The GoPro (for noobs) thread

[— Agent☣Orange —]

I'm a little late to the party but after seeing how ubiquitous video recording has become and after seeing lots of member's great runs on the Tail of the Dragon and so on, I thought I'd dip my toe in the video craze.

Although GoPro cameras have been around forever, I'm finally getting in on the action and decided to get one. Keep in mind I am completely new to this so I want to tap some of the talent and experience from existing users for any tips and accessories to watch out for. As of right now, the GoPro 4 seems to be the latest version so that's what I got and then realized I probably need a few accessories like a suction cup mount and memory card to start with. Those are arriving in a few days.

So...experienced videographers, what should I buy and what should I do to get started? what are your thoughts on GoPros? After I transfer the video from the memory chip to the computer, what do I do then to get it on YouTube?





Nice kit but it only comes with a couple of permanent stick-on mounts, no memory chip and even though it comes with a mini-USB cable (why not micro-USB??) they didn't include a charger. Pretty shortsighted for a camera that costs this much. I am going to use a charger I already have for a tablet but since I'm not sure of charging voltage, I hope I don't blow anything.



Man, this thing is tiny! Yes, I could have gone with the smaller GoPro 4 Session cube but I wanted some more features.

[wannafbody]

I bought a Vivitar 12 mexapixel goproish camera at WalMart for $60. Has a rear view screen and uses a micro SDcard.

[This is a Lamp]

Nice Gopro 4 Welcome to the club!

I'm an avid fan of the GoPro and extended my usage to cinematography. At the beginning, I was only into just recording my driving...then I found it to be so fun to record just about anything.

I suggest reading this article, to get yourself started with the settings of your GoPro (although it refers to the Hero 3, same principle applies):
http://abekislevitz.com/understanding-your-new-gopro/

I mainly record in 1080p 60fps, depending on the light situations and 120fps for Slow-mo.

Assuming you want to take videos of your Miata running through the twisties, you may need to setup your WiFi capabilities on your GP. It can be useful to start/stop record while you are driving. Also, download the GoPro app (which lets you change the settings from your phone) and the GoPro software for the PC. The software lets you quickly edit your footage and mash it up, but its most prominent feature is to provide you with the slow-mo/speed up feature...by recording in 120fps, you can cut down the fps in the software, which then slows the footage down (those awesome slow-mo shots you see in videos). The software is limited in editing though; if you want advance editing software I can suggest Sony Vegas Pro or Adobe Premier but the learning curve is steep.


Try different mounting points, it'll give you many cool POVs, like for instance, I tried mounting it on the window:



Or facing back, mounted on the windshield:






A few accessories that you might find useful to your recordings:

- GoPro Skeleton Frame. Full frame case but without the protection for the front and back, leaving you naked basically, but provides flexibility in terms of your connections and also uninterrupted sound. Wind noise will be very high here, I'll address those in the next few accessories.

- Extra batteries. You notice that you may run out of batteries in the midst of recording. Get some Wasabi batteries that have dual charging capabilities or you can just go OEM. Not recommending to get cheap China made batteries. GoPro also allows charging while recording, so if you have a decently long cable, you can charge your GoPro while recording (this is why I love Miatas; open top charging haha).

- Micover (http://micover.com/manufacturers/gopro/). Micover is an universal dead kitten accessory, masking wind noise. Make sure to place it on the Skeleton frame and not the GoPro.

- If you want a clear cut sound from your exhaust (or interior), you may want to invest in a 2m+ long simple 3.5mm microphone. I bought a clip on version that clips to my rear license plate and then you need to find a 3.5mm to USB Gopro accessory, which connects the mic to the GoPro. I found this to be a suitable setup to hear your nice shifting and masking almost all of your windnoise. Do tape the long running cables however (or hide them), it might flay around during the drive and unclip the mic. Note that if you choose this route, you can't charge batteries while recording/driving.

