[Closed] gopro camera Xmas pressie

I tried my chesty mount for the first time yesterday, the position of the camera is great for capturing more interesting onboard video and you can't tell you are wearing it at all (apart from looking a bit daft) however you do need to angle it up a bit more than you think, as I found out afterwards! And it is prone to getting covered in mud on a very wet ride

Helmet mounts always look a bit slow and you need to really be recording someone else riding infront/behind to make it interesting.

The bar mounts would be great for clamping on frame and forks etc but they get terrible reviews for snapping and leaving the camera in a bush somewhere...

Put your contact details on a slip of paper in the case in case you lose it and an honest person finds it.

Use a leash (camera wrist strap) to connect it to something solid.

Bar mount facing you can be interesting for fill in shots. Chest really good. Play with angles, shoot and watch lots to work out what looks good and get creative with mounts.

Vary angles and edit heavily.

Quality in good light is amazing.

Most seem to like the chest mount as it gives a greater sensation of speed, but you can end up showing too much bike and the footage can be very bumpy if the trails are rough. A good helmet mounted camera may look slower, but is far smoother. Mess about with angles and mix it up when editing, and as above, good light makes all the difference.

I cobbled together a stickmount and treemount by butchering the headstrap that came with it. Fits in the camelbak and gives a few more options (pic and vid of homemade mounts below).

[img] [/img]

This is all from the point of view of the GoPro HD, the newer ones are better in low light and offer higher frame rates.

Here's a video I made this year, using the most different angles and mounts that I have tried.

HD version on Vimeo gives a better feel for the image quality.

[list]
[*]I used the Chesty mount (camera mounted upside down). [/*]
[*]The Bar mount on the smaller parts of the bike frame and on a telescopic pole. I use a piece of old inner tube in the clamp to get the "fit" right and to reduce a little of the shake. Also it means you don't have to tighten the clamp as much.[/*]
[*]The Roll Bar mount on larger parts of the bike frame. This has a rubber inner surface on the clamp so no inner tube required. [/*]
[*]One of the curved sticky mounts on the helmet. [/*]
[*]I also used one of these: [url= http://xcracer.com/shop/viewproduct.php?productid=235 ]xcracer.com/shop/viewproduct.php?productid=235[/url] which replaces the bolt on a quick release skewer. It's meant for mounting lights on the bike but I used the bar mount on it to get the low angle at the back and the shot of the rear mech.[/*]
[/list]

The Gor Pro works great in sunny conditions, for me that is when it really excels and you get nice crisp video with good colour. In overcast conditions it can be hit and miss. Some times it comes out fine, some times it just looks very dull. The auto exposure can be hit and miss. Some times it will expose from the top half of the shot (the sky) and it will make the action going on in the bottom half quite dark.

Never had a problem with mounts breaking. I never do them up to tight though so they move round the bars in crashes instead of snapping.

which editing S/W did you use? I love to do some split screens as well but Window Movie maker do not let me do it.

Thanks!

Gilles

I use Vegas myself, mostly straightforward... Try the demo first though as not all versions cope well with the Gopro footage (IIRC I tried Movie Studio HD 9 originally, and it couldn't run the preview, which made it useless. Everyone including Sony said "Your computer isn't powerful enough to edit video"- then I tried Studio HD 9 Premiere and it worked perfectly. Some failing in the basic version's coding.

Thing about gopro vids is that most are dull, because they're all one camera position. Chest is the single best location but if you use all chest, it's still going to be boring. Shift it around, get as much static as you can be bothered to.

Also- remember you can attach a sticky "shoe" to just about anything. i got a gorillapod tripod and removed the screw fitting, and attached a Gopro shoe to it, so now I can quickfit the camera to it without fannying around with the screws. Much more convenient. I've got a bar and seatpost mount but I rarely use them just because of that extra faff.

Second Gilles question. Been using iMovie and it cant handle big/long clips.

I used Final Cut Pro 7. To get that split screen effect I used cropping and animated cropping. Sadly I wouldn't be very confident that Movie maker would let you do something similar.

Formats can be tricky. The GoPro records a .mp4 with the h.264 codec. This is a presentational format, not an editing one and can often lead to very jerky play back on the time line and generally makes editing more difficult than it needs to be. I spend a lot of time prepping footage though before it goes into the edit so that while I'm doing the fun bit I have the least amount of faffing to do.

I convert everything to QuickTime with the Apple Pro Res 222 codec which can play natively in Final Cut Pro. I use MPEG Stream Clip to do all my trans-coding. It can also rotate footage if you have been using the camera upside down. It does loads of stuff actually and is very useful, specially as its free. http://www.squared5.com/

Sorry to high jack but I also have just got a GP HD3 'silver edition' . I tried it today with the chest mount and the angles were great but the footage not so. I had it on 960p and 50FPS. What would work best for wooded DH riding (Lower light, rough ground?)

Many thanks, Jay

I find 1080 30fps works well on the previous hd.

Editing in the later version of premiere is fine for the formats and worms well.

composite; thanks very much for the tip, i do struggle with the playback in the edit software. I actually have a Contour (sorry GP fans!) and it records in .MP4 which apparently is different to .mp4 and i have to convert it already so hopefully changing codec (no idea what that means yet!) will make it a bit smoother.

Thanks.

or maybe its .MOV and .mov

Im confused now!

What is it you are experiencing that makes you say that ".MP4" and ".mp4" are different?

As I understand it all mpeg4 containers are the same in respect to the video and audio element. You should just be able to rename the extension.

Looking at the specs for the Contour it appears to record a ".MOV". I imagine the codec is still h.264. This is what my Canon 600D records and I still convert this to a full frame format like Apple Pro Res. Although I do all my editing on a Mac I never use iMovie so it's difficult to comment on exactly what container and codec combination is going to work best.

Hmm OK so posted that then saw you second post about .MOV.

Just tried bringing a .MOV (h.264) into iMovie 7.1.4. I couldn't drag and drop the file into the library but I could import it via File>Import movies. Although it appears to do something more than just copy it, after looking at the file that it copied it hasn't changed the format or codec. So I'm wondering if its something else that makes it problematic on your computer.

How much RAM are you running?
Are you editing 1080p or 720p?

tbh composite, i havnt a clue, i could work it out but have little interest in spending the time for what id get out of it. Im trying to focus my time on more usuful things this year (coming year) as i got so little riding done last year due to faffing on with crap that served no purpose (to me).

Thanks for your help tho, it think it will improve what little i do but right now ive just hit my memory limit as the HD is quite small, need to get the NAS running again and get some of the crap off the computer to try it properly, when i can find time.

No worries fella.
Drop me an email if you try to get it sorted and need any help. 🙂