# ukbloke's bike video channel



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

I thought I'd post a few of my bike videos. I've posted one in the Northern California forum previously, but it is probably more appropriate over here. The videos all have a telemetry overlay, including basic stats, power and a moving map. These are mostly trial runs, I'll be trying to get more interesting footage later.

The first one was a hill climb and then descent on Altamont Road in Los Altos Hills. I need to adjust the camera mount upwards so that there is more sky and less road in the picture!


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

*Highway 84 to Woodside*

This bike route was a descent on Highway 84 to Woodside. The speed is low because of the damp conditions.


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

*Central Expressway Time Trial Practice*

This was a training time-trial on Central Expressway in Sunnyvale, CA. It is in 2 parts corresponding roughly to the outbound and return legs. I suffered mightily on the return leg because of the headwind. I was way off my personal best.


----------



## willhs (Apr 10, 2009)

Lovin' the new stuff.


----------



## Mr. Versatile (Nov 24, 2005)

Very slick! I likee.


----------



## Tort (Nov 4, 2008)

You got it going on. Very entertaining and unique stuff you have. I like the addition on the Hwy 84 ride of brake, and nice touch with the color changing with the intensity of the braking.


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

Thanks for the comments! I think I have a pretty decent set of features in the overlay now. I do have a bunch of other stats that I keep track of, but I don't want to overload the viewer any more. The missing ingredient is really the footage. I need to improve my conditioning, get into some fast group rides over more interesting terrain, and have some better brighter weather. I think the end result will be pretty cool.


----------



## worst_shot_ever (Jul 27, 2009)

Looks like you need to raise the camera angle when you are assuming your TT position, but I like watching these regardless. Reminds me of when the weather in DC permitted riding a bike outdoors. Those were the days.


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

worst_shot_ever said:


> Looks like you need to raise the camera angle when you are assuming your TT position, but I like watching these regardless. Reminds me of when the weather in DC permitted riding a bike outdoors. Those were the days.


Yeah, you're right. I think it would be OK if I was using time trial bars, but I'm in the drops and getting lazy. It is a pain to adjust the camera mounting all the time so I'm trying to find one position that works well enough for all. I also have a habit of looking down at the PowerTap reading which is very hard to break.


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

Here's some more interesting footage. It is the Noon Ride in Portola Valley and Woodside, CA. The video segment is the return leg on Canada Road with the wind at our backs. I take a few turns at the sharp end, but when the hammer goes down the entire group comes by me, even though I'm still putting out 300-400W. I just manage to latch on the back, only for the hammer to do down again and then I'm dropped. Good times!


----------



## worst_shot_ever (Jul 27, 2009)

That's very cool. I like the group ride videos -- less boring, and the camera really captures the colors of the kit. Also, around 5:15 a guy in a Yahoo! kit passes you -- is that from the new team? Also interesting to see a couple riders sans helmet -- I rarely see that on group rides around here. Does the guy in the white kit around the 6 min mark ask "is that a camera"?


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

worst_shot_ever said:


> Also, around 5:15 a guy in a Yahoo! kit passes you -- is that from the new team? Also interesting to see a couple riders sans helmet -- I rarely see that on group rides around here. Does the guy in the white kit around the 6 min mark ask "is that a camera"?


Yeah, group rides and races are definitely more interesting for video footage. I'll have to take another look on the Yahoo! guy. It may be someone from the new team, but it might be someone from their new amateur club. The other guy does indeed ask if it is a camera, followed up by "does it have wi-fi"! I'm not sure why one would want wi-fi on a helmet camera. It's not like there's too many wi-fi hot-spots out there on the road. Unless he wants to relay video back to the team car ...


----------



## willhs (Apr 10, 2009)

Definitely another excellent video! I agree that the group rides are more interesting.


----------



## Tort (Nov 4, 2008)

Have you considered mounting the camera to your bike somewhere? Like on the bars or off the fork maybe? I know the height wouldn't be as good but it would get rid of you looking around or down at your readout. Just a suggestion to try once. I suppose a hard mount would show more road vibration though. Ignore me I am just thinking out loud.


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

Tort said:


> Have you considered mounting the camera to your bike somewhere? Like on the bars or off the fork maybe? I know the height wouldn't be as good but it would get rid of you looking around or down at your readout. Just a suggestion to try once. I suppose a hard mount would show more road vibration though. Ignore me I am just thinking out loud.


Indeed, and that is what I originally wanted to do.

So I tried it, and it was awful. Much much worse than I would have thought possible. I considered returning the camera and abandoning the project before I'd even started.

The problem is vibration and there is a lot more vibration going on in the front end of a road bike than I had previously realized. It is mostly road buzz from the texture of the road. I have a carbon bike, carbon steerer tube and tubeless tires but the vibration is still there. I tried various techniques for adding dampening and tightening it all down and nothing made any significant difference. Also there is a lot of rapid rider input to the handlebars, particularly when climbing and this becomes incredibly distracting when watching the video. It would literally make me feel nauseous in minutes. A frame mount would fix this but then you've got to find some way to mount to the frame and get a good view - which is difficult because the camera is very wide angle.

Finally, there is one fundamental limitation of these cheap helmet cameras that you have to watch out for. A "proper" camera would essentially take a snapshot of the whole image once every frame. But the cheap helmet cameras have a rolling shutter design that just scans the whole image progressively every frame. If the camera is jolted in a vertical direction the scan can pick up the same part of the image multiple times or miss it out altogether. This leads to a horrible "jelly-vision" effect which totally kills the video quality. You can try to take out some of these artifacts with video post-processing but that is hard work.