- If you have a roll bar, the roll bar mount is a strong mount that prevents vibration. I plan to replace mine with the Zhiyun Rider2 Gimbal, which stabilises my images, but then I wonder if it'll look unnatural. Here's a look at the roll bar mount (wind noise is bad though, without dead kitten and no mic):



- If you want to take a first-person POV, you can invest in a headgear mount, a shoulder strap mount or the chest mount; this depends on your intended perspective. I used a 3M mount to a hat for this shot, but it seems too high for the roof haha:




Anyway hope you enjoy your GoPro, I'm still finding many ways to use it really!

FYI, I have a channel here with a Cars/Miata Playlist, hope to give you some idea:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...h1Our628nlczA2

And an example in the playlist with GoPro Hero 3+ Black:

[— Agent☣Orange —]

I bought a Vivitar 12 mexapixel goproish camera at WalMart for $60. Has a rear view screen and uses a micro SDcard.

Cool.

Nice Gopro 4 Welcome to the club!

I'm an avid fan of the GoPro and extended my usage to cinematography. At the beginning, I was only into just recording my driving...then I found it to be so fun to record just about anything.

I suggest reading this article, to get yourself started with the settings of your GoPro (although it refers to the Hero 3, same principle applies):


I mainly record in 1080p 60fps, depending on the light situations and 120fps for Slow-mo.

Assuming you want to take videos of your Miata running through the twisties, you may need to setup your WiFi capabilities on your GP. It can be useful to start/stop record while you are driving. Also, download the GoPro app (which lets you change the settings from your phone) and the GoPro software for the PC. The software lets you quickly edit your footage and mash it up, but its most prominent feature is to provide you with the slow-mo/speed up feature...by recording in 120fps, you can cut down the fps in the software, which then slows the footage down (those awesome slow-mo shots you see in videos). The software is limited in editing though; if you want advance editing software I can suggest Sony Vegas Pro or Adobe Premier but the learning curve is steep.


Try different mounting points, it'll give you many cool POVs, like for instance, I tried mounting it on the window:


Or facing back, mounted on the windshield:


A few accessories that you might find useful to your recordings:

- GoPro Skeleton Frame. Full frame case but without the protection for the front and back, leaving you naked basically, but provides flexibility in terms of your connections and also uninterrupted sound. Wind noise will be very high here, I'll address those in the next few accessories.

- Extra batteries. You notice that you may run out of batteries in the midst of recording. Get some Wasabi batteries that have dual charging capabilities or you can just go OEM. Not recommending to get cheap China made batteries. GoPro also allows charging while recording, so if you have a decently long cable, you can charge your GoPro while recording (this is why I love Miatas; open top charging haha).

- Micover (http://micover.com/manufacturers/gopro/). Micover is an universal dead kitten accessory, masking wind noise. Make sure to place it on the Skeleton frame and not the GoPro.

- If you want a clear cut sound from your exhaust (or interior), you may want to invest in a 2m+ long simple 3.5mm microphone. I bought a clip on version that clips to my rear license plate and then you need to find a 3.5mm to USB Gopro accessory, which connects the mic to the GoPro. I found this to be a suitable setup to hear your nice shifting and masking almost all of your windnoise. Do tape the long running cables however (or hide them), it might flay around during the drive and unclip the mic. Note that if you choose this route, you can't charge batteries while recording/driving.

- If you have a roll bar, the roll bar mount is a strong mount that prevents vibration. I plan to replace mine with the Zhiyun Rider2 Gimbal, which stabilises my images, but then I wonder if it'll look unnatural. Here's a look at the roll bar mount (wind noise is bad though, without dead kitten and no mic):


- If you want to take a first-person POV, you can invest in a headgear mount, a shoulder strap mount or the chest mount; this depends on your intended perspective. I used a 3M mount to a hat for this shot, but it seems too high for the roof haha:


Anyway hope you enjoy your GoPro, I'm still finding many ways to use it really!

FYI, I have a channel here with a Cars/Miata Playlist, hope to give you some idea:

And an example in the playlist with GoPro Hero 3+ Black:

Wow Lamp (?)! What a great response and thank you very much for taking the time to give me the great tips and videos! This isn't just a camera but a whole new world of possibilities and accessories I see. Based on your advice, I just ordered the Wasabi dual charger with two batteries (then afterward I found out they make a triple for a few dollars more .

