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What are ways I can film my rc cars?

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Emery Hall

RCTalk Member
Messages
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RC Driving Style
  1. Bashing
Ok guys, so I want to start filming my rc cars but I don’t really know what to use and where to mount. On my radio I was thinking of doing it how Kevin talbot does it and hot glue a phone mount to the radio but I kinda wanted something a little cleaner. Filming on board the car wise I don’t really know where to mount. All my rc cars are monster trucks and Truggy’s and one scale looking buggy. U hzz a be a GoPro hero 2. Would love to here some of y’alls opinions and ideas.
 
Made a shell from a stock E Maxx body for a friend of mine, and rigged up a solid mounting on the rig for the camera. The body has the grille cut out so the camera can see . I made it by mounting the camera, placing the bodywork on top, then, mirroring the camera's view through a PC monitor, cut out enough bumper/grille so that it would have an uninhibited sight. It was for a friend of mine, but I did photograph the body, which I also added head and tail lites and painted for him. Nice and clean.
 
I need to film my cars with their lights and sound and sirens, but would need 2 people, 1 to operate the car, and the other to chase the car with the camera with focus and not shake around too much, like in the old "Cops" episodes".
 
The easiest way I have found was the mount gopro on a bike helmet and wear helmet...go pro mount holds with 2 sided tape...if you rc mount camera yo get the blair witch of rc car driving(sea sick)..
 
Made a shell from a stock E Maxx body for a friend of mine, and rigged up a solid mounting on the rig for the camera. The body has the grille cut out so the camera can see . I made it by mounting the camera, placing the bodywork on top, then, mirroring the camera's view through a PC monitor, cut out enough bumper/grille so that it would have an uninhibited sight. It was for a friend of mine, but I did photograph the body, which I also added head and tail lites and painted for him. Nice and clean.
Sounds like a good idea but I don’t know if I really want to film from the car
 
Ok guys, so I want to start filming my rc cars but I don’t really know what to use and where to mount. On my radio I was thinking of doing it how Kevin talbot does it and hot glue a phone mount to the radio but I kinda wanted something a little cleaner. Filming on board the car wise I don’t really know where to mount. All my rc cars are monster trucks and Truggy’s and one scale looking buggy. U hzz a be a GoPro hero 2. Would love to here some of y’alls opinions and ideas.
Get a drone FPV setup. I've been wanting to with mine forever that way I can drive it out of sight.
 
I find a headstrap is definitely easier than the remote mounted way, but everyone is different.
For vehicle mounted shots I use a gimbal to help remove bumps.
 
I wear my gopro on a lanyard with little legs I made so it hangs on my chest. I'm not a fan of wearing hats and I didn't really want to strap a go pro to my head. I'm standing for most of the shots and got used to "batman'ing" when I run my RC's (turning my body instead of my head).

Lanyard just goes around my neck, usually wear a collared shirt and keep the lanyard outside the collar so it doesn't stick to my neck. The little legs I made hold it relatively stationary and I tilt the neck as needed:
2018-0713-GoProLanyard-02.jpg


My latest video from this weekend:

For onboard, that gets annoying if you want it for a truck that jumps. Regardless what gopro mount you buy, it will not handle impact of jumping. Mounting it to the body destroys the body with the weight of the camera and leverage of the mount, if you can get it to stay put without ripping screws through the body or snapping the gopro mount into pieces. I tried many solutions... none worked.

Until I used a tower to tower support on my stampede, made a little cradle for the Hero5 Session to rest in with a lip on the front to keep it from sliding forward on a hard hit, some industrial velcro to keep it from moving side to side and a battery/velcro strap to lock it in. Looks stupid and horrible, but was the only solution so far that I found that held up to balls out bashing:

Without the camera:
2019-0708-Stampede-Hobbystar3665InstalledSide.jpg


With the camera:
2019-0714-Stampede-BodyBraceTop.jpg


The top of the camera was basically even with the roof of the body and 1/3 of the camera was below the hood. So the footage shows a decent amount of under the body. I even went so far as to heat the body with a heat gun and push it down before it cooled to make it better as it covered half the camera before.

This is older footage with the above installed in the truck, wasn't much because the stampede did not do well in the wet grass, but from 00:35 to 4:35 is the stampede. 1:26-1:46 the onboard has the main portion of the screen:

Personally, I can't watch a lot of "onboard" video as it makes me nauseous, so I use the onboard mostly as a picture-in-picture type thing to add a little something extra to my admittedly lame camera work. lol! I'll throw a jump or two in there or a bit of onboard footage for a few seconds as the main video, but otherwise, it's just a PIP type thing.

I've since done a lot of mods to the truck since then and didn't put the camera mount back on it.

The onboard is a hero 5 session and my wearable camera is a hero 5 black. With the session I record at 1080p @60fps on the hero 5 black I record 1080p @120fps, helps make the slow motion stuff smooth. The session maxes out at 60fps with 1080p. For what I use it for, I could probably use 720p then be able to use 120fps as well.

To edit the two streams together I use Cyberlink PowerDirector 16. It allows you to downcovert all the footage so you don't need a massive server or GPU to edit the stuff, then when it puts it back together, it uses the original source. You just have to wait for it to downcovert after importing into the project.

I had another mount on my outcast that ultimately destroyed the body. It was an L brace bolted to the rear window that came out to the side of the body and I'd strap the camera onto it. The camera would still fly off and the extra strain of the camera on the body literally broke the body in half within a single bash session:
2018-0814-Outcast-CameraMount01.jpg


I used plastic and rivets to frankenstine the body back together. No matter how I attached the camera though, it would always go flying when I landed a jump until I made another L bracket with a sled like the stampede had and bolted that to the existing bracket. I eventually replaced the body and didn't bother mounting the camera back on it.

I broke a ton of camera mounts, camera cages, etc. Even the aluminum ones would slam the camera forward when it landed, if it didn't rip off the truck and eventually they would bend and bind up anyway.

Anyway, that's my nickels worth.
 
The camera shoots through the open grille on my buddy's E Maxx. The pipes light up when accelerating too.View attachment 122467
What camera does it use? I was thinking of trying a cheaper/lighter camera, like an FPV camera, so it had less weight to it for inertia when jumping.
 
Ok guys, so I want to start filming my rc cars but I don’t really know what to use and where to mount. On my radio I was thinking of doing it how Kevin talbot does it and hot glue a phone mount to the radio but I kinda wanted something a little cleaner. Filming on board the car wise I don’t really know where to mount. All my rc cars are monster trucks and Truggy’s and one scale looking buggy. U hzz a be a GoPro hero 2. Would love to here some of y’alls opinions and ideas.
Unless you use a gimbal, which, the only ones I have seen are very pricey, any on board video you try to get will be extremely shaky, even with EIS on the newer GoPro's. I have 3 GoPro's, and several GoPro knockoff's, and I have never been able to get on board video that is actually viewable, especially on fast vehicles and boats. The way I do it, I have a couple cameras on tripods at different heights, and one head mount, and after getting the video, I just splice them and edit them into one video. You can get decent GoPro knockoff's with EIS and high resolution on Amazon for $100 or less, and GoPro accessories are stupid cheap on their as well, and GoPro accessories work with the knockoff's.
 
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