Instant Replay Camera. Does it exist?

[speedog]

Fwp.

[rage2]

Wanted to update this thread for other parents that want to record their kids games now that I got another season wrapped up. Since COVID killed off last season, had a chance to up the game a little this year. With the new MBA M1, all the issues I had with heat were gone, and there's enough battery life to record 2 full games, so double headers weren't a problem at all. I did bring a power bank just as a backup, but never ran into power anxiety the whole season.

Software wise, I switched to OBS. It's free, supports streaming (never used it since data/cell reception can be spotty playing in small towns) and recording, has a full instant replay buffer to quickly output the last 120s and airdrop to phone for distribution, and just works flawlessly. There's multi cam input, each cam with filters, even LUT applications to color calibrate the inputs if needed for a pretty pro look. Webcam wise, I'm using a Logitech C930e for 90 degree FOV to cover the whole game.

I also added a scoreboard, so re-watching the games, you can follow it much easier. There's a ton of scoreboard software out there ($$$) so I just made my own Baseball spreadsheet in Excel to display a scoreboard, and OBS allows screen capture to overlay the scoreboard onto the video feed. The setup is pretty decent.



Generally, it's a great setup as long as kids aren't bothering me and fucking up my pitch count/scoring/outs/base status updates. Not the prettiest scoreboard, but good enough.

Next year, going to fix the camera quality issue. Logitech webcams are great for indoors, but they are brutal in bright light, I think the sensor isn't designed for outdoor use and video quality is terrible especially in the sun. No amount of video filters can fix it. I'm going to do some testing with maybe a ND filter to see if I can get decent video quality, otherwise it's going to be a go pro in webcam mode (1080p only unfortunately), which has much better fence mounts anyways. The only concern is power usage for go-pro, which means I'll have to rely more on a battery bank. If the ND filter works, I might switch to a Logitech BRIO 4K instead (which has the exact same too much light problem). Recording in 4K would be much better, especially for post processing zoom in.

Wind noise was really problematic as well, but a ghetto windscreen (bandaids over the microphone) cut out 80% of the wind noise.

Here's a game recording from the weekend to show how it turned out.

[npham]

Looks great - you're basically a Twitch streamer now. What about using a DSLR and external mic to fix your video and audio issues? I'm sure you've got a camera laying around and then you just need to spring for a mic which will help with the wind noise.

[rage2]

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Looks great - you're basically a Twitch streamer now. What about using a DSLR and external mic to fix your video and audio issues? I'm sure you've got a camera laying around and then you just need to spring for a mic which will help with the wind noise.

The biggest problem is the variety of layouts at diamonds. While you can get a good placement for a DSLR at one field, it would be unusable in another. Some fields have metal fences, while others have netting. That and it has to be unobtrusive, can’t have a camera rig setup in field of play. So cameras have to be compact, and can either fence mount or stable enough to free stand somewhere. Then you have to worry about the gear getting smacked. I'm surprised my gear hasn't bit hit at all.

What I would love is to fire up a long range router and have parents use their phones to cover the bases, which transmits the feed to me to choose from and be able to rely on multiple cameras including the core wide view. But that’s asking a lot of others haha. It would open up using a dslr with a long lens in outfield to get great shot of pitcher and batter MLB style, although some fields have really high fences where that won’t work either.

External mic, definitely looking into those as well. The webcam catches way too much parents banter which is sometimes hilarious.

If anyone has suggestions on potential webcams that work well outdoors and support 90 degree FOV, I'm all ears.

[npham]

Yea you would need to mount to a tripod that has enough height to clear the fence along the 1st/3rd baselines. That might not be ideal if you need to sit and have your laptop plugged into it.

All those vloggers have to have a mic to use when they are outside filming, can't be too hard to find one that cuts out the wind/background completely. Or you need to set your noise gate with VoiceMeeter Banana or something else to process audio.

[R-Audi]

Although it does 180-360 degrees, perhaps a Ricoh Theta? It may include too much of the diamond and get distracting, but would then also show the full baseline and foul path.

Is that majors?