Cycle Camera footage - what do you do with it?

[Mile195]

So after several failed attempts with cheap cameras that weren't really up to the job, I bought a decent one a month ago. I rarely experience any interactions with other road users that are noteworthy in any way but regardless I've been running this thing on every journey to work, and just deleting it all when the memory card gets full. I can't see much point in keeping it if nothing happened.

That said, the BBC probably thought something similar when they were wiping tapes of original material in the 1960s to save money, and look how that turned out.

My footage isn't exactly akin to original Doctor Who episodes, but I'm now thinking that watching a clip of my commute today, in 40 years time might be vaguely interesting, and maybe I should hang on to the odd one... or is that just Digital hoarding for the sake of it?

What does everyone else do?

 

[LCpl Boiled Egg]

I delete it unless there's an incident that I feel requires reporting to someone (e.g. local council or Police)

Why would I want to relive the horror of my commute when I'm happily retired and can be cycling instead?

 

[drummerbod]

I delete most of it. I only keep recordings that were noteworthy ie nice scenery. Even then I am ruthless and edit it down. No one wants to sit through even 20 minutes of what might have been a lovely 4 hour bike ride.

 

[Hip Priest]

I agree that it would be interesting to watch the footage back in 10, 20, 30 years to see how your area has changed. Why not just keep one full commute saved for that purpose?

 

[tommaguzzi]

Here are some thoughts off the top of my head. The cars will be different that's for sure. Just look at any old 60s/70s TV programme. You should make a special digital time capsule video where you commentate and name or describe them and also the conditions on the roads. In future maybe dedicated cycle lanes could be developed to the extent that we will no longer be able to ride on the roads with other traffic , what if the saftey nazis get us all wearing full body armour, air bags crash bars and hi viz daytime strobe lights with automatic proximity alarms. Then 40 years down the line anybody seeing your film will say how dangerous it must have been back then. Yes I think you should make a video and put it in a safe place until you are in your dotage and then show you grand kids what a hero you were.

 

[jarlrmai]

Stays on the card, some goes on YT, rest gets deleted when the card is full.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

I would say keep it, but the novelty of seemingly unique old photos and film footage is perhaps just a novelty because nobody had cameras, so it's inherently interesting to see old photos.

But now we all have cameras perhaps the abundance of photos we'll be awash with in the future will diminish the novelty?

 

[jarlrmai]

a 1080p camera generates around 1GB of footage for every 10 mins, keeping it all is impractical.

 

[w00hoo_kent]

The camera is set to delete the oldest files when full, but have kept one complete run of my commute in and out elsewhere just because. It's no more or less special than any other days, just the weather was nice enough for the recording to be a good one. I figure it's not that much hassle to keep and I might be interested in it one day.

 

[Smokin Joe]

Keep one a month, old films and photos will be worth watching and sharing in decades to come. Despite the proliferation of cheap cameras now most of the footage will be lost or deleted as time passes. There is a much higher percentage of the old cine films that have been kept than will be the case with digital simply because the stuff was relatively expensive back then and people hung onto it.

 

[w00hoo_kent]

Plus I think a lot of people think digital media is a lot more resilient than it actually is. And that's ignoring the probability of file types becoming obsolete.

 

[Mike_P]

NCH softwares VideoPad, free for home use, allows you speed up videos so apart from making things faster will use up less space.

 

[Shut Up Legs]

I record any major variation on my commutes by keeping the videos, but apart from that I delete them from the cameras at the end of each commute. I have roughly 1TB of videos stored at home, even with this selective saving approach.