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  • GoPro

    Anyone out there using a GoPro camera?
    If so, what kind, and have you experienced any problems with the GoPro Studio software crashing?
    Any helpful thoughts or comments are welcome.

  • #2
    Justin I have a Hero 3+ that I use to document my fishing trips. The thing works great. I use Apple iMovie to edit the clips and patch them together. Never had a problem.

    My only complaint is that when you push the record button on the housing it sounds really loud on the audio so I got a remote control to get around that. The batteries also don't last that long when it's really cold so make sure you have spares. My benchmark is steelhead fishing in Buffalo during the middle of winter with the wind howling off Lake Ontario so this might be a bit extreme.
    Oh I'd rather go and journey where the diamond crest is flowing...

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Pauly D. View Post
      Justin I have a Hero 3+ that I use to document my fishing trips. The thing works great. I use Apple iMovie to edit the clips and patch them together. Never had a problem.

      My only complaint is that when you push the record button on the housing it sounds really loud on the audio so I got a remote control to get around that. The batteries also don't last that long when it's really cold so make sure you have spares. My benchmark is steelhead fishing in Buffalo during the middle of winter with the wind howling off Lake Ontario so this might be a bit extreme.
      Thanks, Pauly.
      Yeah battery life seems to be an issue in the cold. I've found that keeping the camera in a small pouch (within easy reach), and keepng a hand/toe warmer packed inside the pouch has helped prolong battery life in cold temps.
      I will look more into iMovie, which my buddy Rob has also suggested.
      Thanks again.

      Comment


      • #4
        I had wanted to buy a GoPro a couple of years ago, primarily to document when I canoe race on the Yukon River. But the limited battery life is what put me off. Even if I use it in interval mode for individual shots, as confirmed by GoPro Tech, battery is draining the same as if it was in movie mode. Plus the maximum interval is only 60 seconds. I would have preferred a longer interval between shots. Doesn't make sense, but that battery drain makes it of very limited use for me to make the investment. I would have to invest as much in batteries as the entire camera, and not be able to change them while racing anyway.

        I will still consider the 5th generation that is supposed to be much better, but its release, originally scheduled for last year, has been delayed for more than a year.
        "Now I see the secret of making the best person, it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth." -Walt Whitman

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Justin View Post
          Thanks, Pauly.
          Yeah battery life seems to be an issue in the cold. I've found that keeping the camera in a small pouch (within easy reach), and keepng a hand/toe warmer packed inside the pouch has helped prolong battery life in cold temps.
          I will look more into iMovie, which my buddy Rob has also suggested.
          Thanks again.
          Remote areas- battery use is always a compromise- you gain one thing to the detriment of another. Cold saps all rechargeable batteries, I slip the battery of my full-frame Nikon out of camera and into an inner pocket. YOu may experience fogging slipping the whole camera in there if it has been in the cold for long, a trick for bringing a cold camera into the "warm" is to put it into a ziplock bag, Cold air is normally quite dry... thus dry air is trapped in the bag...any condensation will form on the outside of the bag. DO NOT TAKE THE CAMERA OUT UNTIL ITS TEMP has warmed up- or it will instantly fog up! GoPro has a much larger battery available and there are several aftermarket devices out there like this that will give up to 12 hours continuous use.



          A friend just went on a mountain climbing trip, they used a solar cell sheet to recharge everyone's phone... Spread out over gear in a canoe, you could be charging backups while you are shooting away or perhaps charging while in use- i turn my gopro on while hooked up to to computer... I have not tried to capture anything while it is charging, so not sure if this will work... but its charging all the time its on.

          This solar charger is no longer available for sale. The Instapark Mercury 10 was easily the most underrated panel in our tests--that is, until we started...


          Or you can get something like this that itself is rechargeable and will recharge your backup batteries a couple of times.



          Or some "fire" related chargers are starting to show up- no experience with them myself. But keeping a small stick fire going is not a challenge in the Adirondacks...

          Charge your gadgets with fire! FlameStower, a startup that came out of Stanford's StartX Summer 2013 class, has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to get its alternative charger to market. The gizmo lets you harness the heat from a campfire/gas stove/naked flame heat source to add some juice to a phone or other USB-charged device.

