More and more people are taking part in 'extreme' sports¹. At the same time, the precipitous drop in both the cost and the size of video recording equipment has made it easier than ever to record a participant's-eye-view of these activities. This Entry gives some basic advice on the most common methods of getting your extreme exploits onto video.

The basic equipment you'll need to do this properly is: a helmet (which you're probably going to be wearing anyway, right?); some kind of video camera and recorder; a reasonably modern PC with a big hard drive; some video editing software.

Common Pitfalls

There are a number of pitfalls you will inevitably run into when trying to capture the ideal video. These issues are common to all methods of capture, so they're best dealt with first.

Battery Life

Whatever gadget you're using, its battery life must be good enough to keep recording for a whole session of whatever it is you'll be doing. For a parachute jump, this might be a matter of seconds and is unlikely to be a problem, provided you charged your batteries. For a paragliding session, it could be hours. Engage all the power-saving features of your kit to extend the battery life as much as possible.

Recording Capacity

Though this is related to battery life, it's no use having a full battery if your recording medium fills up too quickly. If you're recording sporting action for your personal amusement, there's no need to record it in HD quality - 640x480² and 30 fps³ is usually plenty.

Recording Format

Make sure that your gadget records in a format you can edit. Remember that most of what you record will inevitably be useless shots of mucking about. Being able to cut all this out and skip straight to the good bits is essential, so ensure you have an editing program that can open and work with the format you record in.

Orientability

An odd title for what basically refers to 'knowing where the camera is pointing'. Some set-ups make this easier than others, but knowing what your camera is picking up is vital. More will be said on this subject in the individual equipment sections. The general principle, however, is that when your head is in a relatively neutral position and you're looking straight forward, the camera should be pointing at whatever your eyes most naturally come to rest on. Getting this right can be tricky, and it can be quite disappointing to do something impressive and later to find that you have some really good video footage of what was happening six feet to the left of where you were looking.

Are You A Camera?

After you've shot your first couple of helmet-mount masterpieces you will appreciate how quickly the average human whips their head from side to side when looking around, and how bad the average video camera is at following this movement smoothly. Learn to make the movements of your head as slow and smooth as possible. You want your audience to be excited and impressed, not actually motion-sick. Also, remember to concentrate on and keep in frame your target for several seconds at a time. It's very frustrating when the camera keeps glancing at interesting or impressive stuff and looking away again.

For best results, switch off any autofocus features and manually set the focus to infinity. Also, engage any anti-shake features to their maximum extent!

Operability

Most extreme sports activities will require gloves of one sort or another. Operating fiddly video equipment with a gloved hand can be very tricky. Therefore consider either equipment that is easy to operate with a gloved hand (hard to find) or better, equipment that doesn't require the user to intervene much.

The Integrated Camera

It is possible to purchase solid-state camcorders not much bigger than a large cigar. They are entirely self-contained, and record footage onto an SD card or similar chip-based medium. They need no connections in the field, are light and easily attached to equipment. This equipment is easily waterproofed for canoeing, windsurfing or similar activities, or indeed may itself be waterproof already.

The major disadvantage of this type of camera is orientability. There is, quite simply, no way to tell precisely what the camera is seeing until you review the movie on your PC later. Also, being limited to solid-state media, the currently relatively-low capacity⁴ of these devices may be a problem.

The Camera/HDD Recorder Combination

There are a number of personal HDD recorders on the market, in varying sizes, with screens up to seven inches and hard disk capacities into the hundreds of gigabytes. These devices are usually sold as multimedia players, able to store and display hundreds of movies, photos and music tracks. Most, however, are also capable of recording, and need only the addition of a lightweight camera to function well as a camcorder.

The big advantage of this setup is capacity. Literally hundreds of hours of footage will fit on these devices, and their battery life is usually good enough to last all day. They are good for orientability, too, as the generously sized screen can be held in your hand while the camera is attached to your head, allowing you to position the camera easily and see where it's pointing. Operability is less of an issue, too, because you can simply begin recording when you turn up and leave it running the whole time - no need to stop and start.

The disadvantages are cost and complexity. A recorder can, on its own, cost well in excess of £100⁵, going up to more than £400 for a really luxurious one, and the camera is another £100 or more on top of that. Further, you have to connect the two with a wire, and you have to have somewhere safe to stash the relatively fragile HDD recorder. Nevertheless, this is probably the best solution if you can afford it.

Solid-state Camcorder

It is now possible to buy a solid-state camcorder about the size of a packet of cigarettes which will record video onto a card. These are slightly different in design to the integrated cameras mentioned above, in that they look like a much smaller version of the tape or disk camcorders most of us are used to, complete with flip-out display screen. Such a camera can simply be attached directly to the helmet.

The advantage of using one of these is simplicity and cost. You simply take the camera and stick it to your helmet. They're pretty cheap (well under £100), quite robust and record reasonable quality footage. A one gigabyte card is good for about forty minutes of footage.

The disadvantage is orientability - it can be hard to tell where the camera is pointing. However, it's not as bad as the integrated camera. If you have the kind of camera on which the display screen can flip right round, you can orient it by just looking in a mirror. You should therefore remember to take a mirror with you, and also remember to flip the screen back down before starting to do whatever it is you're going to do. Operability with these devices can be an issue, as they're designed to be held in the hand⁶ rather than stuck to the side of the head. Finding the small buttons unaided can be tricky. The cost advantage, however, is significant, and outweighs this problem.

Helmet Attachment

There are a number of ways of attaching a camera to your helmet. Take care before applying any adhesive to the shell of your helmet as it may degrade its integrity.

This Researcher's preferred method is to use heavy duty velcro. This can be obtained cheaply from craft shops and can support over 10kg. Nothing you attach to your helmet should weigh much more than a couple of hundredths of that, but despite that, do always make sure that whatever is stuck to your helmet is also attached to you by some other means, such as a lanyard.

You could construct a camera pouch from offcut neoprene and attach this permanently to your helmet. This has the advantage that once you've oriented it correctly, you can just drop the camera into it, sure in the knowledge that it's pointing where you're looking.

Conclusion

Exciting first-person video footage of your favourite sport is within reach. See you on YouTube!