How do you know you're recording?

S

seismic52

Wannabie Member
There is a lot of instructions for how to do moto vlogging, but rarely have I seen anyone mentioning how do I know I'm recording?

I'm using an Akaso brave 6 plus which I think gives good video quality and the sound is not too bad with an external microphone. I have mounted the camera at the front of the helmet so I do not see the screen with the helmet on. My problem is how do I now the camera is recording?

I don't want to stop every time I want to start and stop filming. I typically try to film in one minute or less clips. I can't get the voice control in the camera to work with the external microphone plugged in (voice control works relatively ok without the external mic). There is a remote control and I can use this but there are two issues; 1) When the screen turns off to save battery, the first click on the remote will only turn the screen on and not turn on or off the recording, and 2) If I don't think about the recording for a while I will have forgotten if I turned the camera on or off the last time I hit the remote:-( BTW, the flashing light indicating recording is impossible to see in the mirror in day-light.

I also have a Sena 10C and with this I know if I'm recording or nor because of the voice telling me so, problem is that with the helmet in the way I only record a portion of the scenery.

This seems like a very trivial problem but I have no idea on how to deal with it.

What do you experienced moto vloggers do?
 
I got fed up with the camera, I could not tell if I was recording or not. Also, the pushbutton did not suit me well, so I started using Garmin Virb Ultra 30 camera, which has a flip switch. When I put my finger on the swithc, I know if I am recording or not. Also much easier to operate, with gloves on, than push button.
Before that I had problems several times, when I wanted to record on the road, but I did not know if I was recording or not, and had to unscrew the camera, while riding. All this distracts from riding and can be dangerous. I am quite happy with the virb camera. I believe their whole line has physical switches. But Garmin is not the only one. There have been other camera manufacturers too, who have used sliding switches and such, but I am not sure, if any of them have updated their cameras recently.
 
Do you not have a flashing red light on the camera? Especially with GoPro's stability issues, I regularly check, as I ride if I'm recording or not by leaning and looking into the mirrors.

I'm using standard mirrors, I imagine this would be hard to do with bar-end mirrors.
 
First, I have yet to see good instruction on how to motovlog. Any sources you've got would be very helpful! Most of what I've seen is how to set up your gear, or what gear to buy, but the ins & outs of motovlogging... those vids I've not yet found. I've thought about doing videos on it myself, but haven't - yet.

Second, why are you recording such short clips? I'm not judging, we've had discussions on this forum about it and folks decided to go about it different ways... but why not just start recording, put on your helmet, and go for your ride? That way you don't miss any interesting goings-on around you, and if you have a brilliant idea, you just start talking and it'll get caught by the camera and you can put it in your vlogs. FWIW, I used to carry a GoPro remote with me and use it to start/stop recording, but have since gone to recording full rides. It's a little more time-intensive in the editor, but my videos are [I think] much higher quality because of it, and it gives me plenty of extra footage to play around with, whether it be music or special effects or something.

Third, Alex is right - isn't there a recording indicator you can check while riding? All the cameras I've seen have a red light on the lens side, which you should be able to check, whether it be a mirror or a reflective surface of your bike. For me, I use the mirrors to ensure my helmet cam is recording.

If this response seems judgmental or mean, my apologies, I certainly didn't mean it that way.

-John
 
For helmet cameras, I just periodically have a quick peer at myself in the wing mirror to see if I can still spot the red flashing recording light on a camera. When setting off, it's similar or listening out for the particular beeps the camera makes. I used to find turning Drift camera's on/off a doddle to do one handing whilst riding in gloves. My new GoPro Hero 9 however, for some reason I can't get hang of pressing the right buttons in the same way whilst riding, I keep toggling it into some other mode instead...

In the past, I've always opted for a record-everything mentality: turn on, set off, park up, turn off, but that was with a Drift camera which could easily do 4.5hrs of record time... I'm still trying to work out the best plan for the Hero 9 due to its short battery life. It's a faff to ride to a good spot, stop, turn on cameras, then set off again. And with only a little over an hours battery life, it's usually flat before I stop again...

