CVS Disposable Camcorder Hacked

[BJ_M]

"We've been watching this on MAKE closely- and the king of the one-time digital camera hacks/analysis finally got his hands on a CVS Camcorder on Friday, the 24th via someone shipping him one FedEx. Within 18 hours, he had slurped the flash memory and has the unencrypted, XVID codec, 320x240, 30fps movies stored in the camera on his computer."


hmm - XViD? Isn't XviD LGPL or GPL ? do i smell a lawsuit here ? If they link with it at runtime they must provide the code not only for the version of XviD they used, but also for any parts of their application that link with XviD.



How it works and how to hack it

http://www.maushammer.com/systems/cvscamcorder/flash.html

This site might die with the amount of traffic it will get ..

more info http://camerahacks.10.forumer.com/viewforum.php?f=13



http://www.makezine.com/

[yoda313]

Hi,

Wait a minute!?!?!?!?!? XVID?????? It says DVD! How can they claim a dvd when its encoding in mpeg4????

Kevin

[BJ_M]

no one said dvd --

they send you a dvd when you take it in for proccessing

[BJ_M]

notice the resolution recodered is really quarter-VGA, not full VGA quality as advertised ...

whoops ... !

[yoda313]

no one said dvd --

they send you a dvd when you take it in for proccessing

Hi,

Well then I won't be expecting MPEG 2 at 6000kpbs with ac3 sound!

Boy too good to be true huh???

Kevin

[lordsmurf]

From what I've read so far, the DVDs you get back look like shit. Blocky, low res, noisy videos. VCD is better.

Waste of time.

EDIT: I just saw some of the clips off the hacked camera. Barf. It's about on par with videos shot with a still digital.

[thecoalman]

Waste of time.

Not really if you want to take some video that could possibly destroy the cam. The Divx clips posted on that site didn't look bad, worth it for $20.

[BJ_M]

cheap skydiving cam

[thecoalman]

I'd also imagine since there's no moving parts your less likely to have a screwed up video for something like mountain biking that was mentioned.

[lordsmurf]

I guess it's good for people that want to play.

You have to realize people that use cameras professionally or as serious hobbyists have insurance policies in case of "screw ups". I have still cameras that I take anywhere they are needed, I won't punish myself with a point-and-shoot because the conditions are "dangerous".

And then most amateurs are going to be totally turned off by the quality.

Just a few things to consider.

To all who use it, more power to you. Probably nice videos to share online (or on blogs) for any kind of stupid/dangerous stuff you'd like to show off. Strap it to something and have at it.

[celtic_druid]

Doesn't mean that it uses any XviD code, just the same FourCC.

[BJ_M]

it has been confirmed to be xvid indeed -- people been hacking the heck out of these things, but putting more memory in one has not been done yet --

[NightWing]

For the price is a nice hacking project. The site did not really have the exact how to.

Like his Dragon. Even printed one out!

Now if the encoder can do 640 x 480 and add more memory. Would be a nice non serious little camera.

[yoda313]

BUMP!

Hi,

I just saw a demo of the cam at a cvs. They had a dvd playing at the store. It's not too bad after all.

It had about an inch black border around the video so don't expect a full screen output from it. Also it did have noticeable macroblocking on it. It was noticeably low quality encoding.

But I'll admit the picture quality was better than my 4 year old sony digital still with mpeg movie mode (the crummiest sub vcd encoding). So if you just wanted to fool around with it its not bad for the price.

Kevin

[NightWing]

Its not bad. It seems to beat out the other SS Digital Video camcorder on lo light and FPS. Most only do about 7 to maybe 12. Even at 320x240. Its pretty chrunched but you get what you pay for.

Some of the shot from planes are scary!

Here is the whole thing. Its 30 dollars. Cheep. Ruged. Good for places where its too darn riskey to even use a 70 dollar one of these.

Even at some of the 70 dollar units cant compare to this thing.

If I can find an editor that will accept its flavor will post a shot or two.

[jimbucc]

I downloaded the files from one of these using the Saturn utilities. The files are XVid. I use Liquid Edition and could not import the AVI's. I used Cucusoft AVI converter to convert to 720x480 DVD MPEGs and imported them into my editor.

The quality is ok at best. Blocky with a lot of movement but when there is sufficient light the video doesn't really look that bad. I haven't viewed it on a TV yet but I assume it will be pretty bad.

But it is perfect for someone who doesn't care about video quality and just wants to have a camcorder around to take a quick video.