TB hard drive is on order.

Those who roll with Camera(s), post your Setups/Mounts! - http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...-Setups-Mounts!

there are contour mounts that are functionally equivalent to the HERO mounts i'm using (post #10).

These are SanDisk micro SD Cards and they came formatted. I'm showing 15GB each and I've tested both so we are good to go. I also bought a second battery and probably 2/3 of all the Contour mounts. I'm hoping to use both a helmet cam and a frame mounted camera.
I set myself up for HD video several months ago but I've been shooting still for so many years I still haven't been real excited about video results but I'm hoping the action camera works better for my needs this time. I now have 3 video cameras.

Oh, I have a 6 core processor and 12 GB memory on my PC with 2 TB backup drives. I have a Windows 7 64 bit setup and am editing with the new 64 bit Cyberlink Power Director 9 and several other editors. Now all I have to do is make a video. LOL.
In October I will use much of my vacation to film several special trails and try my hand at bicycle video. We'll see how it goes.

I bought the Contour helmet mount and the Contour handlebar mount but experience with still cameras tell me that in their stock configuration, I cant expect alot from either. My hopes are to mount the ContourHD to the neck of the bike and find something to seriously choke the mount with. I will also have a dedicated helmet where I can create some kind of dampening for the floppy strap set up. My motorcycle helmet is heavy and I have a full touring fairing that the camera looks over. I expect pretty great things with that one, if I can keep from looking all over the place.

Alright. There is a terrible rattle in the audio in this camera. Can anybody here tell me what is happening here? The camera mount is clamped directly over the bar tape. I can't see anything rattling against something else.


This is just a quick sample video for test reasons. Anything you could add would be appreciated.

Also, I mounted this camera right under my hand in the upper area of the drops in hopes the close proximity to my hands would help reduce vibration. Should I have mounted the Contour mount over the bar tape? Pulled the bar tape and mounted over provided rubber? or directly to bar metal? It doesn't look half bad the way it is.

What camera settings do you folks use with the ContourHD?
I can guess what effect frame rate and resolution will have.
What bit rate do you use? The default setting is low quality; is that good enough for road bike use?

I use the lowest resolution, which is 848 x 480, 60 fps. I have the bit rate on the highest setting. The quality is excellent, much better than my Kodak Playsport at the same resolution. The higher frame rate means smoother playback and no waviness in the picture from the rolling shutter, which the Contour supposedly has.

When I make a video I compress the bit rate to 3000 kbps, which is DVD quality. I keep the audio bit and sampling rate the same to preserve quality and avoid aliasing. Here's an example from last week's sufferfest climbing ride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_NanMq4-xw

I use the highest setting which record 1920 x 1080 and I set it to Medium bit rate. I also set my Contour HD to Low light Dusk exposure. I find that setting pretty useful for low light and the higher quality recording still can capture cars that buzz by me in a fast speed although I still have to use the Event/Pan crop in my editing software to zoom in on the plate.

Since I commute in an urban setting and I want to get the most detail in my videos for getting license numbers, and motorist/vehicle descriptions, I set my Contour switch on high, 1920 X 1080P, 30fps, maximum quality setting. Even in that particular setting and with a 16GB class 6 memory card at 8min per GB battery life, I still get over 2 hours worth of video.

what is that "Low light Dusk exposure"? i use a text editor on linux/BSD to adjust the settings, so i don't have anything that fancy... just contrast, sharp, EV, etc. it seems like i either have to settle for useless results at night, or nearly useless results at night and washed-out, overexposed results during the day.

for catching plates, i've found that reducing the resolution down to 1280x720 is worth it, to get the frame-rate up to 60fps. if amazon ever gets my order out, i'll soon have a 2nd contour-1080 to do side-by-side testing... two contour-1080s, a HERO and a HERO-960... a RLJ hot-spot should be a good place to test them all at various settings ;)

The "Dusk Exposure" I was refering to is the light configure setting in the Contour. I find the Daytime setting was just too much under expose for night shot while the Dusk setting was a little over expose for daytime. However I find it was easier to darken my video with the editor than it was to increase the brightness and contrast of the video taken by the Contour.

