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3000 miles of road video is awfully boring to watch. Besides, how do you find anything on it?
In addition to a go pro like camera, because you will have lot's of dead time, you will need some sort of software package to do some editing. And they have learning curves, but not too bad. I've used Adobe Premier off and on, but that is probably too expensive.
Try maybe Adobe Premier Elements or Coral Video Edit Pro.
Thanks for the advice, everyone. I'll look into Go Pro, although one of my hopes is that the video can be GPS- and time-stamped so that when I play it, it will be easy to see where and when it was taken, as in this video:
I don't know how likely that will be to find but that's what i would like, anyway.
I'll also need to make sure the camera can be easily-transported from car to car, since I will be renting a car for the trip rather than using mine.
If you're looking for continuous recording, you can go into the menu of your dash cam and change the setting to continuous. Three minute loops are normally the default, since most people want a dash camera for incidents, and not sight seeing. Just be aware of the amount of time you can record on an SD card so you can swap out cards before the camera starts to override the earliest recording. Also be aware of how long it takes to download a full SD card and how much space that takes up on your computer's hard drive. For a dash cam, I would also recommend getting high endurance SD cards, which are better suited for dash cams.
A Go Pro would provide more flexibility for recording outside of your vehicle.
I do have "continuous" on, which is what the camera defaults to, as opposed to impact only recording, but the video gets recorded as a series of one minute video files, rather than one long continuous file which I would prefer.
The cam comes with a 16GB card, but I was (am) planning to obtain a 64GB card for all-day drive recording.
I'm also bringing an external hard rive to file off the day's recording each night we decamp.
I used a Go Pro out last trip, and it worked out great. My wife poked her head through the sunroof and recorded while I drove. We ended up with some good videos, and the best part was I didn't have to listen to the wife nag about my driving.
I'm looking for something I can mount on the windshield and leave there for the trip. We can take video outside the car with an iPhone.
3000 miles worth of recording, even in SD, will take HUGE storage. Unless you record in say daily drive increments and download it onto a large media during rest stop. It will still take huge storage. Dashcams normally have 64 Gb one, you'll need a Tb or several at least. MP4s are very large.
I am already accounting for this.
If I stick with the F800, the video taken will be 85MB per minute. The longest drive in one day will be Grand Canyon Village to Salt Lake, a roughly nine hour drive (high side estimate). So 85MB * 60 minutes * nine hours = about 46GB, which is well within the capacity of a 64GB card, and we will be filing off each day's video output onto a 1TB external HDD.
Our total drive is going to take about 58 hours, which is about 300GB, well within range for a 1 TB drive.
One side note, we just flew to Kalispell, MT and Hertz was only rental that allowed us to drive it to Spokane and fly home from there. Original price was via USAA was $260. Didn’t realize we had to pay .25 per mile. Our bill ended up being $750. I’d be sure to find a rental that doesn’t charge for mileage, if they exist? Also, Idaho, Montana, and Washington was full of smoke, has been for months and isn’t going away. Coeur d’Alene was worst, basically ruined. I never thought of this when we booked it.
Use a GoPro set to 2fps timelapse. It will capture everything going on around you, just without full motion, and will be already sped up. The whole trip should fit on a 128GB microsd card or if not you can transfer to a computer once it's full. A normal dashcam will overwrite earlier video without telling you.
I suggest setting the image correction on the GoPro to "linear" which removes the fisheye distortion in camera and gives you a narrow field of view
OP, my advice is to get a good camcorder instead. you can find them with various amounts of internal storage, as well as various media for extra storage as needed.
the nice thing about the camcorder is that you can choose to record or not to save memory, and have a zoom function, among other items.
this way you can use your dash cam for what it was designed for, recording traffic, and other things that you may have use for without having to constantly change the memory card.
The down side of using a camcorder is that someone will have to operate it, and my goal is to capture the entire 58 hour drive without having to manually operate any camera. My wife ain't gonna wanna do it while I'm driving, and I ain't gonna wanna while she's driving.
3000 miles of road video is awfully boring to watch. Besides, how do you find anything on it?
Well, that's one less invitation I'll need to send out for the viewing party!
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