The other thing about cameras is if one mounts it on the upper bay so it catches the apogee separation, it will give one an idea of what happened if a failure occurs. I had a failure in an old cardboard rocket I thought simply the apogee shockcord broke
and the two rocket portions did the "death dive" and that was it. The onboard video showed the apogee charge blew the side out of the cardboard sustainer and didn't separate the two portions. The rocket did the "death dive" routine and when the main charge blew, the main shockcord zippered up the upper bay completely and the zippered tube fell free off the ebay. The wrenching force pulled the ebay free from the sustainer, the apogee shockcord then zippered and broke.
The camera was on the upper tube that "fluttered" down. Frame-by-frame analysis revealed the events. After the main charge blew, the camera caught frames of the sustainer falling away with the now broken apogee shockcord wrapped around the tube.
The ebay came down on the 6' main chute and heck the only thing one could see at altitude was the open parachute. One would have figured the chute would have fluttered down but the ebay was hanging underneath and was hard to see.
It provided enough weight so the chute stayed open. Was the gentlest landing that ebay will ever see.
The camera came "fluttering" down on the zippered tube and survived fine. The fincan was long enough and the fins survived. I'm able to remove the damaged portion, apply a coupler and the fincan will fly again! Second rebuild.
Link is here if one wants to watch:
https://youtu.be/hMvT9BKzbUg
Soooooo, if one flies a well-positioned camera can have a resource to figure out what happened on a less than nominal flight. What I initially thought was an apogee cord failure in an old rocket was more complex (and cooler!) then that.
Kurt
