Test flight with our new camcorder

For the past few years I've been watching videos on YouTube of people flying into different areas and capturing their adventures. I've been jealous and wanted to buy a camcorder to tape my own flights, but haven't been willing to spend the money. Michelle and I decided long ago that we would wait until we start our family before we buy a camcorder.

Here is a link to another pilot who posts his flights. This is his flight into Kernville, I figured I'd link this one since this it compares to the flight we just made.

Now that we have a girl on the way, we made the purchase. Granted she's not due until the end of February, but that's just too long to wait. It kind of goes along the lines of getting the new TV in time for the football season and the new camera in time for a long anticipated trip. The anticipated trip is to Panguitch, UT to visit my Uncle Errol and to fly over Lake Powell, the Grand Canyon, Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, and Las Vegas.

We decided that since we have a fancy new HD TV, we wanted to get a nice HD camcorder. We also want it to be digital since we will be posting both flights and videos of our daughter on the web for friends and family to see. The hassle of DV tapes eliminated that category, and since hard drives don't operate at altitude, those versions wouldn't work either. Hard drives rely on airflow between the disks so that the head "flies" between the platters. When the altitude goes up, the pressure goes down, and the head crashes and the disk fails.

This left us looking for a solid state HD camcorder. I also had 2 requirements for flying, an image stabilizer and a microphone input. All the HD camcorders come with image stabilization so that wasn't a problem, but finding one with external audio in was. Canon is really the only manufacturer supporting external audio anymore these days and we ended up with a Canon Vixia HF100.

My airplane just got out of maintenance so I was anxious to get back up and flying so a flight for lunch in Kernville to test the new camcorder setup was perfect. We also decided to take the dogs with us. They've each flown before, but this was the first time they both flew together and Michelle wasn't in back to calm them down.

The dogs did ok, but they both ended up being nervous at some point. Emmett was much worse off, but I think he'll get used to it. He's always not been a fan of bouncing around. When we drive up to trailheads to go hiking, he always lays down in the back of the Jeep, but he's never gotten sick.

The video turned out pretty good, but there are a few things I found that I want to change. I made a little stand the camcorder attaches to that has a sponge between as a shock absorber. I noticed that the sponge allowed the camera to shake more than if it was just attached firmly. The angle also didn't turn out too good, it was looking down too much and the dash takes almost 1/2 of the screen. This also causes issues since it tries to focus on the dash instead of outside. I also want to work on the audio a little. I have it tied into the co-pilot audio jack, but there seems to be a lot of noise in the audio.

I used a trial version of CyberLink PowerDirector to edit the video, but I think in the future, I'm going to try to use Microsoft Movie Maker so I don't have to pay for the software. I decided to shoot the trip in HD since I had more space on the card than the battery would last. The video was incredible when it was focusing on the terrain. After editing and down converting to HQ, the file was about 10 minutes and 652 Mb. Good thing YouTube just started allowing up to 1Gb uploads... It took about 1 hour to render the video on my PC and the clip is still trying to upload after almost an hour.

Tomorrow I'll be working on the attic since I spent all day playing...