How to use multiple smartphones to record simultaneous videos

[Switch]

I’m looking for tips on how to operate multiple smartphones to record videos of my launches. One app I found looks promising (Irium) but requires WiFi and a laptop. Is there a simpler way? Right now I’m setting up each smartphone to record separately and it is too much work. I want to start recording from up to four smartphones at the same time.

 

[OverTheTop]

Can you specify a start and end recording time on each phone for a scheduled recording? They should be within milliseconds of each other if they are synchronised through the network time infrastructure.

 

[dhbarr]

It's pretty caveman, but just strapping 3-4 cheap bluetooth phone camera remotes to a board should be fairly straightforward.

 

[neil_w]

Is it really that hard to load the four streams into a movie editor and then adjust them to sync them up? I’ve done very little editing myself so I really don’t know what I’m talking about, but this seems pretty basic. As @OverTheTop said, all the individual video files should have very accurate and consistent time stamps.

Curious where the difficulty lies.

 

[tsmith1315]

Curious where the difficulty lies.

The problem is telling phones in different locations to start the recording. I don't think it's critical that they are synced to start at the exact same time.

 

[neil_w]

The problem is telling phones in different locations to start the recording. I don't think it's critical that they are synced to start at the exact same time.

Ah. In that case @dhbarr’s suggestion seems like a good quick-and dirty solution.

 

[alexzogh]

When I used to do multi camera in the very early days of VR, I would start the cameras at different times, but use a dog clicker to produce a distinct sound once the last camera was started. In most video editing software, it’s super easy and obvious to see the sound track waveform of the click, and synchronize them at the moment of the click.

Haven’t done that it in a decade though….

I should point out that in more pro apps like Premiere, this has all been automated, and is just a few clicks. Don’t even need the dog clicker anymore. - https://editlounge.com/post-production/editing/audio-sync-multiple-cameras/

 

[tsmith1315]

Ah. In that case @dhbarr’s suggestion seems like a good quick-and dirty solution.

Yeah, I didn't know they existed. Cheap and useful!

 

[shockie]

Any of these might work:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=camera+r..._9563369&tag=hydsma-20&ref=pd_sl_5ypy7uwhi6_b