Advice on HD v ideo 720p

[Ian Sharpe]

Hi guys,

I bought one of those in car dvr that people use a lot now to record their trips, they mount on the windscreen & have a wide angle lens & record all in front of you. ANyway I got one off Ebay, there are heaps available ranging from $40 up to a couple of hundred. I picked a low-mid priced one to try.
Its says it can record in 720p which isnt half bad , much better than VGA & would not have such huge file sizes like a full HD 1080 would have, so you could fit more video on the micro sd card.

So I recorded my trip home (1hr) & hooked it up to my com puter witht the usb cord & grabbed the files off the card & loaded them into studio. I look at the properties & low & behold they are only vga 640x480 or thereabouts & the clarity is about vga quality too, not enough to read numberplates for example.

SO I read the manual (yeah I know should always read the manual first) & it says to get the HD video you have to use their download app that comes on the mini dvd disc provided. Bit odd I thought as I was grabbing the source files anyway.

I did this & it took ages to dowmload a 30sec clip & it turned it into a huge 730mb file! I load that into VS & the properties say 1280x720 which is good BUT the video still looks crap. What I am guessing is happening here is that the unit is not really capable of recording in 720p in the first place & when you download the raw footage (avi) with the app it goes thru some upscaling process to turn the video into 720p, which is nice but the probem is of course you cant turn a vga into a hd because the extra data that HD files have (which gives them their crystal clear appearance) is not there in the first place. You cant add stuff back that isnt there!. Am I right here or on the wrong track?? I guess the old motto is you only get what you pay for. Should I be asking for my $$ back.??

Oh BTW, if Ken sees this, how are you?? still in beautiful NZ. We look a bit like NZ at the moment, we have had amazing amounts of rain (for us) this year. We coped over 200mmls a couple of weeks back which left me stranded here not being able to get across my creek, I even had to miss work for 3 days!!.

cheers

[Ken Berry]

Yes, still in NZ, looking out over green fields dotted with grazing Clydesdales as I type this! And yes, I have noted the strange weather patterns around Canberra for this time of year, with days cooler than here!

As for your problem, your reasoning sounds about right. If the camera shoots in 640 x 480, then no amount of fiddling, either by their download program or VS, is going to improve the quality. "You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear", as the old saying goes.

But is there anything on the box the camera came in, or in the manual, which suggests that it *can* be set to record originally in 720p? Or is there no microscopic switch on the camera itself which allows you to switch from one format to the other before filming? If the answer is "no" to these questions, then yes, I think you have good cause to seek a refund.

It's a little strange, though, that they would be selling something which is fixed to only one format, yet claims to produce a much higher quality. As you would be aware, external laptop cameras made by the likes of MS or Logitech, which can film at an excellent 720p quality have been available at fairly moderate prices for some time. So I can't really see why you should not be able to buy a similar type of camera for the purpose you want it for, for much more than a similar moderate price...

[Ian Sharpe]

thanks Ken,

well yes there is a switch to go from vga to HD, but it doesnt seem to make any difference, the screen says hd or vga depending upon where the switch is set, but no matter which setting is used the source files are always vga quality. Unless of course the untit is faulty, I 'll email the supplier.