It's the rainy season here ... Lately that means ~1 rain per day ... I've decided I like it ... All the water adds something to the ride ... Plus it is warm rain so, with or without my gore-text jacket, its a good time .... I have a Kodak ZX5 Playsport video camera now ...Water proof \ shock proof ... I'll try to mount it some how later and get some riding video .... No real rain today where I am at but it is all cloudy to the north and I'm heading that way now and it appears to be heading my way ... Since it is already wet here and more rain expected, I'll be sticking to roads and rocky trails ... My rear tire is a toasted Kenda 270 ... Small water fall here along the way... Pondering pond ... New ST area I just found Back down to the river to refuel with gas and get some drink....
Pavement with a sheet of water running down it to the bottom of the hill Small creek crossing ... Not to deep or wide but the water is moving very fast ... This crossing has a good paved bottom so no problems crossing here ... I just followed this unknown road out to a place I knew .... and went from there ... This is the start of some ST \ shortcut trail I use going over to the Mulao area ... It's full of creek crossings on the pavement on the other side so I'm not sure I can make it over the entire way to Mulao before I get blocked at a creek ... More rocky road with water flowin' over it ....
Back to some pavement between DapDap and Mulao, heading SW towards Mulao ... This one blocks me .... It's not so deep but that water is really moving ... All cement bottom but as fast as the water is moving, it might push you over and maybe over that small fall ... Back to the new DapDap Welcome sign and cool creek crossing ... This one does not have a paved bottom and that water is moving very fast over the falls ... but very passable but don't go to the fall side to close ... Here is a look over the falls here ...
Here is a short video I made just walking across the creek and looking at the water ... The playsport seems to do video better than pics .....
It is fun to me ... see the rain coming and head for it unless it has thunder and lightening which is not usually the case here ... I'm wanting to see a few specific creeks that are local to me here flood as they should have cool looking water falls ... Nothing too large but the landfall and surrounding area should create a very good effect ... The floods are old news to the locals and as long as I listen to them, it's ~pretty safe also I think ... I'll be doing more testing in this area but it seems like many times riding during rainfall can actually help traction as the water on the ground (plus hitting the tires) helps keep the mud cleaned out of the knobby ...
Ray, The video quality looks good. I want to replace the POS Contour I have, could you post a couple short riding vids in the different resolutions? I can read reviews all day but a couple of real world examples would be great.
I would be glad to ...But on the last trip the playsport quit working .... Not sure what happened but since you cannot remove the battery on this model and it would not respond to ANY buttons, the battery just exhausted itself in my pocket ... Now, after bringing it back home and recharging, it appears to be working again but I need more time to verify what is happening with the device... Maybe after the battery exhausted, it has reset it's self or something ... What is the issue with your Contour? What model is it? PS -- That was HD video setting on that small video...
It's the HD 1080P First issue it only records .MOV files so to watch on anything else it has to be transcoded. The other issue is, it turns itself off ( guess it's supposed to do that to save battery life) but there's no obtion to disable it and it seems like it's random time length of time. Kind of a pain to have to stop, take your helmet off to see if the camera is on. Missed a bunch of good video because of it. Battery recharging has always been inconsistent, can't tell what the charge status is. Sometimes I get 2hr + sometimes 15 minutes, most of the time the 12v charger will not work at all, charge light comes on and goes off after 5 minutes. Latest problem is that it records in slo motion and the audio is not synched, this just started, screwed up all my video of the Shenandoah DS ride. I've tried everything to fix it, reformat the card, reflash the firmware, change from 1080 to 720 same problem. I'm going to send it back and see if contour will fix it, it's close to 3 years old and I've never been happy with it. I probably have $400 or more invested in it Take a look at their support forums and look at all the problems.
One more thing, it takes a super computer to play back the video without stumbling, the new software is better but the files are so bloated that even using my media server ( a Dell 2850 dual processor server) using all all 4 cores at 100% across a 1G network it still does not play smoothly on TV.
wowo ... Sounds really bad ... ESP with 4 bills into it ... I gave 125$ for this thing on line and only had to buy memory ... I need to attach it to me somehow and get moving video ... I'm OK with holding it for videos currently and the pics are OK and usually < 2Meg in size .... My playsport seems to be working now so I'm not sure what happened ... I lost a ton of photos OPPS on the last ride when it quit... I guess I'll have to carry the recharger next time .... I gotta clean the bike and do some work on it the next few days so I'll have a few test videos this weekend if the device is back to normal ...
