Shadow RX300

[robbsonn]

I didn't have any trouble with my suction cup mount. It's really strong and I can even mount it to that shaded part on the top of my windshield, which is not the case with various other dash cam mounts. I remove my camera from the car every single time I leave my car for longer periods of time. Of course, like with everything else in life, you have to be gentle, otherwise you can break even carbon fiber parts

Little release mechanism is small and you have to be gentle, you can't expect to jump on it and to last forever. As I said, I've never had any trouble with it, plus I believe Niko made one video how simple is to make your own DIY magnet powered mount. Super easy to make, super easy to mount and dismount your camera. Even if your original mount breaks at one point, it's not the end of the world. I'd always rather have great camera with mount that's not the highest quality, than lousy camera with the best mount out there

As far as original footage goes, I believe Niko already posted RAW files. Well, they are not RAW, but they are original MOV files that came straight from camera. Search these forums, you'll find his post with numerous videos made with RX300.

Thanks for your opinion about this camera. I read Niko's review. I saw every topic about this camera at Dashcamtalk. I just want to make sure that I chose the right camera So that is why I wanted to see RAW files.

 

[niko]

STRANGE !.
So many posts here, I DO HAVE this and many other threads in my watch-and-notification list, but realizing that some of threads does not notify me, there for couldn't keep eye on this one here.
Will try to read all posts soon and replay as much as I can.

 

[niko]

Thanks for your opinion about this camera. I read Niko's review. I saw every topic about this camera at Dashcamtalk. I just want to make sure that I chose the right camera So that is why I wanted to see RAW files.

As far as original footage goes, I believe Niko already posted RAW files. Well, they are not RAW, but they are original MOV files that came straight from camera. Search these forums, you'll find his post with numerous videos made with RX300.

All mega.co.nz video files I share to download are RAW = Original / Untouched, as they were saved to memory card.

As I understand meaning of RAW files: Raw files are named so because they are not yet processed.

Or do I understand something wrong as you saying @ " Well, they are not RAW, but they are original MOV files that came straight from camera."

If so, please explain, because my technical English is not that great, but seeing this expression ( RAW files ) used by all other's here, I thought this is the definition of original / untouched video recording. Same definition give Google search.

P.S. - I am a little bit confused.

 

[niko]

Yes, when I mentioned higher capacity battery, I assumed it would give you little more time to record when outside the car. God forbid you're in some accident, and then you want to record couple of minutes of what's the damage on your car or something like that. I'm thinking higher capacity battery in your camera would give you peace of mind when it comes to thinking is it going to cut you off in a middle of recording.

At the end of the day, all these little cameras are super useful and I am sure they will sell like hot cakes. Funny thing is, every single time new model comes out, people tend to complain a lot about the new model. I found couple of posts when GT680W just came out. Some people who owned GT550W/WS had nothing good to say about GT680W, even going that far mentioning the worse recording quality, smaller bitrate etc... which of course wasn't true. Maybe buying their camera just to find out few weeks later, newer, smaller camera virtually same quality was released, left a bitter taste in their mouth. All these cameras are working great and they are super useful. Some of them look nicer than others, but in general they do their job well. Of course, we all would like we never need them. No one wants to be part of an accident, even when it's not your fault at all.

Regarding recording outside of the car ( if needed ), - we all have camera-phones these days as well as an option to use

 

[niko]

The only problem was a low quality GPS antenna(obtaining GPS lock), and people updating the firmware to unsupported versions for the camera they had(GPS vs non GPS).
Shadow updated the GPS antenna to Taiwanese 5ghz high quality and problem solved.
I agree people hate buying new cameras only to have a newer model release... But that's life and how everyone keeps getting paid, look at APPLE.. change small things and release a new phone every 6 months. Same phone.. But one difference and people line up for it!

There is alot of idea "borrowing" where these dash cams are manufactured.. If you don't stay ahead someone will borrow your idea/style etc and price you out of the market. I'm sure this is why they change so fast.

Keep us informed to your RX300,might carry a couple and see how it goes.

Agree @ comparison to "Apple idea" of marketing. Same as "Gilette" adding some very little extra design every half year naming product as "NEW" where actually for end usage not much difference, but thats how marketing works these days, there is nothing to do, just accept the reality.

 

[niko]

Tax free.....hahah , no freebies in Canada, government likes the money

Not only Canada. The main goal of ANY country "tax-man" is to b_nt you over and have you as many times as they can have. ( sorry 4 my maybe not nice expression, but thats the reality on stupid customs / vat / import and other non-sense duties ).

