Veo SD 1.3MP Camera

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/336/C2215/' target='_blank'>http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/336/C2215/</a><br /><br /></div>"Veo today introduced a 1.3 megapixel camera designed to utilize Secure Digital (SD) card slots on Pocket PC devices. The Photo Traveler 130S is equipped with a true 1.3 megapixel sensor and standardized JPEG encoding, which allows users to easily transfer photos between devices or print 3"x5" photos directly from their handheld."<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/parekh-20031111-VeoPhotoSD.jpg" /><br /><br />Looks promising, and $99 isn't a bad price! I have a feeling that this is probably the same camera that <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17226 target=">HP is selling</a>, but I don't know if the HP version supports non-HP Pocket PCs.

[Jonathan1]

Something like this should have a slot for an SD card. 1.3MP takes up quite a bit of space.

[Kevin C. Tofel]

"Veo today introduced a 1.3 megapixel camera designed to utilize Secure Digital (SD) card slots on Pocket PC devices.

Just to clarify, this requires SDIO support, correct?

Thanks!
KCT

[Steven Cedrone]

Just to clarify, this requires SDIO support, correct?

Yes...

See the specifications here... (http://www.veoproducts.com/Traveler_130S/default.asp)

Steve

[Gerard]

Whoa, this thing is ugly. Still, it would seem Veo has been busy, getting a few things right where others have messed up. They mention no video save filetype though. I'm downloading the PDF, which would seem to be enormous, as after 5 minutes PIE shows only about 10% downloaded (dialup). Maybe it mentions the video type in there, but I'm not holding my breath.

The PC-side interface seems to be a huge part of their focus, so at a guess I'd think the video format is proprietary, needing PC conversion to make it something one can readily share with others. If so, that's a big mark against it. At least with mmVision's software for the HP it offers a PPC-based converter to PC-playable EXE files. That's not a great solution, but usable.

The focus ring is small, but at least a bit longer than usual for CF cameras past. Looks easy to make a lens shade to glue onto it, as I did with my HP CF camera. I used nylon rod stock for that, with my little lathe. Such a thing is a really big help when there's strong light sources just outside the picture, to avoid a lot of glare. Strange that none of these companies are sending a small plastic or rubber snap-on shade like this. It can also be a huge help in ease of focus, and to keep fingerprints off the lens surface.

The price is certainly attractive. I have the stinker CF camera from Pretec too, and though there is now CECam to use it a lot better, I just can't see spending another USD$40 on the thing. It cost me plenty already, and without a video component that price is just too steep. If the Veo can offer 1.3Mp for USD$99, with decent software to run it, it seems to me a far better idea to hold out and see if anyone likes this new thing.

It seems a bit of a mistake that they say one needs a Dell Axim X3 to run it. That's unlikely. Maybe that's the only PPC that Veo has to test on? Maybe they're looking for testers? Someone with some other SDI/O-enabled PPC should email them and see about a test unit, someone with good reporting skills. I don't have anything but this 3835 still, so count me out.

[Pat Logsdon]

My guess is that this thing is pretty similar to the CF camera. The CF camera can record video in plain vanilla .avi format using Veo's Photo Traveller software. I'd imagine that the SD version would be capable of the same thing, unless the SDIO bus can't handle the video...

[Gerard]

Hey Snack, that's cool to know! Can you tell us other stuff about this AVI capture? What I'd like to know is what sort of compression might be used, what level. With the AVI saved by the FlyCam, I think it's totally uncompressed, meaning that only a minute or less can be grabbed and the files are really, really large, like those saved by digital still cameras.

The video shot by mmVision/HP CF cameras is saved in MMV format. This is converted on the PC player they supply into AVI in a few seconds, and since the video on the PPC is extremely compressed, the resulting AVI files are about equally small. Typically, a fullscreen (240x320) full quality (there are 30 steps, '1' being best - resulting in about 3.8fps typically, lower qualities and resolutions making for better framerates) video with sound costs about 2.2MB/minute, in MMV and in the converted AVI. If I use a few of the tweaks and some compression available in TMPGEncoder, cleaning up the noise some and adjusting colour, I can have fullscreen MPG video at about half that rate, just over 1.1MB/minute.

