Vio POV 1.5

We now sell the VIO POV 1.5. Contact us via www.dirtvideo.co.nz for a price.

As I wrote my last post I was lamenting the difficulty of getting good advice about helmet cameras, at least locally here in NZ. I was also agonizing over separating myself from my hard earned bucks to buy a new camera.

I love riding dirtbikes. The Husky WR 250 is the greatest thing since sliced bread as far as I am concerned. This bike has quite a hard edge to it. I need to be fit to get anywhere near the best out of the bike. So there has been a double benefit to me in buying it. Not only is the bike new, got a great suspension package and handles exremely well, so it is basically just awesome to ride even for a weelend warrior like myself. It has also prompted me to work pretty hard on my fitness. Since Christmas I have lost almost 10 kilos. So I am fitter, skinnier and can enjoy blasting around the trails on the WR-which equals more fun.

This just proves that with any sport or physical recreational activity you do actually have a lot more fun when you are fit.

The other thing that I realized was that I get almost as much if not more pleasure out of the hours I spend editing hours of video down to short clips posted on YouTube. (let me know if you have any bright ideas around making money out of this as I have exhausted mine)

This self discovery had a major bearing on my choice of camera. The other major influence was the old but true adage that when you are buying equipment, well lets' be honest-when we go buying toys. Anyhow you need to buy the best that you can possibly afford, spend the extra to buy a modern dirtbike, instead of that cheapy 90's 'great deal'. As sure as god made little apples most of us end up regretting taking the cheap route when we find that the 'cheapy' doesn't cut the mustard and end up having to spend more bucks to upgrade to something decent/suitable. I speak from experience.

To cut a long story short I spent the bucks and bought myself a Vio POV 1.5 extreme/sports/helmet cam system. I have taken it out for a test run and I am not disappointed in the usability of the system and the quality of the output.

I still have a bit of work to do in sussing it out-particularly the mounting of the microphone and the sound levels in general-but this will give me something to do next weekend.

This camera system is everything that I expected and more. The video quality is second to none and I was particularly impressed by the battery life. With my old camera system I would be lucky to generate an hours' footage. Running on AA batteries and saving to a 4 gig SD card -gives 3 hours plus videoing -almost an entire ride for old farts like us. If this is not enough all I have to do is slip in some fresh batteries and another card.

The four minutes or so of footage in the YouTube clip above was created from almost 3 hours of raw footage. Clearly I am going to spend more time shut in my office with my editing suite as well. I'm not sure whether the missus thinks this is a good idea or not.

She says that it is 'cos it keeps me out of her hair-but you can never be sure about these things.