Race Replay Capture (camera) Options

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PWD_addict
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Race Replay Capture (camera) Options

Post by PWD_addict »

I suspect Randy can answer this best. We did our Pinewood Derby this past weekend and used RaceReplay for the first time. It was awesome--thank you very much.

However, we used a USB webcam and the pic wasn't great. I have a firewire connection on my computer but couldn't locate a videocam with firewire before our races. I've seen a Unibrain webcam (about $100) that is Firewire capable. Would that be a good option or should I find a dv recorder that has Firewire connection? Are there any that are relatively inexpensive (under $200)?

I'll be running the District races in April. This would be for that and for future Pack derbies.

Thank you,
Dave
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Re: Race Replay Capture (camera) Options

Post by gpraceman »

FireWire video cameras do seem harder to come by these days. You might want to check out some of the newer webcams that boast 1.3 megapixels or higher.

Some of the new video cameras have a HDMI connection. I haven't yet had a chance to test one of these cameras to see if they would be compatible with the software.
Randy Lisano
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Awana Grand Prix and Pinewood Derby racing - Where a child, an adult and a small block of wood combine for a lot of fun and memories.
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Re: Race Replay Capture (camera) Options

Post by msurebel »

Has anyone tried to use more than one camera with Replay? It would be great if you had a camera pointing down the track and one at the finish line and somehow project both images on seperate screens.

Maybe run two computers and monitors?
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Re: Race Replay Capture (camera) Options

Post by gpraceman »

RaceReplay will only interface with one camera at a time, unless you have some hardware that can switch between different video sources.
Randy Lisano
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Awana Grand Prix and Pinewood Derby racing - Where a child, an adult and a small block of wood combine for a lot of fun and memories.
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Re: Race Replay Capture (camera) Options

Post by gpraceman »

An update on using an HDMI connection. I tried a couple of video cameras, but the HDMI connection does not provide a live video feed. It seems like there are some cameras out there that do provide a live video feed, I just have not got my hands on one yet to see if the software will be able to interface with it.
Randy Lisano
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Awana Grand Prix and Pinewood Derby racing - Where a child, an adult and a small block of wood combine for a lot of fun and memories.
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Re: Race Replay Capture (camera) Options

Post by msurebel »

Randy,

I've been looking at some of the new web cams and educating myself since the latest technology. Because of use with certain chat rooms and to minimize the demand on the cpu, some HD cams have encoding built into them in the H.264 format. Will replay allow you to utilize this format, or will it still save it to an AVI file.

Has anyone tried one of these type webcams?
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Re: Race Replay Capture (camera) Options

Post by gpraceman »

H.264/MPEG-4 is a standard for video compression. If you have a codec installed on your computer that can do that video compression, you can use that with RaceReplay. Which codec to use can be specified in the Advanced Device setup. Video is still saved to an AVI file, but will use the specified compression filter.

If you do not already have MPEG-4 codecs installed on your computer, you can try installing them from this file:
http://grandprix-software-central.com/d ... 4_pack.exe

The specific one that I recommend is the Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V2.
Randy Lisano
Romans 5:8

Awana Grand Prix and Pinewood Derby racing - Where a child, an adult and a small block of wood combine for a lot of fun and memories.
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