# A tivo camera?



## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

Just bought a new digital camera, and thought you lot might be interested in a tivo-like feature :

It has a 5 second circular buffer so that you can watch the action, and when you press record, it records from 5 seconds IN THE PAST.

This is very useful in practice as it means you can catch an unexpected event,
instead of having to hav a hair-trigger, and missing the right moment.

The quality MPEG4 movies it records are the best I've seen, and this might even replace my camcorder ! 

The model?
Casio EXILIM Zoom EX-Z750 7.2 MP £180

Takes great pictures too


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

A lot of the extreme slow motion recordings for the BBC's Planet Earth was made using this kind of technology. Previously, the film had to be running to capture the event - and with film running through the camera at that speed it's incredibly expensive.

Now, the camera man has to sit and watch. When something happens he presses a button and 12 seconds of HD recording in the past is maintained.


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## cwaring (Feb 12, 2002)

So that situation with the pandas in the KitKat ad would no longer happen then?


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

What kitkat ad?

What's an ad?


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## painkiller (Jun 23, 2005)

Very interesting.

I'd like such a camera in my car.


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## andyjenkins (Jul 29, 2001)

painkiller said:


> Very interesting.
> 
> I'd like such a camera in my car.


The US have such a thing .. used in accidents. When an accident occurs, the driver hits a button, and the past x seconds of video and car data is stored to a black box. Pretty cool if you asked me.


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## ericd121 (Dec 12, 2002)

I read somewhere that with the advances in storage technology, soon we could walk around with enough storage to record everything we see and hear; i.e. a personal Black Box.

Although, as I think about it, it would make more sense to have the storage at home, and just walk around with the recording technology and wirelessly transmit it back to your home server.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Of course, the ultimate would be to dump your long-term memory. Think of all those images that you've recorded.

Mind you, once that happens, the police will get permission to sample it like DNA, and they wouldn't need to use CCTV any more.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

I remember reading a science fiction book years ago about _slow glass_, where light took a long-time to pass through it.

They used alternate panes of 8-hour and 16-hour glass as street lights, which captured the sunlight and passed it through at night.

You could plant a pane of ten-year glass beside a lake, and ten years later, it would give you a 'live' image of the lake in your city apartment window, which lasted for another ten years.

They executed a man who committed murder, and ten years later, they saw the image of the murder come through a window, and realised they'd executed the wrong man.

A simple but scary idea.


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## painkiller (Jun 23, 2005)

To Iankb:

Wasn't a Doctor Who story was it ? (heh, actually - I'm looking forward to seeing the first season of the New episodes just arriving stateside on SciFi tomorrow nite).


To Andyjenkins:

I was aware of a product sometime last year that would record 20 to 30 minutes of digital video to an SD flash card - but it was in the neighborhood of $300 or more.
So I'm happy to see at least one camera seeming to take an interest in putting such a feature in their product line. (In other words, why get another product when this one could already do it?)

As an experiment with my slightly older 3.2 Meg Kodak - I plugged in a 1GB SD card and allowed it to record video from my car's dash from work to home (1 hr drive). Was surprised that it didn't overflow the card. Of course, now that more recent cameras are offering twice the resolution for video capture - this is becoming far more promising.


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

andyjenkins said:


> The US have such a thing .. used in accidents. When an accident occurs, the driver hits a button, and the past x seconds of video and car data is stored to a black box. Pretty cool if you asked me.


My memory's a bit fuzzy on the exact details but I'm pretty sure a TV show hosted by Adam Hart-Davis featured such a device as one of the inventions submitted as a competition entry. It was located inside the driver's mirror and had a shock detector to automatically trigger it in a crash along with a button trigger.

I should have a clearer memory of this than I do as I was in the audience when it was recorded! It was shot on location in a water pumping station near Teddington in south London among the Victorian pumping gear, which was being restored, rather than in a studio. I'm sure the money paid by the BBC to record the show there helped - and it was probably far cheaper than hiring a studio 

FYI the BBC no longer own any studios of their own*, they have to hire them from BBC Broadcast at commercial rates, which is why many ITV and other independant programmes are now recorded in BBC Television Centre and conversely why many BBC programmes are recorded in indipendent studios (and also why BBC Television Centre's studios are far less used than they used to be).

*tecnically, the BBC does still maintain a few studios of its own but none are used for broadcast. To my knowledge there are several fully equipped studios at the Wood Norton training facility near Evesham which is currently under threat of closure as a couple of years ago the BBC flogged all the accomodation facilites to an external conference facility who are now not willing for BBC staff to stay there(!) and a research studio at the BBC's research & development facility at Kingswood Warren , Surrey, which is being closed down within the next 2 years.


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## Dibblah (Jun 9, 2002)

iankb said:


> I remember reading a science fiction book years ago about _slow glass_, where light took a long-time to pass through it.


It's OT, but it's a short.

http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/shaw/shaw1.html

Cheers,

Allan.


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## iankb (Oct 9, 2000)

Dibblah said:


> It's OT, but it's a short.


There were actually several stories based upon slow glass. The one I was thinking of was much longer and probably called "Burden of Proof". Bob Shaw also combined several of them, including "Light of Days" into a novel called "Other Days, Other Eyes".


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## painkiller (Jun 23, 2005)

To AndyJenkins:

I haven't found such a video product for cars here in the USofA.
But maybe I'll try some more searching.

We do have, however, electronic 'black box' style recorders in most of our recent make cars being sold, and also on the road. It hasn't been common knowledge for some time though. Only recently have news stations had blurbs on this item. It doesn't store/capture video but - similar to the aircraft counterpart - it continuously records data so it can be retrieved after an accident. (Speed, braking, other factors can be stored and retrieved from at leasst 30 seconds before the impact.)

Insurance companies love it since it either corroborates, or catches the driver in a lie.


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## andyjenkins (Jul 29, 2001)

painkiller said:


> To AndyJenkins:
> 
> I haven't found such a video product for cars here in the USofA.
> But maybe I'll try some more searching.


Can't recall where I saw it, but it was definately on a (British) TV programme about 6 / 12 months ago .. I think it may have been one of our UK copycat episodes of Worlds Most Amazing Chases, or similar.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

iankb said:


> Of course, the ultimate would be to dump your long-term memory. Think of all those images that you've recorded.


as in the film Johnny Mnemonic ..?

I saw that again recently, made me laugh - 320 Gb was the amount Keanu Reeves managed to store in his head by dumping his childhood memories... that probably seemed impossibly huge in 1982....


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## SteveA (Oct 30, 2000)

andyjenkins said:


> The US have such a thing .. used in accidents. When an accident occurs, the driver hits a button, and the past x seconds of video and car data is stored to a black box. Pretty cool if you asked me.


Well, they have this:

http://www.drivecam.com/

Driver doesn't have to press a button, everything's recorded!


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## painkiller (Jun 23, 2005)

I like what I read about that DriveCam.

I just wish they would have listed pricing for it somewhere on their website.
It appears you have to give them your contact info just to find out.

Don't care for that much.


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## aleks (Mar 22, 2001)

> FYI the BBC no longer own any studios of their own*, they have to hire them from BBC Broadcast at commercial rates, which is why many ITV and other independant programmes are now recorded in BBC Television Centre and conversely why many BBC programmes are recorded in indipendent studios (and also why BBC Television Centre's studios are far less used than they used to be).


Actually it's BBC _Resources_ who own the studios in London - and they are still part of the BBC. Outside London the BBC production departments own the studios.


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