Recording autocross runs

Looking for recommendations for a video camera to record autocross runs. The GoPro in its various forms seems to be the "standard answer", but I'm open to other options. The plan is to record primarily from a roll bar mount. Options for speed/GPS overlay would be a bonus, but not necessary.

BTW - might be time for a GRM article on this topic . . . hint, hint.

Are you breaking into my hard drive?

Actually working on this story right now. Scheduled for April GRM.

In the meantime just go buy a GoPro. You can get the damn things at Walmart now.

jg

There is the replay xd, but I think I remember from a year or so ago that it might not have recorded in as high a quality as the gopro.

On a similar note, this may be a silly question, but if one used a gopro to record hpde runs to review and get better, is the camera more useful inside the car recording the driver or outside recording the car on the track?

I use a CamOne Infinity. It has an accessory module that can tell you speed and G-forces too, but I don't have firsthand experience with it.

Gopro is certainly the easy button. A couple local guys have tried a few of the other competitors, but the video quality doesn't seem as nice as the GP.

I can't stand any GoPro videos especially autocross ones. Have they fixed the barrel distortion and other problems in the newer models?

I want:
1. normal human vision angle lens
2. optical image stabilization
3. 60p or higher
4. 1920x1080 or higher.

I'll take the 30p 640x480 output of my Canon S1 IS over any fun house version of reality labelled "HD".

There are Android/iOS apps that can connect to your car and a GPS transmitter and take video on the device with all that information.

totes mcgotes hon wrote: There is the replay xd, but I think I remember from a year or so ago that it might not have recorded in as high a quality as the gopro. On a similar note, this may be a silly question, but if one used a gopro to record hpde runs to review and get better, is the camera more useful inside the car recording the driver or outside recording the car on the track?

aim the camera correctly and you can get both … you'll see what your driver inputs look like (don't mount on the windshield) + you'll see the track and your lines around the course

rollbar or headrest mount should be able to get both

totes mcgotes hon wrote: On a similar note, this may be a silly question, but if one used a gopro to record hpde runs to review and get better, is the camera more useful inside the car recording the driver or outside recording the car on the track?

I stick mine on the rear quarter glass so you can see ahead of the car and what the driver's doing at the same time. I once tried a dual camera setup, wasn't much better and it was a lot more work.

cool, thanks guys.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=644637578901846&set=vb.100000668293262&type=2&theater

If that link works it's a pretty good idea of how much the GoPro can capture. This one is mounted on my rollbar.

pretty neat with the hand controls … my hat's off to you for not letting anything stop you from our sport

I'm considering the ReplayXD1080 for next autocross/trackday season. (hint hint santa) It doesn't have the funhouse mirror lens, you can get optional lenses and filters that screw on. I like the compact size. It always seemed strange to put a boxy camera on a race car. Aluminum body. optional waterproof case. I like the lens, body profile, mounting system and output. Just my 2 cents.

I noticed these in a recent Crutchfield ad:

http://pivothead.com/products/eyewear/recon/conceal

Seems perfect for autocross. Where you look = what you're recording, and since you should be looking ahead...

Easily moved to other platforms... or hell.. just recording what you're doing while working on a car... or anything... I can think of millions of uses...

Downside: I wear glasses... so if I want to use these I'll either need lasic or contacts.

J.G. - if you could add these to your article, it would be great to see them directly compared to other camera platforms.

In reply to Ian F: Interesting concept, but I need glasses 100% of the time while driving. Plus then I'd have irrefutable proof of how much I'm NOT looking ahead.

The Pivotheads are cool. I've played with them a bit for shooting. The upside is you see wherever your head is pointed. The downside is you'll realize very quickly how often your forehead and your eyes are aimed at different things.

