Skip to content

Recording good footage

Racecraft analyses what your camera saw. Footage that's stable, clear, and shot from a consistent vantage point produces accurate splits and reliable time deltas. Footage that's bouncy, dim, or shot from a different mount on each run will still work, but alignment becomes harder and the comparison less precise.

This page covers what we've learned helps the most. None of it is unique to Racecraft — it's just good action-camera practice.

Mount placement

Helmet-mounted, chin-up:

  • gives the most stable view of the track
  • captures the same line of sight as the rider
  • is easiest for Racecraft to align across runs

Chest-mounted is also workable but tends to bounce more on rough terrain and shows more bike than trail, which gives the alignment fewer distinctive features to lock onto.

What matters most is consistency between runs. The same mount, on the same helmet, in the same orientation, every time. Switching mounts mid-session means each run shows the track from a different angle — still analysable, but less reliable.

Camera settings

Good defaults:

  • resolution: 1080p or higher
  • frame rate: 60 fps; higher is fine
  • field of view: wide; the same FOV across runs
  • stabilization: on, if your camera supports it

The single biggest avoidable problem is mixing settings across runs. A reference run shot at 1080p60 wide and a target run shot at 4K30 linear will still align, but you're making it harder than it needs to be. Set your camera once at the top of the track and leave it.

What makes a run easy to align

Racecraft aligns runs by matching what the cameras saw. Runs are easier to align when the footage contains visually distinctive features that appear in the same order on every attempt:

  • corner entries and exits
  • gates, signage, fences, line markers
  • transitions between sections of the track (rocky to loamy, open to wooded)

Long uniform stretches — dense forest, featureless fire road — are harder to anchor. The product handles them, but a track session with rich visual landmarks will produce sharper splits than one shot in a green tunnel.

What to avoid

  • camera covered or fogged for part of the run — alignment breaks where the camera can't see the track
  • mid-run camera bumps that shift the view to the sky or the bike
  • multi-lap footage in one file — one run per file. If your camera records in chunks, that's fine; one continuous run across multiple files is what matters
  • changing the mount between the reference run and the target runs — same mount, same orientation, every time

Supported cameras and formats

See Cameras and formats for the specific cameras, file formats, and codecs Racecraft accepts.