The Camcorder Customization thread!

Joined: 08 Sep 2005 Posts: 5

Hi all. I've been lurking this forum since the CVS camcorder came out, and I just wanted to give you guys a classic Mac theme I put together. Six different screens that can be mixed for your choice of splash, logo and shutdown. The theme also includes camera formatted & tested Mac wav files: startup, quack (delete) and bip (shutdown). I've also included Corscarica's silent SOUND2, because every buttons should not beep.

The demo.gif is just that - download mac-classic-pack.zip to get the actual files.
mac-classic-pack.zip: (renamed because of file hosting)
http://www.thefilehoster.com/images/OXC87663.zip

Few bits to keep in mind: All the new sounds are longer/bigger than the originals. You have to delete the processed images to free up room first. Of course, these images and sounds might break your camcorder.

My sounds are a touch quieter than the camera's originals. If you think that's still too loud, it is easy to fix. Windows XP Sound Recorder produces perfect sound files for the camera. Load anything into in and convert to PCM 16KHz 16bit wav. (I haven't tried 8bit files.) Anyway, dump my sounds into Sound Recorder, hit 'decrease volume' half a dozen times, resave and upload.

Random notes:

I am running firmware 3.40 with PCB B2.

I used the overwrite-and-powerdown technique to upload. No zero byte files and no problems. Everything worked right on my first try.

I tried the special GIMP settings and couldn't get them to work. The image would display for about one frame and then the screen goes black. After the image timeout, the camera acted normally. Image Alchemy worked perfectly for images.

The screen artifacts horribly. I had to blow up my pixel art 3x to make it visible.

I successfully used 160x128, 160x120 and 120x90 jpegs. The camera doesn't seem to care what size images you use, which is good if space becomes tight. Pixel art is very clear at these smaller resolutions, but jpeg artifacts are also very visible.

I added a tripod mount. It's a 20x1/4 nut mounted nearly flush inside the battery compartment. It's tight, but looks good outside. Inside; the lower battery is pushed up a bit, and there is a 0.1 mm gap in the case.

Finally, I have you all beat for a ghetto cable. I made my own USB connector out of scrap PCB, electrical tape, and wire clippings. Smile

Joined: 10 Aug 2005 Posts: 59 Location: Glenwood, Maryland

Keenerd -- Could you post a closeup photo of your tripod mount? Thanks.

Joined: 08 Sep 2005 Posts: 5

Sure.

How I made the mount: The bottom of the nut was soldered onto a washer. The top of the nut was capped with a bit of scrap, to keep dirt out. A hexagon hole was filed in the base of the camera. The washer/nut assembly was glued in place with contact cement. It's pretty much unbreakable, since the solder joint bears all the stress. The washer makes the camera topple over easily, so I may shim it. Either that or use a mini tripod all the time.

Joined: 31 Aug 2005 Posts: 28

great job on the mount.

Joined: 13 Aug 2005 Posts: 49

keenerd wrote:

Hi all. I've been lurking this forum since the CVS camcorder came out, and I just wanted to give you guys a classic Mac theme I put together. Six different screens that can be mixed for your choice of splash, logo and shutdown. The theme also includes camera formatted & tested Mac wav files: startup, quack (delete) and bip (shutdown). I've also included Corscarica's silent SOUND2, because every buttons should not beep.

The demo.gif is just that - download mac-classic-pack.zip to get the actual files.
mac-classic-pack.zip: (renamed because of file hosting)
http://www.thefilehoster.com/images/OXC87663.zip

Few bits to keep in mind: All the new sounds are longer/bigger than the originals. You have to delete the processed images to free up room first. Of course, these images and sounds might break your camcorder.

My sounds are a touch quieter than the camera's originals. If you think that's still too loud, it is easy to fix. Windows XP Sound Recorder produces perfect sound files for the camera. Load anything into in and convert to PCM 16KHz 16bit wav. (I haven't tried 8bit files.) Anyway, dump my sounds into Sound Recorder, hit 'decrease volume' half a dozen times, resave and upload.

Random notes:

I am running firmware 3.40 with PCB B2.

I used the overwrite-and-powerdown technique to upload. No zero byte files and no problems. Everything worked right on my first try.

