High Speed Frame capture - have I gone mad?

[bobcat88]

Hi,

bit of an unusual problem.

I'm filming various sports actions which I need to analyse frame-by-frame. Each frame is then going to be digitally edited to remove extraneous detail and add effects, before being turned into a flash animation.

25fps is not fast enough and to get around this problem (without spending £++ on a high speed camera). I'm planning to use 3 basic mini-DV (PAL) camcorders fixed next to each other. Not ideal. But I'm hoping that between them they will gather the equivalent of 50 usuable frames per second.

Is this complete lunacy? Is there a better way of doing this?

One option I considered was to deinterlace the PAL video somehow to achieve 50 fps. Not sure if this is possible.

[lordsmurf]

Deinterlace loses detail and video info. Ugly mess.

2 cameras @ 25fps EQUALS 2 cameras @ 25fps
2 cameras @ 25fps DOES NOT EQUAL 1 camera @ 50fps

Better way? Better camera.

[jagabo]

You can perform a BOB deinterlace of interlaced PAL material. The tradeoff is spacial resolution for temporal resolution.

[tphaggerty]

Newer Cannon digital cameras (A610/A620/A700 and S3 IS) have a 60fps 320 x 240 mode designed for high speed action. Depending on what you are going to with the video, this might work. The "normal" video from these cameras is pretty good, close to camcorder quality and already in MP2 format. I haven't tried the high-speed mode yet.

You can get an A610 for under $200 I think.

[bobcat88]

many thanks for the replies guys.
For the record Deinterlacing worked surprisingly well but the only way to get clear still frames seems to be with a progressive scan camera. So far as finding an affordable high-frame rate vid cam - they don't actually exist, or do they? Actually, JVC made a couple of 100fps cams in the late nineties I'll have to seek one 2nd hand. The Canons sound interesting but I need to make hours of footage.

[edDV]

I don't understand your needs.

If you only look at standard PAL as single field Mini-DV 720x288 at 1/50 sec motion resolution is this not sufficient?

Anything more has compromise (mostly £+++).

[jagabo]

Google search:

http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/high_speed_video/camera_description.htm

http://www.visiblesolutions.com/

I wouldn't call them affordable though. VisibleSolutions Phantom series start around US$30,000.