Camera for trail videos

[thebuggyman1]

I recently bought a new camera to mount on the front of my machine for trail videos.
It is a REPLAY XD Replay XD
I thought about the go-pro's, but they record in a format that I hadn't heard of before.

I have not had much time to play with it yet, but here is a sample of the video it takes.

What do you think?
Does anyone have the go-pro, and how do you like it?
Other cameras?

[Model Citizen]

[Mike]

I thought the video turned out really well for it to be hard mounted to the machine. The only thing you may be able to improve on is eliminating some of the "jello effect" that makes the video look wobbly. The more you can isolate the camera, the less jello effect you will experience.

I have the previous generation gopro HD camera and have used the newest gopro HD as well. Both had similar results to yours when they were hard mounted. When I used one of their adhesive mounts I got slightly better results. With their body mounts where you wear it on your helmet or chest, your body does a good job of absorbing the shock and that's probably where the best results were. I continue to play with mine every time I go riding trying to find a better solution for a mount.

Overall I love the gopro cameras and they give you the capability of recording 1080 HD which is hard to beat for the price. There are some other cameras like the contour HD but the mounting options that come with the GoPro are ultimately what drove me to order it instead of another camera.

If you want to get geeky you can google "jello effect" or "rolling shutter effect" and there are a lot of articles showing what people have done to help eliminate that. Basically, it is caused by the CMOS sensor and the way that it has a rolling shutter that captures the image from top to bottom instead of a CCD or other sensor that captures the entire image at one time. Any camera including the GoPro that uses CMOS will do that. People have built some pretty cool mounts to suspend the camera to help improve on that and there is also some software that can help correct it but I haven't seen anything that completely eliminates. Well, I guess a springer kit would help.

[mad-max]

We have both a gopro (original) and a new gopro2 they work great and without the weatherproof back have good sound to me. Have made a few ATV riding videos I put up on YouTube with it. Some aatv videos will be in the near future for sure. I like the gopro as I don't record onboard that much and I pre setup the camera ahead on the trail and you can put it almost anywhere with a small tripod and wrist strap (trees, rock piles, stumps, etc) and records great for what we do and its really tough so that's a big plus.

[trebmaster]

im just disapointed you both took the wussy bridge across the swamp

[thebuggyman1]

The rear cover on the camera seals the microSD card and USB port so they are water tight. There is another cover (included) that has a small hole and that one picks up sound much better. The solid cover was actually designed to muffle the engine noise from racecars. (800-1000 HP v-8's w/open headers)
I thought the "jello" effect was from vibration with it being mounted to the plastic body. The technical info was interesting...I'll try the sticky-backed velcro that came with it next.
The model I'm using is the standard model($150). It records at 720 not the 1080 of the HD model($250). Price was one consideration, but the biggest was the file size. It took 2-3 hours to upload the 7 min. video as it is.
Another thought I had was how cool it would be to have a dual camera setup (split screen) showing forward and behind you. On trail rides you would catch the people in front and the ones behind you going over/thru the obsticles/ mud holes etc.

[thebuggyman1]

im just disapointed you both took the wussy bridge across the swamp

Un fortunately, I didn't get the "good video"
On the way back we went thru the bottomless mudd ditch(no water in it this summer) about 20 yds from the bridge. I was first, got stuck (of course), climbed out across the hood and winched out. My step-daughter and her husband followed right behind me, also got stuck, and before I knew what was happening.......He went out of the side of the machine and sank past his knees.
He was stuck also. LOL Engineers give them a masters degree and they think they are smart. (Howard Walowitz)
This is why I need the camera on the back of the machine.