I tried the special GIMP settings and couldn't get them to work. The image would display for about one frame and then the screen goes black. After the image timeout, the camera acted normally. Image Alchemy worked perfectly for images.

The screen artifacts horribly. I had to blow up my pixel art 3x to make it visible.

I successfully used 160x128, 160x120 and 120x90 jpegs. The camera doesn't seem to care what size images you use, which is good if space becomes tight. Pixel art is very clear at these smaller resolutions, but jpeg artifacts are also very visible.

I added a tripod mount. It's a 20x1/4 nut mounted nearly flush inside the battery compartment. It's tight, but looks good outside. Inside; the lower battery is pushed up a bit, and there is a 0.1 mm gap in the case.

Finally, I have you all beat for a ghetto cable. I made my own USB connector out of scrap PCB, electrical tape, and wire clippings. Smile

it seems that the file is not available

Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 7:33 pm

anybody consider making some utility that'll let you replace the screens and sounds without the funkiness of the 0kb dummy files and the fried cameras that can result from that (I was a victim, my camera commited suicide from the abuse).

Joined: 08 Sep 2005 Posts: 5

Oops! Sorry. Here it is again, from more friendly hosting:
http://www.filefactory.com/get/f.php?f=a51def92a7bce78b8e310944

That should be up for at least a month. By then I'll have real hosting. I will edit my posts when that happens.

Joined: 02 Sep 2005 Posts: 9

I was just thinking, has anyone made any cool custom sounds? I know there isn't much room for stuff but you could still have some good ones.

Joined: 28 Aug 2005 Posts: 55

Quote:

What helps even more is deleting all 3 'processed' images

CAMPROCE.ZBM
PROCES~3.JPG
PROCES~3.ZBM

this frees up 93KB of disk space, and allows the images to fit on disk much more easily. Most upload failures are due to lack of disk space.

YES, even if the file is smaller than the original!
trust me, i thought i'd never get my splash screen back until i deleted those 3 unneeded file.

I must advise against this method. if for some reason you ever shoot all 20 minutes of your video the camera will die when it looks for the PROCES~3.JPG it has a little camera heart attack and then dies. If you wanted the space I would encourage you to replace these with 0byte files instead of totally deleting them.

Joined: 05 Aug 2005 Posts: 1541 Location: jacksonville, fl

indeed, whenever you scrap a file for space, you still want at least a dummy file so the cam won't burst into flames. just keep in mind that the cam will only tollerate having dummy files for JPG screens, a dummy wav file will lock the cam. i'm not sure about zbm files

Joined: 28 Aug 2005 Posts: 55

here is my shutdown screen I made

It was great while it lasted
As for my start up I just used the "hacking mad simple" by Maxwell Smart

Joined: 26 Aug 2005 Posts: 17

Screens for my camera to be .. Smile

SPLASH

LOGO

SHUTDOWN

I'm going to use it for a boyscout activity with the theme Jackass in the Bush Smile

Joined: 29 Jul 2005 Posts: 68 Location: new orleans

Joined: 08 Oct 2005 Posts: 13

i think i need some help!

background info:

got a cvs camcorder

did the vulcan pinch, it was 3.62 Sad

after a LOT of help from a friend(who showed me this whole thing in the first place) i got it working and thanks to the many discussions on this site we used the pin6&7 shortout in order to get it to give the reset key.

it works great!

i saw this thread so i made a picture with photoshop and saved it with the same filename and all, but i used pretty high quality jpeg compression so it was a pretty big file(thought that would be okay since there are currently no videos saved on it)

i at first just tried to upload it using ops 0.13 but that didn't work and it now shows a splash.jpg that is 0 bytes. it has trouble shutting down when any uploads or deletes take place, but eventually does shut down just fine and then starts up like nothing ever happened, except of course the startup splash screen doesn't happen, it goes straight to the second splash screen.

when i try to upload a SPLASH.JPG to the camera, even after deleting the old, it gives me the message "error writing file to camera" and then its back to a 0 byte file on refresh of the tree. what am i doing wrong?

sorry my post was so long:(

Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 11:48 am

Read the first post of the thread. You have to pass the image through ImageALchemy to be able to have it work

gr2 wrote:

i think i need some help!

