ATC 2000 users, I have some questions

[Alcdrew]

So after the attempt on my life this morning, I'm thinkg of getting a helmet cam (or actualy a handle bar cam, as I'm one of those none helmet wearing types) and the ATC 2000 seems to be the cam of choice for many around here.

But since I will have it attached to the handle bars, how easy is it to unclip? Is it QR, with a mounting attached to the bike and it just clips in?

What resolution is it best to record your rides in? And how much recording time do you get out of a 1GB or 2GB card at that rate? Asking this so I can judge if it's ok to live with a 1GB card or go for the 2GB

Whats the battery life like?

Other than these questions please feel free to tell me any other things I should know about using this cam.

Thanks.

 

[magnatom]

But since I will have it attached to the handle bars, how easy is it to unclip? Is it QR, with a mounting attached to the bike and it just clips in?

It has a sliding clip so it would be very easy to remove when you leave your bike. I haven't used the handlebar attachment though so I can't comment on how good it is.

What resolution is it best to record your rides in? And how much recording time do you get out of a 1GB or 2GB card at that rate? Asking this so I can judge if it's ok to live with a 1GB card or go for the 2GB

Whats the battery life like?

I would record at the best resolution (more likely to catch number plates etc) and with a 2Gb card that gives me 1 hour of recording time.
The battery life is quite good. I use rechargables and I get about 3 hours or so out of them. I charge them every few days.

Other than these questions please feel free to tell me any other things I should know about using this cam.

The camera suffers from a little shutter judder (i.e. solid objects can appear to wobble!) although for evidence purposes this isn't very important. It doesn't have the widest field of view (this is my biggest bugbear) but it is probably ok as long as you either look at what is happening or if handlebar mounted, it happens in front of you. Someone from C+ was strongly considering getting a 2nd to look backwards!

There are better quality cameras (i.e. look at wiggle for head camera) but this is the cheapest and most compact option at the moment.

Hope this helps.

 

[Charlotte_C+ :-)]

Hi Alcdrew

Ive just bought the camera, so im not that clued up with it yet aswell lol. but from what others have told me, its best to get a 2GB card, as then you will be able to film an hours footage at the best quality setting. & the best make of card is Sandisk. this is what ive bought

http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/1112120/SanDisk-Extreme-III-SD-Card-2GB/Product.html


also if you use the handlebar setup, its very quick to take off the camera as it just slides/unclips in seconds . but its also very secure aswell though :?: .


Hope this helps a bit :?:

 

[Alcdrew]

Thanks for the advice.

Now all I have to do is find a spare £100 laying around and convince the wife that I need to spend it on another thing for my bike :?:

 

[Arch]

There is a little more shake when the camera is bar mounted - your head cushions it a bit. Mind you, I was trying it on pretty harsh tyres - might be better on something with tyres like Big Apples...

There is a rubber strap you could use to carry it actually on your head, without a helmet - although I don't know how secure it would be, as I guess you wouldn't want to cinch the strap to tight for fear of cutting off the blood to your scalp :?: . I guess you could even carry it on your upper arm (like an armband) - it comes with a couple of straps of different lengths..

Someone did suggest that to counter the shake, you could use a piece of foam around the bars, under the mount, to cushion it a bit..

With regards to cards, batteries etc, yes, I use a 2gb card, gives me an hour, and rechargeable AA's, about 3 hours a pair...

 

[TimO]

I'll agree with most of the comments about the ATC2K that others have made. I normally run mine at max resolution and frame rate, and it claims (when it's empty) to have room for one hours and one minute of filming with a 2G Sandisk card, although occasionally it'll fill up with less time. Since it's using Motion-JPEG video (iirc), the exact time is not fixed, and the more complex the view, the larger the video will be.

I normally charge mine about twice a week, and use it for around an hour a day, so the 3 hour life time for the batteries sounds about right. I'm using 2200 mAh NiMH's.

I found that I had to put a little grease on the quick release, so I didn't struggle to fit and remove it.

If you mount it on your handlebars, you can remove some of the wobble and shake using VirtualDub's Deshaker plugin, which is all free software. It can sometimes exacerbate the "ripple" effect that the ATC2Ks Rolling Shutter introduces, but overall it remove a lot of the irritating bouncing of the image about.

To see the difference, here are 45 seconds of my commute, along Queenstwon road in Battersea, before and after applying the filter:

Without Deshaker Filter
With Deshaker Filter

The "With" video shows the effect of the Rolling Shutter, when corrected as much as possible, if you look at the top of the double deckers, which tends to "jelly wobble" a bit. I think overall I can live with it, until I can afford a better camera (or Oregon Scientific starts selling an improved model!)

If anyone wants the details for the Deshaker filter, I can dig out the web page I used to set it all up.

 

[Cab]

If anyone wants the details for the Deshaker filter, I can dig out the web page I used to set it all up.

If that ain't too much trouble TimO, I'd be quite interested to see that.

 

[TimO]

OK, you'll need to download (and install) VirtualDub

VirtualDub

You'll also need the Deshaker Filter

Deshaker

The guide I used to set it all from is here:

A Guide to using deshaker

For completeness, this is an image of the settings I've been using

Deshaker settings

I think they are similar to those in the article. With these settings it isn't all that fast, I don't think either pass (and there are two) runs even as fast as real-time on a 3GHz Pentium. It's quite possible that you can adjust the settings to be less fussy, and faster, and still get video which is quite acceptable when on somewhere like YouTube, which pretty massively compress everything anyway, so any fine detail is very likely to be lost.

I also used Windows Movie Maker to tidy things up, speed the video up to 4 times normal, and add any audio.

The article looks a bit daunting, but actually it is quite straightforward if you just follow things as it says. Not entirely trivial, but not too involved.