Podcasting with a Dashcam

A

Anton Sugar

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So I take a lot of road trips and got the idea for filming a podcast with my dashcam. I figure I can show off some cool scenery, and having something to talk to might help me keep awake at the wheel, lol

I'm mainly wondering how I should go about recording the audio. My car has a lot of road noise, and my dashcam doesn't pick up my voice very well. It can pick up audio from my speakers pretty good, but if I was to get a USB mic, it would sound weird, because you would (faintly) hear my speaking into the mic, and then hear the audio of my voice played through the speakers.

This is just something I'm doing for fun, it's not meant to be a serious, high production value attempt at making money on youtube (I'm also not super tech saavy), so I'm looking for minimal cost and effort solutions.

I run a 70mai A810

Thanks!
 
Anton Sugar said:
but if I was to get a USB mic, it would sound weird, because you would (faintly) hear my speaking into the mic, and then hear the audio of my voice played through the speakers.
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I don't understand the problem.

I think I would use my phone to record the audio, then mix it with the dashcam video in a video editor. If you want good quality speech, without much background (road) noise, then you would want an external mike of some sort for the phone, that you place near your mouth, but for adequate quality, you could just put the phone in a shirt pocket.

You can get a Viofo A139 Pro dashcam, that has an external microphone input, and place the external microphone nearish your mouth, but that would be a costly upgrade to your dashcam that you don't really need.
 
Anton Sugar said:
not super tech saavy), so I'm looking for minimal cost and effort solutions
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Welcome to the club.
I’ve tested every Viofo dash cam since 2019, (except VS1).
And a few others from different brands.
By far the best audio is from the ORIGINAL A229 Duo (2022) using the optional external microphone.
It’s been discontinued, but maybe @viofo has one laying around they could sell.

The A139 Pro has the second best audio with optional external microphone.
You can use the “rear” camera of the original A229 Duo as an internal camera if your podcast is during daylight driving hours.
It’s 2K 1440p so the image quality is pretty good.
You just wont be able to see anything at night unless you turn on your dome light.

Here’s an audio demo with the eternal mic vs. internal mic.
This will also show you what the “rear” camera looks like being used as an “internal” camera;

Here’s an audio comparison of the INTERNAL mics of the;
A229 Pro (2023)
A299 Plus (2023)
A229 Duo (2022)
A139 Pro (2022)
Shoutout to @rcg530 for the fancy editing, and audio analysis;


-Chuck

Nigel said:
I don't understand the problem.
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The problem is having to spend hours in post production adding audio over the recorded dash cam footage with a computer, and editing software.
If the audio is already on the dash cam footage it makes it that much easier.
He said he’s not tech savvy, and looking for minimal cost, and effort.
 
I too think a voice-over audio recording recorded on your phone edited over your dash cam footage would be the best approach.

Since you are concerned with road noise I wouldn't bother with any dash cam microphones, even wired external ones. These won't solve your road noise problem. Instead, I would recommend a noise cancelling Bluetooth headset. There are dozens on the market but I can recommend the following one which I've owned for about 5 months and find that it performs well, virtually eliminates external noises, is solidly built, reliable, always connects and is quite affordable compared to many of its competitors. I use it mainly for my phone (often in my office when I'm at my keyboard) but it works with any app or device. ($29.99 USD) ($39.99 CAD)

It has voice notifications that sound and function very much like what we are familiar with in Viofo cameras.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/B0CR9R3PJY

trucker.jpg
 
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Panzer Platform said:
The problem is having to spend hours in post production adding audio over the recorded dash cam footage with a computer, and editing software.
If the audio is already on the dash cam footage it makes it that much easier.
He said he’s not tech savvy, and looking for minimal cost, and effort.
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If your gonna' do podcasts you need at least some minimal editing skills. Adding some audio over a video is one of the easiest things you can do with simple editing software and doesn't require "hours in post production" unless you want to get into fancy edits and elaborate production values.
 
I just got a A810 to beat on, at least on the front 4K you can crop in a little so you do not have dash ASO in the frame,,,, at least i would do that if it was me.
Also the audio, i would also use a stand alone audio recorder of some sort, mixing that in with the video should not be a problem, most edit softwares today have a auto SYNC feature, that i assume will also work with a audio track.
But otherwise you can always use a cue like a clapper ( clapping hands ) to get things lined up good.

Mind you today as i have a Insta360 ACE pro camera, i would use that recording 4K 120 and then one of the BT microphones like dji ones that will work with the Insta camera.

BTW most editing softwares have tutorials on how to use them on youtube, most i think also have their own often free classes on how to get by.


But K.I:S.S for starters, so just cut / trim, and maybe do a few transitions in between clips ASO, all something you should pick up on within the first 2-3-4 videos.

Of course you also need a computer to do that on, as you are filming 4K and if you want to output in that too ( and you should ) then it will take some compute power to do it reasonably fast, but a slower computer can also do it, just you can mow the lawn and do shopping while it finish the job at a slower pace.
 
