Video Camera Questions, considering installing an in-car cam Options

[John]

Any advice/suggestions for mounting a video camera in our track only car? There is virtually no interior left and a bracket would be fabricated and welded into place for mounting.

Any brand/model recommendations? Any brands/models to avoid?

The car is a DE only vehicle.

What I THINK I want is a small, lightweight camera that stores video on Digital Tape, and can be powered from the car 12v system. I want something that will be easy to transfer video to a PC and then burn DVD's to be played in stand-alone players.

I want enough resolution that it will look decent full screen on a television.

It will need to be hard wired as there is no lighter plug (or dash for that matter).

Thanks in advance for your replies.

[John]

The high resolution isn't the problem that I'm having with my ENORMOUS files. It's the conversion to lower resolution that really bugs me.

My movies look perfectly fine on the TV after burning DVD's, but getting to something that looks like something on a computer monitor has not happened for me yet.

How do they fit full length movies onto DVD's? I can only fit about an hour.

For my next test, I'm going to try capturing (tape to PC) at a lower resolution and see how that goes.

[wobbletop]

The high resolution isn't the problem that I'm having with my ENORMOUS files. It's the conversion to lower resolution that really bugs me.

My movies look perfectly fine on the TV after burning DVD's, but getting to something that looks like something on a computer monitor has not happened for me yet.

How do they fit full length movies onto DVD's? I can only fit about an hour.

For my next test, I'm going to try capturing (tape to PC) at a lower resolution and see how that goes.

DVDs use a variable bit rate. Most people use a constant bitrate for their DVDs since they dont want to spend the extra time on the multiple passes that a variable bit rate requires.

TVs are very low resolution compared to a computer monitor.

What kind of problems are you seeing? What looks bad about them?

[John]

The high resolution isn't the problem that I'm having with my ENORMOUS files. It's the conversion to lower resolution that really bugs me.

My movies look perfectly fine on the TV after burning DVD's, but getting to something that looks like something on a computer monitor has not happened for me yet.

How do they fit full length movies onto DVD's? I can only fit about an hour.

For my next test, I'm going to try capturing (tape to PC) at a lower resolution and see how that goes.

DVDs use a variable bit rate. Most people use a constant bitrate for their DVDs since they dont want to spend the extra time on the multiple passes that a variable bit rate requires.

TVs are very low resolution compared to a computer monitor.

What kind of problems are you seeing? What looks bad about them?

I simply can not match the quality of similar videos that can be found at places like youtube. I can't seem to even get the quality found in the video turboman posted a link for. My source files are fine, but when I try to reduce the resolution, they either stay HUGE file sizes or they are really really unpresentable (pixelated, grainy, and full of hieroglyphics.)