Football season is upon us, and that means my younger son is hard at practice with training for his now 5th grade team. One of the volunteer duties of the parents is that one person is asked/volunteers to film all of the games, for review by the coaches and players. Not too hard, but something that one of the other dads typically have done in the past. This year, I was volunteered to do so.
Of course, I can’t just go into the use of technology without going a bit overboard, so I immediately set about doing some research on approaches, tactics, and options, to get the best and most useful footage. I have discovered that there is an entire industry which will do computer analysis on your game footage, automatically calculating stats and recording plays – something that is expensive and out of the realm of our family league. I also toyed with the idea of using a parabolic microphone to record the voices from the field (instead of the parents in the stands), but that was shot down when I realized how expensive such options are (several hundred dollars and up), and my homemade option of using PVC and a squirrel baffle was vetoed by the wife as too “janky”.
I ended up taking my camera to one of the practices, to test it out, see how good the quality was, and what sort of default sound pickup I get, and quickly realized some challenges. First, my tripod sticks a bit, when I twist left or right – this results in jumpy footage when I am trying to follow the players during a play. I plan to try some oil to try to loosen it up a bit, or possible another tripod option. Second, although the sound actually turned out decent, the general impression online is that the background voices are irrelevant, strip the sound, and simply overlay some music. Not completely convinced with that option, but barring a microphone choice, its about the best I have. Finally, I found that despite the viewscreen brightness being turned up all the way, the sun made it washed out and barely visible – a challenge when you are trying to follow the ball. This fortunately is where my other interests can contribute, and I have now been prototyping various 3d printed sunscreens, to fit over the camera. After printing several failures, I did discover that such products are readily available for only $20 or $30, but I am not one to buy when I can print.
At this point, I think I have a rather minimal option, and hopefully the print will turn out well. Our first opening game is this Saturday, so I will rather quickly get an opportunity to try it out in the field.
If you are interested, the screen is sized for a Canon Vixia HF R800 camcorder, but is easily adapted to other sized viewscreens. You can download the file on Thingiverse.
