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Apologise now in advance if this has been covered before !
I've got a GoPro 3 Black edition and used it for the 1st time today and the battery died after just 40 mins ??
Its all new and I used it in conjunction with the wi-fi remote but thats pretty ****ing shocking tho ?
What's the best settings you'd recommend for quality and battery life ? or just ditch using the wi-fi remote perhaps.
Thanks
I take it you've seen this page? https://gopro.com/support/articles/hero3-battery-life .
Once you've set the camera up using the app then turn wi-fi off and anything else you don't need off as well. Video settings wise: I go with 1080p at 24fps, the 30fps setting is for NTSC, i.e. America, in Europe we use PAL which is 24fps. One thing you might want to try is the 2.7K setting, this is basically the 1080p mode but whereas that uses an aspect ration of 16:9 the 2.7K uses 4:3 at the same quality. You can then crop the video down to 1080p without any loss in quality.
in Europe we use PAL which is 24fps
Is this really relevant though, provided that you're not going to air your clips on TV?
Honest question.
i'd go with 1080p at 50fps (or 60 if it's NTSC) and then you have the option of slightly smoother video and ability to reduce its speed by half and have some slow mo.
the 2.7K is an option for allowing you to zoom in and steady the shot very well, just be sure you have software that can handle the larger frame size - it's becoming more the norm so you should be ok with most major software types. The downside with this is the hero3's larger K frame rates are very slow. I wouldn't choose these myself because of this, preferring the 1080/50fps option over anything else.
For battery saving I'd say turn off the wifi for starters and then run a test on that, and make sure you fully charge the battery all the way... 😉
Agree with the point about 24 / 30 frames not making a difference these days.
Of more (likely) important is where you plan to upload your video. Vimeo only supports 30fps maximum, Youtube now supports 60. If you down convert 60 to 30 you don't get the same motion blur you'd get if you'd recorded natively at 30. That can play havoc with various compression algorithms and gives the film a more juddery look than you'd expect.
Put it this way, you can't smoothly reduce something shot at 25fps to become slow mo at 25fps playback because the frames simply don't exist. stick with 50fps and you've got the option.
Thanks Guys
Very useful info there 😀
From the guy who makes the GoPro videos..
[url= http://abekislevitz.com/understanding-your-new-gopro/ ]http://abekislevitz.com/understanding-your-new-gopro/[/url]
Great link Milkie
Gah! When I said 2.7K earlier I meant the 1440p setting - gives you a bit of wiggle room to choose the best bit of the shot. Useful with a chest mount if you don't quite get the angle right
As a rule I stick with a high frame rate and lower resolution (720/50fps), wifi definitely off.
I usually stay with a lower resolution as most content these days is viewed via a mobile or tablet device where a 720x1280 resolution is fine but you want to keep the action smooth i.e. a higher frame rate.