Aiptek A-HD Indoor Video Test

Published by rodfather on October 7, 2007 02:29 am under Aiptek, Gadgets

I did some more testing while bowling. It’s a fairly dark place besides the lanes themselves. It’s ever darker in the bar. I was somewhat surprised with the A-HD’s indoor quality since the MPVR is really in bad indoor, low light, situations. It’s not great, but ok. It’s essential to have it stable like on a tripod. You can tell it suffers when shooting handheld.

The raw files are 1280×720, 30FPS, h.264 quicktime .MOV files at around 4Mbps. I first had to run MP4Cam2AVI to get Sony Vegas to recognize the audio. It didn’t matter since all the audio was blown out. One cool thing I found out after shooting this. You can plug the A-HD into an Xbox 360’s USB port and it’ll play the video in full 720p. It thinks the A-HD is a normal USB drive/camera. It’s convenient since you don’t have to mess with component cables. You can use the Xbox 360 to view the video you just took.

I used Sony Vegas to edit the footage. At first I encoded to avi using the raw HDV 720P 30FPS profile. Quicktime didn’t like the .avi it produced though. I ended up encoding the file using the 6Mbps, 720p, WMVHD profile.
Quicktime wouldn’t read that either so I ended up encoding the WMVHD file with Nero Recode. I encoded it to a 480×272, 2Mbps, h.264, mpeg4 file. Not sure if it’ll play on an iPhone but we’ll see. UPDATE: Nope. iTunes didn’t want to copy it to the iPhone.

I uploaded the WMVHD file and h.264 file to blip.tv. Here’s the flash video they produced after uploading.

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play


[blip.tv page for this video]
[WMVHD video. 720p, 30FPS, 6Mbps. 173MB]
[MP4 video. 480x272, 30FPS, 2Mbps. 58MB]

  • Rodfather
    I wouldn't replace it. I would assume the picture quality of your MiniDV cam is much better than the Aiptek. MiniDV encodes at around 25MBps. Panasonic's CCD sensor and lens are much better. You won't experience the 'wobble' effect when you are shooting handheld.

    Aiptek's are cheap, pocketable, flash based, and durable but it will never reach the quality of a 'real' camcorder.
    If you want to introduce yourself into the world of HD, give it shot. It'll prepare you for the trials and tribulations of dealing with HD footage for editing, encoding, etc.
  • Julian
    Hello
    I have a question, i have a Panasonic nv-gs17 (miniDV) and thought about changing it with a aiptek ahd200, is it worth it? is The pocket camcorder better than my panasonic? I was tented to make this change because the aiptek is a HD...
  • Rodfather
    I didn't have a problem playing raw clips when connecting the camera directly into the Xbox's USB port. I only tried 720p h.264 clips. I'm not sure if the standard resolution clips would play since they aren't encoded using h.264.
    I didn't try to play any of the clips I encoded myself on the 360 including the WMVHD file. I will try to test that sometime.
  • frivera28
    Did you have any problems with playing the video on the xbox 360. Some of my clips causes the xbox 360 freeze and require a reboot to fix. The clips seem to random

    Did you try playing the WMVHD on the xbox 360?
  • Rodfather
    Yep
  • steven
    Cabrillo lanes, Watsonville, CA ?
  • Rodfather
    Cabrillo lanes
  • steven
    where was that video shot?
  • fishyC
    As Always, I though I was there especially in Flash 2.4 player, Excellent job! I hope others will learn from the best, and very pleased with the output of not the Economy Hybrid, but of the User? WOW! is all I can say.
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