Best GoPro accessories for recording carving

[1xsculler]

Thanks for all of the good tips. 

[1xsculler]

On 4/2/2021 at 8:12 AM, 1xsculler said:

With a UBC-C to Lightening dongle can you watch GoPro recordings on your iPhone?

To answer my own silly question the Hero 9 connects to your phone by WiFi and/or Bluetooth. 

[Jack M]

On 3/31/2021 at 5:45 PM, SunSurfer said:

Hand helds shake

GoPro's built-in digital stabilization called "Hypersmooth" which debuted in the 7 works profoundly well.  Hand holding is no issue anymore.

[daveo]

31 minutes ago, Jack M said:

GoPro's built-in digital stabilization called "Hypersmooth" which debuted in the 7 works profoundly well.  Hand holding is no issue anymore.

Any idea if it is hardware or software based?

[Jack M]

41 minutes ago, daveo said:

Any idea if it is hardware or software based?

I don't know about the 9 but the 7 which I have is software based.  I'd be surprised if the 9 had any optical stabilization as it would increase size and cost significantly.

[Neil Gendzwill]

2 hours ago, Jack M said:

GoPro's built-in digital stabilization called "Hypersmooth" which debuted in the 7 works profoundly well.  Hand holding is no issue anymore.

I think gimbalgod has given up his gimbal, the GoPro he uses is just that good.

[dredman]

1 hour ago, daveo said:

Any idea if it is hardware or software based?

Software based.  Works great!  Even has an auto horizons leveling feature.  Heck of a lot of camera for the money.

All the video I have shot this year is on the 9.  Super easy to carry and use.  Very happy with the quality vs ease of use.  Use a Mac and iMovie to mix things together.  

[1xsculler]

I really appreciate all of you guys chiming in on this as it eliminates unnecessary and potentially faulty info. 

[SunSurfer]

Might have to retire my faithful GoPro Silver3+. The 9 sounds pretty darn good.

PS: The YouTube reviews I've watched consistently suggest that unless you're like a kite surfer who mounts the camera on the kite, that the 8 represents better value than the 9 for most users. I am now planning to upgrade to the 8. If I had a 7 I might wait to see if there are firmware upgrades for the 9 or wait to see what the 10 brings. (planned obsolescence as a continuing income stream strategy is alive and well!)

Edited April 11, 2021 by SunSurfer
update my plans

[1xsculler]

N E body have experience with the DJI Osmo Pocket camera? It has a very good review on youtube and it costs half the price of a Hero 9. 
How about mounting a cellphone on your helmet. Would a 12 pro plus have image stabilization adequate for this purpose for short video runs?

[philw]

On 4/1/2021 at 2:55 AM, dredman said:

... This looks like a pretty simple option.  Your head is a pretty good natural gimbal.  https://www.prostandard.com/products/the-grill-mount-the-best-mouth-mount-for-gopro-cameras

That one's also designed and built by Ken Achenbach. Is commonly used for MTB and surfing also.


The question was specifically about accessories and carving, neither of which are particularly my thing. However for back country snowboarding at least 360 cameras seem to me to be the way to go, because there's no stabilisation issue as they capture the entire 360 degree field, so can do that in post. But more importantly you can crop and frame in post production too, so it makes the camera-man job much easier/ lower skilled. On the end of a pole works best, either for 1st person or 3rd person use. Poles over about 1.2m long are give a big enough usable field of view.

Otherwise, I think the "go pro accessory" thing is a bit like dealer-fit car options - a lot of accessories are sold, but I suspect not so many are used that much. You don't need a bag of bits. Most people will be able to cobble something together if you want to experiment.

[1xsculler]

Thank you very much for the 360 suggestion. 
It looks like a 360 captures everything and then you edit to what you want to save. 
I have no experience with a 360 but after doing a little research it seems it would be the way to go. 
Thanks again...a whole new thing to learn about. 

[johnasmo]

Don't ignore the optics and physics of what is going on with 360 cameras.  There are two lenses capturing highly fish-eyed 180 degree views onto two sensors that are stitched together as a frame in the video.  Say that image is a 5.7K image (5760 x 2880).  Now you want to extract a portion of that image and render at least a VHD resolution image (1080x1920) that's not so fish-eyed.  What are the chances that the portion of the frame you want has enough resolution for the quality you want, especially the further from the axis of each lens?

There's a trade off between the ease of capturing with a 360 camera and actually pointing a lens at the subject you want.  The trade off is image quality.  Even with two sensors to capture 360 degree views, one sensor capturing just the field of view you actually want is likely to give you more resolution to work with.