You'll also realize what excellent motion stabilizers your eyes are. Everything shot with a head-mounted camera tends to look like a Bourne movie. If you were going to use a head cam a your primary camera I'd definitely recommend pairing it with some editing software with some motion compensation algorithms. Adobe's warp stabilizer is a good built in option for Premiere.

jg

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/12/10/jvc-adixxion-next-great-action-cam-hero/?intcmp=features

Haven't seen this before. Interesting.

freestyle wrote: I'm considering the ReplayXD1080 for next autocross/trackday season. (hint hint santa) It doesn't have the funhouse mirror lens, you can get optional lenses and filters that screw on. I like the compact size. It always seemed strange to put a boxy camera on a race car. Aluminum body. optional waterproof case. I like the lens, body profile, mounting system and output. Just my 2 cents.

If you want to find some more info into the real world use of the replay vs the go pro, search around the forums on pbnation.com. The xd has been rebranded by a paintball company called R7 and the gopro has also been used extensively by players for years. Paintball players are pretty vain, so I'm sure they've already put in a lot of effort into arguing over which one makes them look better.

If you guys don't want the fisheye effect, there are still other small action cameras available.

One is called the Mobius camera. It costs about $100 of eBay and shoots 1080p. Check out the Youtube channel Techmoan for a review on it.

I've used a GoPro HD Hero (the one before the Hero 2) pretty extensively and use it almost exclusively at the "narrow" FOV setting and 1080p, and it works brilliantly well for helmet cam footage when mountain biking and it spent a brief time clamped to the roll bar of my Miata during autocross runs and some backroads runs.

Here's an example of helmet cam footage I shot on the HD Hero this past October at Bryce Bike Park (that was me riding and doing the HORRIBLE 2-stroke impression, btw!) and here's an autocross run with the camera on the roll bar in the Miata, with the lens on the housing scratched from a fall the camera took a few months prior (suction cup mount + bare primer...)

I definitely like the camera and have been using it for over 3 years without any issues, and will continue to strap/stick/bolt it to whatever I can, but it has its limitations. I'm not a terribly big fan of the mounts, each one only has 2 degrees of freedom (the little dogbone mounts have one end 90 degrees out from the other), the sticky mounts do stay put VERY well (3M VHB is some seriously good adhesive) but the bases that slide into them occasionally have some play that's kinda difficult to get rid of. If you need to tether the camera (a must for racing I think) there's not really anywhere on the waterproof housing itself to tether to without drilling holes or using the surfboard mount's stick-on tether. Also, it's got all the aerodynamic appeal of a Jeep XJ Cherokee with rally lights and a roof rack, although for autocross that isn't much of an issue. There's the FOV deal, the HD Hero and Hero2 both have barrel distortion, and the Hero3 and 3+ have it as well, but it isn't as pronounced. I shoot in 1080p 30fps 135deg FOV, which is the narrowest angle the HD Hero or the Hero2 can manage, although the Hero3 can go slightly narrower I believe, and the image quality of the Hero3 black edition is phenomenal. Unless you get an AIM datalogger with a GoPro cable, I don't think there's any way to overlay telemetry onto the video, but I could be wrong about that. If you have to plug any cables into the camera while recording (external power or mic, for instance, or a HDMI-out) you need the skeleton housing, which is definitely not waterproof, and the camera itself is not designed to be water-resistant, although a few raindrops won't hurt it.

