11-11-2003, 10:00 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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Veo SD 1.3MP Camera
"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."
Looks promising, and $99 isn't a bad price! I have a feeling that this is probably the same camera that HP is selling, but I don't know if the HP version supports non-HP Pocket PCs.
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11-11-2003, 10:34 PM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Mar 2002
Posts: 1,329
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Something like this should have a slot for an SD card. 1.3MP takes up quite a bit of space.
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11-11-2003, 10:42 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 366
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Re: Veo SD 1.3MP Camera
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Originally Posted by Janak Parekh
"Veo today introduced a 1.3 megapixel camera designed to utilize Secure Digital (SD) card slots on Pocket PC devices.
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Just to clarify, this requires SD IO support, correct?
Thanks!
KCT
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11-11-2003, 10:49 PM
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Moderator
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 6,878
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Re: Veo SD 1.3MP Camera
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Originally Posted by Kevin C. Tofel
Just to clarify, this requires SDIO support, correct?
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Yes...
See the specifications here...
Steve
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"My eyes are rolling back in my head so far I can see my grey matter bubbling and frothing from reading this thread....bleh." JD
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11-11-2003, 11:46 PM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 1,043
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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.
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Gerard Ivan Samija
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11-12-2003, 12:15 AM
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Magi
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 2,186
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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...
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11-12-2003, 12:45 AM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 1,043
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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?
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Gerard Ivan Samija
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11-12-2003, 12:48 AM
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Contributing Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,389
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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?
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11-12-2003, 01:16 AM
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Magi
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 2,186
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by 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.
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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)
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11-12-2003, 02:08 AM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 1,043
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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?
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Gerard Ivan Samija
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