I also ordered the headgear, mic adapter and 16ft cord as I already have a great micro, dual-mic and I'll be ordering the skeleton frame this week. That Micover is the most ridiculous looking thing I've ever seen so I'll have to look into that further. I don't even know where the mic is on the camera body anyway. The GoPro 4 Black is supposed to have better recording or onboard DAC converter as opposed to the Silver. I have to study some more to understand.

As far as software goes, I'm afraid I'm behind the times with even YouTube but I hear it has some rudimentary editing features that most people are familiar with. I'm downloading GoPro's own software right now and will start to play with it soon. I do have Adobe Premier but you're right, that is a very steep learning curve and I'm not sure I want to spend more time trying to understand video software than I do shooting video or else I'll just get disinterested in the whole thing.


Just curious but I see lots of people mount their cameras on the sides of their cars to get cool angles but there's something disconcerting about mounting a $400 camera with just a suction cup and hoping that the wind doesn't knock it off somewhere. Wouldn't it make sense to also tie a line to it just in case or is the suction mount that trustworthy? I don't have a roll bar but I would like to mount my camera on the roof via the suction cup mount. I also like how some people post YouTube videos with a rear view, picture-in-picture as well. I haven't even shot my first video and already, I want a second camera to shoot rearward!





Hey GoPro, my annoyances so far:

1. No charger included! Really? To charge this much, include a cable but no charger? That's like me buying a Porsche but then having to order a steering wheel to drive it off the lot. Even cheapies include a charger. Considering the short battery life of the standard battery, a cigarette-lighter-based car charger would have been nice as well. Each of these are like $2 items so why not include them?

2. Would it have killed you to include a backlight? The front screen is already tiny enough but no backlight makes doing anything impossible unless in broad daylight or a flashlight in my mouth.

3. Mini USB instead of micro USB. Minor but annoying because I have a dozen micro USB cables for my various devices bit since the GoPro uses mini USB, I have to buy yet another cable. Nothing else uses mini USB anymore.

[This is a Lamp]

Wow Lamp (?)! What a great response and thank you very much for taking the time to give me the great tips and videos! This isn't just a camera but a whole new world of possibilities and accessories I see. Based on your advice, I just ordered the Wasabi dual charger with two batteries (then afterward I found out they make a triple for a few dollars more .

No worries! Always glad to help!

I didn't know they made triple chargers for the Wasabi too! I always run into battery problems during usage because you can go trigger happy with just about anything and everything even when not driving.

I also ordered the headgear, mic adapter and 16ft cord as I already have a great micro, dual-mic and I'll be ordering the skeleton frame this week. That Micover is the most ridiculous looking thing I've ever seen so I'll have to look into that further. I don't even know where the mic is on the camera body anyway. The GoPro 4 Black is supposed to have better recording or onboard DAC converter as opposed to the Silver. I have to study some more to understand.

The dead kitten (like Micover) i think it's a common accessory for movie productions; they wrap a ball of fur into the mic to allow wind to safely breeze off the mic. For the GoPro Hero3+ Black, the mic is located on top (3 horizontal holes). Not sure of the position of the Hero4 but could be like below:



And yes I have heard that the Black edition has a DAC converter, but I do not have a side by side comparison between Silver audio and the Black.

As far as software goes, I'm afraid I'm behind the times with even YouTube but I hear it has some rudimentary editing features that most people are familiar with. I'm downloading GoPro's own software right now and will start to play with it soon. I do have Adobe Premier but you're right, that is a very steep learning curve and I'm not sure I want to spend more time trying to understand video software than I do shooting video or else I'll just get disinterested in the whole thing.