I certainly prefer to record more, you never know what you encounter, could be handy in editing, could be handy for an insurance claim... My whole vlogging thing started out of wearing a camera for my daily commute into London after getting knocked off and screwed over insurance wise as it came to one word against another.
 
Arfa said:
For helmet cameras, I just periodically have a quick peer at myself in the wing mirror to see if I can still spot the red flashing recording light on a camera. When setting off, it's similar or listening out for the particular beeps the camera makes. I used to find turning Drift camera's on/off a doddle to do one handing whilst riding in gloves. My new GoPro Hero 9 however, for some reason I can't get hang of pressing the right buttons in the same way whilst riding, I keep toggling it into some other mode instead...

In the past, I've always opted for a record-everything mentality: turn on, set off, park up, turn off, but that was with a Drift camera which could easily do 4.5hrs of record time... I'm still trying to work out the best plan for the Hero 9 due to its short battery life. It's a faff to ride to a good spot, stop, turn on cameras, then set off again. And with only a little over an hours battery life, it's usually flat before I stop again...

I certainly prefer to record more, you never know what you encounter, could be handy in editing, could be handy for an insurance claim... My whole vlogging thing started out of wearing a camera for my daily commute into London after getting knocked off and screwed over insurance wise as it came to one word against another.
Click to expand...

+1 for all this. As for the relative short battery life of a GoPro, I did some testing, and I get about 1 hour out of my Hero 8, 1.5 hours out of the Hero 9 and Max. I put the Hero 8 on my fairing, and when it dies I know it's time to pull over and swap batteries. If I'm rolling with the Max and 9, I keep track of the Max's battery % and do the swap when it gets low.

I would say that once you have some good data to work with, you'll how about how long the 9 will last for your settings and riding environment, and you can plan stops accordingly.

-John

PS: Be glad you're not using a Hero 8 in a Media Mod... it's damn-near impossible for me to turn it on/off while riding, but not too bad to start/stop recording. The Hero 9 in MM has been much easier for me to use on the go.
 
Thanks for your replies!

The flashing light on the Akaso brave 6 plus is not very bright, it's blue and when the camera is in the plastic housing it's near impossible to see if it's flashing or not. Particularly, on a bright day. I ride with ear plugs and hearing a small beep is impossible, even without the engine running. (I'm 60+ and eye sight and hearing is not as good as it used to be:-( ) It looks like the flashing light on the GoPro might be brighter than the Akaso.

Perhaps, if I go for a short ride I can record most of it if I turn the camera on before setting off, however, I hate having to sift through the entire recording to produce a 10 min video in the editing process. Also, filming when doing short trips does not produce very interesting videos. I made a trip from SIngapore to London with some days stretching out to 16 hours riding and turning the camera on for the entire day would not have been possible.

There is one solution that I haven't tried and that is to use the WiFi, connect to my phone and run the camera app and turn the camera on and off with this. However, I'm afraid that will "eat battery" on both the camera and the phone. The Triumph Tiger 900, supposedly, has GoPro connectivity and you would be able to see what the camera is doing on the instrument display, this actually sounds nice, but I have an Africa Twin... With GoPro you can get an intelligent remote that supposedly also shows what the camera is doing, I'm not sure how well that works and how easy it would be to see the remote in bright daylight. Similarly, the new Akaso brave 7 comes with an intelligent remote...

Let's face it, action cameras were not designed specifically for moto vlogging and motorcycle use is, possibly, a small fraction of all action cameras sold. So, we shouldn't expect them to work well for our usage. On the other hand, Sena make equipment specifically for motorcycle use and it works a lot better, it's a shame they don't make a "true" action camera using their knowledge for what motorcycle riders need. (BTW, I'm in now way promoting Sena, it's just an example of technology that works reasonably well for motorcycle use)

Sorry, for my long rambling!
 
The GoPro remotes [I have both, and have done videos on both] work pretty well with the cameras, and work in bright daylight... not so great in low light.

I wear ear plugs on every ride, so I can't really hear the beeps either - I have to go off the red light on my GoPro or looking at the front-facing screen to see if it's recording.

