Things to do on a lazy afternoon: Work? Nah. Clean? Nah. Strap a camera to a remote control car and shoot some video? Sure!

Now that I have a real video camera, I feel less protective of my other one. So much, that I decided to duct tape it to my remote control hummer and drive it around the yard. I set up the XL2 as a stationary camera and shot some supporting video too so you can get an idea of what’s going on. It’s not a very fancy vehicle, but it’s electric with two gear settings (power or speed). So I tried drive around the grass and garden a bit in power mode, then hit the sidewalks for some speed.

This video also makes a case against shooting to tape. Every time the car hit bumps there were DV tape dropouts, so I actually had to make quite an effort to sync up the two videos in post. This was mostly accomplished by synchronizing the audio from both sources. I mixed the two audio sources together, and I kind of like the effect. You get to hear the audio from both the stationary mic, and the on-board mic. This means you get good presence, but you also get to hear the Doppler effect when the car buzzes the stationary camera. I also had a bear of a time getting the video converted, rendered and uploaded. I never recall having had so many difficulties with codecs and compression. Nothing seemed to want to work correctly. Alas, gone are the days where I was blissfully unaware of what all the settings should be. And after all that, the pixel aspect ratio got mucked up somehow. Anyway, it’s not too bad. But geez, I could really use a much better tripod.

I found this to be a pretty good way to attract the attention of neighbourhood kids and dogs. As with all my R/C experiences, this video ends in tragedy.

Next time: R/C helicopter!