Podcasting with a Dashcam

[Anton Sugar]

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.

Speaking while driving was the original plan, but I never planned on doing a live commentary while driving.

While I’m lucky enough to drive in some beautiful places, my country is sparsely populated (when you consider it’s size) so there usually isn’t anything exciting happening, it’s more, oh look, here’s miles and miles of beautiful forests and mountains, lol

The talking would be about stuff that I think my friends would find interesting/useful.

 

[kamkar]

No most often you can not 100 % remove reflections, but the CPL filter will remove a lot of them, but like i said white / bright colored A pillars, or say a piece of paper lying on your dash, that it will only somewhat remove.
But everyone should run with a CPL filter today, it was different 10 - 12 years ago when camera sensors was not nearly as good, back then some would pull off the filter at night, CUZ it do block a little light.

 

[kamkar]

I also have a dashmat in my car, though as i drive a obscure little Suzuki brand car, well no one make a dashmat for it, so i had to make my own.

It is just a piece of flat black stage curtain draped over the dashboard and then trimmed with scissors to sort of fit
It is now 5-6 or so years old and no longer flat black but more some dark shade of gray, so is my dashboard plastics, but it is reflective so my dark cloth are still excellent for cameras with no CPL.

But i will be ordering CPL filter later today ( 2:30 AM here in Denmark now )

 

[kamkar]

BTW the video editing software i use is power director 17, it is now up to version 25 or something.
Pinnacle studio is also working / looking much like it, i also have this and actually in the latest version 25

 

[kamkar]

and also i was in Canada in 1991, with a huge tanker ship bringing you guys a poop load of unleaded gasoline, i was at the helm for the first time going up the river with the 200 something Meter long ship.
Canadian pilot,,,, very cool so good experience. sadly at night + emptying ship is fast, so i for sure will have to revisit if the damn lotto gods will take pity on me that is.

 

[Anton Sugar]

and also i was in Canada in 1991, with a huge tanker ship bringing you guys a poop load of unleaded gasoline, i was at the helm for the first time going up the river with the 200 something Meter long ship.
Canadian pilot,,,, very cool so good experience. sadly at night + emptying ship is fast, so i for sure will have to revisit if the damn lotto gods will take pity on me that is.

I’m assuming you were on the Saint Lawrence (St. Laurent)?

I just came back from a massive trip, unfortunately none of the footage is good due to reflections in the windshield.

 

[kamkar]

Yeah the big river on the east coast, we had to unload a little half way up CUZ otherwise the river was not big enough for a little Danish tanker ship
You guys had massive forest fires that year,,,, though i think isent that also that year.

Anyway 2 days and we was out of there again.

Also not really your big towns i would like to see, you have so much cool stuff sitting out there, overwhelming from a pancake dweller from flatland Denmark where the highest " mountain " are 170 M

 

[Anton Sugar]

Yeah the big river on the east coast, we had to unload a little half way up CUZ otherwise the river was not big enough for a little Danish tanker ship
You guys had massive forest fires that year,,,, though i think isent that also that year.

Anyway 2 days and we was out of there again.

Also not really your big towns i would like to see, you have so much cool stuff sitting out there, overwhelming from a pancake dweller from flatland Denmark where the highest " mountain " are 170 M

If it’s mountains you’re after, you need to go to the western part of the country. From the western edge of Alberta onward.

Look up Jasper, Banff, the Icefields Parkway, and anywhere in British Columbia.

 

[Dashmellow]

While I’m lucky enough to drive in some beautiful places, my country is sparsely populated (when you consider it’s size) so there usually isn’t anything exciting happening, it’s more, oh look, here’s miles and miles of beautiful forests and mountains, lol

But what are you going to do when a bigfoot stomps out into the road?

Actually, I too live in a scenic rural environment, although likely a lot more populated than where you are. The interesting surprises out on the road are usually wildlife related, idiot drivers or annoying tourists who usually prompt me to make comments, but I'm quite so sure they are something I would want to put in a podcast for public consumption !

 

[Anton Sugar]

If it’s mountains you’re after, you need to go to the western part of the country. From the western edge of Alberta onward.

Look up Jasper, Banff, the Icefields Parkway, and anywhere in British Columbia.

I forgot to mention, 30% of Jasper burned down this year… so look up pics of it from before.

 

[Anton Sugar]

But what are you going to do when a bigfoot stomps out into the road?

Actually, I too live in a scenic rural environment, although likely a lot more populated than where you are. The interesting surprises out on the road are usually wildlife related, idiot drivers or annoying tourists who usually prompt me to make comments, but I'm quite so sure they are something I would want to put in a podcast for public consumption !

Haha, yeah, I see a lot of idiot drivers too, but I tend to avoid the busiest areas and times, so I don’t suffer as much as you probably do, lol

 

[Dashmellow]

I forgot to mention, 30% of Jasper burned down this year… so look up pics of it from before.

That was a very sad event....... It was basically the same scenario with Paradise, California that was destroyed in the historic Camp Fire in 2018 when 18,804 buildings burned.

 

[Anton Sugar]

That was a very sad event....... It was basically the same scenario with Paradise, California that was destroyed in the historic Camp Fire in 2018 when 18,804 buildings burned.

Yeah, it really sucks to see all these beautiful places reduced to ash

 

[Dashmellow]

Unfortunately, we are likely to see a lot more of this in the coming years.

 

[Vortex Radar]

So from a shooting / editing standpoint, here’s how do it.

You’ll definitely want to record audio separately. You can use something like an A139 Pro that offers an external wired lav mic, record to a mic wired to your phone that’s running to a wired mic, or get a mic that clips onto your chest and record it separately too.

Now for the editing, synicing video and audio is trivial. Most any reasonable video editor will have an option to do that for you.

Two things come to mind for the video.

First, some dashcams (and I don’t know about the A810 off the top of my head) don’t have perfect continuity between clips meaning there might be a tiny gap between subsequent clips and so you’ll have black frames in the video every minute or so for those gaps.

You can combine those clips into one big clip, but again if they’re not continuous then the video and audio are gonna get more and more out of sync as time goes on. For this reason you’ll want to ensure your dashcam perfectly transitions from one clip to the next.

When it comes to combining a bunch of video clips, you’ll want to see what method works best with your editor of choice. There’s a few approaches that come to mine:

-Merge the videos in something like LosslessCut then sync video and audio in your editor.
-Combine the video clips in your editor directly into a new clip and then sync that with your audio
-Layout all the video clips in your timeline, manually sync the audio, mute all the video clips, then combine into one synced clip.

Find the easiest approach when starting your edit and it’ll pay dividends when you start cutting for the actual edit.

Then when it comes to audio, some editors have options to reduce noise or isolate your voice audio.

Adobe also has a tool that helps clean up audio and make it sound like it was shot in a studio. It’s actually made for podcasts. https://podcast.adobe.com/ I haven’t always been a huge fan of the results, but it does help in some instances and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s gotten better since I first tried it. YMMV.

Finally if you do have to cut, try to do it without varying your car speed so that the road noise and engine noise sounds the same and the cut is less jarring and noticeable. Using cruise control will help. You can also switch the video between a front and interior cam, for example, to help visually hide the cut. Hiding the time (or just slightly zooming in in post to hide the clock) can also help mask any cuts you make.

Sounds like a fun project. I hope you have fun creating it!