[ruafraid]

I am looking for suggestions on setting up cameras in this years haunt to record the scares and to make a dvd. I was thinking of using my computer and a dvr card to record to disk the activity. One card I looked at was by Geovision. Has anyone else done this ? pro's con's which types of camera's to use. Will the ones they sell at harbor freight work ok ? Wallmart here has Homeland brand security camera's that are night vision capable and have sound ?

 

[noahbody]

I also would be interested to know what vid cams people have, or do, use for the recording their haunt.
Ease of use, quality, cost, and of course night time recording.
I am going to buy one this year and would really appreciate any input.
Thanks.

 

[ruafraid]

I cant believe no body else has done this ? I guess I need to take this question of to the MOM forum but I might die waiting on a response there as well
anybody ?

 

[trishaanne]

Try sending a message to Vlad. He bought something to tape his haunt with and he may be able to answer your question. Just a suggestion.

 

[Frighteners Entertainment]

I was just waiting to see how much interest was going to be in this thread.

I install commercial camera systems. I haven't dabbled in any of the home (non commercial ) units.

I would be willing to have to do a good deal for someone to put a home version together.

 

[ruafraid]

Jeff I knew it ! I could feel you were holding back on me. So I understand from one person I know that does this for a living the card I asked about is the card they use for systems they install at Car Washes. I know he has some camera's and they are fairly expensive. Ok I don't follow this " I would be willing to have to do a good deal for someone to put a home version together."

Thanks trishaanne I will send a message to him.

 

[Technical Terror]

You might want to check out some of the cameras that deer hunters use to film deer moving patterns at night. I don't think they are real expensive and record good night shots.I would go to a hunting supply site and look around.

 

[DeathTouch]

I have sony camera. I just hook up to my compter via firewire. The software I have is really nice but it takes up alot of hardrive space. Even a small segment could be 15 gig at least. I had to buy to big hard drives just to handle a few weddings that I did.

 

[Dr Morbius]

Don't even get me started about my camera.

 

[Frighteners Entertainment]

I agree, I like Sony. Real expensive for stand alone cameras though.

Ok RU, typicaly, you would have a cpu just for the video capture, nothing you would use to do your bills on. That's all it does. That's commercial.
But, you only want to use it a few nights, so as long as your hard drive is big enough....well size does matter here.

Can you friend buy at wholesale?
I do, so if you have some specs of what you want, just shot them to me.

Like I said before, not really sure what we can do to put a good clear picture on a DVD from a standard PC. Really depends on the compression. Less is better.

Anyways, just let me know.

 

[ruafraid]

Jeff, I got computers everywhere thats what I do for a living. LOL I don't know what I am looking (by brand) for specifically. The card is one that my friend told me about and it has 8 channels. (425.00) on e-bay. That's why I posed the question to see what others have used and the results. From what I am told there is a plug in that coverts the recorded video to Microsoft's media format. So with that I could burn /edit that to a DVD. Last year one of the guys that helped me out used his digital camcorder and dumped it to his disk drive. I have used USB camera's connected to computers and I even have a TCPIP camera running at one data center that saves images to a webserver every min but that wont work for a haunt. So what brand of card and camera's that work in the night vision mode do you work with. Maybe if we start there we can get something going. When I place my order can I get it supersized.

 

[Frighteners Entertainment]

Not fond of eBay myself for buying...ive me a link to see what it is and I'll tell how much it's worth and what the quality is.

 

[heresjohnny]

I was hesitant to answer because I am no expert in this area, but I have owned a Sony MiniDV DCR-TRV19 camera for a few years and am very happy with it. I seem to remember it cost around $500 or so. MiniDV is a digital format, so you can transfer it directly to your computer and its ready to burnto DVD. It has night shot (night vision) that works pretty good, and it uses Firewire to transfer to the hard drive. It came with software, and I have also used Microsoft MovieMaker (free online last I checked). I used all of this to build a DVD of my Sons soccer season, and had several hours of video captured on a 30G hard drive. I was able to cut and edit scenes, preview, overlay soundtracks, and use some special effects (like slow motion) with the Movie Maker software. Buring the final DVD took several hours, but once it was done it turned out nice. My computer is nothing to brag about, Pentium 3, 833 MHz, 70G hard drive.

 

[ruafraid]

Not fond of eBay myself for buying...ive me a link to see what it is and I'll tell how much it's worth and what the quality is.

Here is the e-bay link. The adapter he told me about is the GV-650
http://cgi.ebay.com/GeoVision-GV-65...yZ116224QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Also direct to the company http://www.geovision.com.tw/english/product/GV-System_Feature.htm

Thanks Jeff

 

[Frighteners Entertainment]

HJ, I agree. We're using about the same equipment on both ends.

 

[Frighteners Entertainment]

I've contacted GeoVision. I'll let you know when I hear back from them.

 

[ruafraid]

Jeff Thanks for looking into this.

 

[Frighteners Entertainment]

I have heard good things about the ARM Electronics cards.
I've installed their cameras, worked well.

 

[BuriedAlive]

I've been debating on using this for my haunt. The only drawback is that the least expensive system as of yet does not record audio. I contacted them awhile back and they said that will change in the near future, whatever that means.
http://www.cctvwholesalers.com/home.php

 

[Haunted Neurons]

I have a Sony camera with nightshot too. I shot some last Halloween and unless you are close up to the action the built in (I think its infrared, not sure) light doesnt give you much range. If you do go that route you probably need a infrared spotlight sold seperately. Also I think dark video doesnt look as good as well lighted areas when they are copressed so it takes more work to make it look nice.