New to GoPro

Jeremy

Just picked up a Hero3 Black Edition yesterday. I've read through the manual and several sites to get an idea of the features. Wanted to ask you all what you feel the best setting is for fishing, and later, capturing great still shots from the videos? There are so many options on the thing. I plan to experiment with all of them, but have seen some really great fishing vids/shots off of these things. I'd like a go-to starting point.

Thanks.

WaterEngineer

We need just a little bit more. Above water surface or under water surface.

IMHO, getting good stills from this video stream format is nearly impossible, difficult at best.

Not impossible about lots of post processing depending on what you want to do with a video stills capture.

Much better stills from interval (time lapse) function.

Anyway, are you mounting to you, to a kayak, to an t-top, over/under water, please advise.

Jeremy

WaterEngineer wrote: »

We need just a little bit more. Above water surface or under water surface.

IMHO, getting good stills from this video stream format is nearly impossible, difficult at best.

Not impossible about lots of post processing depending on what you want to do with a video stills capture.

Much better stills from interval (time lapse) function.

Anyway, are you mounting to you, to a kayak, to an t-top, over/under water, please advise.

That already helps. I guess a lot of the great still-shots that I've seen have been from the time-lapse function and not from the video mode.

To answer your question, I'd like to use it for both underwater and out of water shots/videos. Most of the underwater stuff would be in high light situations (e.g., releasing a fish boat side), rather than deeper/pelagic shots. I usually run my flats boat or my kayak, so it would be in many different situations. Some would be mounted, and some would be handheld. I understand that all of these would probably require some tweaking on the settings, respectively, but I know some of you guys have some go-to settings to create some great videos and stills.

Thanks

WaterEngineer

Watch this. You can forget about the 4K stuff. The young gent in the video is right about the 2.7K and the 1080p stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d_GI31Tv5A

The 2.7K at 30 FPS video mode is my favorite. If I want to scale the image or down rez down for say YouTube there is plenty of file to work with. Also the codec in the GoPro will probably need to be rewritten into another format depending on your editing tool(s). What is (are) your editing tool(s)?

For conversion ever GoPro owner should have downloaded a copy of this.

http://www.any-video-converter.com/camcorder-video-converter/gopro-camera-video-converter.php

One thing. Every camera is a compromise. GoPro certainly has its shortcomings for sure, too. LOL!

My point is that any POV camera stuff you see on, say, ESPN, etc. has been heavily massaged to get it to "look" right, like the video coming off the "A" cameras. The better editor you become, the better you will become at grading, which will look better on the final video. Even if all the footage comes off the video, having an idea what you want the final footage to look like will help you in the long run.

One last point. I shoot at 30 fps because that is TV video speed. Classic film speed is 24 fps. My point is during final edit it is MUCH easier to go from 30 to 24 than the other way around. If there is ever a question, "overcrank" the shoot, then you can always back off. It will look MUCH better than doing it the other way around. This fact is important for Slo-mo. Shoot at 60 fps and leave the playback rate at 30 or 24 for those engrossing fights next to the boat.

These settings will work for underwater too. You can do a limited amount of color correcting or dehazing in a powerful editing tool like AE.

If you have more questions. Ask away.

Jeremy

That's some awesome information. To answer your question, I haven't picked an editing program just yet. My dad had Final Cut Pro, but unfortunately, he just passed away and I have no idea where his installation CD/key is. If I happen upon it, I'll use that. I'm open to suggestions, with a moderate budget in mind.

Thanks again, W.E.

WaterEngineer

Sorry to read about your dad passing.

If he was using final cut he was an Apple guy.

If you are a PC-based dude, it is very likely that the consumer version of Premiere will be plenty, and reasonably priced, too.

Jeremy

Thank you.

I will be using a MacBook for editing.

conquistador

GoPro is also very hardware hungry, especially if you record in greater than 1080P and have protune on. The best advice I can give you is to record in different settings around your house with Protune on/off and white balance in auto/manual. See how the camera reacts in low light scenarios, intense light, etc. Test the camera when moving slow, moving fast. You also have to think about what you're trying to capture. If there is a scene where you want to do slow motion in an editor, you may want to scale down the quality and bump up the FPS.

You may not want to have to edit white balance manually, you may not care about adjusting brightness, contrast, colors, shadows, blacks, etc. Hell, your MAC may not be able to handle Protune on. You may get sick of waiting hours just to export 20min of video, these are things to consider.

Try and put those videos in your computer and see which ones you can actually work with. I mention this again because just because your camera can shoot 4.7k in Protune doens't mean your computer will be able to handle that much data. TBH, if you're just wanting to show off in youtube, 1080P is really the highest you should go.

So in short, record in all formats around the house and experiment with each on your computer, iron out all the bugs before you take it out otherwise you may make a mistake and miss out on some captured memories.