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Looking for 6 cameras to record all day training sessions

ctwo

Merely Rhetorical
Joined
Feb 5, 2015
Location
auf der motobahn
Moto(s)
motato
Name
Heyou
My boss suggested buying GoPros but the mic situation seems to be a hassle - he wants external mics and I just don't see a good wireless solution. Hero13 power bundle was going down until I saw the USB-3.5mm mic adapter is $70.

I also looked at the DJI Osmo Action 6

I got burned out researching cameras
 
My hero 10 or 11 or whatever shows that the audio is pretty good. Why the external mic?
 
Training sessions being held here?

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It's going to be a tabletop with equipment as the focus, so the camera will be behind the trainees and they will be looking at computer monitors. There will be fan noise and misc room noises going on
 
DJI wireless mics are prolific on YouTube content these days. Rode wireless mics are prob the second most popular.

Action cams seem like a waste for indoor stationary content. Can you use webcams?
 
Budman comes to mind for some guidance here.
I seem to recall his bike, as well as others, bristling with GoPros for his now legendary cinematic event.
Not sure how it came out.
I don't own a tuxedo so I was obviously never invited to the premiere.
 
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Using GoPros/Action cameras indoors, stationary, for any length of time will get too hot and shut down. On your bike, no problem. What is the longest run time you expect to use them for?
 
Having trouble visualizing the setup. There will be a table with some hardware on it and three technicians testing the equipment. That will be repeated for a total of 6 demo stations. I'd have to connect each camera to a computer and we want to record the equipment and how it's being used. I guess I could use OBS to record but it seems complicated and the USB tether will just be in the way.
 
Tech YouTubers may do something similar, just with a single station usually. The good ones tend to have 3 cameras - overhead, off angle, and straight on. Like this:


They use big cameras that record to a card and a shotgun mic mounted overhead. Then they ingest and edit. The Sony ZV-E10 with a dummy-battery AC adapter might be a good option for going this route.
 
I'm guessin' the shoe box sized 8mm camera I have zip tied to my handlebars is lookin' more and more antiquated by the day.
 
Webcams are going to require a computer to capture the video to. This can be done using a tool like VLC but it's going to take someone with a clue on how to plumb cameras into VLC instances and set up scripts to trigger video capture and the like.

It's going to be _much_ easier if you do this in the following fashion:
Buy ten identical action cameras. Brand doesn't matter as long as they don't get too hot during operation, if the LED screen turns off, etc. but I've done this with GoPro Hero 5s in a past life- you need a camera which can be operated (capture video and be mounted to the tripod) while it's plugged in. Get ten long USB charging cables and wall plugs, etc. Get ten tripods or other mounts for them (magnets, clamps, whatever fits for your deployment application.) Get twenty flash chips, two for each system, of a capacity where each can hold eight or more hours of video. Get two large external hard drives, connect them to the computer you'll be using, set them up to mirror each other (e.g. anything written to one is replicated to the second.) During the morning session, you'll have the cameras recording on the first set of flash drives, while you're pulling the recordings off the second set of flash drives from the prior afternoon's recordings. In the afternoon session, the cameras will have the second set of wiped drives back in them, and you'll pull the morning's recordings off the first set of drives.

Here's a little bash script you can use (on MacOS) to pull the files off of your drive and copy them to the external drives you'll want. You'll need to modify paths to match your setup. It concatenates all of the 12 minute GoPro videos into one large file in the process, and removes the originals at the end. You execute it with ./import_gopro.sh <value> where <value> is the camera number.

$ cat import_gopro.sh
#!/bin/bash

SUFFIX=`echo $1`
SRCDIR=`ls -d /Volumes/*|grep GOPRO`
DESTDIR="/Volumes/Dans_Personal_Drive/Ride_Videos"
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d`
SRCDIR=`ls -d $SRCDIR/DCIM/*GOPRO`

for file in `ls $SRCDIR/GOPR*.MP4`
do FILENAME=`echo $file|cut -f 6 -d \/|cut -f 1 -d .`
FNAME=`echo $FILENAME|cut -c 6-8`
echo "file '$file'" >> ${SRCDIR}/${FILENAME}.in
for file2 in `ls $SRCDIR/GP*${FNAME}.MP4`
do echo "file '$file2'" >> ${SRCDIR}/${FILENAME}.in
done
cat ${SRCDIR}/${FILENAME}.in
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i ${SRCDIR}/${FILENAME}.in -c copy ${DESTDIR}/${FILENAME}_${DATE}_all_${SUFFIX}.MP4
for file3 in `cat ${SRCDIR}/${FILENAME}.in|cut -f 2 -d \'`
do rm $file3
done
rm ${SRCDIR}/${FILENAME}.in
done

exit 0
 
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