It’s the age-old dilemma for parents. Capturing your children’s youth sports games while remaining in the moment. The camera can require so much attention that you don’t feel you are present enough to truly support your child. Deep down, you are also terrified of missing out on recording crucial moments.
Don’t worry, we feel your anxiety. This is why we have compiled five proven techniques that help you capture professional-quality sports footage while remaining in the moment to enjoy the game with your family. This is a strategy to bring the fun back to recording your children’s sporting activities.
Trying to record youth sports games while still being present enough to support your child can be incredibly frustrating. It feels like the camera demands most of your time..
Your ultimate anxiety is missing key moments in youth sports games. They are memories lost. The last thing a parent wants is their child excitedly approaching them after the game to relive their match-winning moment, only to be told you missed it..
With traditional manual cameras, you can struggle to keep rapidly moving players in focus. This can cause you to miss key moments, particularly when players quickly change direction. Handheld cameras can also result in off-putting shaky sports footage that is nigh-on impossible to watch.
However, there is another way. One that can provide professional-quality footage without all the hassle involved in fumbling with handheld cameras. Imagine being able to sit back, relax, and actually enjoy the game with your family. To cheer your child on and watch them turn around to see you supporting them. Bonding with your child rather than with your camera!
How do you achieve this? By letting an AI-powered, hands-free camera do the work for you. These modern innovations in cameras are true game changers when it comes to recording youth sports games. No more constant messing with the camera as AI becomes your cameraman instead.
The XbotGo Chameleon is a revolutionary solution to the challenges parents face in recording youth sports. This AI-powered hands-free camera takes over filming duties so you can be more present and eliminates the worry of missing key moments.
The camera uses smart AI technology to auto-track the game, recording the action wherever it happens on the pitch or court. The Chameleon also tracks individuals by their jersey number, which is ideal for ensuring you never miss any of your child’s plays.
4k recording delivers the professional-quality footage you may only dream about with a shaky handheld camera. You can livestream games, too, so no one misses out on the fun. You also have access to 20GB of free cloud storage to upload your games and receive automatically generated highlights.
The XbotGo Chameleon means you are a supporter first, cameraman second. The camera is easy to set-up using Bluetooth to connect to a smartphone, and supports over 20 different sports. With a fully-charged battery life of 8 hours, you can rest easy that you won’t miss a moment of the action.
A little consideration of the best place to position your camera can reap big rewards, as ill-thought out camera locations and angles often result in poorer quality recordings. You are also more likely to miss those key moments.
Your first port of call at a venue is to check for potential obstructions when recording, such as the heads of spectators, fencing, dugouts, trees, and even low ceilings within indoor venues. Glare from the sun or artificial lighting is a further annoyance that needs to be taken into account.
Evaluating for obstructions ahead of the game helps you determine the elevation required for your camera. You may realize you need to use a tripod to raise the camera high enough for a clear, unobstructed view of the match. A bonus of recording from a higher angle is that it brings a professional, broadcast-style look to your footage.
That said, low-angle shots can provide an added intensity to your youth sports footage. It creates a feeling of being right there amid the action.
When you set up your camera at the halfway point, you are in the best position to cover the whole game. You will achieve a consistent quality and depth to your shots regardless of where the play is happening. If one camera angle is not dynamic enough for you, then you can introduce additional cameras around the venue.
You will want to take the pitch or court dimensions into account, too, as this helps you plan your framing. An AI-powered camera like the XbotGo Chameleon will make this task far more manageable because it allows you to select the specific sport mode. With this mode, you can select the pitch dimensions to optimize the camera’s auto-tracking feature. The job is all done for you. Result!
Landmarks are also useful pointers when you evaluate the pitch or court dimensions. Using lines such as the penalty box in soccer and the halfway line in basketball as guides helps provide a consistent angle of footage when you are recording across different venues. This delivers a more professional looking recording, and in turn, a better viewing expereince.
The right camera settings will deliver a better quality to your youth sports documentation. The good news is that you don’t need to be a tech whizz to set your camera up for the best shots.
A video resolution between 1080p to 4K is an excellent starting point for sharp and professional-looking youth sports footage. You will also want to set the frame rate to at least 60 fps to bring the required clarity to your recordings.
Much of the technical complexity in recording fast-paced sport derives from keeping the action in focus. Thankfully, advances in camera tech are your friend here, as many modern cameras have auto-focus settings. This nifty feature ensures that you keep the main focus—usually your child— consistently in the frame.
Employing a shutter speed of 1/1000 or above will give you the best chance of capturing fast-paced youth sports, and should be paired with a wide aperture for better results. With regard to light sensitivity, the camera ISO setting will need boosting when you're recording at an indoor venue.
Shaky footage from a handheld camera can still spoil the end product. This is particularly true when recording fast-paced sports like football, basketball, lacrosse, and soccer. Mounting your camera or smartphone on a gimbal or tripod will bring that all-important stability to your footage. No feeling of sea-sickness now when you watch your videos back!
