Hard Disk Camcorder on the track

[Jeff A]

I bought a high-end Sony camcorder with a 30 gig hard drive in it, for mounting in the NSX for in-car videos at the track. It does not work. It shuts off almost immediately, even when the shock sensor is turned off. You can hold the thing in your hand and beat on it and shake it and it works fine, but as soon as you connect it to the car (and the vibrations are directly transmitted to it) it makes the hard drive mess up and it shuts off. I mounted it on a harness bar.

So, do not buy a HDD camera for in-car on-track use. Otherwise, it's an awesome camera, good for like 7 hours of wide format high resolution video, and it has a 3 megapixel digital still camera also built in. It just doesn't work when mounted on a car - at least not in my NSX with the NSX-R suspension. So I got a cheapo MiniDV (small tape) camera just for in-car use. It'll have to do.

Jeff

 

[VBNSX]

that sucks...

yeah i've been using a hi-8 cam to record some session but got tired of having to edit them to digital to get things going.

I'm going to try my camera (5M) with san disk media at VIR monday to see how it does. I can use a 1G card and it'll record up to 45 mins or an hour. It's not the space I'm worried about though.. it's the battery..

we'll see... i'll keep ya informed.

x

 

[ctrlaltdelboy]

try using a suction mount - you can mount it to the rear cabin glass so the camera is in basically the same position as when mounted to the harness bar.

the rubber of the suction cup mitigates a good amount of the direct vibrations, so may well allow your cam to remain on.

these things suck like crazy, so you don't need to fear it falling off - I took mine for a 1 hour fast road trip mounted to my hood and when I removed it at the end it was still stuck solid!

 

[Acura NsX Pilot]

try using a suction mount - you can mount it to the rear cabin glass so the camera is in basically the same position as when mounted to the harness bar.

the rubber of the suction cup mitigates a good amount of the direct vibrations, so may well allow your cam to remain on.

these things suck like crazy, so you don't need to fear it falling off - I took mine for a 1 hour fast road trip mounted to my hood and when I removed it at the end it was still stuck solid!

Some tracks and events require you to have it mechanically mounted and will not allow the suction cup type although I used mine and they did not notice if they do see it they will ask you to remove it from the car.

 

[Acura NsX Pilot]

that sucks...

yeah i've been using a hi-8 cam to record some session but got tired of having to edit them to digital to get things going.

I'm going to try my camera (5M) with san disk media at VIR monday to see how it does. I can use a 1G card and it'll record up to 45 mins or an hour. It's not the space I'm worried about though.. it's the battery..

we'll see... i'll keep ya informed.

x

I use a camcorder on alot of my drives and what I do is carry the battery adapter/AC cord with me and use a inverter to power it.

 

[MvM]

So, do not buy a HDD camera for in-car on-track use. Otherwise, it's an awesome camera, good for like 7 hours of wide format high resolution video, and it has a 3 megapixel digital still camera also built in. It just doesn't work when mounted on a car - at least not in my NSX with the NSX-R suspension. So I got a cheapo MiniDV (small tape) camera just for in-car use. It'll have to do.

Jeff

Thanks very much for the info.
I have been for a nice camcorder for a long time. Am on my 5th digicam but never had bought a camcorder before and was just looking around deciding which way was best to go.
Had been looking at the JVC Everio HDD-camcorder line but in the end decided to go for a JCS Mini-DV camcorder because of the still better image quality (higher bitrate). So, now I might just have made the right decision going the Mini-DV way instead of the HDD.

Now I am going to look for a suction-cup mount for the car but have not been able to find it yet were I live.

 

[92 white 0650]

Re: Some ideas

I'm not sure what all your parameters are, but for others out there, this general info may start them off in the right direction.

Have you looked into dedicated race cam set-ups? There's quite a spread in the prices for units that I see around the paddock, so a guy can pick a budget first.

Just off the top of my head, here's a couple:

http://racecam.com/
http://www.aimsports.com/products/david/index.html
http://chasecam.com/

Other guys buy just the lipstick camera and plug it into their home camcorder sitting in a padded pocket mounted anywhere convenient.

For inquiring minds; http://www.chasecam.com/forum/

 

[VBNSX]

I'm actually at VIR right now and have used my Nikon Coolpix L3 to record the video. The video actually came out quite nice. I'll post up vids when I get back.

x

 

[VBNSX]

Well I have some really good footage however it was saved in a .mov format... I'm trying to find software to edit it. Good event, besides the heat that made the ground temperature around 130 degrees. On a side note I'm happy to say I hit a 2:17.17 (still street tires) on the full course!

As soon as I get an editor I'll show some footage.

x

 

[92 white 0650]

Re: Addtional discussion

For those after more general info:

http://p081.ezboard.com/fdsrforumgeneraldiscussion.showMessage?topicID=1610.topic

 

[Joshs]

I (thought I had) recorded several hours of the most recent CCNSX drive using my carpc (with a Hauppauge PVR mpeg encoder), and was extremely disappointed to come home and discover the video had frequent 'holes'.. By 'holes' I don't mean blank space, but missing sections, as if sections of the 'film' had been excised and then the remnants spliced together.

The mpeg stream itself seemed to be intact, since the players had no problem playing it. I haven't examined the mpeg frames themselves though - but clearly there was something wrong, possibly due to vibrations in the car causing the drive head to fail to write.

But this I would think would cause some sort of corruption of the mpeg stream, unless there was error handling present to take care of the scenario. So there may be some other issue not related to hard-drive vibration.

Seems potentially related.. Has anyone successfully used a hd-based video recorder in thier car?

-Josh

 

[W]

I use a MiniDV camcorder to film car video. It's worked quite well although I wish it didn't auto-turn-off after so many minutes of not recording.

 

[NSXDreamer2]

It's not the space I'm worried about though.. it's the battery..

I've been using my wife's sony DV for track recordings. We had the machine a little more than 2 hours and both batteries are in their dying age. (like I couldn't even rewind the whole tape on freshly charged) Instead of spending $30 for another new battery, I just stop by the Radio shack and got one of those DC / AC converter. They had one that's pretty slim and compact size. What I did was using the 3M blue tape to secure the cigratte wiring, then hook it up to the charger. I tug the charger wire underneath the center console, between the carpet, then top off with another blue tape just in case.

It proves to be working good and I had no need to adjust any of the wiring due to the compact size and light weight design of the converter. Next time, maybe I'll just hard wire it and either stuck it behind the seat or even hook it on to my harness bar.