My new stereo rig (dual Vado HDs)

[cybereality]

So I finally received my Vado HDs! Missed the delivery so I had to go to the post office to pick them up. Got home and ripped those suckers open. I also got some various accessories from Amazon and also the twin camera bar I had gotten from Berezin last week. Check it out:

VadoHD_Packages.jpg

Parts list:
Creative VadoHD 720P Camera: $100 x 2
Jasper Engineering 6" Twin Camera Bar: $70
Barska Accu-Grip Hand-Held Mount: $15
CamGrip: $10 (not used)
Micro-fiber Pouch: $10

And here is how it looks once I put it together:

VadoHD3D_Back.jpg

VadoHD3D_Front.jpg

VadoHD3D_Side.jpg

All in all it cost me a little over $300 and so far I am really happy. The weight is really low, the camera grip feels nice and solid, and it looks great. Before I put the stereo rig together I did some quick tests with the VadoHD in my house and the video quality looked decent. So after I had the whole thing mounted I took it outside to do a real 3D test. Now here is the bad part. Not even 5 minutes in the field and one of the cameras crashed! After I hit the record button to stop a recording, it usually shows an hourglasses for a few seconds while it saves. However the camera would not come back, it just froze on the hourglass screen. None of the buttons worked, I couldn't shut it off!!! The only way to restart it was to remove the battery. However, it was mounted on the bar and you need an allen-key wrench to take it off (which was at my house). So I had to come home to reboot the camera. Really friggin' annoying. I did some more tests with this one camera and it hasn't crashed since. I think I might send it back to exchange for another but I will see how it holds up. Maybe it was just a fluke. Anyway, I am going to need a little time to process the footage I did get, so I will see if I can post to YT3D later tonight. Aside from the camera crashing, everything about the whole rig seems really cool. I will be doing some serious testing this weekend, so hopefully the cameras will hold up.

[WheatstoneHolmes]

Bummer about that crashed cam

The rig looks great, can't wait to see the results!

[cybereality]

Ok, I posted a quick test on YouTube (although I admit it looks really shabby):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k0T78aQX08" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I had to convert the video a few times, from AVI to MPG and then back to AVI due to some weird issues with the codecs on my computer. I think I lost a lot of quality. I was getting some nice quality with WMV, but unfortunately StereoMovie Maker doesn't support it. Also the aspect ratio is off on YouTube, I have to figure that one out. And the 3D effect is marginal, at best. But hey, it was just my first test.

[Freke1]

Looks very nice.
Someone used a YT tag for aspect ratio, not sure if it works?

Edit: If You add: &hd=1 to the url You get the right Aspect Ratio (I think).

[WheatstoneHolmes]

Yeah, it looks very compressed but you are getting some good depth, nice first video, especially considering you had camera problems happening.



EDIT: How did you sync them?

[Likay]

This is quite nice! Would also love to see how it looks when codecs are issued out. It looks way quite decent already!

[martinlandau]

"ripped those suckers open" LOL! That's my bro! There is NOTHING like ripping open some new stereo3d toys to play with! Can't wait to hear more of your s3d filming adventures Cyber.

[cybereality]

How did you sync them?

Well I did buy a pro quality stop watch (accurate to 1/1000 of a second) but I didn't use it for that quick test. I just synced it up by eye in Adobe Premiere. However this was really annoying, so I am going to try with the stop watch when I do some more tests tomorrow. Just pressing the record buttons at the same time is not a viable option.

[Freke1]

A 3D camera is fun. What do You do with Adobe Premier?

[cybereality]

A 3D camera is fun. What do You do with Adobe Premier?

I was using Premiere so I could sync and correct the video. Basically I shifted one video about a half a second and I also had to move one of the videos up like 20 pixels (the vertical alignment was off). Luckily the twin camera bar I have included a 2-axis bubble level but I didn't get a chance to use it. The workflow in Premiere is less than optimal though, I might have a look at that Make3D plugin for Vegas.

[Freke1]

the RAW Vado avi's import into StereoMovie Maker fine... (instead of Premier).

[cybereality]

Ok, so I got a lot of footage today. Went to the American Museum of Natural History and recorded over 1 hour of raw video. The cameras held up fine, no glitches or crashes (hopefully that crash was a one time deal). The battery life seems great, had the camera on in standby for around 2 hours (recording for a little over 1 hour) and they still had half full battery. And the video quality is pretty nice in a well lit environment. In low-light it gets a little grainy but still better than some other cameras I've seen in that respect. Overall I am pretty happy with the Vado's so far, and the Barska grip makes holding the cameras very comfortable.

I did get some strange looks from people wondering what I was doing, and a few people asked me questions. The first guy asked "Is that the latest toy?", and I said "Yeah". He asked where I got it and I told him: "I made it". LOL! The second guy, an old white guy, asked me if I was shooting a 3D movie. I told him I was just doing some tests for YouTube. Then he asked if it needs glasses and I said "I already have them." The third dude, this Japanese guy, was like "thats a 3D camera?". I said yeah, he asked where to buy one and I told him you just need 2 regular cameras. I was pretty surprised there was even anyone that knew about 3D, so that is a good sign.

Anyway, its going to take a while to go through all that footage, but I did edit out one short clip and things look a lot better than that initial test I did. You can see the sample here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWYEraCWn80" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

As it turns out I didn't need Premiere at all. What I did was use VirtualDub to sync the raw footage and output an AVI via "direct stream copy" so I wouldn't lose any quality. Then I imported those clips into StereoMovie Maker. In order to output a cross-eyed video I had to import the videos in reverse (right source for left view and vice-versa) then I outputted using the "side-by-side" option. Set the option to resize and resample to true, and set the width to half (640x720 instead of 1280x720). Then I uploaded the 1280x720 stereo file to YouTube using the "yt3d:aspect=16:9" tag to restore the proper aspect ratio. So far I am pretty happy with the quality, but I will see if I can get it a little better.

Also, I was using that Robic stop-watch to get some timecode sync for the cameras. This was very helpful when editing the videos to have a picture perfect timecode on the video to sync to. First problem was that the LCD wasn't backlit so it was very difficult to see half of the time. There is a backlit version but I found out about it like 5 minutes after the one I got had already shipped. Second issue is that the one-thousandth position on the LCD screen doesn't update. It just shows "8" until you stop it. So while it is technically accurate to 1/1000 of a second, it doesn't display so it is useless for my purposes. This is pretty obvious in retrospect because no way that dinky LCD screen could be 1000Hz (duh!). So I could have just used the chrono on my watch and been fine. I still do like the stopwatch though, and I will probably get another one thats smaller and has a backlight. Plus, now that I only need accuracy to 1/100 of a second I have a lot more choices.

[Freke1]

Yeah, older people know what a 3D camera is
Very nice video quality.

[Likay]

It's a funny story you tells about comments you get about your camera.
I agree with Freke about knowledge about stereo-3d among older people. "It's like: Cool! I did some experimenting with 3d but it was quite some time ago! It's fun it still exists."
Most people if saying anything just asks "Why do you have two?".