Vivitar DVR 787HD: an inexpensive GoPro-like camera

With the success of Gopro, the market for mountable and wearable video camera is growing at a fast rate. The Vivitar DVR 787is a very capable camera while being one of the cheapest in the market.

The DVR 787 is a 5MP camera than can record HD video. It comes with a waterproof casing and accessories to mount the camera on a bike or an helmet. However, with a little imagination, you can put it pretty much anywhere to get amazing footage. Case in point: watch the video below I did to review the camera. I had a lot of fun finding new and innovative ways to get a funny angle (hint: The suction cup you use to hold your smartphone/GPS in your car will probably hold your camera. Mine did). My guinea pig children where very amused with my tests and they loved even more the video final edit. The Vivitar DVR 887HD is definitively a gizmo I will often use.

The 2-inches screen could have been a little bit brighter to see better what’s in it while in the sun, but I was still able to position the camera to get the exact angle I wanted. You can control some of the camera features with the touch-screen when the case is opened. You can however turn it on/off and start/end a video when it’s not.

The camera has three modes. You can use it a the normal video camera like you would expect, and you can use it to take still photos.

The third one will record everything until you shut it down, saving your footage in three minutes chunks. When your memory card is full, it will start to record over the oldest files. This mode is interesting when you mount the camera on your bike, motorcycle or car in a set-and-forget mode without worrying to run out of memory. If something worthy happens, you just have to stop recording to get the footage.

If you use a Mac, you might hit some speed bumps. The DVR 787 records movies in ".avi" , a file type that is not supported natively on a Mac and cannot be used in iMovie. I used a free app available on the Mac App Store: Free Video Converter. After a conversion to a ".mov", you are good to go!

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