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LA to Oregon at Mach 9
Kallahar writes "Last April I hooked up a video camera to my front bumper and drove from Los Angeles to Oregon. The video is finally done; it's sped up 95x which makes the trip a mere 6 minutes long. To do the recording I hooked up a VCR inside the car and recorded in real time, then captured the entire thing to the hard drive and changed the framerate of the avi. The camera and VCR only cost about $50 total, which makes for a fairly affordable hobby/art project."
I'd like to see someone do this with a more interesting route (yes, I'm a Portlander). This would be cool for, say, Route 66 - and possibly at 1/50th (or a selection of several speeds/frame rates).
:)
Anyway, it's a pretty cool video and actually something I'd thought about years ago. Glad to see someone else had the same idea.
is there any performance hit or other reason why you wouldn't record straight to (RAM then) hard disk?
Power for one. An affordable digital video hard disk recording solution may consume more power than a VCR. Remember, at a minnimum you'd have to power a disk, a video encoder and a backplane (unless both the hd and video controllers are integrated I suppose). A professional solution would cost more than a VCR. A homebrew system is possible, but also has drawbacks. It's probably more cumbersome and complicated. VCR's require very little time to get from an unpowered state to an actively recording state since digital solutions may require a booting period. A VCR has standard and easy interface. The homebrew interface may be rougher.
Americans drive left-hand drive cars and drive on the right hand side of the road. I had to take travel sickness tablets after watching that.
Having never been to America, I now have an insight to what the scenery from LA to Oregon is like.
The roads are a lot wider? Is that because the US has bigger cars?
I think I shall drive from Sydney to the Gold Coast in Brisbane and do the same thing to compare and contrast with that video. Although I doubt the scenery would be as interesting as the route follows the coastline.
.. are those flicks where somebody put up a camera to follow the building of a house, and then speeded the result it up by 200x or similar. That really cool to see a house 'grow' :)
If anyone remembers urls to these flicks, post 'em in, I can't remember anymore..
-el
I didn't study it as closely as you did, but I've seen more of these time-lapse driving things, and it ALWAYS looks like the driver is a speeding maniac, brakes too late, makes erratic turns etc.
I think it's the same effect you get when driving as a passenger: when you cannot control the vehicle, a distance you would judge as safe when driving yourself, suddenly seems a bit close.
Add the (seemingly) extreme decelleration (sp?) and erratic steering, and it looks a lot more extreme than it really is.
You make a good point about safety though. Anyway, it seems to be human nature to respond to people pushing from behind by slowing down.
What I usually do, is use the turn signal to indicate I want to pass, and if that doesn't work, a brief flash of the headlights usually does the trick. There is a difference in road behaviour in different countries though: In Germany, this works great, in France or The Netherlands, not as good. Germans are used to people passing at 190km/h.
Of course, our situation in Europe is a bit worse, because it's illegal to overtake on the right.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
There's something really cool about driving at 160kmh, seeing a highway patrol car and freaking out that you are busted until he overtakes you at 180kmh and waves...
The bad news is that if you are a long way from somewhere when your car overheats and breaks down, you will probably die.
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In Virginia, failure to yield the passing lane, regardless of speed, is illegal. Unfortunately, it's not enforced as often as it should be.
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