That whole process is easy enough, though what I'd really like better is to cut out the middlemen, just go straight to MPG from the camera. MPG is just a version of MP3, or so I think it's been described. If NoteM can grab 128kbps audio as MP3, why not a similar overall bitrate for video capture to MPG with one of these cameras? It's a puzzler. Perhaps it's something to do with the legalities involved, with the MPEG group being kind of snotty of late. But Alexander got around their rules by staying to only 3 bitrate options, avoiding the license purchase by one of their rules which specifies exactly that limit. Surely 3 bitrate options for MPG saving would be similar, legally...

Anyway, can you say if the AVI Veo uses is like this, compressed a lot? Or is it hideously, impractically large?

[Jason Lee]

so the hardware is the same, and all the listed features are the same... Is the software the same? Or does the HP have custom, I only run on hp software that is actually better than the veo software so i am screwed if i ever sell my ipaq, or are they the same also?

[Pat Logsdon]

Hey Snack, that's cool to know! Can you tell us other stuff about this AVI capture? What I'd like to know is what sort of compression might be used, what level. With the AVI saved by the FlyCam, I think it's totally uncompressed, meaning that only a minute or less can be grabbed and the files are really, really large, like those saved by digital still cameras.
I'm not sure what kind of compression it uses, but I'll give you some hard numbers. :)

I just used my CF unit to record two movies, both 15 seconds, both 320x240, one with sound, one without. The video with sound came out to 1235k. The one without sound came out to 985k. To me, that sounds like not much compression at all, as a 1 minute movie would end up being about 4mb.

I can verify that it's not in any kind of proprietary format, as I was able to open it up and edit it in Windows Movie Maker without any problems. It converts to DivX just fine with VirtualDub, too. 8)

[Gerard]

Again, great information. Thanks a bunch for taking the time to offer those numbers. One more question; does the Veo software offer a direct-to-SD saving option? Have you tested this thoroughly as to whether the camera uses temp files, then moves them to SD on pressing Stop? (Okay, that's two, so shoot me.)

With my HP/mmVision combo, video is recorded as a couple of temporary files, one video one audio, in the device root directory. When I tap Stop, that's when the program couples these into one file and writes the new MMV file either to \My Documents or to the card. Obviously this limits total video size to available storage memory in the main device, making the claim by mmVision of "hour(s) of video with sound!" a bit absurd, unless one has had a PocketPCTechs memory upgrade to at least 128MB, and also shoots at the lowest resolution and lowest quality. I've tested that combo, though not the memory upgrade, and get a figure of about 35-40 minutes with 25MB available. The resulting video is useless, like looking at a postage stamp through a waterfall.

Actually, the figures you offer sound like there is a little bit of compression going on - I'd expect closer to 10MB/minute at 240x320. Maybe less, but not a lot less. So anyway, if this thing shoots such large video files, it'd be very handy to know if it can direct-save, in realtime, to an SD or CF card as the case may be. That way, a 256MB CF card in the other slot could mean half an hour of very nice quality fullscreen video; the first time that's been possible with an add-on PPC camera. What say you?

[Gerard]

Jason Lee; I am a bit puzzled by your question. The Veo page for this camera makes no mention of use with an HP PPC. I know that some are using the CF version with HP products, and I assume that there would be no reason not to use the Veo SD camera and software with any HP PPC which has an SDI/O slot... but no one has confirmed this yet, as the product was just announced. All we know for certain is that the site tells us only the Axim is supported, and only one model. What that means, in my opinion, is that the person who wrote the page didn't have much of a clue. Or I suppose it could mean that they are promoting it for use as an Axim accessory, for reasons only a marketing person could know. Or it could be the truth, which would be unfortunate.

[sponge]

Well, the PR graphic says fits into SD slot of any PocketPC or Smartphone (or thereabouts. No matter the wording, it infers more than the Dell)

[crazy0000]

In specifications under "Pocket pc:" it says dell axim that doesnt mean its only for dell? Does it?!

[Pat Logsdon]

Does the Veo software offer a direct-to-SD saving option?
Yes - you can save the END file to any location on the PPC, using a browse feature.

Have you tested this thoroughly as to whether the camera uses temp files, then moves them to SD on pressing Stop?
Yes, I'm fairly certain it uses temp files. I say that because the longer the movie, the longer it takes to actually save the file, so it's doing some kind of conversion/compression on the temp file.