 

[niko]

Did you guys consider the rx300 non branded? Less money, but no GPS.

I am not sure if internally they are the same ?

 

[niko]

just wanted to know what the rule was, not much is going to slip by at $20 value, receiving a box weighing half a kilo never sends a sub $20 vibe either

it was just so I know what costs a local distributor had and was being compared to when people think about buying direct, for you guys it's a more even playing field, as I mentioned in Australia duties aren't payable on anything sub $1000 so a lot of stuff comes in direct as a result

Lucky Australians

 

[niko]

So, on another note... what is really the field of view angle on GT680W and RX300. I'm reading everywhere it says 140 degrees super wide angle, but many people are reporting it's actually 160 degree. Which information is true? I believe I watched couple of videos on YouTube, some comparison footages, and it really looked like little wider angle than in GT550W/WS which is 140 degrees. FoxOffer says both, RX300 and GT680W have 140 degrees only and they confirmed it with manufacturer. It's kind of confusing...

I have compared FOV of both in my review. Not much difference, only vertical FOV on gt680w is slightly bigger, for catching a falling metiorite

 

[niko]

Just looked at the park function.. Such a low frame rate, is it even worth having?
If you are trying to catch say car park hit and run.. Wouldn't it be jumpy and blurry with that frame rate?
I will stick with straight up motion detection or let her run while I'm in the store for the 30min-1hr.

Agree @ jumpy and blurry.

 

[niko]

No that's not how it works. Low frame rate won't give you blurry frames. That's what slow shutter speed does. Framerate is just what it says.. how many frames per second will be captured. Every single frame will be captured perfectly sharp. At the end, you can collect all those captured frames and make kind of a stop motion movie. It's still better than nothing

The thing is. Park function actually works in 30 fps, but we all wanted it to work at low frame rate. Because if I park my car outside on my driveway whole night and I want to keep monitoring who is possibly scratching my car, I don't want it to shot at full framerate. I want it to capture every other or even every 5th frame if possible. That's what low fps is made for. I believe RX300 normally captures 30fps in park mode, but to get it to work in low fps, you have to activate special low fps mode. Niko was talking about that in his extensive review too.

This is from Niko's post:


And just so more people can find how to activate this function, I will re-post Niko's part. I hope he doesn't mind.

I still will be adding a playback of this low fps. Its a little bit unconvenient. Didnt had time at moment of review, was going abroad for some time at that moment.

 

[niko]

OK, message taken. I am truly sorry, I got carried away. Thank you for reminding me. I will delete couple of posts just to clean it up a bit. My intention really wasn't to steal this thread.

Again, sincere apologies

EDIT: I erased 3 or 4 posts. It should look a little cleaner now. Thanks for reminding me. I really don't want other people to hate me over something like this, and certainly I don't want to annoy anyone. I was just little too worried about possibility of never getting my package

We probably all? still like kids, want to unwrap that Xmas present few days b4 Xmas eve

 

[niko]

Yeah, especially my van (Dodge Caravan 2004) does not turn off lighter plug when car turns off. So, I have to unplug it when leaving my car. The thing is, I'm not leaving my camera inside the car anyway, it's so easy to detach it and it's so small, I just don't want to risk broken windshield or something

One funny thing I've noticed this morning... I've seen Niko talking about firmware v2.2G. I have 2.3G installed in this camera and the option Screen Rotation has only 2 possible options; ON and OFF. What the hell happened to AUTO? It looks like they removed it in this new firmware, so there is only manual screen rotation available.

Does anyone know if there is a place where to check for newest and download firmware for RX300? Thanks in advance!

Need to bring this to @FoxOffer @billknow attention. They clearly specify this function on their web, so they should take care of people receive product with correct FW / functiond listed.

 

[niko]

I will, as soon as I catch some free time, I promise I will be posting some links. For now, all I can say I am super happy with how this camera performs. Image is super sharp, compression levels are not bad at all (usual bitrate is around 15Mbps). I'd only love if the field of view is little bit wider than 140 degrees, but they do most of these little cameras with that FOV, so I guess it's OK. I'm just acting spoiled because I used my GoPro Hero3 as my dashcam for so long, and that impressive 170 degrees angle is something I love. Sure it distorts the image a bit, but there is nothing that can't be fixed in post production... plus, we're not doing any cinematography work here, so if there is a little bit of fish eye, who cares.