You also need to give some thought to how you will store your documentation, as you don’t want to risk losing valuable footage of your children’s key sporting moments. Having a dual storage plan doubles as a decent back-up plan too. Saving your footage to an SD card as well as uploading to the cloud ensures you don’t lose precious memories if one system fails.
Dedicated platforms like the XbotGo app offer 20GB of free storage. You can also transfer files stored on an SD card to your laptop or PC. From there you can auto-sync a backup of the files to the cloud.
Having a checklist you can tick off ahead of the match is a good idea to help ensure everything is good to go. You might make checking that your camera battery is fully charged is number one on this list, too. A camera that dies at the worst possible moment is a certified killjoy!
You can soon build up hours of footage when recording youth sports games. Multiple games across tournament weekends may leave you floundering in a mishmash of recordings. This is why you need an efficient post-match strategy.
The first task ahead of recording youth sports is to create a simple filing system, which may include folders by date, tournament, or opponents. Such a filing system is just as straightforward to set up when you use a cloud storage solution like Dropbox or Google Drive.
Tagging key moments during matches also makes your post-match life so much easier. When you come to editing highlight reels, you are after the goals, assists, saves, fouls, celebrations, and other such key moments. All the good bits!
Tagging can be done by good old-fashioned note-taking during the game, although the more digitally-inclined will prefer phone apps or dedicated cloud storage solutions like Scorebreak to do the trick.
Editing apps such as iMovie, Filmora, and Adobe Premiere Pro allow you to create the type of highlights you want. They offer editing features to help deliver balanced footage, and you won’t require a degree in computer science to use them!
You can speed the process up further using AI-powered cameras like the XbotGo Chameleon. Upload the footage to the cloud, and hey presto, you receive auto-generated highlights. The XbotGo app also allows you to further edit and trim the highlight reels.
Batch processing is a term that parents recording youth sports should familiarize themselves with. Editing tools like Adobe Premiere Pro support batch processing, and this allows you to handle multiple sports footage tasks at the same time.
This is very handy when you are recording multiple games across the course of a youth sports tournament weekend. For example, batch processing lets you group editing tasks together to create team highlight reels more quickly for eager parents, players, and coaches.
All that’s left then is to share the footage with those who wish to watch. This may include extended family who couldn’t make the game, and YouTube and Facebook are popular free platforms for this. If you use a cloud service like Google Drive, you can distribute the link to the video.
The costs involved in recording youth sports can feel like a barrier. You want quality and consistent documentation, but at a price you can afford.
Action cameras can cost under $200 and offer a good entry-level solution for parents. They balance quality, durability, and affordability, all the key ingredients for you to successfully record your child’s youth sports games. AI-powered auto-tracking cameras, like the XbotGo Chameleon, cost only slightly more for a hands-free solution.
However, pooling your resources can also be a budget-savvy approach. Parents may decide it makes more sense to come together and buy the necessary equipment between them.
All the parents chip in, and at least this way, there are no begrudging complaints from one parent who buys the camera gear that benefits all the other parents. Another tip is that it is always worth shopping around to see if retailers offer student or youth sports discounts.
Purchasing used camera equipment gives you another way to keep your costs down. Places like Facebook Marketplace and eBay can be explored for deals. If you go in this direction, you should pay extra attention to elements like the condition of the camera lens and battery. Rushed purchases here could end up costing you more down the line.
While a one-off purchase gives you full ownership without ongoing fees, subscription models could be better for some parents. Although you may face monthly fees, the upfront costs are usually lower. Subscription plans can also offer you useful features like AI-tracking, livestreaming, automatic highlights, and cloud storage.
Talking of livestreaming, this can also be done in a budget-friendly way using free platforms like YouTube or Facebook Live. Your editing tools don’t need to cost the earth either for you to achieve a polished quality to your highlight reels. For example, iMovie is a free video editing application that can help give your footage a professional touch.
As your children grow up, you may need to up the ante on your recording tools. Challenges are posed by larger venues and the increased pace of the matches you are recording as your children grow.
To counter these challenges, you may need to upgrade from an entry-level action camera to a mid-range mirrorless camera like the Sony 6400. This could also be a good time to turn to a hands-free AI-powered camera to act as your cameraman.
Recording youth sports should be fun, but too often isn’t. The pressure of trying not to miss any key moments while remaining in the moment to support your children can feel overwhelming. However, the good news is that you can transform your family’s game day experience for the better by adopting these 5 essential youth sports recording techniques.
The XbotGo Chameleon is the go-to camera for parents wanting a hands-free solution to recording youth sports games. The camera’s AI-powered auto-tracking removes the tech complexity of recording the game yourself. This helps ensure you never miss a key sporting moment in your child’s life.
Capture every moment with AI-powered tracking. Perfect for coaches, parents, and athletes who want seamless footage without manual filming.
Save $20 on Your First Chameleon Order!
Get the AI Sports Gimbal now at its lowest price!
Get Exclusive Updates and Special Discount Offers on XbotGo!