I agree though, recording for 16 hours would suck. I use Davinci Resolve, and using the waveform of the audio is a quick way to cut out the fluff... but then again, I have a stereo, so when I'm not talking to the camera, I am listening to the stereo, which makes it easy to cut out. I did a rough cut tonight of about an hour's worth of footage, and it only took about 20m to cut out the parts of the video where my stereo was playing.

-John
 
This has often been a challenge for me as well. I've been doing this for about five years and what I've learned so far is to listen very carefully for the beeps. Also learning how to wear thinner gloves so you can hit the top button. On Saturday I did a booboo though. With my new Hero 7 Black I had no idea that if you hold the top button a little too long it bypasses video recording and goes to timelapse mode, taking a thousand pics within a short period of time. You get home and find out your video is actually a collection of over 2500 jpgs. Lesson learned!

Also though with the new camera having a back viewscreen, I can just barely glimpse if there is a red dot while riding. I'm still working on effectively working the rear view cam.
 
Baldbiker said:
With my new Hero 7 Black I had no idea that if you hold the top button a little too long it bypasses video recording and goes to timelapse mode, taking a thousand pics within a short period of time. You get home and find out your video is actually a collection of over 2500 jpgs. Lesson learned!
Click to expand...

Did not know, thanks BB - one to watch out for!!

John
 
Set an audio bleep, a lot of cameras have a quick start button too. At night it's easier to spot any flashing LEDs to confirm functioning but not as easy in daylight. i think it's just down to REALLY learning your camera, we've all had situations where the very best potential footage wasn't recorded due to a flat battery or a inaccurate press of the record button but this happens a lot when using new equipment. Very frustrating. The more you own a camera the better you get at not cocking things up. The main issue is down to battery life and conserving it, so I tend to try and get things rolling once I've set off, if all cameras had batteries that were longer lasting (like the Drift stuff) you could set record before putting a skid lid on to be sure. 1st world probs.
 
I went into my camera settings and set the alerts to maximum volume. That allows me to hear them over wind noise while riding. From there I use the voice controls to stop and start recording (being able to hear the beeps lets me know if the command was recognized)

I think you're right - connecting via smartphone to control the camera will most likely drain batteries on both devices.
 
Interesting.

On the Akaso 6 plus I can only turn the beep on or off, there is no setting for the "beep-strength". And the flashing blue light is really faint and trying to see that in the mirror while riding on a sunny day is near impossible and also dangerous having to stare at the mirror rather than the road.

For the time being I've gone back to using the 10C Pro and found that by mounting it fairly far forward on a full face helmet means there is very little blockage of the right hand side of the video. So maybe that is the solution for me?
 
I have both my Hero 7 and Hero 8 set to beep when I start / stop recording and it's been more than enough for me to tell. Of course I'm on a very quiet Goldwing so I can hear birds chirping over the sound of my bike even at highway speeds. :cool:
 
One of my latest issue with the GoPro 9 is that even with the flashing light on, you still can't know for sure, whether it will record the footage or not.

Basically, I went for a ride, the flashing red light was there all the time.. the camera did NOT freeze, as I successfully managed to stop the recording after my ride. Yet, when I checked the SD card, the first few parts of that video were missing.

I even have the 2nd GoPro facing me, which clearly shows the flashing red light was on all the time.

It's really annoying.
 
seismic52 said:
So what happened? The GoPro code locked up?
Click to expand...

I have no idea, but the first 2 parts of that video were nowhere to be found, however, the 3rd part was there, which is weird.

I understand let's say if the first part would be there, and the rest would be missing, it would indicate that the camera froze, but no, in this case, it just didn't record the first two parts, or maybe it did, but it glitched out when it had to save them, yet, with the 3rd party, everything worked well.

This is actually the first time this ever happened, so hopefully it wont happen again.
 
Yeah, inquiring minds want to know what the heck happened!

I've had a few issues with my GoPros, specifically my 9, but not THAT.

-John
 
LOL, stale page, sorry...

That sucks! I know if I rename my files [I don't like the GoPro naming convention because it mixes up rides - 1-1, 2-1, 1-2, 2-2, that sort of thing], I can get them mixed up and have parts of a ride mixed in with another ride.

Could that have happened here?

-John
 
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