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Video camera trials
Started testing out my camera options today. My daughter has a Gopro Hero5 and I just purchased a refurb Garmin Virb Ultra 30 for $280.
I crawled all over my car interior trying out a couple of different mounting locations and ended up liking the view from just over my shoulder the best. So I grabbed one of the 3M sticky mounts and stuck it to my dome light. Then I built a vertical drop extension ~5" long to get the camera down a bit so it's closer to looking straight out the window.
I made a couple dozen runs around the block with both cameras. The GoPro wouldn't stay connected to the phone app so it was very tough to change video and audio settings on the fly, which got frustrating pretty damn quick. And the voice control seemed pretty suspect. With the bad connection, it was tough to play with the infinite settings enough to get the right balance between the dark car interior shooting through a bright window. I was never able to get it looking very good.
Garmin's voice control was spot on. It stayed connected to the app on my Android phone throughout. And it dealt with the dark/light contrast between the car and the windshield much better straight out of the box. And on video playback on the phone it automatically overlayed speed, GPS position, etc. so it looked like a finished video already. On the downside, it didn't seem to have any stabilization on by default so the first few videos were pretty shaky...once I stopped and turned on the digital stabilization it worked fine. I think I also liked the default audio of the Garmin as well. Wind vs. vehicle noise wasn't as distracting as it was on the GoPro.
I'll continue to play with the settings of each on my way to/from work over the next few weeks leading up to my DE weekend at COTA to see if I can dial it in.
I'm also thinking about letting the Garmin control my data recorder for easier video plus data overlays and letting my RaceChrono app control the GoPro and then try to edit the two videos together. The idea would be to put one camera on the exterior or on the windshield recording the car/track and the other camera recording my hands and head movements inside. It's got to be easy and automatic though...I'm not one to fight a bunch of technology and cameras on the Grid.
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