I just wish that Contour had a switch that can change the exposure mode just like they have with that "Hi/Lo" switch for the resolution setting. Sometime I don't have a computer handy at work to hookup and reset the exposure mode for my afternoon daytime ride. I did thought about getting the option lens kit which have a threaded ring for filter and add a Neutral Density filter to it. This way I can leave the setting on the Dusk mode and use the filter in the daytime to reduce the amount of light exposure.

@colleen - does the "official" contour software have presets for dusk and night? if you, or anyone else, can post the settings (contrast, sharp, EV, etc) so i can duplicate it by hand... thanks...

the other way to switch the contour between day/night settings is to carry two micro-SD cards: one with daytime settings, one with nighttime settings. good luck labeling them, changing them, and not losing them :rolleyes:. a neutral density filter may be the way to go, but so far i've been unable to get anything decent from that camera at night.

Here are two snapshot showing the default setting for Dusk and Outdoor:

Dusk:
http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...creenshot2.jpg


Outdoor:
http://i1127.photobucket.com/albums/...creenshot2.jpg


I think the contour uses a CMOS sensor and it take quite a bit of Lumens to make good night exposure since from what I heard that CMOS censor does not response to well with LED lights. The other day I was playing with my lights and Contour HD where I flooded the area with a lot of light at night to see how much area the Contour can response and it does OK. As it shows, it takes at least 1500 OTF of lighting from LED light source to get OK exposure in the Dusk mode. I normally ride with at least 2000 OTTF lumens so most of my video clip are OK. Check it out:

In my urban environment, I've found that 1500 lumen is more than adequate, and that is probably too much if the proper lens is not used. The shorter run time, having to carry/charge that many batteries( including spares) to operate a much larger system, I would consider to be a major PITA.

I returned this camera today at REI. I think the internal mic was not properly anchored to the camera chassis. REI did not have a replacement for me so I was reimbursed. An hour later I ordered another one on Amazon for $25 less. It should be here for the 3 day weekend. Now I just hope that weekend is somewhere under 100 degrees.

@colleen - thanks for the screen-shots.

in your other video, is that a teletype or dot-matrix printer in the background? ;)

5500 OTF lumens :eek: :wtf: ?!?!? that's more light than a truck! do you ride in caves? on my sub/urban rides, 20% of that would be more than i'd need.

as for CMOS not responding to LED light, i haven't heard that before. it may depend a lot on the color temperature of the light... so the (cheaper) bluish-white LEDs may not show up as well as more white LEDs.

That blue object in front of the fence is a shopping cart left behind from a homeless, I hope he was not sleeping anywhere near by, otherwise he would think it was sunrise. It was at least 100 or morre feet away. Way back in the backround are building several stories high. Those building are located a block away. :eek:

I did that for fun to see what it is like having that much lights and took a little detour when I turned on all the lights and shot that video. I normally run only 1000 OTF to 2000 OTF. I am running in the higher side (2000 OTF) because of the limitation of video capability for night shot. I do believe that CCD sensor are more better for night shot while CMOS sensor are generally use for their low power consumption. It's too bad that the Contour Lens are coated to block IR, otherwise it would be a nice option to use a IR light to enhance nightshot video like those used in security cammera.

You might still hear a rattling noise as long as you're using that handlebar mount. I have the same problem with regular digital cameras in handlebar mounts. For quieter audio, use the vented helmet mount.

Here's a comparison of audio from different mounts.

Casio EX-S12 digital camera in handlebar mount.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUrtap22pAY

ContourHD 1080p on vented helmet mount.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_NanMq4-xw

Note to anybody considering buying a Contour: better act quickly. See my post on this subject here.