1 Hour Video. Ideas?

Carl Hall

Carl Hall

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Sort of just thinking out loud...

I need to record a church wedding ceremony this weekend, but I am struggling to find a way to record video for the 45-60 minutes it could last.

Options I have looked at:
  • Insta360 Go 2. It's a lot of fun to use but I don't think the battery would last. Plus it overheats and usually switches off quite quickly.
  • Fuji X-T2. Seems to limit video length to 15 mins, although I could get a second-hand battery grip which extends it to 30 mins. Then just cross my fingers all the good bits are caught on camera!
  • Record it on a smartphone. Not great, I know, but I've tested my P20 and it seems to record for as long as needed until I stop it. My OH has a Pixel with a better camera, so that's even better.
The camera will need to be on a tripod and will have to be pretty much left alone after hitting record.

Does anyone have any other bright ideas? The quality doesn't need to be amazing (it's just to show someone who can't be there), as long as you can see and hear what's going on. At the moment it's looking like the smartphone might be the best (least bad) option, and then buying some sort of plug-in microphone to help improve the audio.
 
One of these can last 8 hours on a charge and has a variable viewing angle, audio + mic input, could sit almost anywhere and links to a mobile phone.
Maybe totally off what you want but just chucking it out there :)
 
Shoot from all options so you can cut to a different view, perhaps set up to capture the couple facing the camera ie looking back down the church for the vows on phone as that can run unaided. Then shoot other views , include pan shots of the guests. Can anything be powered by a USB battery pack, that could give longer recording time possibly.
 
Sky said:
Use a remote control and stop it a couple of times. You can easily cover up the edits with a couple of wipes/transitions.
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Thanks Trevor, but I won't be able to control the camera in any way during the wedding, so it just needs to be press and forget, unfortunately. I wondered if I could use a locking cable release and hold the shutter button down so that one video starts straight after another finishes, but I don't think that would work either!

gramps said:
One of these can last 8 hours on a charge and has a variable viewing angle, audio + mic input, could sit almost anywhere and links to a mobile phone.
Maybe totally off what you want but just chucking it out there :)
Click to expand...

Oh, they look pretty cool! I'd like to avoid buying another camera if I can but I'll have a proper look at them later. Thanks, Gramps.

artyman said:
Shoot from all options so you can cut to a different view, perhaps set up to capture the couple facing the camera ie looking back down the church for the vows on phone as that can run unaided. Then shoot other views , include pan shots of the guests. Can anything be powered by a USB battery pack, that could give longer recording time possibly.
Click to expand...

Yes, I think the phone on a tripod looking back down the church is going to be the best option at the moment. I've just ordered a microphone (never owned or use a mic before, so there's something new to learn!) so hopefully I should get an "ok" video using this. I'm not entirely sure why the Fuji can't record for more than 15 mins without a battery pack, because after recording a test video the battery was still showing as almost full. I can only assume it's a deliberate limitation for heat build-up or something. I've used a USB battery pack for astrophotography with the Fuji before and it works really well at getting a couple of hours worth of photos, so it's a shame it won't prolong the video length.
 
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I'm fairly sure my Gopro will record for over an hour.

I'll charge it up now and try it.
 
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Sound is usually the most important thing. I would think the safest bet is phone with a good view near a speaker. We did that once for a Christmas livestream from the organ loft and it worked quite well.

Can you beg, borrow or rent some equipment? I'm using canon which has a recording limit in the photo cameras, so I using a Ninja V to record the HDMI out and that has no limit. To prevent the battery going, I have an A/C adapter. Most important is sound. Placing a mic near one of the speakers can work. Can you hook up to the church system? If they have a loop system for hard of hearing you can plug in to that.
 
simon ess said:
I'm fairly sure my Gopro will record for over an hour.

I'll charge it up now and try it.
Click to expand...

Hmm I do have an old GoPro Hero 3 somewhere. It's like 7 years old now but I think that can do 1080p video, although I remember the battery on them being pretty poor. If I can remember where it is I'll dig it out and try it. Cheers Simon!

TimHughes said:
Sound is usually the most important thing. I would think the safest bet is phone with a good view near a speaker. We did that once for a Christmas livestream from the organ loft and it worked quite well.

Can you beg, borrow or rent some equipment? I'm using canon which has a recording limit in the photo cameras, so I using a Ninja V to record the HDMI out and that has no limit. To prevent the battery going, I have an A/C adapter. Most important is sound. Placing a mic near one of the speakers can work. Can you hook up to the church system? If they have a loop system for hard of hearing you can plug in to that.
Click to expand...

I don't think speakers are going to be used as there are only 18 guests and it's in a smaller part of the church. (I can't remember the name for the room, but it's at the front of the church and has sideways facing pews). The music is just going to be from an iPod with a little portable speaker haha. The microphone I bought is one of these little guys and I'm hoping that if I can get the phone close enough then I should at least get some passable audio. As I said, the video doesn't have to be great, just needs to be able to see what's going on and who's there.

I wasn't aware of external recorders that took an HDMI input from the camera (I always wondered what the HDMI port on my camera was for!). Looks like the perfect solution, but as I'm likely to only use it this once I can't really justify the cost sadly. Lots of good things to think about though, thanks Tim :)
 
So an update for anyone in the future that is looking to do something similar, I ended up using a smartphone (Pixel 3a) with this Boya microphone. It worked ok and recorded the whole ceremony in full fine. The only issue is that I didn't think to put the phone in flight mode so there is a lot of times when you get that infamous interference sound that stops you from hearing what's going on, and the photographer stood in front of the camera for a few minutes :ROFLMAO: (not his fault, I didn't tell him it was there). As I said, it was just a basic video for someone who couldn't be there, so it worked well enough.
 
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