CDRKING "Action Cam" or Bicycle DVR (Digital Video Recorder) [Model AT18]

I haven't been blogging reviews in awhile since I got busy with other things but since this is the rainy season and I still ride my motorcycle in the rain, I took it upon myself to do a review of the "Action Camera" by CDRKing which I use to record some of my road escapades in the sun and in the rain.

Now this products is the first of it's kind I ever had, owing to the fact that it's the cheapest in the market now of it's type [like GoPro and the like] and readily available. But I am familiar with video cameras and still camera's so I can at least gauge the quality of the output well enough [beside like who HASN'T seen a video they made through a camera phone nowadays].

When I bought the camera, I had already set my expectations VERY low (as it IS only 1,880 Pesos or roughly $42).  The box was rather bulky but it housed something I really didn't expect.

Yes, the 20 pesos was my change :D

It housed a multitude of stuff that didn't truly fit the camera and place I had at the time (I was too excited getting it set up on my motorcycle)

Yes its my dining table, sorry

Just look around the image for the captions on the parts. The mini USB cable is used for when you don't want to remove the memory card from the camera [or don't have a card reader], you won't normally need a driver on vista and onwards but for those using Windows XP, the mini installer CD has the drivers you need. As for the A/V cable, this allows you to showcase your video on any TV with an RCA plug. Just below is the image of some of the more pertinent parts you'll probably use more often as well as the "Action Camera" strap for the helmet.

The hand strap is pretty straight forward, you loop it through the helmet mount and strap it on your wrist, it's made of velcro backed by a bit of cloth so it wont chafe your wrist. The rubber helmet strap on the other hand was a bit of mystery since it doesn't look like it could cover the circumference of a helmet and it doesn't have a way to lock. Then I realized you don't really need to wrap around the whole helmet but instead, you loop one end on your helmet's chin strap and then loop the helmet mount in and then the other end goes through the other end of the helmet chin strap. The most versatile here is the suction cup mount, as it has the suction element that allows you to mount the camera even on your shiny smooth helmet, to your motorcycle gas tank or even the speedometer [but I wouldn't suggest that if you want to see your display or if on a car, you could stick it on your dash or windshield. The arm can flex forward and left to right so cover many mounting angles. There are a few not pictured elements like double sided tape and rubber inserts so you could mount the camera reliably.

Below is a picture of the camera mounted on the bike/motorcycle mount/clip. It needed a bit of padding so that it's more stable and would be less affected by vibration.

It's my motorcycle, Enya with the camera

As for the meat of the product, here are pictures of the camera.

Above is the camera back with battery compartment closed, opened and the front of the camera where you can see the lens inside a glass window embeded in a rubber depression. A labeled picture of the camera parts is below.

Now the camera itself has both rubber and plastic parts, the 'nozzle' that holds the lens is made of rubber as well as the buttons for controlling the camera. The body of the camera feels solid, as if it would survive mild drops. It also looks aerodynamic so that it would be less affected by wind (to avoid having your video view changing in mid shoot). The buttons on top are made of soft rubber that have audible and crisp clicks when used. The power button (most likely by design) does not respond to short singular pushes to activate, you'd need at least press and hold for at least 1 second to turn it on. The Start/Stop button on the other hand only requires one quick push to start or stop recording. The end of the camera is protected and sealed by a simple screwon/off plastic endcap which fits snuggly around a double o-ring seal.

Around the camera is the camera holder, it has no adjustments to it for tightness but it holds the camera firmly in place but if you need to adjust the rotation of the camera on your mount, you need to apply a bit of pressure and force rotate it. It seems removable from the body and it feels like there are rubber coverings underneath it to hold the whole thing tightly in place. So far it doesn't need readjusting on my motorcycle. The clip underneath is screwed on the holder so you can also adjust the way it faces or just to remove the whole thing entirely. It also has the tripod screw hole underneath it so that you can mount it on the suction mount. The other parts are pretty much self explanatory.

