My stab at road videos

[DBrim]

So I've posted a road video or two before, but I haven't really gone out of my way to take them before.  Earlier this week I bought a GoPro, so I've been playing with it.  I'll be posting more in the future as I play around with it and try to get a good feel.

Here's my first night test, Storrow Drive and the Leverett connecter at night.  My first impression is that it's pretty noisy, but gets the job done.  I think I need to point it a little more downwards, too... even if it means getting more dash, I think the camera will meter a bit better.

[txstateends]

I think I need to point it a little more downwards, too... even if it means getting more dash,

First raise the camera a bit, then aim it a little more downwards (but not too much).  You'll probably get more clicks for the road scenes than a panorama of your dashboard.  Is your windshield clean, or are all the lighted images coming across with the shiny halos?  Another thing, don't be surprised if YT mutes one of your videos or yanks one altogether because of the music.  You never know how fussy they'll be about it.

But hey, congrats on the camera...looks like you'll have fun with it.

[kphoger]

I'm a fan of road videos, as long as the picture quality is clear (by which I mean neither blurry or bumpy.  If the sound quality isn't good, I just mute the computer.  One thing I'll mention is that a lot of videos I watch are time-lapsed, some by quite a bit to the point that a passing maneuver is completed in about two or three seconds.  For some reason, a YouTube always makes it look like you're going reeeealy slowly, and speeding up the video seems to help; without it, I find myself getting impatient with the driver. 

[myosh_tino]

That's not too bad but like the others have said, I'd try raising the camera a little higher to avoid including your dashboard in the video frame and I would suggest adjusting the playback speed to 2x or 3x.

I've dabbled a little in making driving videos.  Here's one (of two) videos I posted to YouTube...

It basically mimics the types of videos FreewayBrent creates although my scope is going to be limited to freeways in Santa Clara county.  I use a FlipHD video cam for recording and Premiere Elements for editing and adding the graphics.

[Scott5114]

I have seen a few road videos where the speed is scaled to the tempo of the song, which is especially neat when the song starts out slow and speeds up after a bit. I assume that it was done automatically by way of some software feature.

I have never really been into creating road videos, but a lot of road photography tricks apply as well. Shooting at night is probably a bad idea; you will have to deal with glare and lack of light and it's usually just not very appealing (which is a shame because driving around at night in a city can be a pretty beautiful thing sometimes). Keep the windshield clean. You might try cropping out the dash by using your optical zoom; it is something I do for photos, but it might cause stability issues if done in a video.

[agentsteel53]

Shooting at night is probably a bad idea; you will have to deal with glare and lack of light and it's usually just not very appealing (which is a shame because driving around at night in a city can be a pretty beautiful thing sometimes).

I remember Dan getting some decent video of a drive he and I did in Toronto.  where did Dan put it??

[DBrim]

Shooting at night is probably a bad idea; you will have to deal with glare and lack of light and it's usually just not very appealing (which is a shame because driving around at night in a city can be a pretty beautiful thing sometimes).

I remember Dan getting some decent video of a drive he and I did in Toronto.  where did Dan put it??

It's on my Youtube channel somewhere (buried with some robotics videos I'm sure).  It's blocked at work, I can link when I get home.

I tried mounting it higher up earlier in the day, but steepness of my windshield causes the mount bracket to go over itself at a weird angle when it's that high up.  As a result, the bracket moved the suction lever while driving, causing the mount to disengage.  I'll have to play with it further.  It also doesn't help that my toll transponder is right there.  I can move it if needed, but I'd really rather not!

I did not clean the windshield because it was approximately a billion degrees out last week.  I understand that it will help.  I'll probably also use anti-glare black T-shirts on the dash as I do with road photos.

As far as angle goes, it's a bit tricky with the GoPro because it has such a high field of view.  I'll probably end up getting either some dash or roof either way.  I don't have the LCD add-on, so it's pretty hard to specifically compose; I just have to go with a mental approximation.

Speeding up is good advice, and it's something that I'll do in the future as necessary.  The ultimate goal here is documentation of some of my longer trips - right now I'm playing around with it so when I do go on those longer trips I'll be prepared.

[DBrim]

Testing time-lapse mode.  1 frame every ~0.5s, so 15x speed when resolved to 30fps.  No music because this is more of an academic exercise.