My other little problem is that Screen Rotation function. In this new firmware 2.3G, it looks like they removed AUTO option, there is only ON and OFF. I am not sure if that's something they did in purpose (no way I could think of any good reason for doing that), or they simple screwed up something while compiling new firmware.

This is more of a global remark, rather than just RX300 user interface one. Couple of these cameras have almost same menus like for example GT680W - what bugs me is the thing that's not going to affect a lot of people, and it still bugs me (note: it's totally not a functional issue, but cosmetic one), is these ugly looking totally non-intuitive menus with the ugliest font ever. It's like the kitchiest of all the kitch shows out there. Icons are everywhere, no color consistency, when you're inside the menus you simply have no indication where you are. There are two settings pages for the Video shooting and two pages for the Photo shooting. It's very difficult to navigate and tell where you are at some certain points. Some color highlights or something just to tell you, you're inside that particular menu, would be very welcome.

I love that GPS screensaver, so if I set it to 1 minute, after one minute instead of LCD showing what's being recorded outside, it kicks into the GPS screensaver mode showing you speed at which you're driving, compass and Latitude and Longitude information. It's great, although I'd change that too. I'd make MPH or KMPH a lot bigger. That's the most important information inside that screensaver and that's what I love to see, especially in this digital format. Current one is OK, but it is beyond me why they did that compass so large. Who is ever looking at that? I have couple of mock-ups here, couple of possible designs for new UI... if someone from SeeZeus would be interested in these. My long time hobby (over 22 years now) and my profession is very closely related to graphic design, I've designed more than enough UIs (User Interfaces) for some quite well known programs and applications, one of them being avast! antivirus).

Here is those two screens that bugs me the most... GPS screensaver one:

The current one

Possible new look

Current UI look (not bad, but could be improved)

Possible clean new look with icons that actually make sense. Removed that not-welcome bling-bling, set of light bulbs along the edge of the screen. Also, sub-menus like Video Settings 1 and Video Settings 2 are clearly divided, and when you're inside the menu 1, it's highlighted so you know you're changing settings for that particular one. Of course, these icons in my example can be even more simplified, they could even be in just one color and still look good if they're done the way so they make some sense.

I know we're not spending a lot of time in these setting windows, but it would be nice if it could look more attractive, and be little more intuitive. Plus, it would help the company to look more professional and not like some kind of UI that gives impression of unfinished product. These little cameras are very powerful little tools, why not giving them a little facelift if possible?

Of course, there will always be people who'd hate to see any change, and that's OK. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, free land, freedom of speech I'd just thought I'd bring this up. Please don't hate me for that

Have a wonderful rest of the day everybody!

Talk to Seezeus, maybe tey will hire you as their UI designer

 

[quorthonrhar]

All mega.co.nz video files I share to download are RAW = Original / Untouched, as they were saved to memory card.

As I understand meaning of RAW files: Raw files are named so because they are not yet processed.

Or do I understand something wrong as you saying @ " Well, they are not RAW, but they are original MOV files that came straight from camera."

If so, please explain, because my technical English is not that great, but seeing this expression ( RAW files ) used by all other's here, I thought this is the definition of original / untouched video recording. Same definition give Google search.
...
...
...

Hi Niko,

True Raw files are something completely different. They contain information about every single possible setting one can set manually when shooting images, or for that matter, videos (still pretty rare). Photo files I shoot using my Canon 7D, when saved as JPEG, are usually around 5Mb, and if I took that same image as RAW, image ends up being around 20-25Mb. But, afterwards if you want to post-process that image in LightRoom or some other app that deals with RAW image format, you are free as a bird. There is nothing you can't do with RAW files. That's when it comes to photos. Videos would be a lot, lot bigger files, not very suitable for everyday, ordinary Joe editing... used in film industry. To learn more about RAW vs JPEG, go here please:
Video:
http://www.videomaker.com/videonews/2012/10/the-difference-between-raw-video-and-uncompressed-video

Photos:
http://digital-photography-school.com/raw-vs-jpeg

Example (The most famous, by far, Red Scarlet series):
http://www.red.com/products/scarlet

To sumarize... none of these little cameras can even dream about shooting raw. You can call them untouched source videos from camera. First attribute of RAW is that it's not compressed at all, but all these little videos, coming out of dash cams, are really compressed using H.264 codec for encoding. Bitrate, even though it might seem high as 15Mbps, trust me it's nothing... very lousy quality comparing to some DSLR cameras, and not to mention RED and others. I get 25.000 Mbps with my GoPro HERO3, and I get 56000 Mbps with my Canon 7D, and those files are still compressed and while look like ready for film industry, far from RAW.

