extracting any images from video file for road dilapidation survey

D

doubledark

Well-known member
An engineer friend asked me
"I am looking at undertaking a dilapidation survey (a record of the current condition) of roads adjacent an underground pipe construction project.

One idea is driving a vehicle along the road with a camera mounted on the vehicle capturing a video of the roads. Then extracting any images from the video file.

Do you think this will work? The camera to be used will need to be purchased for the project (Go Pro?) and the video may be all that we need to record the condition but a still image extraction may be necessary."

Any comments, suggestions welcome
 
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GoPro changes shutter speed to compensate for exposure so you may have varying degrees of sharpness depending on the lighting conditions. For oblique illumination there may be insufficient detail in shadows e.g. below pavement in a region of damage. The traversal speed is another consideration particularly when doing a time lapse as suggested by Nate. Also, to what engineering or other analysis might the images be used? Might it make sense to employ a parallel system to enable photogrammetry techniques? Just a few things to think about. For a raw qualitative assessment it might be just fine.
 
Use a fast shutter speed and it should work. Note that 1080p will give you 2 mpix images, and 4K will give you 8 mpix images. And different cameras make better or worse use of those mpix. And some of them will not allow long takes (because of the usual 30min limit in stills cameras, or because of the overheating issues of many small 4K cameras).

A half-decent handycam with control over shutter speed is probably good enough for this project.
 
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