(Okay, that's two, so shoot me.)
Naw...I'll let you live. THIS time. :twisted:

If this thing shoots such large video files, it'd be very handy to know if it can direct-save, in realtime, to an SD or CF card as the case may be. That way, a 256MB CF card in the other slot could mean half an hour of very nice quality fullscreen video; the first time that's been possible with an add-on PPC camera. What say you?
Hmmm. I kind of think that it's not possible with this camera, if it's using the same file save system as the CF version. The memory of the PPC seems to be the bottleneck - if it can only save a file as large as the available memory, we're still looking at pretty small file sizes. The program has even crashed on me a few times, which leads me to believe that the file size ate all of the available memory and didn't leave anything left for the conversion process.

Now if only we could designate the location of the TEMP file...

[Gerard]

Once more, thanks for offering such clear thoughts on the operation of the camera software. Seems about like all the cameras so far. No problem, I guess. Just have to make sure there's tons of main memory free before shooting videos, and learn early about what balance seems to offer optimum video length as well as crash-proof saves. I figure that since my next PPC is likely to have 128MB of main memory anyway, it's not so constrictive. Shooting 10 minutes of smooth video would be plenty, way more than enough for most family type stuff. Even with my old Casio, with a best case of around 45 seconds if I did everything just right, I managed to grab a bunch of great little videos of my niece's first 'sports day' things. Lots of laughter and three-legged race stuff can be crammed into a half minute of film.

I really wish this HP camera was getting me decent video. The clarity at any level above 5 is pretty decent, but the best framerate I've had is about 7fps. That's pretty choppy, especially when I was used to over 24 (often 30) per second with the Casio CF camera. In very low light, seriously dark, it dropped to less than 10fps, but in similar lighting and image dimensions with mmVision's software I'm getting only around 3 or 4fps.

What I'd really like to be able to do is make movies with these things. Not serious, but more like documentaries with voice-overs, edit them together and stuff. Veo seems to be enabling editing video clips together with their software on the PC, which is certainly cool. If they or someone else could enable that on a PPC I'd be totally thrilled. I just don't use a PC often.

As for that Axim X3 only thing, don't worry about it. I made too big a deal. It's very likely just a mistake. If the software and card don't work on any SDI/O enabled PPC 2002/2003 device I'll be surprised.

[cherring]

If it's got an sdio slot, I bet the hp camera will work. Nothing's impossible.

[Jason Lee]

oops.. hehehee guess my question was a bit unclear.
The hardware is the same except for the hp/veo logos. Is the software the same also except for maybe some hp branding?

I would imagine that the hp only works with hp pocket pcs and the veo will work with any pocket pc.

I wonder if the software is different which one will work better?
Will the hp software work and integrate better with my ipaq?

If they do the same thing which should i get?
The veo is $30 cheaper and will work with any ppc... sounds like a better deal to me unless there is something really cool about the software integration of the hp...

[Gerard]

cherring; nothing's impossible? What about Steve Martin's assertion, that people in Hollywood all use cocaine because "it's impossible to put a Cadillac up your nose"? I think there are just a few exceptions to your optimistic generalisation. ;) Of course, one could grind up a Caddy and snort it a bit at a time, but the results might not be very health-giving. I suspect one might die before getting more than a few pounds up there.

It is fairly obvious that the Veo and HP 1.3Mp SD cameras are of the same manufacture. Very unlikely that they could come out with identical shells, rotation feature, and 4x digital zoom (among other coincidences) by accident. Still, it is possible that HP has specified that the models they brand are different on the chip inside, made to work only with HP PPCs. I don't have any way of knowing unless HP tells us or some users test this to see. If in fact they are identical in every way, I'd favour the Veo as well. Cheaper, and likely to be software releases for at least a year, if my experience of slot cameras is any indication. With Casio, Pretec, and the mmVision company, post-release development seemed limited to a bit over a year, perhaps two years at most.

[chuck.kahn]

I love the swivel lens. You can point the lens backwards or forwards or straight up and still see what you're shooting on the screen.

The software/drivers for the 2003 Veo/HP swivel lens cameras were written for WM2002. Using them on a iPAQ 210 (with WM6) results in "a problem has occurred with device.exe" errors. (HP tech support's answer for this error was to replace my iPAQ 210. I hope they're right.)

Why hasn't there been another camera for Windows Mobile with a swivel lens? And what happened to www.Veo.com ?