The HogCam!

We have a ton of game pictures for our team, but one thing I always thought would be cool is to have game videos so that we can go back and look at some of our finer and not-so-finer moments from our games.  Instead of just telling people stories of the plays we made or the goals we scored, it would be nice to have videos to show friends and family who are not able to come to our games.

I recently bought a small handheld HD video camera called the Flip Mino HD. It’s about the size of a cell phone, records 4 GB of HD-quality video and plugs directly into a computer via USB. It records 60 minutes of HD video on a 2.5 hour battery.

We’ve taken two game videos so far. The small size of the camera makes it easy to carry around and use. Since ice rink lighting is challenging (due to fluorescent lights), the video comes out a little dark, but I think it’s pretty decent:

Many thanks to Heikila22 who recorded these games from our bench.

The only issue I’ve had is that after I download the video to my computer, I have to collapse the 45+ minute recording into a 10 minute highlight reel to upload on to YouTube. This takes is a bit of time consuming work and I’m not sure I’ll be able to sustain doing that every week. I will do it as often as I can though because it’s fun to watch (at least for me) and anything that I can do to improve the hockey experience for my teammates, I want to do.

I might be one of the few who likes the videos though. The reality shock of watching ourselves on video was a little overwhelming for some of our players. One teammate wanted me to destroy the camera, and another player threatened to quit the team.

On the next movie, I’ll put up a warning.

Singh10.