Key fob camera user questions

[ttweed]

I was impressed with the videos posted here using the cheap little key fob digital cameras, so I ordered a couple from Hong Kong and tried one at the last autox with limited success. The problem I had was that the camera did not stay on for the whole session. It shut itself off randomly after from 2-9 minutes of operation. Unfortunately, this gave me only a video of the pre-grid and the parade lap, which is not what I was hoping for. The quality of the video is pretty nice, if you ignore the sound limitations introduced by wind noise on the microphone from mounting outside the car, and the distortion introduced by the 720 x 480 pixel native format. If you remove the yellow date/time stamp in post-processing, remove the audio noise, and correct the width distortion of the video to standard 4:3 (640x480), which I found to be a fairly simple matter using free VirtualDub editing software, the results are more than satisfactory for a $20 investment in equipment, although a wider angle lens would be an improvement, since you tend to lose the outside of the track from the field of view in tight corners.

What I would like to know is how long other users of these cameras charged them before first use? I have read through all the info about the #3 cameras like mine at this site: http://www.chucklohr.com/808/C3/index.html and they seemed to recommend 1 hour of charging, revised from 2-3 hours due to possible overheating of the internal battery. They say the camera should be able to take 30 minutes of video for each 2GB of storage available, and then start a new AVI file and continue recording. I have not been able to get mine to record for anywhere near that long. They shut down randomly after less than 10 minutes, sometimes writing the video file to the memory card and sometimes not (one camera seems to leave an AVI file of 0 bytes when it shuts down, though I can find file fragments of several gigs by running chkdsk on the memory card afterwards.) I am trying to figure out if they are running out of power because I am afraid to charge them for too long. They seem to get pretty hot after an hour connected to the USB port, so I'm afraid of blowing up the battery. Do I need to leave them connected to the USB port longer?

I have tried formatting the memory cards and it made no difference. They function fine for taking .jpg shots or short (< 5 minute) videos, so I am beginning to think that they are running out of battery power in longer stints. In testing, I had one of them record for 30 minutes one time, writing a valid 2 GB AVI file to the memory card, but it did not start a second file to continue recording as I expected. I was only able to do this once, and never again, even after charging the unit for another hour. I'd appreciate any input from other users about charging practices.

Also, what class of SDHC memory cards are you using. I have tried Class 2, Class 4, and have a Class 6 card on order, to see if the speed of the card makes any difference. The site above seems to recommend at least a Class 4 card in order to prevent dropped frames, judder, etc.

Thx,
TT