One thing you need to take note of, is that the battery compartment cover is made of relatively thin plastic. It doesn't seem brittle, but its best to be careful opening and closing the thing as its a slide to lock/unlock type of cover (you slide the cover down and pull towards you to open and reversed when closing. Another thing is that you would have to make sure the cover is flat when locked in place, sometimes the locks on the sides near the 'arms' near the body of the camera can be left a bit open (basically not locked in the right place).

 

Above is a video of me going home through stormy weather with a thumper of an engine. Everything was wet, except the camera, it happily shot the video without getting water in it.

Now spec wise, the camera isn't much. A small 1.3MP sensor is inside and I have no idea who made these sensors but there are two quality modes that affect video size and of course file space usage. At 720p (1280x720) like the video above, its pretty wide and also consumes a LOT of space. An 8 Gig card will be around the neighborhood of 1 hour. (you can see the available TIME on the LCD when you power it on, its a bit off and basically you can fit a bit more than what it shows) The other mode is VGA, which is squarish and uses less space, it will hold around 50-75% more in terms of time but you wont get as much detail when you blow it up through a large tv.

Image wise,  its pretty ok. It doesn't have that HD crispness of the more expensive models from GoPro nor the amount of detail available but it will perform well enough at 30 frames per second (the YouTube video has some compression and results in less detail as it was turned into an FLV(the original file without music was like 130mb after re-compression using a separate program which I'll mention in detail later and the YouTube video is like 35mb.) Color can be off a bit as the camera has a tendency to cool the image more, basically make it more blue (it you just need to change the hue 1 or two degrees towards warmth), color accuracy and saturation is generally spot on. 

 The camera suffers from ghosting as you can see from the above video (near middle to end) which can get worse depending on the angle where the light is coming from and the brightness. Ghosting btw is the effect where an image gets recorded as an upside down copy of the source of light that looks like a transparent ghost. This basically means the glass covering the lens isn't very transparent and tends to 'hold' the light on the glass instead of passing completely through, so it gets recorded on video, this is normally avoided with having good/expensive quality glass in between the subject and  the sensor (and is enhanced by lens coatings, which is why good camera lenses are more expensive). This normally happens only in dim to dark lighting as its not seen in morning videos. So just set your expectations with regards to this effect. Also the microphone on the camera is where the warranty sticker was placed, its pretty much ok, joint stereo quality, definitely nothing to write home about but something you need to take note of when placing/mounting the camera.


On a side note, though it wasn't mentioned, it seems the glass cover is water phobic to a degree as water is less likely to cling on the glass and totally ruin your video.


Now as for something I discovered, since (most likely) the camera isn't all that high tech or high end, it writes the video not as it goes (till the end)  but in max 5 minute intervals. This means that when you shoot a video, it will record up to 5 minutes, write the data then capture again. So its possible (but I haven't really noticed it) to see a tiny bit of a skip on videos once it reaches 5 minutes while it goes on to the next. It is also possible that this is a safety measure so that it can record the video successfully in increments instead of one large file where something may happen that may junk the whole shoot, like battery failure.


Given that it saves it in multiple files of 5 minutes, you may wonder how you are going to put them all together since there isnt any software included for editing or even splicing videos on the disk. Enter Freemake Video Converter. It allows you to convert almost any video type to another video type (for almost any platform from ipads to nokia phones) and edit the results a bit, from the size of the video, to buffers, stereo, mono and even cut scenes out. But the most important feature you would need for the CDRKing video camera is the join option, which allows you to join almost any number of video's together, output it in a certain format into just one file. This allows you to upload your video as one file to any video hosting site you choose. There is also another bonus to this, the compression on the AVI file recorded by the camera is a bit raw, by joining and converting it to AVI with the same parameters as the original for image size, buffer, frame rate etc, you get a smaller video file with the same quality as the original. Best of all, this handy thing is FREEWARE!


In conclusion, I believe this is the best bang for buck ride/action camera in the market right now. It's performance is acceptable to good and its weather sealed very well so you don't have to panic and hide when the rain comes suddenly down and it doesn't need any fancy enclosures before use. Lastly, build wise, you wont mind it falling as it will most likely survive the fall. The rubber hood in front of the camera also helps protect the camera from frontal falls.


Till next time, thanks for reading!