This christmas I'm getting a Replay XD1080, which I think will work a lot better for in-car recording. It has an optional cable that replaces the rear cap and plugs into a cigarette lighter (or the cigarette lighter plug can be cut off and the cable hardwired to a 12-24v source, how they deal with that much voltage variation I have absolutely no idea but for a car you won't have much more than 12v to play with anyway) that also has a 3.5mm external mic port, so you can mount the camera out in the airflow without having the same soundtrack as a Cat5 tornado, all while keeping the camera itself water-resistant (both the front cap/lens bevel and the rear cap are O-ring sealed). the aluminum mounts for the camera that RePlay sells are stupid expensive, but do allow you to mount the camera to anything from a 1913 Picatinny rail on a pistol/rifle/shotgun to the trucks on a skateboard to a car's rollbar, depending which mount you buy (buying all of them would set you back at least as much as the camera itself), although the "standard" plastic mounts are fairly reasonably priced so mounting to a mostly flat surface shouldn't be an issue, as long as it's more or less parallel to the direction you want the camera facing. Performance wise, the XD1080 (and its little brother, the XD720) has a maximum FOV of 135deg, with none of the barrel distortion of the GoPro, and when shooting in 1080p the FOV drops down to 110deg. The GoPro Hero3 Black Edition DEFINITELY has the RePlay beat in terms of image quality, with a 15MP sensor and up to 4K Cinema video resolution, as opposed to a 5MP sensor and up to 1080p resolution for the XD1080 and 720p for the XD720, but both models of the RePlay have better low-light performance. The RePlay's advanced settings can only be adjusted via editing the text file on the memory card, but you do have more control over the camera settings than a GoPro gives you, even with the iPhone app. If you so choose, you can get a HDMI-out cable for the RePlay and stream to a recording box (or a datalogger with HDMI-in capability, although you can't control the camera with the datalogger like you can with an AIM/GoPro combo) or a transmitter, if you want someone in the pits/on the sidelines to be able to watch your AX run in real-time. The built-in mic on the RePlay is great as long as there's no wind, but it is VERY sensitive to wind and a light breeze will end up sounding like gale force winds, unless you use a little sticker over the mic port, which only helps marginally. RePlay does sell a hardwired remote designed specifically for using the camera in a race car, is designed to mount to a bulkhead/sheetmetal dashboard, and can turn the camera on/off, start or stop recording, as well as serve as an external power source, HDMI-out cable, and 3.5mm external mic adaptor, but it's VERY spendy at $100 for the cable itself.

The RePlay XD1080 is essentially a GoPro Hero3 White Edition (HD Hero guts, but in the smaller/lighter form factor of the Hero3) with better low-light capabilities, an easier-to-use/more aerodynamic form factor for automotive/racing usage or strapping to the top/sides of a helmet, less internal battery life (hence all the ways RePlay provides to extend said battery life, like external battery packs and hardwire adaptors to a 12-24v source), a woefully bad internal mic (a non-issue if running one of the power cables with a 3.5mm mic jack), but for $50 more. For an automotive/racing application, I think it's worth it, but YMMV

a regular camera phone with a proper mount works for some people. Audio quality on a go pro is just so much better though, that's where you get the huge difference.

Check out the action cam monoprice sells.

I have the ReplayXD 720. http://www.amazon.com/Replay-XD720-HD-Video-Camera/dp/B00BC5JRS8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387290110&sr=8-1&keywords=replay+720

It doesn't record in 1080 but I never notice the difference between 720 and 1080 anyway. I didn't like the price of the GoPro, and I hate the fisheye effect you get with it.

I have some issues with the replay, the biggest being that it's difficult for me to tell if it's recording or not (I'm in a miata and the LED isn't really bright enough...it does vibrate but when I turn it on I'm usually strapped in and can't feel the vibrations) but when I do capture video it's great.

I also picked up the 'hard wire' kit, which includes replaces the back cap with one that has a 12v cigarette adapter and an external mic connector.

They give you a butt load of sticky adapter thingies - I put one on the passenger side of the Miata right in front of the windshield. I haven't got the mic sorted yet but here's a video: replay sample

Harry's lap time app on a iphone. Video is good, data over lay interesting. Biggest problem I have is keeping the phone "live" waiting in line, and I wear gloves when I drive. The drill is hit the camera, and struggle into the driving gloves. Works most of the time.

I still haven't figured out what the big deal is that makes the GoPro so much better than my much more versatile everyday p&s digital camera, on a similarly capable mount, for the occasional in-car recording.

Panasonic Lumix SZ-7 + Manfrotto Super Clamp + Manfrotto 3-Axis Head