Category: Geekery

Cheap camera mount option

I thought the “hat mount” for my camera isn’t perfect, because I think it moves around a bit and also it puts the side of my face as a static object in the side of the frame. So I was thinking what I really want is something like what Ryan Paroz had at the Gorge – a suction cup mount and a pole to put the camera up high enough so it’s sort of looking over your shoulder. I’ve been looking high and low for a pole, and couldn’t find anything for regular tripod mounts, just for GoPros. The closest I could find was this selfie stick that has a 1/4″ socket on the handle. It was only $6, so I figured it was worth a try.

The result wasn’t terribly bad, except the camera moved over the course of the paddle. I tried to tighten it up afterwards to see if I could make it less likely to move, and I think I stripped the thread a bit. So back to the drawing board.

Actually though, what I think would be really good would be some sort of reverse pendulum. In case you don’t know what I mean by a “reverse pendulum”, here’s my crude drawing:
export

Focus on Bootstrap modals

Today’s discovery which I’m going to post here because I know I’ll need it again:

$('body').on('shown', '.modal', function() { $('textarea,input', this).filter(':visible:first').focus(); });

Will make sure that when any modal pops up, the first input or textarea field on it will receive focus. If you’re lucky enough to be upgraded to Bootstrap 3, that shown changes to shown.bs.modal or something like that.

Another boring post about video workflow

Well, it turns out that iMovie does have a chroma-key ability. And it’s pretty easy to use, actually, once you find it. The trick is to drag the two clips on top of each other, just like I do when I’m doing split screen, but on the same menu as split screen, there’s another option called “Green/Blue screen”. So I’ve generated some solid color backgrounds with ffmpeg. Then I bring them into VIRB Edit and overlap the GPS data gauges on them and export that result. Then I bring the resultant exports into iMovie, and I can overlay them on the multiple camera shots. I just have to figure out how to make sure the GPS gauges stay in sync with the camera shots. The easiest way seems to be to do an audio countdown before hitting start on the GPS that’s picked up on the cameras, or look for when I start paddling in the case of a race. But then I’d have to export each full clip with the overlay and bring it back in as a new clip. I’ll have to work on that.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out what color to use for the chroma-key. Green is the standard, but my gauges have green in them. The results aren’t that great. (Note that the video and the GPS track aren’t from the same paddle, it’s just for testing.)

Then I tried red. There’s very little red in the gauges. The results are better, but still not great.

Blue isn’t much different from red, but does save one whole click because you don’t have to click in the red area to tell it which color to key on.

Testing continues.

Video camera battery life sucks, and this is what I did about it

Most action cameras I’ve looked at (GoPro, VIRB, etc) all have battery life somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half. Unfortunately, most of my kayak races are somewhere between 1:40 and 2:00 hours long, and plus you have to start the camera before you get in your boat, so you end up either rushing back to shore to start it after your warm-up, or you start it before your warm up and miss the last half hour or more of the race.

This is the Polaroid XS100.xs100 It’s a very nice action camera, except just like the others it has lousy battery life. I got one for a present, and was very impressed with the picture quality. It’s not as light as a GoPro, so I didn’t think I’d want to wear it on a headstrap, but mounted on the boat it did well recording some of the shorter races. But the battery ran out on the Canadian Surfski Champs, which is a bit longer race. So I decided to do something about it.

This is the cover on the back.IMG_0868. It covers the back of the camera where the USB charging port and the SD card slot live.

Here is the back without the cover. IMG_0869.

Note the curious bump on the cover that fits into the USB port. I have no idea why they put it there, but it’s kind of handy for my purposes.

The first thing I did was buy a second cover from Polaroid. I wasn’t sure if this was going to work, and I didn’t want a useless camera if it didn’t. The second thing I did was buy some waterproof USB batteries and some Sugru. Sugru is amazing stuff – it’s like plasticine, but it hardens into a waterproof rubber.

The next thing I did was drill out that bump I mentioned, and a bit more, so I could slide a USB charging cable through the hole. I “Sugru-ed” around the hole to seal it up. I did the same with the cap on one of the waterproof batteries.IMG_0870IMG_0871.

If I’m really careful, I can wiggle the cap and cover back on without disturbing the Sugru and wrecking the seal.IMG_0872IMG_0873 The battery is now semi-permanently zip tied to the side of the camera. The camera is on a Panavise suction cup mount which I can move from boat to boat. I tested it and I get more than 5 hours video with a 32GB microSD card. More than enough for any race I plan to do.

My video work flow kinda sucks

So today I used two video cameras (and of course my Garmin Forerunner 920XT GPS and heart rate monitor). Trying to make a video from all that is kind of a pain in the ass.

  1. Use ffmpeg to assemble the multiple files from one camera into a single file – this was required when I was going directly to VIRB Edit but I might be able to skip this when I’m doing my current step 2
  2. Bring both files into iMovie. Use iMovie to try to synchronize the two clips, but still get the half a second or so off. (If anybody has a better way of doing this, please let me know). Make a split-screen in iMovie. Since the battery life on the new camera sucks, there is a section at the end with only one camera, so break the clip and switch back to non-split screen. Export.
  3. Bring the new file into Garmin VIRB Edit. Overlay the GPS/Heart Rate data (what they call “GMetrix”) on the video. Try as best I can to match up the place where I can see myself hit the start button on the Forerunner with the beginning of the “GMetrix”, get it within half a second or so, and call it done. Export.
  4. Bring the exported file into iMovie again, and use iMovie to cut it into highlights and add titles. I’ve tried doing this step in VIRB Edit and it’s pretty horrible. Export to YouTube and/or another file.

The worst part is those “Export” parts. Exporting from iMovie takes over an hour. Exporting from VIRB Edit takes over 3 hours. No idea why it takes so long. So obviously I’m looking for anything that could eliminate a step or allow me to do stuff in parallel.