          Turn fire into electricity and charge phones, headlamps, and lights with this USB wood-burning camp stove.


          Finally, extra batteries are not that expensive.



          As far as GoPro Video software crashing, seems all video software that i have used (Final Cut Pro included) all have sporadic issues. Depends on your computer, and even I have issues from time to time and I have very current and powerful Macs-because of my profession- (which is not video-but I can/know how to do it) ... I use them for very large-high res images and 3D illustrations- etc. The best fix? Save often! Especially when you set it to process something. Working with video means you are asking your computer to deal with a quickly staggering amount of images/data. If you configured it to take a photo every second, after a minute you’d have 60 photos. But after a 5 hour time lapse you’d have 18,000 photos. A computer that experiences a hiccup- like an email coming in etc. where the processor has to accept something new- it will react the only way a computer can, it freezes. A restart can mean you will lose everything till the last save. So the other thing you may want to do is have ONLY the video software running.

          That video software is free -more or less, and it does a pretty good job! Not exactly a top of the line non-linear editing program that you can fade all sorts of types of clips and sound effects and music, narration all at once.. but it's not bad!
          Last edited by RichieC; 03-08-2016, 02:08 PM.

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          • #6
            Thanks Richie!

            Last night I was trying to "save" my progress as I went along while making my latest video, and after the GoPro Studio crashed on me for the 3 time I was unable to retrieve what I had already saved, forcing me to start over from scratch!

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Justin View Post
              Thanks Richie!

              Last night I was trying to "save" my progress as I went along while making my latest video, and after the GoPro Studio crashed on me for the 3 time I was unable to retrieve what I had already saved, forcing me to start over from scratch!
              Sorry about that, I have had it happen too. Did you notice how it took you way less time to re-do it? LOL all the fussing about trying this and that is cut out. In fact, sometimes it turns out better. But who wants to do the same thing all over again.

              If you get to a point in a big production, I have saved, and resaved as a second name- two copies now exist. What you may have had was a crash during a save, the entire file is corrupted.

              You may see better performance if you can set the amount of ram a program uses... and once again, shut down any other programs. If you are on a mac...

              Go to: Applications>Utilities>Activity Monitor

              At the bottom are a series of buttons: CPU | SYSTEM MEMORY |Etc

              Clicking on those you can see what your CPU is doing. It will show all applications that are using the CPU. The problem is, if a mac runs out of ram, it will use virtual memory, which is using your hard drive as pseudo ram- which is slower but usually works pretty good- depends on how much free disk space you have.. If you have an older computer, and your hard disk has less the 10% free, this all may become an issue. YOu need extra space to do video!


              You may want to break up a video into pieces. then combine later into one. SO here are your first steps, Optimize CPU available by closing unneeded applications, See if you have plenty of hard drive room available!

              Here is defragmenting info:


              Hard drive size etc: YOU DON:T NEED ALL THIS- but there are hints to what is important in hardware for editing video. I might suggest a fast firewire external you keep cleaned off to use just for this work:

              It's a very common set of questions readers ask us: "When I'm shopping for a video editing computer, what should I look for? Should I buy a Mac or a PC?

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Wldrns View Post
                I had wanted to buy a GoPro a couple of years ago, primarily to document when I canoe race on the Yukon River. But the limited battery life is what put me off. Even if I use it in interval mode for individual shots, as confirmed by GoPro Tech, battery is draining the same as if it was in movie mode. Plus the maximum interval is only 60 seconds. I would have preferred a longer interval between shots. Doesn't make sense, but that battery drain makes it of very limited use for me to make the investment. I would have to invest as much in batteries as the entire camera, and not be able to change them while racing anyway.

                I will still consider the 5th generation that is supposed to be much better, but its release, originally scheduled for last year, has been delayed for more than a year.

                I noticed a link somewhere... for time lapse. Thing is, even at 20 seconds, watching back at 24 frames a second, the video becomes almost unwatchable with a moving subject. Kinda needs something stationery, like a sunset against an unmoving horizon... where the movement is not on the camera's side, to be comfortable to watch- but that is up to you. LOL, I shot a four wheeling trip on a back dirt road at a long interval, and when played back, i had to look away! Like space mountain in high gear! It won't be smooth... but perhaps if you hesitate on each frame for a period of time it will smooth it out.

