From October 27 to 31 2004, BB and I attended a 40-hour advanced cadaver training course in Philippi, West Virginia. The class was taught by none other than Andy Rebmann. His co-instructors were Charm Gentry and Kathy Holbert. It was chilly and rainy nearly the entire time. But we had a good time. BB and I shared a room with Laura Totis and her Rottie Aron. We spent the days both in class and in the field running exercises such as mock crime scenes, building searches, buried aged sources, car searches and all sorts of different kinds of problems. I wore a deja view camwear 100 for the entire course. I patched together a movie of several clips to give you a feel of things. What I most lack in this movie are action clips of me working my dog. Or other dogs working, for that matter (we had little opportunity to observe since we were so busy working.) In five days, I only managed to capture one clip of us working. And that s what the review will address. But first, enjoy the film! On the positive side, the cam was very easy to use and had excellent audio and video quality. It s strengths are what dejaview advertises: you can serendipitously capture the past 30-second when you press the capture button. Also, the camera is very small and unobtrusive. I clipped it to the underside of my hat and ran a wire from the camera down my jacket to a box clipped to my belt.And the first person perspective with a hands-free mode of operation is extremely useful this kind of technology is here to stay. The fact that I have a wishlist of future features says a lot about how much I want this product to improve. But first, on to the negatives: The wire between the camera and capture box can cause problems if you are moving quickly or vigorously. You can see in the one clip where BB is dragging me to the lineup that the cable connection was tenuous; When you are immersed in an activity and not just an observer, it is extremely difficult to remember to hit the record button ; 30-seconds was not enough playback for the training activities that I was recording. I needed 2-3 minutes. The type of activity has bearing on how much video needs to be buffered. This should be selectable by the user; The tiny button on the video box gave no feedback about whether I had pressed it hard enough; What you see visually with your own eyes is at a higher level of detail than what the camera captures; the camera seems to be further away; Now for the wishlist: Digital zoom! Using my eyes, I was able to read the sign in the final shot in the clip above. You can t read it from the captured video. Continuous buffer. Okay this is a tall order, but how great it would be to be able to have a history of several hours or more! The ability to capture video now and also still shots; Voice annotations. It would be great to annotate or mark significant events using speech; Wireless connectivity between the camera and capture box; Time stamping and geocoding. The more metadata the better. ; I m sure I will find other uses for this cam, but for dog training it was much less effective than what I had hoped. Back to a good old digital video camera. Or maybe the viosport adventure cam! Listen to this post.
