Video camera for amateur video recording on Linux

Hardware Other Hardware
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I’m currently thinking about recording some videos of me making music, mainly at home, but rarely also outside. Always with a stationary cam though.

I already have a professional audio recording setup btw.

What’s currently keeping me from doing it, is all the manual steps that I’d have to go through when recording a video.

(E.g. Remove battery from charger, insert battery into camera, wipe SD card on PC, insert SD card into cam, start cam, select resolution etc, turn on lights, hit record on the cam, do my thing, hit stop record on the cam, turn cam off, remove battery and insert into charger, remove SD card and insert into PC, copy files off of SD card, reduce file size to something sane that I can share with other people on youtube or whatsapp etc, import video file into editing program, add my audio, sync audio and video, cut if necessary, save mp4 or something)

I don’t have the patience for all this stuff. Ideally I want to press a button and then my cam and mic automatically turn on and start recording directly into an mp4 file on my Linux PC.

I have a capture card and I’m pretty good at Bash scripting. So my naiive idea would be to write a script that

  • turns on the smart outlet for the cam, mic and lights
  • starts obs to capture my mic and cam input from the capture card to which the cam is connected via HDMI
  • writes the obs stream into a file
  • reduces bitrate or whatever using ffmpeg

(When recording outside, I’d obviously have to do most of this manually and with SD cards instead of a capture card. But that’s okay because 99% of the time I’ll be inside.)

I was looking to invest around €300-€350 into a used camera (maybe a DSLR with clean HDMI output or something like that). (Open for suggestions or other recommendations)
And then maybe another €100 into some lights and a tripod for the cam.

My question: Is that even possible without a webcam? And if so which camera(s) would make sense for me and why?

Note: I don’t want to install proprietary software/apps for this.
Also: I am a complete camera noob. Last time I looked through a DSLR cam menu I didn’t understand what 99% of the stuff is.

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Been a while since I browsed the DSLR / mirrorless market but your budget sounds low except for beat-up older models?

How about UHD or FHD Camcorders, like from Sony, JVC, Panasonic? You won’t have the interchangeable lens option, but they might fit your budget better. They’ll also be easier to use for video than a still frame camera.

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At that budget, I would just use a mobile phone.

You’re better off putting that money into lights and sound equipment.

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To answer your question …

In my opinion ( which may or may not be worth a shit ) …

No.
And yes.
But actually sort of ( somewhere in between the first to ).

But no matter the answer, you have asked a complicated question ( many questions actually ). Which requires more time and space then is suitable for a forum like this.

I to am a noob to this. But I am willing to share what I know (?) and have found. But not sure what the proper venue ( method ) would be best. But let me know and we can see what we can do.

" … (E.g. Remove battery from charger, insert battery into camera … "

You’re working way to hard at this. Way easier then that.

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Obs has a direct recording option, why would you stream it just to record the stream with another program? Obs also has options for recording quality, so you should just be able to punch in your desired bitrate and whatnot, no need for separate ffmpeg processing unless you have some very specific requirments.

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I don’t think HDMI is capable of transferring commands from your PC to a camera. See if you can get a device with USB type C gen3.1 or better. Thunderbolt would be a good alternative, as is the ancient FireWire. Given that you’re probably looking at the 2nd hand market, you’re likely to encounter FW devices and Linux (still) supports the protocol. You’ll probably need to invest another 20 bucks or so for a PCIe card with FW on it.

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You could pipe your smartphone camera into OBS and record that way.
Or, if you’re looking for recommendations, EposVOX has made quite a lot of videos regarding recording and streaming setups.

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@gordonthree
Yes, I’d be perfectly happy with a beat-up camera as long as it doesn’t affect performance. I don’t know if camcorders are any good. The thing is I honestly don’t really know anything about camera technology and what to look for.