                Google "intervalometer GoPro" this is what you need to search for to precisely address your concerns. There are several third party solutions I have found that "GoPro" may not support or endorse- thus why it wasn't mentioned.

                Here are two to get the ball rolling.



                Actually, thanks for bringing it up as I found it quite interesting!

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by RichieC View Post
                  I noticed a link somewhere... for time lapse. Thing is, even at 20 seconds, watching back at 24 frames a second, the video becomes almost unwatchable with a moving subject.
                  My intent is not to make a "movie" out of long interval time lapse photos, but rather to capture representative sample images while paddling that will go into an edited slide show. My team and I have each taken many individual shots on four previous Yukon trips, and I have edited and put them together resulting in a pretty good slide show with narration and music that we have shown to paddling groups here and there.

                  But... since we are racing everyone feels guilty to stop paddling, even for a few strokes, to get their camera out, except for a few certain significant landscape features. Early in the race when competition is nearby and we are jockeying for physical and psychological position, there is no chance anyone is going to stop paddling for even single stroke, so I have no photos of that first full day portion of the race with other boats close to us, all paddling for all we are worth.

                  I just want to let the camera run in a relatively long interval to get several hundred random location shots that I can choose from during major portions of the 1000 mile race. I'll have a separate camera to infrequently manually use for those extra special location shots when I can afford to stop paddling for a brief time. But since the GoPro drains battery in interval mode as if it is always "on", it is not practical to carry enough batteries to last the majority of the 6 days.
                  "Now I see the secret of making the best person, it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth." -Walt Whitman

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    i have done this several times on long rides / trips.

                    i set the gopro to start filming immediately on power up - 1 touch start or something in the menu. i then set the camera to default start in time-lapse mode, with an interval of like every 1-2 seconds or 5 seconds (for mountain biking / road cycling) i start and stop the camera with 1 push and let it run as i go through a cool section or road / trail, then hit the button again to conserve power. i then edit down the photos when i get home. usually lots of them for a weekend trip.

                    if you have enough spare batteries, or a battery pack, you can let it run all day... but you'll be sorting through thousands of files!

                    here are some samples from my trip through MRP last year:
                    ADK-BKPK-GoPro by Mike, on Flickr

                    ADK-BKPK-GoPro by Mike, on Flickr

                    ADK-BKPK-GoPro by Mike, on Flickr

                    Steep hill to the finish, but it was slick! by Mike, on Flickr

                    here are a few from a gravel ride, i shot video using the 1 touch method above, then grabbed stills from the videos. i like the photo option better...

                    25 by Mike, on Flickr

                    16 by Mike, on Flickr


                    i have done the time lapse function to create a movie from the bars of the bike... works OK... but it can be pretty bouncy. here is a sample: (shot at night, with full intention of seeing the streetlights and car lights streaked out by the exposure time)

                    Sorry, we couldn’t find that page


                    i do want to do this on a bikepacking ride though and capture the whole thing, maybe shooting once every 30 seconds or minute, just to see what it would be like. i think the key is having something in frame that keeps the viewer grounded - so front of the kayak or canoe, bike, etc.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Wldrns View Post

                      I just want to let the camera run in a relatively long interval to get several hundred random location shots that I can choose from during major portions of the 1000 mile race. I'll have a separate camera to infrequently manually use for those extra special location shots when I can afford to stop paddling for a brief time. But since the GoPro drains battery in interval mode as if it is always "on", it is not practical to carry enough batteries to last the majority of the 6 days.
                      you can tell the camera to power up and start shooting in whatever mode you want... so set the default operation to 'time lapse', pick an interval, and then set the power up to 1 touch or something. mount the camera in a convenient location, and when you want to take a photo, hold the power until it beeps. it powers up and starts snapping... let it run for a minute or more, depending on your interval... and then when your hands are free power it down. you can make that charge last a long time. maybe not 6 days on 1 battery, but you can certainly get 2 days out of 1 battery with selective shooting (more than you would get otherwise pulling the camera out...).

