[OSM-talk] Video inputs to OpenStreetView

[simon at mungewell.org]

> Have you guys tried to take photos of signs with street names? You
> need a steady hand, and you aren't going to get a better results by
> using an video from a bike mounted cam.

This probably explains why the 'pros' use some expensive cameras... ;-)
http://damien.douxchamps.net/ieee1394/cameras/

Using a decent mount (ie. DIY steady cam ideas) and in-built image
stablization in the camera may help.

If you are attempting to record onto a PC (rather than just on the camera
itself) you could look into DV4Linux (http://dv4l.berlios.de/) and use a
firewire capable camcorder.

>From what I understand most HD camcorders don't have the firewire port
with live video stream, and the video stream is encoded as MPEG4 rather
than DV (basically MJPG) so there is more work to extract the image
afterwards.

For HD maybe you could grab just the I frames (which would be equivilant
to MJPG at a lower refresh rate)...

Cheers,
Mungewell.

PS. I did look into using a DSLR over USB, however it seems the limiting
factor is that the shutter would wear out pretty quickly.

There are some EOSes with a live preview modes (supported by the sensor)
but these are at a lowish resolution. See:
http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=7538524