You can drop the sjcam down to 30FPS in the low resolution, its not limited to 240 or 120 or whatever.

richms:

 

You can drop the sjcam down to 30FPS in the low resolution, its not limited to 240 or 120 or whatever.

 

Thats really useful to know - couldn't actually find that particular info on the web. Picture quality looks fine for what we need.

Would just be a matter of checking if the inbulit mic. can pick up people 2-3m away.

Might have to buy one and try it.

Really appreciate the info and ideas.

Why don't you just privately upload the videos to youtube etc?  And send them the link? Or upload it to a cloud storage (dropbox or google drive) and share the file with them

If the viewer is streaming the video from your dropbox, the size won't matter so much as they'll be watching over the time it downloads.

macuser:

Why don't you just privately upload the videos to youtube etc?  And send them the link?

robjg63:

macuser:

 

Why don't you just privately upload the videos to youtube etc?  And send them the link?

 

People using the cams are not too technical.
The people being filmed would not be too pleased if their presentations went public(I know there are some lock down features on YouTube though)
Movies could be up to 2 hours in length - quite large files.
In some cases only ADSL to upload with

In that case, totally avoid h265, none of the devices your viewers will own will be able to playback the format in a fluid matter (or at all in some cases)

Pick up a 550D DSLR or something similar that shoots 640x480...\

Alternatively most cellphones have a 480P video option...just film with that

macuser:

 

Pick up a 550D DSLR or something similar that shoots 640x480...

 

I'd be very careful recommending a DSLR for a 2 hour video session.

You don't need any of the features of a DSLR for that, and may pick up the negatives, such as limited recording rate (EU limit of 30 mins) and sensor overheating.

My guts telling me you want a handicam, which is designed for this task.  Hopefully you can get a massive memory card and the unit will cope with larger than 4GB files.

Anyone looked at a modern handicam video camera recently?  I know Sony and Panasonic were doing these for a while, oddly with a small projector built into the Sony from memory?!

Have decided to give an SJCam a go - they arent very expensive - will be interesting to see what the audio is like.

DSLRs tend to be just about studio quality these days - indeed there was a TV program (forget the name) that was entirely shot on Canon DSLR cameras - you would not have known going by the picture quality. But again - unless that had the ability to do much lower quality it will be making massive files - which is the opposite of what I am after.

PS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_EOS_5D_Mark_II

Has a list of TV series etc that are/were shot on the Canon EOS DSLR

My S4 goes down to 320X240, no idea what file size it would make

blackjack17:

 

My S4 goes down to 320X240, no idea what file size it would make

 

Just did a test a 30 sec video is 3.3 mb which means each hour works out at around 400mb.

Quality wise it would be fine for moderation purposes.

5gb for 2 hours of hd video isnt big.

copying using usb2/3 should only take a few minutes.

i personally don't use anything sd.

richms:

 

You can drop the sjcam down to 30FPS in the low resolution, its not limited to 240 or 120 or whatever.

 

Have bought an SJcam4000 - The video does go down to VGA 640 x 480 - but you cant change the frame rate it appears.

Its 60fps for 720p (1280 x 720), VGA(848 x 480), and QVGA(640 x 480) according to the manual.

The camera displays 720p 60fps, 720p 30fps and WVGA 30fps and VGA (no fps displayed).

Even with it set to WVGA 30fps -according to the camera, the video samples I have made show as being 60fps via Videolan and mediaInfo - so thats pretty annoying.

Back to the drawing board....

WVGA is as low as mine seems to go? And it has 30 as an option. Files seem pretty damn small to me, will have to look at the sizes but a 32 gig card didnt fill up with a days use off and on.