Evergreen's XviD video camera
posted July 28th 2005 9:40AM
If you for some reason have been holding off buying a video camera because there were none that record directly to
the XviD format, it looks like your wait is over.
Evergreen has released the "DN-DV320"
camera that features 640 x 480 (or 320 x 240) recording at 30 frames per second in the world's favorite open-source
MPEG-4 flavor: XviD. Better yet, it's all in a
fairly compact package for around 17,800 yen (about $158 USD). That seems awfully cheap, and probably for good reason;
it features an abysmal 16MB of internal storage, and can only take SD cards up to 512MB 1GB (thanks,
sodakar). Still, assuming you live in Japan and won't be far from a computer to offload your videos, this could turn
out to be a decent product for you early adopters.
16 mbs?!? WTF?! My only SD card is 1gb. I think they're out to get me.
Does that say 12 mega pixels on the bak of the LCD screen?
yeah, why would anyone release a piece of equipment that can only take SD cards at 1/8 of their current capacity. Seriously, can anyone explain this to me?
Er... 640x480, yet it says "12 MEGApixels" right there on the side, and "3.1 MEGAPIXELS" on the lens. What's wrong with this picture? This company needs to get its story straight.
maybe it means that the internal memory can only hold 12 mega pixels of data total
At 640x480/30fps, you can still store at least an hour of XviD video on a 512MB card. That's not so terrible for the price, really, especially if you can transfer videos to PC and burn them to a CD-R for play in your MPEG4-capable DVD player. This isn't something you'd use for high-end video, anyway.
But yeah, the 12-megapixel logo on the side is a little confusing.
Man...record direct to XviD? That's sweet...I'd buy this for $160 assuming they fix the SD card capacity thing (512MB? wha?!?).
It'll have a 3.1 Megapixel CCD, it'll use software-interpolation to get upto 12 Megapixel.
I thought the SD format had the controller on the card, which means that the camera reads and writes data through the controller and doesn't manage the volume directly.
I have ofen owned or tested equipment that took an SD card larger than what its documentation indicated. In fact, I have yet to come accross a device that wouldn't. That doesn't mean anything though.
Per the tech specs (in Japanese), it can take up to 1GB SD cards...
They also mention that they can increase the 3MP still to 4000x3000 via interpolation, thus making it (in their marketing mind) a 12MP image. Pretty funny.
Overall, it's a nicely priced digicamcorder if you want to take low/mid-quality video in a small package. You don't get optical zoom, no stereo sound, and the video is a wee bit choppier than similar products (Sanyo C5 comes to mind), but for 1/4~1/3 the price, I'd say this is a darn good buy.
Too bad there's no info about battery life...
More specs:
http://www.techjapan.com/Article1078.html
Sample photo:
http://www.rakuten.ne.jp/gold/donya/image/DN-DV310/PICT0006.JPG
Sample video:
http://www.rakuten.ne.jp/gold/donya/image/DN-DV310/PICT0012.AVI
I've corrected the article. Thanks for pointing that out, sodakar.
Apparently Impress Watch got it wrong too, which would explain a few things.
Apparently knock-off of this device are already for sale here, with similar numbers for only $116 US
Check it out... http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1490503&CatId=126
This looks a lot like the camcorder I'm currently hacking (click my link above). Except mine is a one-time-use (hopefully I'll make it many-times-use!). It's only $30 and comes with 128 MB built-in (non-expandable). It records in the same 320x240 XviD format. From analyzing the firmware, I see it has support for mass storage, too, but it obviously isn't enabled yet.
Maybe its 1.2 mega pixel and the "." is mixed with the underline...
sd cards come in up to 4 gig but with the 700 price tag you can just get a regular video camera
wait it also says 3.1 megapixels on the edge of the lense
huh wierd
oops forget the 4 gig thing i read it wrong