How do I make a video?
Discussion
Right chaps, I have a plan for a holiday.
This is going to be a pretty special trip; I've had the car (or parts of it) since I was 15. Now at 27, I've decided it's time to move on. One last (3 week) hoon, then she's going to be someone else's pride and joy. I've been thinking about a good way to record the trip for posterity, and crmcatee has given me an idea. I'd like to make a timelapse vid of the whole trip.
But I've never made a video in my life. Needless to say a camera will be required, but what else do I need to know?
Some quick sums: ballpark 3500km at say 70 km/hr, that's 50 hrs driving. Pic every 3 seconds is 1200 pictures an hour, or 60000 pictures overall. A jpeg is what, 3MB(??). 60000 * 3 = 1.8TB. Or does it not work like that? If it does, that's a buggery lot of data to wade through. Is this even remotely possible, or am I going to have to take a pretty good laptop with me and assemble my timelapses every night?
Also, what camera is good for this? How much is the price going to make me weep? Are they available for hire?
And say I want to record a bit of road in real time, how hard is it to swap over from time-lapse? And how do I get a good recording of my exhaust note to overlay?
As you can see I'm pretty clueless about all this, and have not very long to learn all about it (I'm leaving on 22 May). Help me!!
PS. Video editing on Linux. Is it even worth trying, or should I just admit defeat and use brother's iMac?
This is going to be a pretty special trip; I've had the car (or parts of it) since I was 15. Now at 27, I've decided it's time to move on. One last (3 week) hoon, then she's going to be someone else's pride and joy. I've been thinking about a good way to record the trip for posterity, and crmcatee has given me an idea. I'd like to make a timelapse vid of the whole trip.
But I've never made a video in my life. Needless to say a camera will be required, but what else do I need to know?
Some quick sums: ballpark 3500km at say 70 km/hr, that's 50 hrs driving. Pic every 3 seconds is 1200 pictures an hour, or 60000 pictures overall. A jpeg is what, 3MB(??). 60000 * 3 = 1.8TB. Or does it not work like that? If it does, that's a buggery lot of data to wade through. Is this even remotely possible, or am I going to have to take a pretty good laptop with me and assemble my timelapses every night?
Also, what camera is good for this? How much is the price going to make me weep? Are they available for hire?
And say I want to record a bit of road in real time, how hard is it to swap over from time-lapse? And how do I get a good recording of my exhaust note to overlay?
As you can see I'm pretty clueless about all this, and have not very long to learn all about it (I'm leaving on 22 May). Help me!!
PS. Video editing on Linux. Is it even worth trying, or should I just admit defeat and use brother's iMac?
A Go Pro would do the job, for both timelapse and video recording. It has the facility to connect an external mic via a 3.5mm jack as well.. You're only issue is the amount of storage required, you either need a HUGE number of SDHC cards, or to carry substantial storage with you (and a laptop to transfer from memory card to the aforementioned storage)..
What do you want the video to look like when it's finished?
At least have an idea of final running time and content, don't just hose away meaninglessly for hours as it will just give you stupid amounts of footage you can't edit. Nobody will sit and watch an hour of wobbly road.
Shoot with editing in mind; ie take shots of reasonable length with beginning, middle and end. This also saves wading through hours of crap at edit time.
That's for starters anyway; good luck!
At least have an idea of final running time and content, don't just hose away meaninglessly for hours as it will just give you stupid amounts of footage you can't edit. Nobody will sit and watch an hour of wobbly road.
Shoot with editing in mind; ie take shots of reasonable length with beginning, middle and end. This also saves wading through hours of crap at edit time.
That's for starters anyway; good luck!
I'll second the GoPro reccomendation, but also take a stills camera and if you've got another video camera take that too. Now the GoPro HD2 is out you can get the older one for about £150
Have a bit of a plan in mind before you start, some intro sequences of the car and the route, specific landmarks you want to incude etc. As said above nobody wants to watch hours of driving along a road, so I tend to try and split it up with a bit of road and then some stills or video from a stop.
