The video camera for my rig came in the mail today. I sent a pm to swampfire about his very cool track set up.

Does anyone have tips on the software they use and about difference files formats and uploading to youtube?

Wow, that's a rig!

Is it all 80/20?

Yep, all 80/20. I love this stuff - it cuts like butter on my miter saw, and it's like an adult erector set. Wood is cheaper, but 80/20 is more fun.

For PC, Sony Vegas is very cheap and powerful at about $100. However, you absolutely must spend about three hours doing the basic tutorials. It's not a pick-up-and-go video editor at all.

Here's my Amazon order, if you want to duplicate my rig. boo32, I use CyberLink PowerDirector 9.

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I'd like to feed my camcorder's microphone input from my PinPAC headphone output. Has anybody figured out how to match impedances so the sound level is right?

You could hook a "direct box" directly from the speaker to the camcorder.

If your camcorder lets you turn off "automatic gain", you could probably find a happy medium between the headphone jack and the cam.

Swampfire - thanks for posting the list of materials. I had never heard of 80/20 - it looks very cool. I've got my order placed.

Will it mix both the direct audio and microphone? Pins without the physical sounds of flippers sound weird.

If the camcorder is stereo, then you could put direct audio in one input and miked sounds in the other.

Ive got my rig up and running. One thing I have noticed is that the top of the playfield looks a little fuzzy in the live video and on the recordings. I am not using any additional light on the playfield. I am wondering if the lights at the top wall of the playfield are causing a glare that I need to counteract with some additional lighting?

Duh - it is the reflection from the backglass.

Most consumer camcorders use powered electret external mics -- you need a Pad with a DC blocking cap design (look for one here)
http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/line_to_mic.html

Or check Beachtek (or similar) for mic adapters.

Turning off the camera's AGC helps a lot, then fiddle with the pin's volume. Depending on your camera's audio controls you might have to fiddle a lot to balance ambient pin sounds with direct audio input.

what is a good model camcorder for doing this. one that does 1080p 60fps and does not display the camera HUD on the screen and that streams HDMI

Just bought this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/151098927670?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

And will buy this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/171116523252?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

Easy and cheap. Will cost me a little more than 50$

Did you ever find a good one?

Looks perfect! Let us know how it works out.

Looks good! What camera is used? This playfield is tough to video without lighting. Looks like you have a light on the left? Don't see any glare, which is hard to do.

The damn item is stucked in customs nearly 2 months now... grrrrrrr
Will get it anytime soon

The stand just arrived, after two damn months stuccoed in customs
Works perfectly. Quality is crap from China but it does the job well. 30 euros is a very nice price for something like this.
Video is uploading and I will post here when it's done.
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Rig works very well. My camera sucks though.
Here is the vid made with it:

It's a Sony Legria 406. It sucks for this kind of shooting. It catches the light very badly. Iphone's quality is way better that Legria's to film a pinball lol
I got to get a nice camera

you can also tap line level right off the board in the back box before the speaker amp, that's what I do...

williams machines even have an unpopulated "line out" connector on the WPC89/DCS/95 boards

Any recommendations on a reasonably priced hand held camera to use for this....I want to set up a TV to mine so others can watch current gameplay going on.

With the 80/20 (or any of the equivalent T-slot aluminum extrusions like Bosch or Item), you can also tap the ends and drill holes through it so as to avoid using brackets and having visible fasteners. I've never used additional brackets in anything I've built. Here is just an example. Anywhere the pieces come together there is a hidden button-head cap screw tapped into the end. Takes a little more time to build this way, but it is very strong and gives a cleaner appearance.

I may have to throw together a camera rig of my own, just to do it.

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Really like the ceiling clamps and the mic stands that have room next to the machine, so that it's not hovering above and behind the player.

With all this light weight equipment, couldn't someone come up with some kind of adjustable padded clamp system to attach to the top of the backbox? Snap off and snap on quickly to another machine. Get rid of the bulky stands.

With all this light weight equipment, couldn't someone come up with some kind of adjustable padded clamp system to attach to the top of the backbox?

Tried this a few years ago -- making the arm longer gets everything in frame but jiggles more. Worked ok until the clamp's pads unglued and the whole rig tomahawked the glass. No damage but never used the rig again after that!

I am using a light boom on casters (piece of camera gear I had laying around)
works great. with my high ceilings I can get 3 games covered with 1 camera. I am trying to find a network camera that I can run directly to my PC so I can do some live streaming.

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^^^^That is one sweet set up

River City Flippers has our first night of league play tonight after our August break. I am going to attempt to livestream it from my rig at twitch.tv/rivercityflippers starting at 7 EST.

I just used the fios connection at home and it seemed to go pretty well. The FSPA has some smart guys who have figured out that you can do it with webcams and with software called xsplit. I could not get xsplit to recognize my videocam so I used a webcam. I have solved the problem and will use the videocam next time.

