Recording video from motorcycle

July 29, 2009 12:13 AM

Today I took yet another step up the Ladder of Dweebiness, and strapped my cheap Exilim camera to ye olde motorcycle to record a short trip. Of course it turned out like crap, but with glimmers of ok-ness. Help me do better.

I made some crucial errors, like leaving the camera in autofocus mode, and my bike is a real shaker, so anti vibe is only going to do so much. But the end result was amusing and I'd like to do better without making much of an monetary investment.

Worst, of course, was the sound, which was exclusively wind noise. How can I get a good feed from the exhaust, or is that going to require a separate device/microphone and later dubbing? If so, what do I need? I note the only port on an Exilim is a USB port, I don't know if this means it could take a remote microphone.

The camera is about 2 years old, a 7.2 mp Casio Exilim. When the autofocus was focused, the quality was fine for my purposes. If there is a current camera on the market which is cheap and will do what I want out of the box, I'd consider it, though I've owned Exilims since the first one came out and really like them, so anything else would be a reluctant move.

I don't want to spend much on what amounts to a lark, but am not against investing in (relatively) inexpensive gear which will make all this look much more professional. Open to online guides, quick-n-easy tricks, your own experiences, etc.

posted by maxwelton to media & arts (7 comments total)

You would have less vibration to deal with, I expect, were your mount a BMW boxer, such as the R1200 RT. But, you would have little exhaust note to record, as those things are dead quiet, these days.

Any way, on a shoestring, the easiest way to beat vibration, is to buy a cheap helmet, drill some holes, add an angle bracket fabricated from a piece of 1/8" aluminum sheet, and with a few holes drilled for bungee cords or elastics, use that as a camera mount. Or, you could try to make a copy of the $5 camera mount.
posted by paulsc at 12:35 AM on July 29

Though I personally have some improvements to the design in mind, there exist plans for a cheap-ass steadicam mount that should be a good start and very helpful for half of your problem.

As for the wind noise, you can experiment by affixing different densities of foam over the microphone to get rid of the wind noise. Not sure if facing straight into the wind on a motorized vehicle will really be fixable, but foam windscreens is how they do it in the big leagues. Maybe even fur.
posted by rhizome at 1:00 AM on July 29

There's no way you're going to get anything but wind noise on the audio track, no matter what kind of microphone you use. You might get sounds louder than the wind to occasionally spike up, but I doubt the exhaust is louder than the wind. Even with the best wind guards ($50 fuzzies), I've had wind blow out my audio tracks at just 25ish mph (of wind; I've never ridden a bike). With a good directional microphone, and proper orientation, you can often get the wind down enough to record a conversation... but, I can't see doing that on a motorcycle, and you always have the wind noise anyway.

As for the mount: did you try just wrapping the camera in neoprene? Or at least putting it on a pad of neoprene?

If you really want less vibration, you can mount it in shock (bungie) cords. Make a kind of frame, and run shock cord from each corner tightly to the camera suspended in the center of the frame. Unfortunately, while this reduces low-amplitude, high-frequency vibrational imag distortion, it increases high-amplitude, low-frequency bounciness. Your overall result may not look better to you.
posted by Netzapper at 1:14 AM on July 29

paulsc writes "Any way, on a shoestring, the easiest way to beat vibration, is to buy a cheap helmet, drill some holes, add an angle bracket fabricated from a piece of 1/8' aluminum sheet, and with a few holes drilled for bungee cords or elastics, use that as a camera mount."

Seriously consider the safety implications of drilling holes into and then strapping anything to your helmet. Snell requires manufacturers to retest if they change or add holes to helmets (second question from the bottom). The Motorcycle Safety foundation recommends buying a helmet that doesn't require drilling for accessories[PDF].

And a motorcycle helmet is designed to present a smooth, abrasion resistant surface to anything it might slide over during an accident. Brackets and bungees bolted to the outside of your helmet could snag during an accident placing additional stress on your neck or even pulling your helmet off. Some self adhesive Velcro would be a lot safer. If you have to bolt stuff to your helmet at least use small nylon bolts that will easily sheer off in an accident.

Netzapper writes "There's no way you're going to get anything but wind noise on the audio track, no matter what kind of microphone you use."

How about a microphone mounted inside a hard pannier or even one's (full face) helmet? You'd pick up any wind noise from the air flowing over the container but I'd think the levels would be a lot less than an exposed mic.
posted by Mitheral at 3:45 AM on July 29

How about a microphone mounted inside a hard pannier or even one's (full face) helmet? You'd pick up any wind noise from the air flowing over the container but I'd think the levels would be a lot less than an exposed mic.

Yeah, that'd work a treat. Not being a motorcyclist, I didn't think of that. Thank you for correcting me.
posted by Netzapper at 4:14 AM on July 29

If you were doing this by hand the folks at steadycam.org have developed a $14.00 (materials cost only) instructions for building a handi-cam mount. If you are really trying to get steady footage. If you built the hand held version you may be able to rework a method of side-mounting one to your bike. (Also check out the inverted bracket near the bottom).

As far as audio is concerned, unless its critical to the application (it sounds like you might want the sound of the exhaust to match the speed), even in the helmet you'll still get a fair amount of wind noise. You could try recording the video, noteing your RPMs and the length of time it takes you to get to certain levels, then watching the video and throttling your bike to those RPMs on a stand at afterward.
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:44 AM on July 29

Thanks for the ideas. The vibration doesn't bother me too much, but the audio is something I definitely want to work on. I think I'll try a separate recorder with a shielded microphone hung off the rear fender between the exhausts...they really are pretty noisy and I might be able to pick something up.
posted by maxwelton at 4:36 PM on July 29