Hi all,

have seen a few different bat reps on you tube, a few have some nice side bars edited in that shows the number of hull /shields, destroyed ships etc . is there software that does this ? any info appreciated

I haven't watched this yet but this may help:

How to make an X-Wing Bat Rep Video by Fly Casual...

But someone with experience should weigh in. I just ordered a Vivitar Action Cam (4K/914HD) because it was free from work - I really hope that does the job and has the proper resolution to pick dice rolls. Does anyone have any thoughts on that?

The resolution isn't the problem with those cameras, in terms of picking up dice rolls. The problem is focal length. Action cams have fisheye lenses to give that PoV effect. Fisheye lenses have incredibly short focal lengths, which allows them to capture a wide area from fairly close up, but at a loss of definition of small items that may be only a couple of feet away. Dice markings are, I'm afraid, one of those things that will often get lost very easily by an action cam.

Good news is, in post, there'll be enough resolution for you to pause the playback, zoom in on the dice roll and check the result. You just won't be able to see them too well in the live playback.

I've recorded a few games with my GoPro at various angles, heights, and resolutions, and I'm convinced that - despite it's convenience - it's just not going to be the best at the job. I'm thinking of using my now rather neglected D300s with a nice 50/f1.4 lens mounted higher up to try it. It's a fair bit more inconvenient, but it's still a better overall picture despite being 720p.

Oh.. Blah. This is extremely helpful, though it does make me sad lol

I'll give it a go and report back (once it gets here in a month...)

Give it a try for sure. I've found the GoPro to honestly be quite good at recording the game. It's only major flaw is picking out the details of the dice face after a roll (easily solved with a dice tray and a cheap webcam as a second capture device), and the base chits on the ships (but that's only an issue when running multiple generics of one ship).

One thing I'd recommend is getting a cheap boom arm to mount the camera. Action cams need to be in close to see the... eh, action... and a boom arm for a tripod or lighting stand will let you get the cam in nice and close, and at a good height, without interfering with the players. It's also easy to pack away, if you're going portable.

Give it a try for sure. I've found the GoPro to honestly be quite good at recording the game. It's only major flaw is picking out the details of the dice face after a roll (easily solved with a dice tray and a cheap webcam as a second capture device), and the base chits on the ships (but that's only an issue when running multiple generics of one ship).

One thing I'd recommend is getting a cheap boom arm to mount the camera. Action cams need to be in close to see the... eh, action... and a boom arm for a tripod or lighting stand will let you get the cam in nice and close, and at a good height, without interfering with the players. It's also easy to pack away, if you're going portable.

Okay, definitely. I already bought a tripod, Boom-Arm is next!

You can get some reasonably priced ones on Amazon. You don't need anything heavy duty for the action cam weight, just something with a decent lock hinge so it doesn't do the slow-fall over time (though even if it does do that, they come with hooks on other end of the boom to hang a counterweight anyway).

A trick I've done with the GoPro for long videos (since action cam batteries are notoriously low capacity relative to their drain) is to pick up a USB battery pack with a 2A output. I grabbed a couple of Anker 16Ah ones on Amazon during a sale, and they work a treat. Strap the battery pack to the tripod (or even use it as the counterweight on a strap...), and run the USB cable up the boom arm into the camera. You'll end up running out of memory on the card quicker than battery power with that set up.

You can get some reasonably priced ones on Amazon. You don't need anything heavy duty for the action cam weight, just something with a decent lock hinge so it doesn't do the slow-fall over time (though even if it does do that, they come with hooks on other end of the boom to hang a counterweight anyway).

A trick I've done with the GoPro for long videos (since action cam batteries are notoriously low capacity relative to their drain) is to pick up a USB battery pack with a 2A output. I grabbed a couple of Anker 16Ah ones on Amazon during a sale, and they work a treat. Strap the battery pack to the tripod (or even use it as the counterweight on a strap...), and run the USB cable up the boom arm into the camera. You'll end up running out of memory on the card quicker than battery power with that set up.

Do you happen to know what size memory card is needed for a match that lasts 75-100 minutes (including setup, etc.)?

Totally depends on your camera and it's resolution/frame rate, but they're pretty **** cheap these days. A 32GB card will set up up for an easy 2 hours of recording, but you might as well get a 64GB considering there's only a couple of dollars int he difference these days. Just make sure the card you get is rated for UHS-1; it's a data transfer speed rating. Cheaper chard (say, class-6 cards that are common in cameras) will choke the buffer after a while, and stop recording. Again, the price difference is negligible, so it's worth it.

Totally depends on your camera and it's resolution/frame rate, but they're pretty **** cheap these days. A 32GB card will set up up for an easy 2 hours of recording, but you might as well get a 64GB considering there's only a couple of dollars int he difference these days. Just make sure the card you get is rated for UHS-1; it's a data transfer speed rating. Cheaper chard (say, class-6 cards that are common in cameras) will choke the buffer after a while, and stop recording. Again, the price difference is negligible, so it's worth it.

You, sir, rock.

Thank you! Also, I'm a little surprised that 64 GB will be all I need, but I'm not complaining. I'm still trying to figure out my setup and how to get the right angle. Maybe after I figure it out I'll post a tutorial/video explaining some of these things, something I wish I could find now.

When you're setting up the camera, remember that any angle you put on the cam, with the fisheye lens it has, is going to cause a non-linear depth fall-off. That is to say, objects further away from the camera will look disproportionately so, compared to those close to it. Easiest way to alleviate this is to have the camera positioned dead center of the mat, looking down.

However... that opens a new problem; the fisheye lens will distort the edges of the mat, and anything approaching them, forcing them to look curved and out of size. Most video editing software will have a correction slider for this, though. Just takes a bit of fiddling to get it right. If yours doesn't, there is free software out there that'll do that correction for you as a batch process, and then you can just import the new file back into your software.

So I got the camera. It's pretty bad...

First of all, it doesn't come with a threaded tripod mount, so I have to find one. An annoyance.

Then I filmed some stuff in each of the resolutions available. Woof. Not great. Not even good. Very grainy and definitely won't pick up dice rolls or any fine detail. I put the camera a few inches away from a Pilot card and my heart sank - no improvement in the quality, even close up.

I'll still give it a go (once I have purchased a ******* thread-mount) but I'm positive this GoyPro will end up in the Misc. Electronics bin.