Suggestions for best low light with GPS overlay

[EnragedNinja]

Hey everyone thanks for taking the time to read this

Going to be doing a multi-state road trip from MI to FL and wanted to do a time lapse video with a map overlay. It’s a 15+(ish) hour drive and might be mostly night driving and I wanted to document it. Seen a decent amount of videos out there but the majority use go pro’s and/or finding posts/videos that are dated 3+ years out.

- What would be a dash cam that can handle such a request?

- Heat can tend to be a factor, looking for something reliable

- recommendations for memory size, back and forth trip all in one card preferably. If not on one card then what would be recommended as far as multiple cards

- would prefer a 60 FPS, low light. Bonus for a rear and inside cam

- GPS with map overlay is the main achievement. Bonus for graphing altitude

- can this be achieved by recycling Android cell phones into a dash cam?

 

[kamkar]

Welcome to the forum EnragedNinja.
It will be no problem recording all of that drive, that just require a large enough memory card, or with a smaller card a offload of footage to something else some time during the drive.

Heat are not really a problem for dashcams while driving, or parked ( but not recording ) only when parked and using some form of parking mode can heat be a issue, not least in hotter southern states and in the summer.
As you probably know even in MI in the summer a car can be uncomfortable hot just sitting there parked in the sun, add to that a camera generating its own heat too, and you soon be in a temp range where electronic components call it quits.
But for just being parked in the sun and the camera off just waiting for the next time you drive there are not really any issues, in the old days lens focus might slide in such circumstances, but generally thats no longer a problem for quality cameras.

Regarding what size memory card to get, and how many hours/minutes it can record before being full and start to delete oldest footage, well that have a few factors in play.
1. the size of the memory card of course
2. the bitrate the camera use, higher bitrate = larger file size, but dashcams today often hover around 20 mbit for 1080 / 30 FPS cameras
3. number of cameras, if you go for a 2 or even 3 channel system, well of course it offload 2 X - 3 X more footage as there are more cameras
4. the resolution of the camera, a 4k camera recording 30 FPS will make larger files due to the larger resolution and probably also the higher bitrate you need with 4K to maintain the same image quality of a 1080p camera also recording 30 FPS, so the 1080/30 camera with a 20 mbit bitrate might generate 3 minute video files of 350 MB where as a 4K/30 camera with 40 mbit might generate 6-700 MB files every 3 minutes as it have a higher resolution, letting the 4K camera record at 20 mbit too, would make the image quality less as bitrate are sort of a image quality multiplier, and so the same bitrate with a higher resolution mean the quality are spread out even thinner so to say.

There are dashcams that can do 60 FPS, but not paired with one or two more cameras, so 2-3 channel systems it is just the front camera alone that can do 60 FPS, add one or 2 more cameras and it will fall back to 30 FPS for all the cameras.
The new Viofo A139 do 60 FPS on the camera alone ( 1440p resolution ) but add the 1080p interior camera and the 1080p rear camera and they all 3 record 30 FPS.

The dashcams is not like you some times see with a route overlaid the footage as you can do with some action cameras, GPS overlays in dashcams are just speed and or map coordinates.
You can see your route on a map but that require a dedicated dashcam player software and then the route are displayed on a map in a separate window in the software

Using a phone can maybe do it, but recording for a long time might be a problem in regard to heat

Personally if i was to do a journey video ( and i have once ) i would use a action camera, as those can record in a higher bitrate and so will preserve more detail.
This old video of mine ( part of 9 ) was recorded in 1080 / 60 and then in post production speed up so 1 hour driving = 10 minutes watching, and then upscale to 4K as youtube tend to be more gentle with their re-compression to that format.

 

[kamkar]

I bailed on you a bit fast,,,,,, sorry.

We have a bitrate calculator on this site, it can estimate about how much recording time you have with a given bitrate and memory card size.

Recording Time Calculator - DashCamTalk

Use our Recording Time Calculator to approximate how much video your SD card can hold.

dashcamtalk.com

THis is of course just 1 channel, so if you have a system with more channels you of course have to add those up to get the total

I think it is geared for 1080p cameras, so might be less accurate with higher resolution cameras like 1440p

In regard to low light sensors, ATM the best performers are Sony starvis IMX 291 ( 1080p ) and IMX 335 ( 1440 p )

This is from my A139 test camera, daytime 60 FPS footage from the front camera alone ( 3 channel system )

Here the same camera but night time / in town but now recording 1440p/30 fps, which i have changed a bit in post production ( upscale to 4K )
There is also a little footage from one of my side cameras thrown in.

With just a 1 channel system i would not go below 128 GB in size, but i do actually use 256GB cards in my permanent cameras, and use 64GB and 128 for any other test cameras i might have in the car.

One 1080p camera with 20 mbit bitrate and using a 256GB memory card and you will have about 30 hours of recording time on that card before the camera start to recycle

 

[Nigel]

Don't need 60fps if you are going to speed the video up!
And to make 15 hours of video watchable, you will need to speed it up a lot, eg x6, and it will still be too long!

 

[kamkar]

Yeah i would also stick with 30 FPS, no need to focus too much on 60 FPS