My GoPro will shoot in 1080p but I find 720p is fine and helps keep the file size down, at 720p 25fps it's recording 3.6BG/hour in video, but it can also do the stills at fixed intervals idea you mentioned in your first post, so as said take a laptop and plenty of storage space to shift files around, on a 2 week trip round Europe I took over 40GB of video. Battery life is about 2 hours, if you're using it inside the car you could get a second case with an open side to attach a charger.
I'm no expert but I'e been having a go at doing exactly this kind of thing on my last few trips, feel free to have a look through my Youtube channel if it might give you any idea, and I'm always keen to hear others ideas. My "Carpe Fettle Day" video was shot taking a still ever 5 seconds and then stitching them all together afterwards. One thing I've learned from the videos thread on here is I need to experiment with more camera mounting poisitions, and I think that ties in planning the shots you want in advance.
Have a bit of a plan in mind before you start, some intro sequences of the car and the route, specific landmarks you want to incude etc. As said above nobody wants to watch hours of driving along a road, so I tend to try and split it up with a bit of road and then some stills or video from a stop.
My GoPro will shoot in 1080p but I find 720p is fine and helps keep the file size down, at 720p 25fps it's recording 3.6BG/hour in video, but it can also do the stills at fixed intervals idea you mentioned in your first post, so as said take a laptop and plenty of storage space to shift files around, on a 2 week trip round Europe I took over 40GB of video. Battery life is about 2 hours, if you're using it inside the car you could get a second case with an open side to attach a charger.
I'm no expert but I'e been having a go at doing exactly this kind of thing on my last few trips, feel free to have a look through my Youtube channel if it might give you any idea, and I'm always keen to hear others ideas. My "Carpe Fettle Day" video was shot taking a still ever 5 seconds and then stitching them all together afterwards. One thing I've learned from the videos thread on here is I need to experiment with more camera mounting poisitions, and I think that ties in planning the shots you want in advance.
Edited by RizzoTheRat on Monday 30th April 11:15
If it was me I would use one of these http://www.dogcamsport.co.uk/POV.HD.html
It won't do Time-Lapse but its a more usable system for what you are trying to achieve in imo.
To give you a heads up these things on the highest setting will burn through about 32GB every four hours and they take 32GB cards (about the same for the GoPro) or you can lower the resolution and the bit rate if you wish.
You could down load them every night on to a portable hard drive using your laptop, which would probably take a 20 mins to transfer across.
A few of the benefits with the Vio are you can tag video with the remote so you won't have to look through hours of footage for the bits you want.
It has an external mic input like the GoPro but you can change the volume/gain if needed (which I do for my cars).
It also has a screen built in so you know what you're shooting and a speaker so you can also listen/watch bits back if needed (I never have)
And the big one for a car trip like yours it can run off the power from the car so no changing batteries every 2 hours.
The one thing I would say whatever you go for practice setting it up using the mounts and practice and practice again you will only get one chance.
Also set up an alarm on your phone to remind you the card could be running out.
I don't know where you are in the country but if you're in surrey or close I have both the GoPro 2 and the VIO POV HD here and your more than welcome to try both and see which one you like the best.
It won't do Time-Lapse but its a more usable system for what you are trying to achieve in imo.
To give you a heads up these things on the highest setting will burn through about 32GB every four hours and they take 32GB cards (about the same for the GoPro) or you can lower the resolution and the bit rate if you wish.
You could down load them every night on to a portable hard drive using your laptop, which would probably take a 20 mins to transfer across.
A few of the benefits with the Vio are you can tag video with the remote so you won't have to look through hours of footage for the bits you want.
It has an external mic input like the GoPro but you can change the volume/gain if needed (which I do for my cars).
It also has a screen built in so you know what you're shooting and a speaker so you can also listen/watch bits back if needed (I never have)
And the big one for a car trip like yours it can run off the power from the car so no changing batteries every 2 hours.
The one thing I would say whatever you go for practice setting it up using the mounts and practice and practice again you will only get one chance.
Also set up an alarm on your phone to remind you the card could be running out.
I don't know where you are in the country but if you're in surrey or close I have both the GoPro 2 and the VIO POV HD here and your more than welcome to try both and see which one you like the best.
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