Video clips from Speed Week 2006

[Cword]

It took me darn near 4 months to get a copy of the video one of our crew members shot at Bonneville. Then another 2 months to go through it and pull out the clips I wanted.  Eventually I distilled the 2 hours of tape down to 40 minutes. 
It's funny, but when you're editing that sort of thing down sometime you find yourself thankful for those sequences where the camera goes for a walk pointed at the salt. It easier to trim those shots.

At any rate I shared the dvd I made with our crew and then decided to give You Tube a shot and pulled out a collection of scenes to use on our website.

We don't support embedded You Tube objects in this forum so I'll just post a link to our website where the scenes I chose are stashed.

http://1149.ca/Races/2006/video.htm

Have a peek, some of these make you pine for August.

Mike

[Seldom Seen Slim]

I've watched 'em, I've sent them along to others, and dammit, you're right, I can barely wait for August.  Just seeing Jim Jensen signal "Pull down your face shield" is a reminder of how much fun it is.  Thanks for the videos.

Technical questions -- and you're welcome to post here or PM me:  What recording system did you use?  Whose camera?  Did you have any troubles with electrical interference when the system was car-mounted?  Did you have any vibration-reducing methods in operation?  What did you use for audio -- regular ol' microphone, or something fancy to reduce extraneous noise?

I may go for a recording system this year -- want as much background as I can get before i spend bucks.

[Cword]

Our in-car video was collected on a Canon hand held video camera (digital tape version with and external video input)  The actual camera used was a ?pencil camera? (actually it?s about the size of a small felt tip marker) that we tie wrapped to the rollbar.  Leads from that camera ran into the box of the truck where the handheld unit was strapped in and running in ?VCR mode?.  The mike was a simple little mike about the size of a pencil eraser that was part of the ?pencil camera? Pretty low tech.  The best sound was collected when it was in the box with the recording unit.  It didn?t catch a lot of conversation there but once the engine was running it wasn?t swamped either. 
We also had good luck with putting the mike inside the drivers helmet tucked in along side his cheek. 
Any time we tried the mike in the open sound was poor.  Too much wind noise, and engine sound over powered it, making the sound ?clip?.

We did have electrical interference trouble due mostly to the power supply arrangement for the camera.  The fellow that set up the camera for us cheated the power by running it through too many stages (Vehicle battery through inverter to 110ac the through a standard adapter to get back down to the 8.4 dc that the camera wanted)  Out of 10 runs with the camera we only caught two. On the other 8 you see the drivers hand come up to start the car an the starter load caused the camera to shut off. 
In 2007 we?ll run a separate battery (12v) and regulate it straight down to 8.4v for the camera. That will simplify a lot of things.  I?m sure that if we?d even had a ?cigarette lighter type adapter for that brand of camera it would have worked fine off of the vehicle power.  The step up to 120 and back to 8.4 was a poor choice.

The camera itself rode packed in foam to protect it from vibration, we tried one solid mounted a couple years ago and vibration did weird things to the head-tape interface.

Mike

[Cword]

Once all the video was collected. I recorded it into my computer using a software product called Pinnacle Studio. Studio broke the video down into ?scenes? by auto detecting the camera stops and starts.  From there I selected the scenes I liked, trimmed as necessary, added a DVD menu and then started burning my DVD.  The clips I sent up to you tube also passed through Studio to trim them and get them into a reasonable size fro uploading.  Studio was also what allowed me to insert the ?Fast eh!? graphics. I?ve also used studio to record TV programs and then trim out commercials.  Makes watching the National Geographic speed week special and the Worlds Fastest Motorcycle program over and over much more pleasant.

[Dave Haller]

Good video guys and your right we don't ever want to have a spin out there at the speeds we're reaching. Fortunately no one was hurt on the ones you caught on your recordings.
Thanks for sharing,
Dave Haller #93

[Sumner]

Once all the video was collected. I recorded it into my computer using a software product called Pinnacle Studio. Studio broke the video down into ?scenes? by auto detecting the camera stops and starts.  From there I selected the scenes I liked, trimmed as necessary, added a DVD menu and then started burning my DVD.  The clips I sent up to you tube also passed through Studio to trim them and get them into a reasonable size fro uploading.  Studio was also what allowed me to insert the ?Fast eh!? graphics. I?ve also used studio to record TV programs and then trim out commercials.  Makes watching the National Geographic speed week special and the Worlds Fastest Motorcycle program over and over much more pleasant.

Are you collecting a composite video signal from the TV?  How??  What board??  How fast and what CPU are you running.  I hope to do that next year.

We were happy with the cheap helmet cameras we used last year and hope to get a couple more to use.

Thanks for the video and help Mike,

Sum

[Cword]

Are you collecting a composite video signal from the TV?  How??  What board??  How fast and what CPU are you running.  I hope to do that next year.

We were happy with the cheap helmet cameras we used last year and hope to get a couple more to use.

Thanks for the video and help Mike,

Sum

Yes, I'm using a "Studio 700 PCI card from Pinnacle along with their software.  In December I was doing it on a Pentium 4, 2.8Ghz, now I've upgraded to a Core 2 Duo.  The capture is much less finicky and rendering is faster. 
I'll mail you a couple of the DVD's I've done up. An example of the TV capture and the speed week one I just finished.

Mike

[Freud]

You may want to contact Dick Lague regarding cameras. The shots from inside Sam's 'liner were done with a camera that is the size of a postage stamp but has no tape. It's a solid state piece that has NO PROBLEM from vibration. This is the camera that recorded the scene when the tire went away and there was shaking then. He said that his crew will use an even more recent version for filming in 2007.

FREUD

[Sumner]

Are you collecting a composite video signal from the TV?  How??  What board??  How fast and what CPU are you running.  I hope to do that next year.

We were happy with the cheap helmet cameras we used last year and hope to get a couple more to use.

Thanks for the video and help Mike,

Sum

Yes, I'm using a "Studio 700 PCI card from Pinnacle along with their software.  In December I was doing it on a Pentium 4, 2.8Ghz, now I've upgraded to a Core 2 Duo.  The capture is much less finicky and rendering is faster. 
I'll mail you a couple of the DVD's I've done up. An example of the TV capture and the speed week one I just finished.

Mike

Thanks for that info Mike, Sum.

You may want to contact Dick Lague regarding cameras. The shots from inside Sam's 'liner were done with a camera that is the size of a postage stamp but has no tape. It's a solid state piece that has NO PROBLEM from vibration. This is the camera that recorded the scene when the tire went away and there was shaking then. He said that his crew will use an even more recent version for filming in 2007.

FREUD

Do you have a name for the camera??

Thanks,

Sum

[Freud]

I don't have a clue but Dick knows.
FREUD