Click picture above for video

To say that video has become ubiquitous in our daily lives would be an understatement. One only needs to see how far reaching YouTube, Hulu or LiveLeak have become and it’s clear that we as a society are being defined by motion pictures. Whether that means sharing video of Rocky who’s your pet 80 lb. German Shepherd chasing Bullwinkle (your tabby cat) around for hours on end or your child’s first baby steps, we love shooting and sharing video.

Those of us who want to combine our interest in both video production and motorcycles will need more than just the standard point-and-shoot camera. I for one easily fit into this category and while I won’t be the next James Cameron who makes a $2 billion film I still want to capture the action sequences I participate in none the less. This is where Drift’s X170 video camera comes in.

The X170 is ideal for extreme sports videos so if you not only ride but also ski/snowboard, mountain bike or attend track days more frequently than work then I guarantee you’ll be shooting video on a daily basis. Yes, it’s that addicting. Especially since the X170 is so easy to use but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, first a little background.

Drift’s action camera is quite compact for a video camera as its measurements are: 5.2” (L) x 1.9” (D) x 1.2” (W). With a weight of only 4.5 oz. this is one light camera and packs a lot into its chassis. It features a 170° wide angle lens (aptly named and able to rotate 300º), 1.5” color LCD screen, built-in microphone and speaker and is waterproof to 1.6 ft.

Having all of those attributes are certainly all well and good but a video camera should have (and be extremely good at) one purpose and one purpose only: shooting video. While the X170 will take still images at a 5 MP resolution (which is a nice benefit) the obvious question is "what does the video look like after it’s been taken?" Although the X170 doesn’t capture video in HD the video resolution is more than acceptable at 720 x 480 pixels at 30 fps and the format can be either 4:3 or 3:2 (selectable via its menu system). Video compression is AVI, MJPEG AVI or MOV. I used the standard AVI format and the raw video looked great. Even after scaling down the file size to upload to our YouTube channel the video still looked good. One thing to note: on Windows Vista an additional codec may be required to view the MOV files but on Win7 it’s not.

Capturing all that video (even compressed) takes up space which is why the X170 allows for the usage of external SD cards. It supports memory cards up to 16 GB and I used a generic 2GB card with no ill effects. I by no means filled up the card but if you’re going to string together some lengthy rides or a full day at the track then a large capacity SD card is the way to go. To put that in perspective a 4GB card should provide about 2 hours of footage, 8GB 4 hours and 16GB 8 hours depending upon which compression method you selected.

The best feature of the X170 is the ability to view what you’re going to record as opposed to hoping you got the shot only to find out when you D/L it to your computer you have 30 minutes of looking at your turn signal (if it was mounted on the side of your bike). The LCD screen takes all the guess work of what you’re going to record and the menu system to select all of the options is straightforward and easy to use. And by easy I do mean easy. The large icons depicting a video camera, still camera, gear and double arrow (firmware upgrade) couldn’t be simpler to understand.