Amount of data to deal with

All of the five cameras, 3 camcorders and 2 cameras – DMC-GX85, use about 50 to 100GB of memory per game. The camera DMC-GX85 seems to consume about 50% more of memory than a camcorder does for the same length, same resolution, and same FSP. For instance for a 2 hour shooting with 4k and 30 FPS, a camcorder consumes about 55GB, and the camera consumes like 75GB to 80GB.

I have a San Disk 256GB UHS-I SD card for each of them. DMC-GX85 can shoot 2 games with the SD Card, and a camcorder shoots 3 games most of the time unless one of the games becomes a very long game. UHS-I seems to be totally fine for shooting videos except I should have thought about UHS-II for moving the files to hard disk for long-term storage. Moving these files take time, like 30 minutes for each of them.

I now use 3 SD card readers, one build-in SD card reader, and two external ones. I had an older card reader, but it made a huge difference once I upgraded it to a USB3.0 one. UGREEN SD card reader has been working well.

For storage, I have a Synology DiskStation DS1019 with 5 pieces of Seagate Iron Wolf NAS 12TB. It gives me about 42TB of disk space with Raid 5 configuration. For high school baseballs in Spring, I video-recorded 24 games, and consumed a bit over 5TB. I suppose it’s about 210GB per game. Most of the games, I ran 4 cameras for the whole games, but sometimes some of the recording failed, and I lost some during the post processing.  For the summer ball, I recorded 45 games, and consumed about 12TB. Some time towards the middle to the end of the season, I started running the 5th camera for the whole game, too, so 5 cameras shot the whole games. So, the average size of storage per game was about 260GB.

Once I got home, I use 4 footages to compose one video with multi-views, by dividing a screen into 4. I typically select 1920×1080 resolution with 30FPS in Mpeg4, resulting about 4GB (length = 59 minutes) to 10.5GB (length = 2 hours 40 mins). I upload them to YouTube. I’ve never understood but it sometimes takes only 30 mins, and sometimes take like 3 hours even about the same size of video file.

Cameras I use for video-shooting baseball games

There are 2 types of cameras that I use.

One is a camcorder specifically designed for video recording and I like Panasonic HC-VX981 among other similar kinds. I have the other version of the same model, that has a viewfinder, PANASONIC HC-WXF991K, too, but I didn’t find much use of the viewfinder even though it’s more expensive. I also have Panasonic HC-WXF1. It’s a newer model and has a wider zoom lens. I got it because I thought it’d cover a wider range, or the whole baseball field including the first and the third base, but it doesn’t when you put the camera behind the fence. Also this newer model doesn’t work with some of the old aftermarket batteries, including the ones that had. You want a high capacity battery to keep the video running during a whole game which might last over 2 hours. Actually all of these will show the fence on the corners when they are wide-open. For a pitching scene, I typically zoom in, and these cameras work well. They are also good with shocks, and they won’t likely shut down even when a baseball hits the fence around them.

Another type I have is a camera that also takes videos. I have two of Panasonic DMC-GX85 with 12-32mm lens. This camera take videos longer than the other cameras that have limitations like 30 mins. This one take shots as long as the battery and memory cards last.  The 12-32mm lens that comes with this camera has its diameter which is small enough to fit in the fence gaps without being blocked at all. While you don’t want to stick up the lens on the other side of the fence, I can always adjust so that I can capture the whole field without having any of the corners cut with the fence. The battery doesn’t last long enough for the game, but a coupler (e.g. https://www.amazon.com/DMW-DCC11-DMW-BLG10-Replacement-Panasonic-DMC-LX100/dp/B0781DGN6F) with an external battery pack fixes the problem. A major issue with this camera is that it doesn’t work well with a shock, when a ball hit a fence right near the camera, and recording up to the point might be lost. MP4 file format doesn’t allow an accidental shut down. It happened to me multiple times.  I still love this camera and use it to capture wider view all the time.

I selected Panasonic first because I’ve had decent experiences with Panasonic cameras in the past. I am sure other makes make good ones, too. Since the first one was a Panasonic, I picked the rest from Panasonic too since I can use the same battery and other things, and usability are very similar although each camcorder has its button design and they are all different.

I tried smaller cameras like a GoPro-like 4K camera, and Sony FDRX3000, but none of them gave me results I wanted. The cameras that I use give good-enough results, and I am quite happy with them. I also tried Panasonic HC-V180K, not a 4K, but HD camera, but I wasn’t happy with the result at all.

There are much more expensive cameras that I am sure give higher quality footages, but I didn’t go for them since (1) they are above my budget, (2) I don’t want too expensive cameras to be sitting unattended for a few hours, and (3) they typically have even bigger lenses and they won’t work well when you shoot videos behind the fence.