Recording Sports Videos in an Indoor School Gym

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Recording Sports Videos in an Indoor School Gym

My son just entered high school this school year (2023-2024). He has been super happy to be on the Junior Varsity volleyball team. And as a proud photographic father, of course, I want to be at all his games, shooting photos and videos.

It's important to capture the games for later analysis, talk topic, and entertainment. It's a great way to get my kids to talk about their experiences. And who doesn't want to watch some replays of questionable events. Although referees aren't allowed to watch replays during the game, it's always fun to see if the referees made the right call afterward.

In this article, I will document everything I learned while making video memories of these games.

Cross-Reference
This article focuses on recording videos. We have a companion article on shooting photographs for this same type of event. Please refer to the "Sports Photography in an Indoor School Gym" article.

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Motion Camera

Bring whatever motion camera you have on hand. Even a SmartPhone is better than nothing. If you have several, you may want to bring one to capture the entire game and another one to shoot random close-up clips. If you don't know what to bring, the following is my recommendation.

Cross-Reference
Note that if you intend to record the entire game, don't use a digital single-lens-reflex (DSLR) camera for that purpose. Almost all of the DSLR's on the market have a recording time limit of anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes, due to an European tax law that affects DSLR's around the world. See Canon EOS Rebel T3i - Pitfall #1 Video Length thread.

I do have quite a few camcorders lying around. But camcorders becomes outdated very quickly. It seems like only yesterday that High Definition (HD) camcorders replaced all Standard Definition (SD) camcorders. And now 2K, 4K, and 8K camcorders are already obsoleting the HD camcorders.

Cross-Reference
If you need to buy a camera, check out our "Where to buy cameras?" article. It outlines the best places to buy both new and used camera equipment.

Lately, I've jumped on the action cam bandwagon. I'm an active type of guy. When I'm traveling, I get in the action, rather than simply sightseeing. So for my Hawaii trip last year, I have purchased an Akaso Brave 7 LE action cam (4K) to take replace of my Contour ROAM (HD). It has turned out to be an excellent choice.

Cross-Reference
See our "Akaso Brave 7 LE Review" article.

This action cam turns out to be an excellent video camera for recording in a high school gym. It has four different wide angle settings that allows captures the entire arena. It has digital image stabilization to eliminate shakes from a rowdy crowd. And it can record continuously without dropping a beat. We'll get more into these details throughout this article.

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Batteries

The Akaso Brave 7 LE action cam came with two rechargeable battery packs. They lasted through about 6 hours of tournaments between about 10 schools. Of course, I only filmed my son's games during that time. I ran both batteries all the way down. Luckily I was able to capture all of my son's tournament games. But I was worried about running out of batteries half that time.

A similar experience occurred at a regular game. The Junior Varsity (JV) team played 3 full rounds. And the Varsity team played 5 full rounds. The game lasted about 4 to 5 hours. I ran both batteries down. The priority was my son's JV game, but I wanted to capture the Varsity game as well.

In the future, I will definitely get more batteries to be safe. The Akaso Brave 7 LE uses PG 1350 rechargeable battery pack. They are widely available on Amazon (see "Related Links" below).

Camera Hacker

Recording Sports Videos in an Indoor School Gym

Motion Camera

Batteries

Tripod

Image Stabilization

Related Links