I know nothing about video cameras but am looking to do some extensive recording for a project. I will be filming myself and my day-to-day life for nearly 24 hours a day and for 30 days.

What is needed to store that amount of footage? Would like to avoid cloud storage and prefer local storage. I’m guessing I’ll need an external drive at least to offload the footage on a daily basis. Would I need terabytes of drive space?

Quality of video is not too important and I’m guessing any modern camera would have more than sufficient video quality for my needs. In general, I won’t need a lot of bells and whistles and will likely sell the camera once the project is complete.

Also, I will need a stand to prop the camera up as I will move it around the apartment. The ability to turn the camera 360 degrees would also be handy.

Any brands that are reliable and any that I should stay away from? What does my price range look like? I’m sure there’s some good deals to be found on ebay or craigslist but I am looking to buy new as I’d rather not touch something that someone else has had their hands all over. It’s a personal thing.

Appreciate your input!

  • lobo@lemmy.world
    4·
    4 days ago

    I also wanted to record a couple of days non stop. It was for timelapse so i didnt want to disturb the camera changing sd cards.

    Ended up using DJI Action Osmo 5 I had on hand. Its streaming mode specifically.

    I already run docker so the server setup was easy for me. https://github.com/tiangolo/nginx-rtmp-docker

    Input its url into the camera and start streaming. And I recorded the stream with ffmpeg on a PC.

  • Libb@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    4 days ago

    Appreciate your input!

    Would need more context to be able to give any real advice but on the whole idea here is my 2 cents:

    What is needed to store that amount of footage?

    Mostly depends the size/quality you’re recording but you will need enough to store a month worth of ‘any modern camera’ footage. (removed the first numbers I suggested, there are too many parameters to be precise. roughly speaking maybe at least 8 to 16To, for 2k and for 4k… roughly because it depends a lot of various parameters like bitrate, codec even what you’re recording will have an impact)

    And that is without using any backup! What happens to your project if the disk fails, is stolen or whatever, or if the files are corrupted? Will you start from scratch?)

    Also, I will need a stand to prop the camera up as I will move it around the apartment

    I will be filming myself and my day-to-day life for nearly 24 hours a day and for 30 days.

    Imho, if you want non-stop, or close to, you may need more than a single camera/stand: you will Waste a lot of (unrecorded) time by (un)mounting and setting up your camera every time you need to change room or change angle.

    You should also consider sound recording, if needed ?

    More importantly, you will need proper lighting. No matter the quality of your camera, without proper lighting equipment your image will look like… well, not the best (polite version ;)

    Any brands that are reliable and any that I should stay away from?

    Why not use an older iPhone? They have real nice integrated camera.

    Or much better: a used Lumix GH5 (4k capable): they have an excellent sensor (given enough lighting) and you can pick among many lenses the best one for any situation, they don’t risk overheating and you can easily swap SD cards using the two slots (aka auto-backups), plus you can also use them with a third-party AC adapter in place of the battery making it almost perfect for long sessions filming. And they’re quite cheap on the used market as most m43 cameras.

    Edit: clarifications.