Thanks for your replies everyone

As I was reading through them, I came up with what I think would be the easiest and cheapest solution.

I can record whatever I want to say on my phone, prior to making the drive, then play the recording through my speakers as I make the drive.

Granted, this doesn’t block the road noise, but I think this can be mitigated by turning the volume high enough.
 
kamkar said:
I just got a A810 to beat on, at least on the front 4K you can crop in a little so you do not have dash ASO in the frame,,,, at least i would do that if it was me.
Also the audio, i would also use a stand alone audio recorder of some sort, mixing that in with the video should not be a problem, most edit softwares today have a auto SYNC feature, that i assume will also work with a audio track.
But otherwise you can always use a cue like a clapper ( clapping hands ) to get things lined up good.

Mind you today as i have a Insta360 ACE pro camera, i would use that recording 4K 120 and then one of the BT microphones like dji ones that will work with the Insta camera.

BTW most editing softwares have tutorials on how to use them on youtube, most i think also have their own often free classes on how to get by.


But K.I:S.S for starters, so just cut / trim, and maybe do a few transitions in between clips ASO, all something you should pick up on within the first 2-3-4 videos.

Of course you also need a computer to do that on, as you are filming 4K and if you want to output in that too ( and you should ) then it will take some compute power to do it reasonably fast, but a slower computer can also do it, just you can mow the lawn and do shopping while it finish the job at a slower pace.
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What’s ASO?
 
The guy that have this channel use to be here on the forum, i think it is good stuff, though no talk.

www.youtube.com

American Roads

Time-lapsed video collections of my trips along the highways and roads in America. Most of the videos will come from the southwest, particularly Southern California. Join many other road videographers at FreewayJim group on Facebook as well!
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
kamkar said:
The guy that have this channel use to be here on the forum, i think it is good stuff, though no talk.

www.youtube.com

American Roads

Time-lapsed video collections of my trips along the highways and roads in America. Most of the videos will come from the southwest, particularly Southern California. Join many other road videographers at FreewayJim group on Facebook as well!
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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This is similar to what I have in mind, except it would be real time videos of me rambling about stuff that only the three people watching would care about, lol

Thanks for the link, these videos look great. Now I just have to figure out how to get such clear footage without reflections.
 
Yes most People with a dashcam will need a CPL filter ( Circular Polarizer Filter ) they also make those for the A810 but sadly they are not included as they should be.

You can also put a flat black dashmat over your dashboard, the reflections of the A pillars are often not something you can loose other than like i say crop into the footage, which mean just use a little of the middle of the picture so you do not have things at the edges in view.
The guy doing the travel videos above as you can see in his footage he have no dashboard - no A pillars and no hood, but he used a camcorder for his recordings so was able to use a little optical zoom.

By cropping into a video at some resolution, you of course loose som of that, but you can still tell the editing software to output 4K even if the footage are not that, in that scale the siftware just upscale a little.
 
Anton Sugar said:
OK, thanks

I thought it might have been some insider term for the camera picking up reflections, which is another thing I struggle with, lol
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Well, typically a CPL (circular polarizer) is used to help eliminate reflections but you also might want to consider using a dash mat. You can learn more about how effective dash mats can be HERE. ( and also do some searches here in the forum)
 
Upscaling footage are not really cool, it is something cheap dashcams do to be able to claim 4K, but their sensor are often just 2.5K in actual resolution, so the camera just blow that up to 4K it then output.

But say you have trimmed a little off the sides of your 4K footage and it is now really just 3.5 K it will still look just fine when you blow that up to 4K in the editing software.
 
This video for instance, it is recorded with a 1080p resolution camera, i have just blown it up in editing as youtube seem to be kinder to 4K footage, but detail wise it is just the amount a 1080p sensor can capture.

 
I actually found out about the 70mai CPL filter and dash mats through this forum today.

But after doing a little research, it seems a CPL filter will not entirely remove reflections, they will just be minimized.

And while I’m sure a dash mat would help, it too would just mitigate, but not entirely remove, reflections.

I know this, because when I drive at night, my dash can actually picks up the reflection of my radio screen among other things, lol

I may have to do as kamkar suggests and crop my footage.
 
Anton Sugar said:
I can record whatever I want to say on my phone, prior to making the drive.
Click to expand...

Maybe I don't understand what you have in mind for your podcasts, but I would think you might want to be able to speak extemporaneously while driving so you could comment on interesting or unexpected events and sights you may encounter on your journeys.
 
The " tricks " you see in the footage i have made in editing the video, it is a freeze frame from the video, that is default displayed in 10 seconds before the live video resume, so in those 10 seconds of just a picture you can tell the software to zoom in and center on some part of the picture ( license plate )

Adding this " trickery to a video say with 10 oncoming cars, it take me about 10 - 15 minutes to add, so its not like its a big brain move, i learned this from some video on youtube and then i just played around with the editing software.
 
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