has to have a special block written at the end of it to make the file valid
that would be a strange container format. Neither PES nor TS has this problem
I have been doing some work on this.
The Roadhawk product (above) looks very good and seems to tick the boxes but they are not replying to queries. For example they don’t publish the supply voltage range! However it appears to be 12-30V, inferring it from some power cable they sell.
So in the meantime I did some videos which are here. They are 1080P except the one marked 720. This shows that 1080 is really needed to provide the required resolution. I will do another one today using the Nokia, but in 1080P.
The G10 videos were done with a £1500 movie camera which really is very very good.
The other issue is whether the camera is capable of operating a “spot exposure meter” type of function. The instrument panel is – in daylight – far less bright than the window above it. Any average exposure over the whole frame will be useless – unless one masks off the field of view.
For recording voice for a bit of a flying adventure I did when I had the C140 in Houston, I made up a very simple audio cable to go from the intercom to the camcorder and plugged it into the headset jack. I put a very simple rough and ready resistor network into the quarter inch jack part to attenuate the audio output from the intercom so it wouldn’t swamp the camcorder’s mic input. It worked very well.
I’ve just uploaded a very short 1080P 25FPS video up there, which is a bit useless in that the panel is readable only on the instruments that have pointers.
So clearly a very good quality 1080P (full HD) camera would be needed.
Peter,
some of the very best quality videos on the web come from fellow pilot Guido Warnecke, who sadly doesn’t post here. See his youtube channel here.
All he uses is a GoPro3, but still, he manages to tune the brightness of both the instrument panel and the outside perfectly.
His videos are great. Both quality and content.
Indeed they are – educational and entertaining.
he manages to tune the brightness of both the instrument panel and the outside perfectly.
He must be post-processing them – compressing the contrast range.
It isn’t possible to capture something which isn’t there.
I’ve been talking to the Roadhawk people to clear up the details.
Basically the only mode in which the camera can work as a “black box recorder” is if it is configured to write 1 minute long video files.
Then it will delete the oldest one each time it creates a new one.
So one ends up with hundreds of video files.
They tell me one can combine these with windows movie maker – is that really true and actually works properly? There is also a commercial program called Race Render which can do it and also overlay stuff like GPS data.
