DMC-FT1 AVCHD sample of some poor cycling

[TheKrellMachine]

I'm just trying out Panasonic's new DMC-FT1 digicam : it's small and waterproof with folded optics and records 1280x720p AVCHD lite video at 17Mbps - so is probably far better than any consumer bullet cam.

Today I mounted it in the car (sorry - I will try it on the bike tomorrow).

The raw file decompresses into a 27Mbps h.264 stream - far too big for the web but looks great on the computer, so here's a down sized to 640x360 sample: (11.6MB for 90 seconds )

IdiotCyclist_Edinburgh200409.mov

Unfortunately due to the unique way the EU works : all EU versions are nobbled with 15 minutes of video per clip

It looks like it will be great on the bike, but I wish I'd waited and paid extra to import the US or Oz version, with 100 minutes clip length i.e. the battery life.

PS: The Joker on the bike needs to be locked up - and not just for his pavement and road cycling skills : that rear end trousers half down view was horrific.

 

[Steve Austin]

That is brilliant Quality, much better than the usual shaky, flaky stuff people record. Chapeau

 

[marinyork]

As one would expect with the camera, fantastic quality.

 

[TheKrellMachine]

I did get around to mounting it on the bike:
The C-AF seemed to have a problem at times - a bit confused that the camera was moving at 20mph and the ground was still. I don't think the center weighted AF (that or portrait) helped either as it hunted for focus on clear sky.

I will try turning C-AF OFF, which seems to lock focus, but need to find out if it holds infinity after through 15 minutes of vibration on the bike.

 

[magnatom]

Excellent quality! Very good for the price, though probably not the easiest to mount on a helmet!

I'd be interested to see how it coped with night filming and how much footage it could hold....

 

[thomas]

Nice quality footage

 

[downfader]

What a muppet

Word of warning though on mounting it to the bike. if you use the tripod socket they arent often strong enough to take the strain and can snap off on many cameras.

Making a caddy or holder that encases the camera is a better option.

Shame about the video length though. BTW you might consider uploading this to youtube as a camera test. Lots of camera tests on there and its helped me purchase in the past.

 

[TheKrellMachine]

What a muppet
Word of warning though on mounting it to the bike. if you use the tripod socket they arent often strong enough to take the strain and can snap off on many cameras.
Making a caddy or holder that encases the camera is a better option.

Excellent quality! Very good for the price, though probably not the easiest to mount on a helmet!

Tried the C-AF OFF mode on Friday - it seemed to provide solid focus.
It was a bit cloudy however, so the shutter speed was a bit low (using auto-ISO) leading to some blurry/vibration degraded periods that I did not see in the sun (and the bike is a full suspension TSR30). Another lesson learned for me then is to manually set ISO.

Next move will be to make a frame as suggested and try a little bit of AV dampening so I can stick with the bar mounting ( yes - helmet camera mode is not really going to be that practical ).

 

[TheKrellMachine]

Here's some on bike footage : commute Edinburgh-Dalmeny

Sorry noting too interesting happened - more for those looking at technical critique of the camera with a fixed handlebar non-AV mount. Downsized and sampled to 3Mb/s.
Dalmeny_SQF_video (87MB )

I tried uploading to youtube, but the quality was rubbish. There must be optimum settings - any advice ?

 

[downfader]

Yeah youtube can make some vids look pretty naff, though tbh most people dont mind.

You can get better quality on there, but you have to encode at 5kps video and higher ...preferably when using the video software you would select "16:9 DVD PAL quality" if there is one or similar. I encode at 8kps video with 128kps sound iirc, and its outputted to an mpeg2 file.

Mpeg2 and 4 with mp3 sound work best on youtube. It will accept other formats though the quality degrades with the .mov and quicktimes imo.

Then to watch back a video in better quality mode you need to select the "HQ" or "HD" in the video panel.

Downloaded the first bike vid in your list. Quality is amazing. No sound though

 

[magnatom]

Wow. That is pretty amazing quality, for a really good price. No spare cash at the moment, but if I did....