@SgtAwesomesauce
Well, the idea was to buy a used camera not a new one and I’m not looking to get like super professional quality. I just want something that doesn’t suck as much smartphone camera. In my experience, smartphone cameras perform really bad when there is not enough light. I thought maybe DSLR could solve this (and also focusing issues). E.g. at first I was looking at the Canon EOS 1300D, which would be well within budget, but then I realized that its HDMI out messes with the image quality a lot.

Also using my phone would require me to add a lot of unwanted steps to recording a video and besides that the image quality is really bad.

@georgezilla
I don’t see how putting more money into my sound equipment would solve anything. I already have a professional setup that is more than sufficient.
I’m not sure if I can follow. If you have something to share, a post in this thread would would appear like the right place. This way future readers would benefit as well.

@TheCakeIsNaOH Sorry, when I say stream, I’m talking about a general data stream as we see them a lot in Linux, not about broadcasting. I was hoping OBS could simply take my video/audio streams and record them into a file without broadcasting.

Sending commands to the camera could maybe happen over wifi or using one of these remote trigger switches. For automation purposes I could desolder the switch and replace it with a wifi relay.
There is also a utility called Gphoto an Linux which can send commands over USB for cameras that support it.

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DSLR would really only solve focusing issues.

I’ve got a Sony A6300 with a variety of lenses and simply put, my OnePlus 7 does better in low-light than the A6300, regardless of the lens.

You should really be focusing on the entire setup. If you don’t have enough light, you need to add some.

Yes, that’s a builtin feature.

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My OnePlus 5t makes horribly grainy pictures in low light environments. I thought this was due to small sensor size or something. That’s why I assumed DSLR cams would perform better.

Still, it would seem very weird to me if investing €350 into a used phone would give be better quality than a dedicated camera (be it DSLR, a camcorder or whatever).

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It depends on the camera, but most dslr are designed to shoot the best with proper lighting.

You can take good pictures in dark, with proper settings, but with video, the only recourse is increasing the iso or aperture. Iso makes it grainy, aperture makes it a narrow depth of field.

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Okay I see. So basically DSLR cams kind of require you to mess with the settings a lot whenever your environment changes.
I think DSLR is not for me then. I’d prefer a plug & play solution or something that I only need to set up once.

So I just randomly looked at a few non-dslr cameras and I found the Sony RX100M3 which seems to perform pretty good, even in low-light environments and it sells for ~€300 on ebay. It also supports clean HDMI out.
Any thoughts on that particular model? Or any other suggestions?

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Your phone automatically does this. You can ask the camera to do it automatically as well, but you can usually get better results yourself if you know what you’re doing. (Only takes a little bit of practice)

You might consider a camcorder. They’re designed for exactly this purpose and tend to give you better quality video in a given price range. Of course, the side effect is that they don’t do pictures as well and don’t have interchangeable lenses (at least in your price range)

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Look into stripped-down POV cams that will send out a 4:2:2 feed allowing you to capture it with FFmpeg or OBS\vMix\anythign really. It’s basically a lens, sensor and cam body that uses SDI 3G and HDMI as outputs. No bell and whistles but you get a broadcast quality output with a 0.2lux (awesome in low light) and a set and forget workflow. Look at the Marshal CV502’s since their only 1080p60 and cheaper. Oh and they run for days if needed. Other than that you can always grab a second hand Canon M50 or M100 or anything with a clean HDMI out. Even the cheap cams that don’;t might have a hack for them like the M100 line.

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check out the Panasonic Lumix G5 (not the GH5)

you can find them on ebay in your budget

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I just watched EposVox review the Sony ZV-1.

TLDR:
It overheats, especially on 4k
Excellent autofocus feature, great overall performance for content creators.
Not cheap.

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Lighting and Audio, would be bigger priorities, towards producing videos [if that hasn’t been addressed yet].

If you’re looking at a direct camera porting, maybe look at likes of an Panasonic LX100, or an RX10 [which would be a bit more useful rig, over the RX100]

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