Bread on Table

Bread on the table.

Doing homework to determine the best product upgrades available to enhance our video capture and post production work-flow. In the six years since the RCV concept was born a lot has changed. Video technologies have given us the use of palm-sized HD cameras, such as the GoPro and Contour, both which provide outstanding video. Each, however have their limitations. The GoPro uses a fish eye lens with non adjustable internal image stabilization, making it a real challenge to manipulate in post, and the Contour has a very temperamental GPS function and cannot be used with a DC power source. Both cameras, while they capture stunning full 1920x1080 video, are hit or miss, providing sometimes spectacular highlight shots, but iffy for our continuous capture methodology. It seems that the the gadget containing all our requirements has yet to be devised. Leaving us to seek an alternate tool synergy to accomplish the objective, which sometimes (like for the IMNYC shoot in August), means a one-take shot lasting almost six hours!!!!

Something not even JJ Abrams or Michael Mann would attempt. Six hours? One shot? Are you serious?

Yes, yes and we are.

The solution du jour consists of the following. You are free to try this on your own but it might be easier to simply wait until our products are released and buy one for $99. That approach will save you money, time and a barge-load of headaches.

For moto use, the mobile battery pack fits in my back pack. At 16 pounds it will get heavy, but nobody said this was gonna be easy. Power for up to eight hours. The seamless capture issue which has been plaguing the post process since inception, has always been limited by battery life and tape length. We solved the power issue and thanks to chip technology and video compression, we can now fit all 112 miles of an Ironman bike leg on one 32GB card. What FCP does with the MPEG-4-AVC h.264 codec is to be determined and tested next week and in California. My hunch is that it will be OK especially if capture is with a Canon HA-10 mounted to the Fig-Rig as my legs and torso act as shock absorbers when shooting off the moto. Fixed to a car I will have to cushion as best I can because typically MPEG4 doesn't play well in post with FCP.

If I can bring home a one-shot take of 56 or 112 miles, the merging of GPS data should be much quicker, resulting in us getting more product to market faster.

Which should please our over 40,000 current CompuTrainer users, which doesn't include Multi-Rider users. And that, dear friends, is how bread gets to my table.