Just so you know, once you install the GoPro software on your PC, it will install the codecs needed to decode/play GoPro movies after partially editing (e.g. slow mo editing, filters). I stumbled upon this when I was trying to play slow mo videos in another PC without the software, and it could not play. Don't get me wrong; you can still play non-edited footage. Once you converted your collage/compilation into a playable format like wmv, avi or mpeg4 then you can play videos with your standard video player and upload to Youtube. I understand your concern about the steep learning curve, so I suggest to stick for now with the GoPro software since it is quite user friendly and easy to just drag and drop with minor tweaking here and there.

Just curious but I see lots of people mount their cameras on the sides of their cars to get cool angles but there's something disconcerting about mounting a $400 camera with just a suction cup and hoping that the wind doesn't knock it off somewhere. Wouldn't it make sense to also tie a line to it just in case or is the suction mount that trustworthy? I don't have a roll bar but I would like to mount my camera on the roof via the suction cup mount. I also like how some people post YouTube videos with a rear view, picture-in-picture as well. I haven't even shot my first video and already, I want a second camera to shoot rearward!

Regarding your suction cup mount, I assume you have the OEM GoPro suction mount? If yes then this suction mount is one of the best I have seen. Speaking from experience, the suction is so strong that you can pop a dent back to its original place (had a dent on the hood and used the mount to put it back), and also it ripped my rear tint off before haha. Make sure you lock it carefully and wiggle it before you start recording to check there is no freeplay. If you are still unsure, try wiping the suction with some water and stick it on the intended surface. Roof mounting is only possible on hard surfaces like the hardtops or NC PHRT.

For the PIP videos, other than having another camera, you may need a better editing software. I do not know if the GP software allows two videos to be in one footage, but I know you can resize a second video in the same frame (PIP) for Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere.

Hey GoPro, my annoyances so far:
1. No charger included! Really? To charge this much, include a cable but no charger? That's like me buying a Porsche but then having to order a steering wheel to drive it off the lot. Even cheapies include a charger. Considering the short battery life of the standard battery, a cigarette-lighter-based car charger would have been nice as well. Each of these are like $2 items so why not include them?

And yes, there isn't any charger haha. GoPro magically assumes that you have a USB charger somewhere They are money mongers by the way; OEM car chargers are available...but you can use any kind of cheapo USB port for that really. Some mounts and accessories from GoPro can be bought cheaper and of similar quality than GoPro themselves and this is one example.

2. Would it have killed you to include a backlight? The front screen is already tiny enough but no backlight makes doing anything impossible unless in broad daylight or a flashlight in my mouth.

Sadly there is no backlight...but connecting the WiFi to your phone is a remedy; you can easily control your settings and viewfinder from your phone with the added phone backlighting.

3. Mini USB instead of micro USB. Minor but annoying because I have a dozen micro USB cables for my various devices bit since the GoPro uses mini USB, I have to buy yet another cable. Nothing else uses mini USB anymore.

Hero 4 uses Mini USB yes, it's quite standard in all GoPros I believe.


Not sure if you are interested but you can do timelapse videos with the GoPro, might I suggest buying a kitchen timer from IKEA and stick a mount on the top. 360 Timelapse It works, and the results are great. For timelapse videos, all you have to do is import the first picture to the GoPro software and it automatically compiles the timelapse.

[— Agent☣Orange —]

Yes, after I paid for my dual charger, I was then shown the triple charger. Oh well, I'm not going to worry. I'll probably order the triple at some point however, if I'm going to have the camera within six feet of me, I'd rather use a cigarette-lighter car charger so I won't have to worry about batteries at all. I know there will be some instances with the camera mounted in the front air dam or rear fender that I can't easily run a charging cable to so at least I'll have extra batteries.

Oh, I'm not sure if it's a valid annoyance but why limit memory to 64Gb? I mean, if this thing can record 4K video at 30fps, why not provide for 128Gb chips? They're cheap and prevalent.

I understand that I have to "partially" edit a video with GoPro's software in order for it to install codecs?

I plan on shooting 1080 sometimes in superwide. However, I know I can't upload mega-gig files to YouTube. What's the best way to upload a hi-res video to YouTube?

I would like to try out the time-lapse function pointing the camera at the north star for an all night recording. Is this possible?

