How to film a 24 Guinness world record attempt

[Elle Fox]

Hello experts
My netball squad are trying for a new Guinness World Record in September for most goals scored in 24 hours. It’s to raise money for two cancer charities in suppprt if one of our players.

The GWR requirements include that we video the entire attempt, preferably with sound! I have no idea how to do this without melting any cameras I have.

What would this expert community recommend in terms of how to achieve this? I thought maybe cctv but have had no luck getting a company to help us out yet plus sound may not be possible so at this rate I might have to undertake this filming challenge myself too as well as the netball scoring!

Your advice and expertise very much appreciated. Running out of time to sort out and test. Thanks

 

[st599]

24 hrs video storage is hard.
Are you able to hire in a pro camera and storage solution? Or you could use a Blackmagic H.264 recorder and a big USB disk.

 

[StewartR]

24 hrs video storage is hard.

24 hrs video storage is easy. CCTV systems do that, and much more, routinely.

Do you have a budget, Elle?

For £0, undertake your attempt in an area (car park, shopping centre, etc) which already has CCTV. In fact doing it in a public location like a shopping centre might be good for raising money, attracting new members, etc. Obviously you'd need prior approval from the shopping centre management.

Or for £0, get a local security company to "sponsor" you by lending you a CCTV system.

Or for probably £200-£300 you could buy a DIY CCTV system. I did that when I needed to fit CCTV to my office in a hurry. It was surprisingly easy.

 

[st599]

CCTV with sound? Not many systems do because of ICO advice on when it can be used.

 

[StewartR]

CCTV with sound? Not many systems do because of ICO advice on when it can be used.

You many be right. However, it doesn't really matter whether most do or most don't accommodate audio recording, so long as it's easy enough to find some that do. For example, here's a link on Amazon to a system which is similar to mine - same manufacturer, same basic specs but perhaps a bit newer:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071P39WBJ

It comes with 4 cameras and no microphones, but there is an audio input on the recorder box and it will record audio if you plug in an external microphone. This is the kind of thing I had in mind when I suggested a £200-£300 budget for a DIY CCTV system. There are tons of them on Amazon, and this one is probably over-specified for Elle's needs: she doesn't need four cameras and she doesn't need HDTV quality. (And I think she doesn't need audio either - it seems to be desirable rather than essential.) So with a bit of shopping around it should be possible to do it more cheaply

And come to think of it, I expect that a laptop computer with a webcam and an external microphone and some free software (e.g. Blue Iris: http://blueirissoftware.com/ ) would do the job.....

 

[Elle Fox]

That’s really helpful - thank you. I’ll check those out. I think if I filmed a bit with sound separately on any camera right at the beginning and end so they can hear the start and finish buzzer then the cctv approach would be simplest for me and probably most cost effective. There’s not much sound to record in a continuous netball shoot except people complaining about aching arms! I think I’ll just have to hope that’s ok.
Does the cctv film onto something viewable on a pc do you know?

 

[StewartR]

I think if I filmed a bit with sound separately on any camera right at the beginning and end so they can hear the start and finish buzzer then the cctv approach would be simplest for me and probably most cost effective. There’s not much sound to record in a continuous netball shoot except people complaining about aching arms! I think I’ll just have to hope that’s ok.

I imagine the GWR people would have their own specific requirements which they should communicate to you?

But without any such guidance: Personally I don't see how separate recordings of start and end buzzers will help authenticate it. You really want one continuous recording on one camera. If I were you I'd just plug a mic in to the CCTV recorder or laptop or whatever, and capture the audio. And presumably you'll have someone keeping count, so they could count aloud or announce milestones (every hundred, say) which will add to the authenticity of the recording. And you don't need audio anyway if it's just to indicate the start and finish. They don't have buzzers in Formula One racing, for example - they indicate the start and finish with a green light and a chequered flag. Nothing to stop you doing that, so long as it's on camera.

Does the cctv film onto something viewable on a pc do you know?

Yes, sort of. Bear with me.

My system records onto a hard disk which is built into the recorder box. The disk has 2TB capacity and it can record 4 cameras for 2 weeks. So that implies that 24 hours of coverage from one camera would occupy about 35GB of disk space. Whenever I want to preserve any recordings, I can export it to a file on a USB drive, which is then viewable on a PC. I guess in principle there's no reason why I couldn't export a 35GB file, though it would probably be very very slow.

However .... when I'm playing back stuff on my CCTV, it seems to organise the recordings into calendar days. There doesn't seem to be any obvious way to export a single file containing video that straddles midnight. So if I wanted to export a recording of 24 hours of activity from say, 3pm one day to 3pm the next day, I'd need to do it in two files, one for 3pm to midnight on day 1, and another for midnight to 3pm on day 2. That's no big deal for me but it might be for you, because you need to be able to demonstrate continuity to the GWR people. One thing you could do which would help in that department would be to have a big, obvious digital clock (e.g. a computer monitor or laptop displaying https://time.is/ ) in clear view of the camera.

Other CCTV systems might work differently, so don't take my words as gospel. And if you use a webcam/laptop approach, then I'd expect it would be a lot easier to view the output. (But if you do use a webcam/laptop approach, make sure you check that it can record for 24 hours continuously. You don't want it packing in after 19 hours because it's reached a file size limit, or anything like that!)

 

[Elle Fox]

All good points.
Thank you so much.
I’m still trying to find a cctv company willing to help us out but failing that I’ll give it another week to see if I get one and if not I’ll try the setup you recommend. It will give me time to experiment with your suggestions to sort the best combo and check file sizes etc.
Then I’ll just maybe setup the camera up at home afterwards and watch what the Labrador gets up to when we go out!
Thank you again for your help.