Helmet cams

[xud]

I am looking to buy a helmet cam for when I ride motocross/enduro. I am a bit baffled at the specs on such cams. I have looked at plenty on Ebay.
Most of them record at 30 frames/second at 640 X 480 resolution. Some shoot at 50 frames/second also at 640 X 480.
Finally, some shoot at 30 frames/second but at 720 X 480 resolution.

Basically I want to know which has the most effect on picture quality, the frame rate or the resolution.
Some of the videos on YouTube are of poor quality and I don't want mine to be like that.
Thanks in advance
Mike

[ChuckFickens]

Frame rate has little to do with quality, as long as it's over about 25 will be fine, 30 is generally considered the norm, the higher it is the more you could slow the video down if you wanted to and do slow motion effects.

The resolution should, in theory, be how much detail you can see in the picture, and therefore the quality, in practice the other things will effect it too, such as quality of the optics and sensitivity of the sensor.

[Hymie]

The resolution and frame-rate are two different things. The slower the frame rate, the more jerky the playback will appear (a bit like time-lapse photography, if you have a really slow frame-rate). Since you want to capture fast moving action, I would recommend you go for the faster frame-rate – but bear in mind that old fashioned cine film was shot at 24 frames per second.

As to whether the 720 versus 640 would get you a better picture; sometimes these differences can be swamped by the way the image is processed (compressed). Normally the more money you pay, the better the image.

[society]

I have this, it's a bit expensive but I have no regrets. The image quality on this is amazing despite of its tiny size. It includes helmet mount, car mount and Belt clip for any purpose you can think of. It is a great video cam; clear pictures with sound. It captures fast motion very well too. I took video of a dog chasing a laser spot around the room. The video came out really good. I can't think of any negatives. http://tinyurl.com/4uvjtgf