Best video for the cockpit?

[nick ritter]

Hi all,

I am interested in buying a recording device to use while flying (I fly a club rented basic pa28/c 182) and was interested to hear the views/opinions of those who may have some experience with these as to the best one to buy?

I am currently skiing in Canada and notice that the rage seems to be for for these go pro hd helmet cameras and for sure a quick search on you tube shows some pretty cool videos used filming with this device - any reviews from those that actually have experience would be greatly appreciated as well as those who use alternate products

I see a similar thread has started on rotorheads about helmet cameras but was interested to hear any feedback from those within here as well

Many thanks
Nick

[Ultralights]

gopro hd. yadda yadda for message length

[Pilot DAR]

I have used a number of different digital video cameras to record during flight testing, and just fooling around. I have used the everything proof "hero" cameras on a helicopter flight test. Though they did produce good video, we had several "failures" in that the camera was not recording, and it was quite difficult to know. This resuled in the need to refly, and the operating cost of the helicopter for the extra hour exceeded the value of the camera considerably (I wish they'd bought the better one).

Consider your need to turn it on and off in flight. For reasons below, this may not be advisable anyway. I have never mounted one to my head, always fixed in the cabin, or external as required. I have used remote controls, but they are distracting - see below.

Assuming that your not mounting the camera externally, (which I have on helicopters) you can do just fine with any regular video camera, or even a point and shoot with video capability. If you are going to mount it in the aft cabin, consider occupant safety. In the 9G crash, will it come loose and become a projectile? If you mount it ahead, would it be a visual obstruction, or head strike hazard?

I offer a caution to you that you should ask yourself why you wnat the video. It is fun to keep a record of your flights, and I have a few which I enjoy. If you're going to set the camera going, and ignore it for a normal flight, that's fine. If, on the other hand your purpose is to create some exciting video, please be very careful - you're already distracted by the camera, and now you're flying more dramtically to show off.

The phrase "watch this" while flying has resulted in some very undesirable events. Recording a normal flight is probably fine, making air to air combat or low flying video must be approached with extreme preparation and caution, and is best left to pros...

[austerwobbler]

I have a helmet camera which I mount on my head set, take of the rubber helmet strap and just Velcro it on to your head set ear piece.

Austerwobbler

[BackPacker]

It may be a moot point in the day of solid state storage, but if you use any type of storage that has moving parts (either tape or hard disk) make sure it can withstand the G-forces that you anticipate.

Cameras with tape or disks are not very good for recording aerobatics.

[IO540]

I've played around with flying videos and even the most expensive "helmet cameras" were of crap quality compared to even a cheap consumer camcorder.

Their advantage is small size and being waterproof, but while fixing a camera outside the aircraft improves the image quality considerably, it is easy only on some types, and is always illegal (on a CofA type) unless signed off by the right people so you can't go around doing it overtly.

Also all the helmet cameras suffer from prop effects caused by very fast shutter speeds. These can be minimised with a neutral density filter which forces a slower shutter.

The last mini camera I used was the Sony HQ1 (from Dogcampro) which was used to make this video (http://www.zen74158.zen.co.uk/videos/tempelhof-vcd5.mpg) (flying into Tempelhof). IMHO the quality is crap, and that is after cropping it a bit to remove the worst distortions (which were not caused by the aircraft window).

There was a much more pricey helmet camera, from Sony too, at about £1000 but I never found anybody who had stock.

For a comparison, this video (http://www.zen74158.zen.co.uk/videos/alps2.mpg) came from what today would be a £250 camcorder. Take your pick :)

Using a camcorder is easier nowadays because they have enough storage to run on their own for hours. The old DV ones could not run for more than an hour so could not be set up and started on the ground and just left. They had to be either messed with during the flight (bad news if you are busy) or wired up in the "showroom demo" mode whereby providing it with constant external power and switching it to Record provides a nonstop video output, like a high quality webcam.