background info:

got a cvs camcorder

did the vulcan pinch, it was 3.62 Sad

after a LOT of help from a friend(who showed me this whole thing in the first place) i got it working and thanks to the many discussions on this site we used the pin6&7 shortout in order to get it to give the reset key.

it works great!

i saw this thread so i made a picture with photoshop and saved it with the same filename and all, but i used pretty high quality jpeg compression so it was a pretty big file(thought that would be okay since there are currently no videos saved on it)

i at first just tried to upload it using ops 0.13 but that didn't work and it now shows a splash.jpg that is 0 bytes. it has trouble shutting down when any uploads or deletes take place, but eventually does shut down just fine and then starts up like nothing ever happened, except of course the startup splash screen doesn't happen, it goes straight to the second splash screen.

when i try to upload a SPLASH.JPG to the camera, even after deleting the old, it gives me the message "error writing file to camera" and then its back to a 0 byte file on refresh of the tree. what am i doing wrong?

sorry my post was so long:(

Joined: 08 Oct 2005 Posts: 13

reading comprehension>me

thanks, i'll definitely try that.

edit: Wow! that worked beautifully! thanks.

here are my skins now-

(my car)

(subtle difference)
last one uses a bad word, i apologize for the juvenille quality of it but i like a piece of equipement with attitute Laughing

http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/9543/shutdown0hw.jpg

anyway thank you very much Enigma! sorry, i'm bad at following directions. you guys are extremely smart and good at physical hacks, i'm not worthy! i'm not worthy!

Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 2:38 am

I feel stupid and realized this thread was here...this is what I've got.

Nothing special...the PSing on the first two might look bad, but when on the tiny screen you can't tell 8)

Joined: 05 Aug 2005 Posts: 1541 Location: jacksonville, fl

i love the pandavision screen ^.^

Joined: 06 Nov 2005 Posts: 1540

Here's mine.

Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 5

my house. taken from the front yard ... Laughing

Joined: 26 Nov 2005 Posts: 6 Location: Canton SD

are you sure that is from your front yard? If I remember right when I took a picture of your house I was on a friggin suspension bridge over a ravine!!! I have a studio block blown up on my living room wall to commemorate the hike up the hill.

Joined: 21 Jun 2005 Posts: 38

I first obtained these wonderful little cameras for use in rocketry-video projects. My first installation flew beautifully on e G-class motor, but I soon realized that anybody can loft a brick with the larger motors, so I bent my efforts towards making a camera payload as light as possible, to use as small an engine as possible. After a month of carful tinkering, here's what I have done;

Removed circuit board from case (no-brainer), mounted it into a short section of Estes BT-80 body tubing. Wired in external switches for Power and Record Start/Stop, and mounted those switches onto the body tube. Replaced the two AA batteries with a CR-2 Lithium battery, utilizing a custom battery holder (made from Estes BT-20 body tubing). Installed a USB-A port. Mounted nose cone and tubing coupler, making the entire unit a self-contained payload section.

Result? The payload section, ready to fly (angled mirror is not yet finished, but out-the-side footage ought to be good) is 3.7 ounces. That compares to 5.0 ounces for the camera as it comes out of the package from CVS. I believe I should be able to get some spectacular flights on an Estes D-12 motor, not to mention the possibility of staging the thing with D's. (You know how many D's you can buy for the price of a single G motor?)

As soon as I get some footage I'll post it on my Yahoo group.

Joined: 05 Aug 2005 Posts: 1541 Location: jacksonville, fl

i'd like to see some pics of that rig, it sounds like a slick mod

Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2006 7:08 pm

it looks like i can only use the screens you can download so carpespasm could you put the penguin ones up for download? it would be much appreciated, unless you have a way to get it to work...

UPDATE: i tried to put it thru IA and convert it and that just ended up scaring the $h!+ out of me. any suggestions? i got twist's to work of course.

Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 3:44 am

If you're not sure how to run stuff play with the shutdown image first, if it's a bad image the cam can still bootup fine, it just won't shutdown alright (take the batteries out).

Also: Don't try and rename the files after going through IA, send them in as shutdown.psd and let them come out as shutdown.jpeg (.jpg?).