Long (3 hours plus) video with "action cams" - possible?

[MCR01]

Is this possible? Looking to record continuous hours of video (don't need 4K) from a airplane cockpit.
Limitations seem to be SD card size and battery power? An auxiliary battery pack would solve the power but can ANY "action cam" record this long?
Space is limited so DSLR sized kit is probably out; plus safely mounting such heavy kit is tricky.
Any suggestions, preferably low cost?
Thanks.

[Fordo]

You nailed it - big enough micro SD card and enough power, and away you go. Couple of caveats;

1) Quite a lot of mini cams will format the SD cards into 'fat32 format' - quite an old but robust disk format, but it has a 4gb file size limit. So the camera will start a new clip once the 4gb limit is reached. Usually not a problem on a long record, as you can just stitch them together in your editing software, and they'll be seamless again.

2) Test your hardware. Very cheap and very reliable don't often go together. I've worked on productions where we have multiple go pros running, and you can't guarantee every camera will behave perfectly. Buggy software, vibration (which can jolt the battery around inside), can have an adverse effect and may interrupt recording.

3) Don't just have external power - make sure you start with a full charged internal battery too, in the camera. That way if external power gets interrupted for any reason, the camera will keep recording.

Id still recommend gopros, as the firmware gets updated pretty regularly, so especially on the older ones, most of the software bugs are ironed out. Should be loads 2nd hand on eBay. And theres a tonne of accessories out there for them, which makes getting whatever you need to rig it up, fairly straight forward. You can run power via USB - so a big mobile recharger battery will do the job nicely. 'Anker' make some pretty decent ones - I tested a 3,000 mAh size one, and it ran a gopro for about 5 hours - one of the large 10,000 mAh ones would be ideal.
You may need to modify the go pro housing to run the power cable in - not all the housings are designed to have a power cable running in.

[MCR01]

Hi Fordo, Thanks for the advice. Do you know if older GoPro's will cope with 64G SD cards? If I'm not into 4K does it matter how fast the card is?
Looking at the net it seems cards can be a source of problems; have you a favourite make for use in GoPro?
Thanks again.

[Fordo]

MCR01 said:

Hi Fordo, Thanks for the advice. Do you know if older GoPro's will cope with 64G SD cards? If I'm not into 4K does it matter how fast the card is?
Looking at the net it seems cards can be a source of problems; have you a favourite make for use in GoPro?
Thanks again.

Best to go straight to the source for this info: https://gopro.com/help/articles/Block/microSD-Card...

SD cards can be problematic with video - they were never really designed for sustained data rates - some slow as they get full, which can therefore cause problems. I'd pick one off that list, as then you know they'll be no problem.

Looks like 64gb is only a problem on the original hero. Gopro 3 and 3+ can handle 64gb, but not 128gb.
Personally i tend to always use Sandisk extreme cards

[MCR01]

Thanks again; link interesting.

[JulianHJ]

I think my Drift 4K with the larger battery option and a 64GB card records at least 3 hours.

[peter tdci]

There's a channel on Youtube ('inflight Video') that does full flight window view videos of 3+ hours. He uses a GoPro and a power bank to supplement the internal battery. Not sure what resolution he records in or what size memory cards he uses though.