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How To Post Your Racing Video To YouTube,
Vimeo and Other Video Sites
Posting your videos to YouTube, Vimeo or another popular video site allows you to get FREE exposure for your sponsors, team, car, equipment, and driver! YouTube is now the second largest search engine behind Google because people search for videos when they have questions about how to do things. As a result, when you submit your high quality racing videos you get instant coverage across thousands of racing enthusiasts!

Follow the steps below to submit your video to YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

STEP 1: Get a Good Racing Video Camera

The big sites support videos from virtually all video systems, smart phones and cameras, so you really don't need to worry about how you captured them. Just pick a camera system you like and go with it.

The two cameras we like best are the GoPro Hero HD and the Replay XD. Both are in the USD $300 range. Both use multi-gigabyte SD cards which you can interchange with your regular digital camera and plug right into a laptop to edit the video. Many older camera systems use separate digital recorders which take up space, are affected by vibrations and shocks, take up lots of power and are limited in memory. Not so with the GoPro Hero HD and Replay XD.

The GoPro Hero HD is fully waterproof, since it sits in a clear plastic sealed housing. This is nice for offroad applications like motocross, forging streams in a Jeep, or racing an open wheel car in the rain. The GoPro Hero HD also has great picture quality. It has various wide angle, picture density, speed and sound settings. The image stabilization is simply amazing, and this is extremely important in racing where everything vibrates. The downside is that it requires some kit to mount it properly, and it's small but not tiny, so it can get in the way.



The Replay XD is more "water resistant" which means it can get pretty wet, but you're not going to drive it into a high impact wall of water (stream or bog) without some potential negative effect (although the company claims it is waterproof, it does not have an external housing like the GoPro which provides some additional space between any leak or shock and the camera). The great thing about the Replay XD is its tiny size, which is perfect for mounting in interesting locations like engine bays, next to the suspension, under the car, etc. where you can get really great and different footage. You can literally tape or zip-tie it anywhere you want and it just works. The Replay XD also has top quality picture quality, so it's no slouch either.

You can use any of the following cameras designed for demanding racing environments. Some of these are combined with data logging systems which is nice if you're planning to overlay sensor data, RPM, etc. from your race vehicle.

  • 4kam
  • ChaseCam
  • Contour
  • GoPro HD
  • Race Keeper SE, HE, or Comparo
  • Race Optics EVO HD or T.A.C.K. Cam
  • Replay XD
  • Stack Pro-4 or Clubman-3
  • Video VBox Racelogic
  • V.I.O. POV.HD
  • Zetronix

    STEP 2: Capture Your Racing Video Footage

    Now that you've got one or more cameras, it's time to shoot some on-track video. Here you've got a choice of point of view (POV), vehicle situation views and trackside views. The more views you can weave into your production, the more interesting it will be, but it can also get really complicated to edit and produce videos with different angles, timing and digital video files. If you're a beginner, it's probably best to start simple with one camera view, then go from there.

    Let's assume you bought a GoPro Hero HD and a Replay XD for simplicity. In a race car, truck or other big vehicle application the best approach is probably to use the GoPro Hero HD as the main camera mounted inside to the windshield, dash or rollbar, and the Replay XD mounted in one or more places around the perimeter of the vehicle outside to get cool shots. In a motorcycle, kart or ATV application many people mount a GoPro HD on the rider's helmet and put a couple Replay XDs pointing front and back out of the rider's way tucked up somewhere in the frame. That gives you great POV from the rider and situational video where the bike is compared to other riders.

    Here's a great drifting video taken with several Replay XDs at a Formula Drift event. This shows what you can achieve with multiple cameras.

    The video below is a great demonstration of point of view (POV) filming and how interesting it can make your racing videos.

    For the TrackVids Racing Team BMW SpecE30 we rely on a forward-pointing GoPro Hero HD mounted to the roll bar inside as our main camera, then locate a Sony Bloggie and Replay XD in different places around the car to get some interesting add-on footage. We're still experimenting, so our method is by no means the only way.

    You can save your racing video in any of the following formats: WebM, MPEG4, 3GPP, MOV, AVI, MPEGPS, WMV, FLV, RAW. YouTube, Vimeo and other major sites pretty much take all major video formats.

    STEP 3: Edit Your Video Footage

    Here's where the hard work and decision making begins. You will undoubtably have many questions and thoughts on how to arrange your footage, creating story lines (for multiple cameras), overlaying soundtracks, visual effects, credits, speed, etc. Here are a couple tutorials on how to edit your racing videos using Windows Movie Maker and Apple Final Cut Pro. You can find more on YouTube and Vimeo.

    STEP 4: Upload Your Video

    This step assumes you've already created an account with the relevant video site. For basic free use and guaranteed advertising exposure, YouTube is the best. It's a way bigger site than any other, and you can set up a Channel with multiple videos and outgoing links to your site, blog, Google+ account, etc. The downside of YouTube are the ad overlays.

    For higher end HD where you plan to drive people to your videos and control your image, we prefer Vimeo because it's easy to use, has no advertising overlays, and hosts great quality videos. It's also a big site with lots of support and won't go away anytime soon. IMPORTANT! If you use Vimeo, make sure you select "Privacy > Public" to enable your video to be shared with everybody! Note that Vimeo doesn't allow business logos unless you pay for their professional hosting package. It's really targeted as more of a high end service for professional videographers.

    YOu can also post your racing video to other sites like Metacafe, Crash.net, BlinkX, Break, MySpace, FaceBook, TwitVid, VeeHD, etc.

    When you upload your video always include:

  • A complete description of the video, such as track name, dates and the context of what's going on.
  • Any names and credits you want to include - driver name, sponsor, crew chief, owner, etc.
  • The URL link to your business website = FREE ADVERTISING!
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