REKA action cam from Aldi-worth a punt as a cycle cam?

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Unless I have miss-understood you, I think this is wrong, my reading of the specification (on the link you quote) is that resolutions unto 12mp are supported.

Hi BoldonLad and thanks for raising that point, but I cannot find the section you refer to??

I have taken a screen shot (below) that says 1 MP, so I am now wondering if there is another section/specification that I have not been able to find within the link. Please could you show me.
 

aegis

Senior Member
Unless I have miss-understood you, I think this is wrong, my reading of the specification (on the link you quote) is that resolutions unto 12mp are supported.

The image sensor is 1280x720 pixels so roughly 1mp. It records at 25 or 30 fps 720p but upscales to 1080p. Still images are upscaled also to up to 12mp.

I would hope it allows you to switch off the upscaling and record at 720p as there's no point in 1080p and it uses up more space. Still, for the money, not bad. I've had good results out of my Aldi rear camera/light so tempted with this too.
 
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BoldonLad

Not part of the Elite
Location
South Tyneside
Hi BoldonLad and thanks for raising that point, but I cannot find the section you refer to??

I have taken a screen shot (below) that says 1 MP, so I am now wondering if there is another section/specification that I have not been able to find within the link. Please could you show me.

All I did was click the link you gave in your OP, then, choose "Product Description", then under "Features" about halfway down the list, 8 Photo Resolution Settings:
 

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ianM

New Member
I purchased the Reka £29.00 camera yesterday and looked at my test footage -
When viewing, via a card reader into my Mac i see the .AVI files are split into 5 mins !!
And while trying to join 30 files takes forever !!
Anyone know if the 5mins split can be increased ?
OR recommend a quick "AVI Joining Package" ?
IanM.
 
I can't answer your question about if splits can be extended with your model, but some cams have multiple modes, i.e. manual recording recording or splits. Splits are helpful because the camera can loop on an SD card and it automagically deletes the oldest split so the card doesnt run out of space, rather than stopping recording and forcing you to wipe everything manually. My particular cam only does 10 min splits.
 

aegis

Senior Member
I purchased the Reka £29.00 camera yesterday and looked at my test footage -
When viewing, via a card reader into my Mac i see the .AVI files are split into 5 mins !!
And while trying to join 30 files takes forever !!
Anyone know if the 5mins split can be increased ?
OR recommend a quick "AVI Joining Package" ?
IanM.

Most cameras split into 5 minute chunks so that if the battery goes you don't lose the entire video file as well as being useful for loop recording.

Try AVITools - http://www.emmgunn.com/avitools-home/ for joining files. The demo version is feature complete but you can only add one file at a time.
 

mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
I think (but have not checked) that most camera AVI files can simply be concatenated. On Mac, the terminal command-line tool to do that is "cat" as in "cat file1 file2 file3 > newfile" or maybe "cat vid{01..30}.avi > newvid.avi"

avconv and mplayer/mencoder can do various processing, or Blender's Video Sequence Editor can import AVI files and then cut them about, but it is a bit of a Swiss Army Chainsaw - very powerful, but when you use it wrong, it may remove your leg!
 

aegis

Senior Member
I think (but have not checked) that most camera AVI files can simply be concatenated. On Mac, the terminal command-line tool to do that is "cat" as in "cat file1 file2 file3 > newfile" or maybe "cat vid{01..30}.avi > newvid.avi"

Nope. The files are a multi-part container format not a raw stream of data.

If you're ok with terminal, I've used ffmpeg's concat command.

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Concatenate

ffmpeg can be installed with brew. https://brew.sh
 
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BoldonLad

Not part of the Elite
Location
South Tyneside
I purchased the Reka £29.00 camera yesterday and looked at my test footage -
When viewing, via a card reader into my Mac i see the .AVI files are split into 5 mins !!
And while trying to join 30 files takes forever !!
Anyone know if the 5mins split can be increased ?
OR recommend a quick "AVI Joining Package" ?
IanM.
http://www.quesh.co.uk/data/images/products/82026UGV2.pdf

Will take you to the manual I believe. It would appear you can have Looping video on/off. If you have "on", then, you have a choice of 2, 5, or 10 minute segments.

Please accept my apologies, in advance, real men do not read the instructions, I am a geek ;)
 
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Ian,

What I don't understand at the moment is why the footage does not play automatically, without the hassle of joining etc.

Could this be to do with the file type (AVI)? My dash cam records in one minute segments and play back on the desktop pc is automatic . No messing about having to join anything. The files types are different though.

The good news Ian is that there appears to be good options for customer suport. This is in the form of a geographical phone number (not a silly 0870 No), an email addy and a web address.

Please keep us up to date with what happens and how you get on. The guys on here are helpful.

Thank you to BoldonLad for the intruction link-It is extremely helpful.

Screenshot_2018-01-13-09-08-32.png


If the following is true, then it is very reassuring.

From their website:

Our dedicated UK based support teams are always on hand to offer help and advice when needed. Each team member undergoes expert training to provide in-depth assistance on our entire product range.
 
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MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
If January wasn't the skintest month of the year, I'd have snapped one of these up... there's a stack of them in the shop at the moment but i doubt they'll last until payday :sad:
 

aegis

Senior Member
I'm unsure whether the 1mp video footage would be good enough. I understand the stills will probably be good at 12 mp, but I have no use for that function of the cam.

The camera hardware, like many of these cheaper action cameras, has a 1MP sensor 1280x720p. It extrapolates up to 1920x1080p video or to 4000x3000 12MP JPEG. IMHO it's a bit pointless. You may as well set the stills mode to 1MP and video to 720p.

My camera arrived by courier just a few hours ago. After a brief play with it, I can't see why you'd set it to higher settings than 1MP / 720p.

Only thing I'm disappointed with so far is the bike handlebar mount. It's cheap plastic and doesn't fit a 31.8 handlebar. I'm not sure how I'm going to mount it on the bike yet but I guess I'll have to find a Garmin Outfront/GoPro mount. The rest seems par for the course.
 
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