I need some moving moving pictures

August 23, 2005 2:40 PM

How can I record several channels of video at high quality, and for a short period of time?

I need to record three or four channels of video inside a rapidly moving vehicle, for a film project. I am aware that the security industry has a wide range of multichannel "DVR" products, but most of them offer 30 FPS for four channels and record to a proprietary format that is specifically designed so that you can't extract it and edit it in your favorite video editor (otherwise they would be useless for law enforcement purposes).

I would like 4 channels with at least 30 fps per channel. more frames would be better, but I don't have an unlimited budget. I need to be able to extract high quality video easily and bring it into a desktop DV editing progarm. Since this is a moving vehicle, network or wifi DVRs won't work. I need something that records to a rugged hard drive, or ideally, solid state media (like a CF card). Since I will be recording for less than 15 minutes at a time, I don't need a huge amount of storage space.

posted by b1tr0t to technology (6 comments total)

Would something like this work (Beyond TV). The card records MPEG-2 videos, easy to extract and edit with most video program.
posted by McSly at 3:28 PM on August 23, 2005

You say 'channels' repeatedly. Does this mean there are already cameras with svid/composite output? There are USB devices ranging between $50 and $200 that do a reasonably good job of capping, some with hardware compression. I would think a compressed stream would allow you to have 4 on one USB channel. Don't know if the -software- will deal with it...

Depending on your personal ethics you could buy 4 of them and return them when your project is done. Doesn't get cheaper than that.
posted by phearlez at 3:45 PM on August 23, 2005

I read your question several times... is there any reason why four DV cams wouldn't work? You could check them out from the local cable access station or university, or even rent them, and then throw 20$ at four tapes...

These days you can even get real cheap DV cams for like... 200$ if you wait for rebates.
posted by fake at 4:30 PM on August 23, 2005

1. PCI add-in cards won't work because the application is subject to high stress and vibration. A single-PCB solution is ideal.
2. I can comfortably spend $200-$500 on a capture devices, not including cameras.
3. The cameras need as little frontal area as possible, so I would prefer to use mini-security cams and a remote capture device.
4. I would be surprised if a USB device could handle 15 FPS raw, muchless 30 FPS.

So far, the best I can find is this Neuros MPEG4 recorder.
posted by b1tr0t at 4:45 PM on August 23, 2005

Well, even in that case, DV cams are near-ideal... get ones with video inputs and hide them under the seats. You should even be able to power them (plus the security cams) from the cigarette lighter outlet. Think of the cameras as miniature VCRs.

A note of caution- I did a project using security-type cameras piped into a digital recorder, and the video signal was too shitty for a DV cam or a digital recorder directly- I had to condition it by sending it through a VCR. Those little things have a habit of sending slightly out-of-spec video, and these digital devices are really pretty finicky.

Another problem will be editing the mpeg4 on your machine.. Mpeg4 won't edit nearly as nicely as DV. Good luck with your project.
posted by fake at 4:59 PM on August 23, 2005

You should look at some of the VFL (video for Linux) applications out there, in conjunction with the dvr/tuner cards inside a PC. I would suggest a laptop, but you aren't going to be able to put a PCI card in that.

We've used ZoneMinder, however it will most likely require a pretty decent machine and hardware encoding to have high frame rates on all of the channels.

You could use a PCMCIA flash card as the storage drive, to eliminate the USB bus speed as a bottleneck.
posted by stovenator at 12:30 AM on August 24, 2005