Regards

 

[quorthonrhar]

Regarding recording outside of the car ( if needed ), - we all have camera-phones these days as well as an option to use

Well, apparently not "all". Many and most maybe. I still love my old crappy Nokia dumbphone. Ditched Android long time ago... Makes my life a lot easier. I am sure while I might be the rare one, there are still some other people who are somewhat like me.

 

[quorthonrhar]

Just wanted to add... Niko, you are one of the most valuable users and posters here in this forum. While I was watching it for quite some time before deciding to post my first post here, I've noticed your dedication and your effort you're putting into all this. I am sure others noticed it too. One great reviewer and looks like one wonderful human being and good friend.

While it may seem like nothing coming from a small person like myself, I wanted you to know there are many who appreciate your hard work.

Keep it up dude!
Regards

 

[quorthonrhar]

Need to bring this to @FoxOffer @billknow attention. They clearly specify this function on their web, so they should take care of people receive product with correct FW / functiond listed.

Yes, but no one is responding because of New Year vacation time I guess. Still, it wouldn't take more than one minute from someone to respond with both download links, for old as well as new firmware (2.2g and 2.3g). It could solve these problems for everybody with firmware v2.3g until they fix this and release new one.

This is what I see in my Image Rotation menu:

 

[quorthonrhar]

Talk to Seezeus, maybe tey will hire you as their UI designer

I'd gladly help them if they find themselves in need for new and refreshed UI for these little cameras.

 

[quorthonrhar]

Thanks for your opinion about this camera. I read Niko's review. I saw every topic about this camera at Dashcamtalk. I just want to make sure that I chose the right camera So that is why I wanted to see RAW files.

Hi. In one of my previous posts, I explained a bit about RAW files and how all these files that are coming straight from our cameras are not actually RAW files. RAW has completely different meaning in video encoding circles, first of them being non-compressed, high quality RAW video file... which none of these little cameras have ability, power or memory resources to deal with. True RAW files are huge, literally huge non-compressed files, and RX300 just like any other dash cam, sends out highly compressed H.264 files. H.264 is a compression, so that alone makes its files anything else but RAW. Even though quality is pretty high (15Mbps or 15.000 Kbps), that's nothing compared to some other cameras that still use compression, but at a lot higher bitrate, like for example my Canon 7D. Videos coming from that one are around 56Mbps, and that's still not RAW, it's compressed, but at a lot higher bitrate than these little dash cams. If you are interested how real RAW files look like, you should try searching for possible sample video downloads of RED camera RAW files. But, be ready to spend all your bandwidth, since those files can be rather large... and when I say large, I mean huge

Anyway, I understand what you need, I just wanted to explain a bit about true RAW video term versus wrongly characterized dash cam videos as being RAW videos. I know it's a long longer to write, but if we want to be precise and correct, we should call them High Quality Compressed, Straight From The Camera, Source Video Files.

I uploaded couple of source files, shorten them a bit so they are smaller for file transfer. I did not change anything inside these files, same compression, same bitrate, same names. Anyone can do that using Apple QuickTime, trim out the parts you don't need, and leave the portion of the video you want to keep. Click save and file is saved in less than 2 seconds. That alone means, there is no re-compression, no re-encoding of your video file, nothing. Same thing you can even do inside any advanced DSLR camera, you don't even have to go to your computer to do that. You trim the part you need, and save it. Exactly the same encoding and compression level as the original, no change other than trimming the video. You have to trust me on this one, among other related things, I do video editing/compositing for living, over last 20 years.

So, here is few links for you, pretty small in file size, since it's 15-40 seconds video clips at original encoding and compression, at original 15Mbps bitrate. I thought this length should be enough to see the quality of the video export, rather than uploading hundreds and hundreds of MBs with rather boring driving around. Some clips are with sunny weather, some taken during cloudy, so you can see how it looks like in different light conditions.

Edit: I just realized I had my date wrong all this time. I guess I still live in 2013, lol. Even though it doesn't change anything (quality of the video is still the same), I've changed it now to 2014.

1.) https://db.tt/MRRw9KK0
2.) https://db.tt/OVZreJCl
3.) https://db.tt/BxOPQJl6

Hope this helps a bit...