Note Pad Computers....

[Bbmthbloke]

...but also Laptops.

Well once you read the 'body' of this post you may think 'rubbish' or 'yep beeen doing it for ages'. But here goes.

You have probably noticed JJ members have posted  a 'few' pictures of late but just about no videos. Das cos we dont have peeps comming to meets with video cameras ( or in Dark Castles case, he just hasnt edited and published the footage he's got).

Well , last Sunday rob ( asbestostubing) brought his note pad along to our gym meet with the intention of showing a video he had on it. Ian of projump 101 doing stuff ( un we didnt get to see it in the end, doh). It suddenly occured to him that we could use the webcam. This was then set up on a chair facing a spot where we had obsticals set up for peeps to do jumps and tricks over.

It occures that doing this has 1 or 2 advtages over a str8 digital vidcam, in a gym setting.

There is a good sized screen for , well, up to 6 peeps to review footage at 1 time, as a training aid or to have a good laff at a bail
If by good fortune there is wifi in the gym, 1 may hook up here to compare gym performance to the experts tutorials. Failing that i guess1 could preload said clips.

If , like the JJ's, after a gym session you go for a drink or a barbi, there is now a nice bit of fresh entertainment to watch.

If you already have a digicam, well now you have another to camera to use. 1 static, with a fixed view and another to roam about with. That should enhance videos no end.

No bother with getting the cable out to stick footage onto a computer. So editing and posting to YouTube should be even quicker and easier. Indeed , the likes of Clive could even set to work whilst still in the ambulance!

So yep, basically sorry, you may well be about to get loads of JJ videos as well as stills now. We may try using 2 or 3 comps. So we can get front and side views of the same flip attempts as an example .

[TomH999]

I was filming a band the other week and one of us had a macbook with him so we decided that it would look good if we used the webcam, which is pretty good quality.
we actually used 4 cameras to film the band including the laptop, so we got some nice crosscutting going on.

like you was saying in your post about using 2 or 3 laptops with cameras, it would look ace if you was to cut and edit that together. some sweet films could be produced.

[Bbmthbloke]

un  some1 remember to bring a  memory stick 2 the meet

[Biohazard]

The only problem with this is that the webcams are known to have terrible picture quality and video performance, they are made to send low resolution videos which are small enough to stream over the internet, not taking proper videos! They usually have very small lenses and pin hole sized sensors, so even it if boasts a high mega pixel count it still won't look as good.
Sure, it's good for short clips that you aren't going to spend much time editing, but if you are actually wanting to spend time editing something and making it look good the end result will be let down by the poor quality of the camera. You can still use your Digi cam for filming too.
My preference is to put my camera on a tripod and leave it filming, and you can usually review the footage on the screen.

I guess if NO ONE has a camera it is fine, if someone has a compact camera that is capable of video it will usually produce better footage since it will have a better lens.
As camera performance goes:
High quality video camera > DSLR video function > Compact camera video function > Phone/Laptop Webcam.

Sorry about that massive rant

By the way Q I have about 2 hours of unedited HD footage from CiN, but I just have been too busy to edit it.
I would assume once my exams are over I could take a shot at editing it all if you want?

[asbestospiping]

All good points bio, altho for our needs (quickly reviewing and discussing performance) it worked quite well, its biggest downfall was the setup, i did not have an efficient encoder for the cam (its only a little atom powered netbook, so you have to be a bit clever with video), so i had to put the resolution down low (It will do 640x480, and i had to go down to 320x240) to keep the video smooth. Next time i'll be recording at 640x480, done some testing and can do 2 hours quite confortably now. I doubt any of it will be posted, more for reviewing progress, so no need in general. I'll try and bring another camera as well, the more the merrier seems to be the message here.

[Biohazard]

I really do need to take some spare time to edit my footage for CiN.
Next time I come to a JJ meet I will bring my camcorder again which is capable of 1080p (Well 1080i but it doesn't make much of a difference, the 720p setting I think is the best for everyone if it's only going to be on Youtube).

[asbestospiping]

yes, 720p is better for most things (progressive is always better than interlaced, especially when recording fast moving objects) and has the advantage of being able to take nice stills and hold frames. Also, interlaced video does not get handled well by the flash video encoder (The Sorenson Spark and On2 VP6 codecs do weird things to interlaced video), which sucks for youtube. (I used to work on tele presence and other groovy tech stuff in that field - once made a remote control land rover, with 7 on board cameras)

[timtom]

I'm going to have to disagree on the having poor quality.. Not all webcams are rubbish! Theres plentiful good ones.. its just that most people buy rubbish ones!

We (I say We.. my brother (i helped!) Streamed a wedding live over the net to Hungary (where the brides family were) by a webcam on impressive quality!.

If you buy rubbish it'll be rubbish. My EEE PC has a built in cam and its pretty good

T.