I'm not quite sure what a 360-degree, time-lapse would be good for. Any suggestions besides my kitchen? (I know you're not really suggesting I record my kitchen, haha.)

[— Agent☣Orange —]

Yes, after I paid for my dual charger, I was then shown the triple charger. Oh well, I'm not going to worry. I'll probably order the triple at some point however, if I'm going to have the camera within six feet of me, I'd rather use a cigarette-lighter car charger so I won't have to worry about batteries at all. I know there will be some instances with the camera mounted in the front air dam or rear fender that I can't easily run a charging cable to so at least I'll have extra batteries.

Oh, I'm not sure if it's a valid annoyance but why limit memory to 64Gb? I mean, if this thing can record 4K video at 30fps, why not provide for 128Gb chips? They're cheap and prevalent.

I understand that I have to "partially" edit a video with GoPro's software in order for it to install codecs?

I plan on shooting 1080 sometimes in superwide. However, I know I can't upload mega-gig files to YouTube. What's the best way to upload a hi-res video to YouTube?

I would like to try out the time-lapse function pointing the camera at the north star for an all night recording. Is this possible?

I'm not quite sure what a 360-degree, time-lapse would be good for. Any suggestions besides my kitchen? (I know you're not really suggesting I record my kitchen, haha.)

[This is a Lamp]

Yes, after I paid for my dual charger, I was then shown the triple charger. Oh well, I'm not going to worry. I'll probably order the triple at some point however, if I'm going to have the camera within six feet of me, I'd rather use a cigarette-lighter car charger so I won't have to worry about batteries at all. I know there will be some instances with the camera mounted in the front air dam or rear fender that I can't easily run a charging cable to so at least I'll have extra batteries.

Oh, I'm not sure if it's a valid annoyance but why limit memory to 64Gb? I mean, if this thing can record 4K video at 30fps, why not provide for 128Gb chips? They're cheap and prevalent.

I understand that I have to "partially" edit a video with GoPro's software in order for it to install codecs?

I plan on shooting 1080 sometimes in superwide. However, I know I can't upload mega-gig files to YouTube. What's the best way to upload a hi-res video to YouTube?

I would like to try out the time-lapse function pointing the camera at the north star for an all night recording. Is this possible?

I'm not quite sure what a 360-degree, time-lapse would be good for. Any suggestions besides my kitchen? (I know you're not really suggesting I record my kitchen, haha.)

Not sure if you are aware but the NC has a towhook GoPro mount that i wanted to invest in which reduces vibrations while driving, and a usable towhook

http://www.raceseng.com/tug-view-fro...iata-mx5-06-14

Hmmm your point about the memory is due to the current tech at the moment; 128GBs are cheap and prevalent but they are not the right class thus not being able to record 4K smoothly. SD cards have a class type and the MicroSD class that allows high read/write speeds only exists in UHS Class with Mark U3. Mark U3 types can record 4K videos with ease, and the biggest Mark U3 card is only 64GB.
Read more here: https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/speed_class/



About the codecs, just install the GoPro software (comes with the codec) and you're on your way Haha don't worry about the technicalities.

I've uploaded a couple of gig files to Youtube, but this depends on your Youtube channel; if you are constantly using Youtube to upload videos, eventually Youtube lets you upload bigger files. The best way of uploading high-res videos is to edit them and saving them as a different file format. It slightly compresses it but to an OK level. Some have recorded at higher resolutions then scale it down to 1080p so Youtube doesn't compress it as much, but as a start, I think just edit them and saving is good enough.

Night time shots, well, don't count on the GoPro to be outstanding. Capturing stars requires a better lens and camera, I highly doubt the GoPro can achieve amazing night shots.

One use for the 360 timelapse is...well let's say you just finished your twisty run and you are parked on the hilltop. You can put the kitchen timer on your car and watch the recording of the view surrounding your car. Just an idea of course, haha. You can try bringing it to the beach as well to take a 360 timelapse, like, park your car somewhere, take the timelapse and watch people move by near your car