I hear that https://obsproject.com/ and http://www.telestream.net/wirecast/ are worthy of checking out, as well.

Last time I tried Open Broadcaster there wasn't a way to rotate video streams which killed that option.

First mockup of my own rig. Knocked this together in an hour. Still needs a little tweaking, but it's pretty close already.

CameraRig_1.jpg

neurokinetik that looks sweet, what do you think the total parts aprox. price is?

Axl

Revision 2. Made the base sturdier and heavier, because I wanted to make the boom adjustable and extendable.

Cost in parts is probably more than $100, but I already had the stuff, so it's just my time. It is all 80/20 metric 4040 series. Vertical piece is about 6'8", base is just narrow enough to fit between the legs of a non-widebody pin. The base section that runs front-to back is about a foot shorter than the length of a pin. The boom can extend out far enough to get the camera where a (tall) players head is. The way the bottom is mounted is temporary, as I am going to change that out for some nice gusset brackets once they arrive.

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Testing the camera with live TV output. Ready for the upcoming tournaments. We needed it to be taller, so I've got a longer vertical piece than what I'm showing here. It won't work in my house due to ceiling height, but it will work on location for the Walking Dead launch party and this weekend's tourney.

CameraTest3.jpg

Camera is a Sony HDR CX190. It is HDMI out to the monitor. The screen is 720P, but it looks fine for viewing. We did not test recording, only live viewing. On that particular screen, there are no icons that show up when used for live monitoring. However, on my TV, I get "STBY" on the screen.

Also worth noting is that in this pic, the field of view is too small to get the entire playfield and the DMD into the display. However, that turned out to be a steadyshot adjustment on the camera. It has three levels, and the more aggressive the setting, the smaller the field of view gets. I turned it down one notch and was able to easily get the DMD into the view for the tourney.

neurokinetik's camera rig worked great during its first battle test at our Buffalo POP Tournament over the weekend. Next Friday we should be able to get some good top-down footage of The Walking Dead at our launch party tournament.

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I wanted to build the black pipe playfield rotisserie and had an inkling that I could convert it into a camera rig with all the junk I have acquired.

overview

This uses the Raspberry Pi with the camera module to shoot the video. I have it attached to a power-line ethernet adapter and can stream the feed to Twitch (or youtube) or attach a USB external drive to record video to disk.
If you are familiar with the black pipe rotisserie, you know that it is pretty sturdy, and I arranged the pipes so that the only direction that each piece could move would result in the pipe threads tightening.

Here's the thread about the rotisserie: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-quick-and-dirty-rotisserie-guide
I opted to get 18"x3/4' instead of 12"x3/4", 48" x 3/4" instead of 36" x 3/4" for my build, which helped to get the rig tall enough that it would even tower over a topper.

IMAG1725.jpg
I got a 2 foot long camera cable for the Raspberry Pi, which makes it long enough to twist around the overhead pipe when the camera mount is screwed on. The RPi case is attached to one of the rotisserie tees via a thumb screw that goes through the tee and the mounting block.

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Here is one of the 18" pipes that has a tee to link it to another 18" pipe.

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Here's the power-line ethernet adapter. The other adapter is plugged into my router.
Below this tee is the 48" pipe and to the left (from the back) is another 18" pipe.

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This is how the overhead pipe is kept sturdy vertically. The second 48" pipe attaches to a 18" pipe on the floor which helps keep it horizontally stable.

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Below the overhead pipe is the 60"x1/2" pipe that keeps it from falling forward. The pipe slides into the 3/4" tee. This pipe does not jut out below the game, but a player could kick it if they put their foot under there.

IMAG1719.jpg
I had a camera tripod mount that nearly fit around the 1/2" nipple pipe but the plastic broke and I had to duct tape it to test it out. The camera board is extremely light and I used bushings around the 45 degree elbow because I thought I needed to get more distance on the camera, but the viewing angle that the camera can record exceeded my initial expectations.
I was considering using the floor flange attached to the nipple pipe as a way to mount the camera, but the tripod had plenty of easy ways to adjust the camera angle.

The downside is that the RPi doesn't have onboard audio input. I can live with this.

It might be possible to rotate the overhead pipe such that it can film an adjacent pin but a longer pipe, longer than 72" may be necessary, and this depends if you can angle the camera to cover the playfield and score as well. When you screw all the pipes together, you'll notice some wiggle room but not enough that it feels like it's going to start falling apart on you.

So here's how the order of how I assembled it or rather disassembled in reverse because it's taken apart now to go into the rotisserie duty mode:

first 48 inch pipe w/tee, 60 inch pipe already beneath it
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two 18 inch pipes on top of the 48 inch pipe
which are topped off by the tee with the faucet handle
60 inch x 1/2 inch pipe slides thru the 3/4 inch tee from the front, tighten the faucet handle
RaspberryPi mounted on to tee
slides onto the pipe

now it's just a matter of adding the camera mount and plugging in all the cables.