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by bmike-vt View Post
                        you can tell the camera to power up and start shooting in whatever mode you want... so set the default operation to 'time lapse', pick an interval, and then set the power up to 1 touch or something. mount the camera in a convenient location, and when you want to take a photo, hold the power until it beeps. it powers up and starts snapping... let it run for a minute or more, depending on your interval... and then when your hands are free power it down. you can make that charge last a long time. maybe not 6 days on 1 battery, but you can certainly get 2 days out of 1 battery with selective shooting (more than you would get otherwise pulling the camera out...).
                        That's something to consider trying. But the camera will likely be mounted on a post so it is out of the way while paddling in an inconvenient location to reach to power it up and down. Again, I checked with GoPro tech directly, two different years, and they both told me that as long as it is in interval mode, it is consuming power continuously and wont last any longer than if it was in movie mode.

                        I was really hoping for the easy solution of having it set for an interval of 2 minutes or more, and letting it run for a good part of the day in interesting sections of the river with minimal battery changes. Why it can't power itself up and down for a infrequent shot without consuming a high amount of power between shots is beyond me. I still intend to look strongly at the 5th generation model when it comes out (October?), but it will be too late for Yukon 2016.
                        Last edited by Wldrns; 03-08-2016, 06:47 PM.
                        "Now I see the secret of making the best person, it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth." -Walt Whitman

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          I'm sure the issues mentioned above is probably some of the reasons why the GoPro stock has plummeted in the past few months, along with countless complaints I've read in reviews.

                          I currenty own the Hero4 Sessions model, which was a xmas gift from family, and even though I really like it's small size for backcountry use, I think overall it's really not that great of a product (just yet), and its picture quality is not all that great either.

                          I hear much better things about the Sony Action Cam.

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                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Wldrns View Post
                            My intent is not to make a "movie" out of long interval time lapse photos, but rather to capture representative sample images while paddling that will go into an edited slide show. My team and I have each taken many individual shots on four previous Yukon trips, and I have edited and put them together resulting in a pretty good slide show with narration and music that we have shown to paddling groups here and there.

                            But... since we are racing everyone feels guilty to stop paddling, even for a few strokes, to get their camera out, except for a few certain significant landscape features. Early in the race when competition is nearby and we are jockeying for physical and psychological position, there is no chance anyone is going to stop paddling for even single stroke, so I have no photos of that first full day portion of the race with other boats close to us, all paddling for all we are worth.

                            I just want to let the camera run in a relatively long interval to get several hundred random location shots that I can choose from during major portions of the 1000 mile race. I'll have a separate camera to infrequently manually use for those extra special location shots when I can afford to stop paddling for a brief time. But since the GoPro drains battery in interval mode as if it is always "on", it is not practical to carry enough batteries to last the majority of the 6 days.

                            Did you follow the links?

                            The first one is programable for intervals between 35 seconds to one week or more between shots. It turns on the camera in one shot mode and captures a still, then shuts down the camera… it runs in a sort of standby mode, as such it uses practically no power. There are several types, this one requires a hardware modification. These are the first two I included, there are more.

                            A treking pole with a camera bungied & mounted in the stern paddler (or similar selfie type pole) would capture 2000 images on one battery according to the website. In an 8 hour day in one minute intervals.. . it would cover 4.1 days. With one of the big batters… indefinitely! LOL Anyways, there are solutions to what you want in a range of prices and features.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Wldrns View Post
                              Again, I checked with GoPro tech directly, two different years, and they both told me that as long as it is in interval mode, it is consuming power continuously and wont last any longer than if it was in movie mode.
                              yes, if you leave it on, it consumes power. if you do the '1 touch' setting, it is shutting down and powering up. leaves you lots of battery capacity to stretch over multiple days. depending on how long you leave the interval running. you setup to shoot as soon as it powers up, and the default shot is interval... so it consumes battery when you are shooting. you could shoot video if you wanted - its all the same to the camera (but 1 photo every X second will consume less storage then video...)

                              they make a key fob sized remote, but you need to keep the camera's wifi on to use it. it takes a battery hit, not sure how much of a difference from just leaving the camera on, or in wifi only. i have one, works well once setup, but haven't used it for long duration events.


                              the hacks and 3rd party options are likely your only option here, if you don't want to manually press a button on the waterproof housing.
                              Last edited by bmike-vt; 03-09-2016, 01:35 PM.

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