i-KAM Video Eyewear and the Free Music Archive

I went to the Indiana State Fair last Friday. Visited lots of exhibits and ate lots of great food. I also wanted to shoot some test POV (point of view) video with the i-KAM XTREME video eyewear.

The i-KAM is a lower cost alternative to wearable video cameras. The video is actually quite good. Here are some specifications from the website:

Power Duration: 2.5-3 hours
Memory: Built in 4 GB, Max 8 GB, Supports Max 8 GB Micro SD card
Resolution: 736 x 480
Video Format: AVI
Audio: Mono
Camera: 3 megapixel pinhole CMOS camera
Recording Speed: 25 fps

Even though the audio is mono, it is still decent. Other wearable cameras will capture other people speaking just fine but when you speak, it’s really loud since your mouth is so close to the microphone. The i-KAM audio seems to be equalized to similar levels to other speakers when you speak.

I, however, almost never use the audio from wearable video cameras anyway. I use a wearable camera to capture POV video while engaged in some activity such as skateboarding, dangling from a zip line, riding amusement park thrill rides, and so on. Then I like to add background music to the video.

My first thrill ride choice for the Indiana State Fair Midway was a ride called “Speed.” According to the web page of the company that provided the ride, “the arm is just over 100 feet long with two sets of seats mounted at the end of each arm, back to back. Each four-seat assembly can swing 360 degrees. The arm rotates at up to 13 revolutions per minute, producing an acceleration of 3.5Gs on the riders!” Unfortunately I was the only one in line for the ride. The two very nice South African gentlemen who were operating the ride said it required two people to balance the ride and I couldn’t convince my wife to ride it with me. So I had to settle for, well, you’ll figure it out when you watch the video.

The background music for the video is “Head On” performed by a band called "mess." (see note below) from Moscow, Russia. The song was downloaded from the Free Music Archive. The Free Music Archive has free music you can download under the Creative Commons license to use in your videos, podcasts, and so on.