[1xsculler]

1 hour ago, johnasmo said:

Don't ignore the optics and physics of what is going on with 360 cameras.  There are two lenses capturing highly fish-eyed 180 degree views onto two sensors that are stitched together as a frame in the video.  Say that image is a 5.7K image (5760 x 2880).  Now you want to extract a portion of that image and render at least a VHD resolution image (1080x1920) that's not so fish-eyed.  What are the chances that the portion of the frame you want has enough resolution for the quality you want, especially the further from the axis of each lens?

There's a trade off between the ease of capturing with a 360 camera and actually pointing a lens at the subject you want.  The trade off is image quality.  Even with two sensors to capture 360 degree views, one sensor capturing just the field of view you actually want is likely to give you more resolution to work with.

Thanks for that explanation, Jonasmo!

[bigwavedave]

@philw

Are you using a shorter pole than you did with a gopro? I love the edit in the middle where you rotate the view. I think you said before that it was more difficult to edit, or that it required more computer power to edit the 360 view. Is that still the case? 

 

[philw]

On 4/19/2021 at 9:46 PM, bigwavedave said:

@philw

Are you using a shorter pole than you did with a gopro? I love the edit in the middle where you rotate the view. I think you said before that it was more difficult to edit, or that it required more computer power to edit the 360 view. Is that still the case? 

 

Actually for that one I used the same pole - a Delkin KaBoom, which is multi-segment but fixed length. Google tells me that one's 50.8 – 152.4 cm, or 20″ to 60″. I broke that pole after many years and ended up with a Rode microphone boom which is three simple carbon fibre sections. I like it, and shot the thing below with two of those sections. As both sections are necessarily long, it's a bit of a hassle to transport. 

The edit posted earlier was my first attempt with the 360 camera, so I experimented with a few of those editing things. It is pretty neat in than you can effectively create your angles after the event. The difficulty in editing was more that with that camera (the now obsolete Rylo) you had to do the 3D editing on the mobile phone app. So I crop and pan segments out of the 3D sphere using the Rylo phone app, then export those as ordinary 2D videos. Then I use DaVinci resolve to cut those together. So the edit process has that extra mobile phone based step, which is the difficulty.

Now you've reminded me I'll go and check if there are free plug-ins which will edit 360 video in DaVinci Resolve - that's what I really need, so I don't have to bother with the phone app at all. Other people may be happy with the phone on it's own, but I like the big desktop editor toys.

Overall, as you end up dealing with video optimized for mobile devices, and mostly (in my case) lower resolution that 4k once it's cropped, you actually need less compute power  That said, these days power is no longer the issue it once was: computers are mostly powerful enough.

Note that the spherical video from these consumer 360 cameras (including all the current "action" ones) is typically 5.6K or some such, which is obviously bigger than 4k. However if you are cropping a conventional 2D video out of that sphere, then you're not using most of those pixels, hence the actual video quality is not very good or clear - it's much lower/ worse than the 4k you can get from any modern GoPro for example. Hence I'm waiting for a lightweight 360 camera capable of being cropped down to 4k: then I'll be happy. Well for a while
 

 

[patmoore]

A half dozen years ago I experimented with different mounts and put together a short video using a GoPro 2 and a 3+.  Since then I've owned a 5 (which I left in Botswana) and an 8 which is a big improvement over the 3+.  

 

I ordered the Max and a long carbon fiber selfie stick and plan on shooting some 360 video when they arrive next week.  

[slapos]

Hi all,

 

I am very happy with back belt from insta.

Works really well and don't have to hold anything which is an advantage imho.

 

 

 

 

[slapos]

On 4/21/2021 at 5:58 PM, philw said:

 

Note that the spherical video from these consumer 360 cameras (including all the current "action" ones) is typically 5.6K or some such, which is obviously bigger than 4k. However if you are cropping a conventional 2D video out of that sphere, then you're not using most of those pixels, hence the actual video quality is not very good or clear - it's much lower/ worse than the 4k you can get from any modern GoPro for example. Hence I'm waiting for a lightweight 360 camera capable of being cropped down to 4k: then I'll be happy. Well for a while
 

 

 

That said about the resolution of the Vid, note that content watched on mobile devices an most pc monitors will be actually all right. 

 

How many of you have got 4k monitors ?

 

Issue becomes apparent when watching on TV.

 

For watching on TV it's worth looking at the Hugh Hou tutorials on how to export for best quality 

 

https://youtube.com/c/HughHouFilm

Edited January 8, 2022 by slapos