A high Q webcam is another way to approach it but I have found the quality poor also. I also started to experiment with taking a still pic (with the webcam) every second and then combining them into 25fps movies, which gives you a 25x speedup and can be fun for filming a whole flight which would otherwise be mostly boring. This one (http://www.zen74158.zen.co.uk/videos/canakkale.m1v) (a flight from Brac, Croatia to Canakkale, Turkey) was made with the most expensive webcam - the £50 Micro$oft USB one. Note the prop effects. I removed it from the top of the panel pretty fast after landing, just in case, this being Turkey ;) If you are happy with this quality then this is easy because it just plugs into any laptop, etc. and there is any number of little progs which can take a snapshot ever 1 sec and save it to a 640x480 jpeg, and then you combine the jpegs into a movie using Premiere etc etc. or you could use windoze movie maker to just record the whole movie (a few MB per second) to the hard disk of the laptop but then you have the job of editing it.

A camcorder is also totally self contained, whereas any of the other solutions involve wires, power supplies, etc, unless you go for one of the solid state recorders which places like Dogcampro sell (not cheap).

[172driver]

The GoPro HD is a great little piece of kit, but has it's drawbacks.

For starters there is not - yet - a remote control for it. So, mounting it on the outside of the a/c, you have to switch it on before start and keep it running. Fine for a short little hop, but not too good for long x-country.

Second, it is sensitive to vibrations. You get what's called 'rolling shutter' or 'jello' effects; think of the image looking as if it was a wave.

There are some others out there that do have remote control. Do a bit of a Google search and you shall find!

[neilcharlton]

I got a creative vado HD , nice bit of kit . and a small gorrilla pod thing from ebay , then you can mount it anywhere .

YouTube - Jet Provost flying (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgqXDKmaRTk)
the quality is better than this as youtube will always degrade it .
I'd love one with a wide angle lens if anyone has any ideas ?

[martinprice]

VholdR CountourHD and the new Drift HD170 both do full HD, are compact, and have a wide-angle field of view. I haven't used either of them but have seen a lot of flying footage shot with both.

All suffer from the rolling shutter effect which makes a moving prop look really strange.

[IO540]

From what I have seen, all the small cameras are basically webcams, repackaged variously for the "sports" market.

[nick ritter]

Thank you all for the above. It is certainly appreciated. My intentions are just to keep a record of some of my approaches to new airfields - I don't want to be concentrating on the recording device while I should be flying so just want something simple I can turn on and forget about. Thanks again

[Maoraigh1]

I started with a Fuji Finepix still camera on movie mode. It did 360X480 O.K for up to 30 minutes, but didn't work in the cold. I then bought a Canon HG10. It was a total disaster in the air. Even when I had the vibration solved, it produced weird effects.
I'm now using a Panasonic DMC-FT2 still camera, which does only 10 minute shoots, then start button has to be pressed.It has a 32G card, though, and good battery life. It is slow to focus. Video taken with it in cold conditions is on the PPRUNE video thread, and others from the Finepix are there if you click YouTube for other videos. I got nothing useable with the Canon.

[yoyoplata]

Hi there, long time lurker, first time poster here.

I was wondering what you guys think of the Flyvie system? It records from two cameras, the intercom and gps info.

Flyvie | Elevate your flying performance | 360 degree Flight Viewing Experience (http://www.flyvie.com/)

I like the idea of an all in one package for this sort of situation (would've been really handy early on in my training). I really like how the software combines all the footage, audio and data into one screen (displays gps info with animations and google earth).

What i really don't like about it is the fact that you have to pay a subscription fee for access to the viewing software (although it wouldn't be too expensive for a flying school). What i really really don't like about it, is that after having a second look i realised the package looks pretty much like an eee pc with a bunch of adapters and two webcams, and they want to charge 2000 US dollars for it!

A computer techie might want to put together his own diy version and probably only needs to pay for the software subscription to save a lot of money...

[yoyoplata]

Avweb just did an overview of a few packages.

YouTube - Flight Recorders Reviewed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxTLi3kj3F8)