Some of these can be mitigated on a mountain bike because of the shock absorber. Mountain bikes will take some big hits and that's really an integral part of the footage.

It turns out that the human body is a fantastic shock absorber, so the helmet mount mostly solves these problems. I've improved my ability to hold my head still quite a bit over the last few weeks! But from time to time I've got to check for traffic or for riders or blow snot, and that's the down-side ...


----------



## willhs (Apr 10, 2009)

I think the head turns make it feel more organic and real... which obviously it is... but I think it works out well.


----------



## Tort (Nov 4, 2008)

During my ride today I noticed what you pointed out, the human body and neck in particular are excellent shock absorbers. I have noticed it as well on night rides when I have a headlamp on my helmet as opposed to my bars, or even worse my latest set-up with the lamp out on the nose of my aero bars which magnifies the road vibration and every bump.

Thanks for sharing your video with us, it's great stuff.


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

Here's another video with the Bike Telemetry Pro dashboard.

This video is a descent of Kings Mountain Road from Skyline to Woodside, CA. Find out more at http://www.biketelemetry.com and download a free DVD of the whole ride! The video was shot with a ContourHD helmet camera at 720p, and has a dashboard overlay using Bike Telemetry Pro software. This was part of a 120 mile ride where we checked out the route of stage 3 of the Tour of Calfornia 2010.


----------



## NTA (Apr 4, 2010)

I likee !!!:thumbsup:


----------



## tober1 (Feb 6, 2009)

That's a great video. How does the dashboard know when you're braking???


----------



## Henry Chinaski (Feb 3, 2004)

My old stomping grounds. Thanks for posting! You should do a video of descending Old La Honda!


----------



## ratpick (Jul 31, 2008)

Henry Chinaski said:


> My old stomping grounds. Thanks for posting! You should do a video of descending Old La Honda!


Not sure about that! It's considered poor etiquette to descend OLH; especially at speed. Capturing a head-on with climbing cyclists could make for good youtube, though 

I wish you'd done this a year ago, ukbloke.. I'd love a video of descending the front side of Monitor Pass - *that* was a blast! 

Calaveras would be another great road for video, even though it's not a huge descent - right from the wall (or perhaps from the top of Sierra Rd) to the Welch Creek Rd intersection... great winding road, lots of cyclists, can get some good speed up.

Descending W Alpine is kinda fun but you'd be overworking your jitter-elimination filters (I cracked a tooth on this descent


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

tober1 said:


> That's a great video. How does the dashboard know when you're braking???


That's part of the secret sauce


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

ratpick said:


> I wish you'd done this a year ago, ukbloke.. I'd love a video of descending the front side of Monitor Pass - *that* was a blast!


I guess we'll need to go back and do the Death Ride next year!

Page Mill Road is another awesome Bay Area descent. Even Highway 9 and East 84 have their moments. There is an interesting trade-off between helmet mount and bike mount for the camera. For fast descents on smooth road with sweeping corners and lots of lean, a bike mount should make for very exciting video.


----------



## Henry Chinaski (Feb 3, 2004)

ratpick said:


> Not sure about that! It's considered poor etiquette to descend OLH; especially at speed. Capturing a head-on with climbing cyclists could make for good youtube, though


Really? I guess it was less crowded when I was doing it in the 80s...


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

This is a head-to-head (or rather side-by-side) video comparison of two descents of Kings Mountain Road in Woodside. On the left we have a 2009 Tarmac Pro SL road bike with 700c 23mm tires at 100psi and 50-34 x 12-25 gearing. The bike has a PowerTap and an Edge 305. On the right we have 1999 Stumpjumper Pro hard-tail mountain bike with 26" 2.1" knobby tires at 30psi. There is no PowerTap, just the Edge 305 data. The gearing is 44-32-22 by 11-34. The overlays are generated by Bike Telemetry Pro. The road bike route was a pre-ride of the TOC 2010 Stage 3, while the MTB route was the MTB Tour De Peninsula. It was the same rider on both bikes, and the rider was pushing his limits on the descent.


----------



## ukbloke (Sep 1, 2007)

The entire climb of Tunitas Creek Road in 4 parts! 





















This is the climb of Tunitas Creek Road up to Skyline as featured in Stage 3 of the Tour of California 2010. This was part of a 120 mile ride where three riders checked out much of this stage.

Find out more at http://www.biketelemetry.com and download a free DVD of the whole ride! The video was shot with a ContourHD helmet camera at 720p, and has a dashboard overlay using Bike Telemetry Pro software.


----------



## Leopold Porkstacker (Jul 15, 2005)

Nice videos, eh!


----------



## Blue CheeseHead (Jul 14, 2008)

Wow! you guys have some guts. Having just returned from doing similar descents on Skaggs Creek Road up by Lake Sonoma with a Contour cam I can tell you the camera adjusts to the light and dark way faster than your eyes. Going from the bright sun to dark shade at 30-40 mph darn near made me soil my bibbs.

Your software is coming along nicely. Great job.


----------



## Leopold Porkstacker (Jul 15, 2005)

Blue CheeseHead said:


> Wow! you guys have some guts. Having just returned from doing similar descents on Skaggs Creek Road up by Lake Sonoma with a Contour cam I can tell you the camera adjusts to the light and dark way faster than your eyes. Going from the bright sun to dark shade at 30-40 mph darn near made me soil my bibbs.
> 
> Your software is coming along nicely. Great job.


I know of Skaggs Spring road, but is Skaggs Creek road near there anywhere?


----------

