Home Room Camera?

Floppage

Floppage

True Beginner
Silver Member
Do you have a camera setup in your home pool room? If so, what did you go with and how do you like it?

Webcam, security camera setup, etc.?

I was mostly thinking it might be nice for recording practice sessions to get instructor feedback or even just recording the occasional match. (I want to make sure I get evidence when I beat Baxter) Right now the Nest Cam seems like a pretty good option since it works with my wifi and has cloud storage for up to 10 days but I am curious what other people have tried.

Thanks in advance.
 
I use a streaming setup (but don't live stream) and am super happy with it. Have a camera with manual focus and white balance controls (this is extremely important), that outputs HDMI. The HDMI goes into a Blackmagic converter box, that spits out Thunderbolt. That goes into my iMac, that is dedicated to the pool table, and sits on a shelf next to the pool table. The software I use is Wirecast 6. I control everything from the keyboard.
 
I have a 4 camera system, the one we use at the the big tournaments for Video Analysis.

We use 4 Canon Pro Video cameras with a 4 camera Software System. The software allows us to play this back at 1/64 speed. We use other tools too, like laser, stroke trainers & Skype...

Very soon, we will move to HiDef..

Video is a great tool.
 
Floppage said:
It really doesn't matter how the match really goes. I spent too many hours in the editing and CGI labs in college to let reality interfere with a production. :wink:
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What are you going to do, put your face on my body while I'm running out racks? It'll be hard to edit yourself at the table when I keep you sitting in the chair.
 
I had an old video camera that I never used. It uses a small tape cartridge and I bought a cheap tri-pod for it. It worked well until the battery died. I'll have to try to find another one.
 
Can some of you post pics of your camera set up?

I have a flat screen on the wall infront of my table, and wanted to mount a gopro on top of the tv and have it showing on screen while recording

Does anyone have a setup like that?
 
I haven’t bought yet however this is what I’m leaning towards,

https://www.zoom-na.com/

They’re big on sound with video at what seems to be at a fair price, Q8 @ 399.00, Q4 @ 299.00 both with an HDMI output.
 
Will it still work with an A/C adapter or A/C battery adapter (A/C adapter using a connector in the shape of a mock battery)?

flyrv9 said:
I had an old video camera that I never used. It uses a small tape cartridge and I bought a cheap tri-pod for it. It worked well until the battery died. I'll have to try to find another one.
Click to expand...
 
Well this is an interesting subject matter. I have been doing recording for our local pool room for the local TAP pool league. I record every Monday for about 4 hrs. I have been constantly looking for ways to improve my quality. I started using 2 Canon HV40 cameras which used DV mini tapes. I kept a stack of tapes and rotated them out to film the entire night (approx 4hrs). The camera is good quality and can be used as a streaming web camera with Wirecast. Wirecast is one of the top selling video production softwares out there today. At the time this location did not have any internet service to allow streaming. My next purchase was to lose the tapes and go with flash memory sticks. I was able to buy Canon HF10 cameras online for under $125.00. I now use 1 HF10 camera and replaced the other camera with a GoPro 3+ Hero. I purchased a mini boom micstand online and made a mount in the ceiling to hang the camera. The GOPro has great quality but I find it not very versatile for pool use. The camera wants to shoot a wide shot which makes the lens view fish eye which distorts the table. But I was able to positon my camera so I could shoot overhead using a narrow view and just capture the full length of a 9 ft table. I was looking to achieve the overhead view that would allow the viewer to see the whole table. I bought 2 64gb SDHC video cards and rotate them out so I can just leave the camera hanging. I wanted to be able to position the camera so I just needed a small step stool to reach the camera. I did not want to have to pull out a ladder every week to get the camera going. Also as for powering the GoPro camera for almost 4 hrs I opted to get a Ankler USB power pack for like $40.00 this gives me almost 8 hrs of recording time. Forget buying an extra battery pack. I have since run an extension cord in the ceiling and just use a USB to standard edison plug into an electrical outlet in the ceiling. I really don't use the audio from the GOPro but you can use it if you want to.

The second camera Canon HF10 I run on a tripod that sits on a table about 5 ft away from the end of the table. So I get to run a dual camera shoot which seems to work. As for the sound I picked up an old Nady guitar wireless unit at a local pawn shop for $40.00 and wired it so I could use a standard professional mic with the wireless. So I hang a Shure SM57 overhead off the light. This is great cause you can capture the sounds at the table as well as when league players have time outs you can here what they are saying. I was having a problem capturing too much personal conversation from the railbirds when using the mic built in the camera. So I run the wireless receiver into the mic input on the camera. This works great.

I record using a framerate of 29.97 fps at 1080 resolution which I downscale to 720 for uploading to YouTube to reduce file size and upload times. I also use a software app called Handbrake which is free and compresses the video with very little quality loss. So a typical 60 min match raw video file will be about 2 to 2.5gb after handbrake the finished uploaded file for YouTube is about 5-600mb.

I dumped both cameras into a macbook pro laptop and use Adobe Premiere CS5 to do post editting. I can also have someone sit in and do post match commentating and mix that in with the original video.
file. Recently I had a request for live commentating by the players. So I added a 4 channel mixer and run 2 SM-58 mics on short desktop mic stands that you can buy for around $20 a stand. I would prefer to use a more professional headset mic setup but I have yet to find a good XLR headset mic setup that does not cost more then a few hundred per headset. I run the 2 commentator mics and the table mic into the mixer then run the main output of the mixer into the mic input of the camera. The negative side of doing this is you lose the ability to adjust audio levels for each mic individually in the post edit phase. It would be best to record audio to either an external DAT reorder or direct to a laptop and then have multitracking ability for your audio in post editting. I am not a video guy as a profession. I do this as a hobby and to try and help promote the local league, pool room and offer a great training tool for our players. So you don't need to be a pro to get a decent product. You can view some of the matches here. I use each week as a playlist on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkMlg1LBXj6QMFMgR7ybweRiEHT9i5vI0
 
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After reading this thread, and trying to get back in stroke the last couple of weeks, I found another camera option. Its called the Yi Action Camera. Its a small wifi camera similar to the go pro line, but its getting great reviews. I got one after Xmas with a gift card. It looks like a toy, but Im impressed with it so far.
It has a wide angle lens, with several options in the app you download to run it. It can record 1080 up to 60 frames per. Not too shabby for a camera under 100 bucks.
It has the same type of accessories available as the gopro, but I just sit it on a shelf in the garage, and it works just fine.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0148TNDXY?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

Here is a sample video from one in 30 frame at 1080. Its also softened by youtube, but still looks pretty good. Forgive the short rack, I havent been playing much with the health problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y1g1GAFigA&feature=em-upload_owner
 
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