GoPro advice / Troubleshooting

[Kellyg 0]

Purchased Hero 2 Go Pro recently so as to get some footage while skiing. After 2 days in Hirafu have nothing but distorted files. Works ok if taken from room, but all the files taken while skiing are crap.

Anyone else had similar problems.

[Thundercat 60]

If you describe the problem I little better I might be able to help. Sometimes you might be fog issues. You can use silica(sp?) packages to help with that. It's the stuff to remove moisture from food packages. Also, keep the case closed as much as possible. Mess around with the video quality settings to find what works best.

[akitapow 1]

Yea, like Black Mountain said, I might be able to help as well. Just bought a Hero2 myself and the vids are SWEEEEETTTT. What do you mean by distored files? is the playback choppy?!?!

 

hit us up!

[nippontiger 8]

What kind of memory card are you using? You should use a minimum Class 4 card - preferably Class 10 if you want to shoot time lapse photos. I picked up a 32 GB Class 10 TDK card for about 2700 yen on Google shopping. So far, it seems to work flawlessly. Ive been sticking mainly to the 720p wide @ 60 FPS which is around the same bandwidth as 1080p @ 30fps.

Pop a different card in there to see how it goes.

[yamabushi 3]

If you have it mounted on your helmet or chest, that's part of the problem. Mount it on a pole. It acts as a counterweight that keeps things steady, not to mention that you can do the 'getting pulled by the pole' videos.

[rider69 18]

You may also have a bum camera I would contact go pro directly.

[nippontiger 8]

Its a bit hard to say when we dont know the nature of the distortion you are seeing - if its because of excessive vibration and movement of the camera, then you should also check the mode you are filming in - is it wide angle, or narrow? Any vibrations will be much less distracting in wide angle mode. If you helmet or chest mount, consider filming in 60 fps - you can then slow it down in an editing program - you could get down to about 1/3 speed if filming at 60 fps - much lower and it starts to get a bit choppy - if you really want to slow things down further consider using Twixtor which if you get it right can get you down to 5% speed or less.

If the distortion looks like some kind of digital or data corruption ie false colours, blocky patterns, strange dots etc. then try a different SD card and if its still no good, you might want to send it back to GoPro.

[Kellyg 0]

Thanks for the responses.

No it is not a fog issue. I have the anti fog inserts in and it was not choppy video due vibration.

 

Think I may have found the problem as I changed the setting today to the highest resolution. Just uploaded today's files and they appear to be working when I use the highest resolution available.

 

Now to edit out all the crap skiing which should leave me with about 10 seconds of respectable skiing

[nippontiger 8]

Strange they looked distorted at a lower resolution - even at the lower resolutions it should still look OK just not quite as sharp when you view full screen. You might want to check that the camera is working correctly at all the different resolutions. Personally, although Ill probably never use mine at SD resolutions, I wouldnt be happy having just paid 27k for it if it wasnt working perfectly in all modes.

[Kellyg 0]

Its a bit hard to say when we dont know the nature of the distortion you are seeing - if its because of excessive vibration and movement of the camera, then you should also check the mode you are filming in - is it wide angle, or narrow? Any vibrations will be much less distracting in wide angle mode. If you helmet or chest mount, consider filming in 60 fps - you can then slow it down in an editing program - you could get down to about 1/3 speed if filming at 60 fps - much lower and it starts to get a bit choppy - if you really want to slow things down further consider using Twixtor which if you get it right can get you down to 5% speed or less.

If the distortion looks like some kind of digital or data corruption ie false colours, blocky patterns, strange dots etc. then try a different SD card and if its still no good, you might want to send it back to GoPro.

 

Digital or data corruption was what I was getting. Unfortunately only have the one SD card. May have to head down to Kutchan to pick up another. Still seems odd that it works at highest resolution.

[nippontiger 8]

You can pick up a low capacity one from anywhere for next to nothing, or perhaps you could borrow one of somebody - could be worth giving a try - best err on the safe side and get a class 10 one. It is a bit strange that it works ok at high res and you get distortion at low. The other culprit could be the computer you used to view the files - one of the low res modes is at 120 fps - if it was this mode you were using, then perhaps the computer you were using or the software couldn't handle the high frame rate?

I'd go though each mode and check if there's a problem with each, check with a different SD card and check the files on a different computer. If you keep getting some distortion, send it back to GoPro.

[surfarthur 22]

I guess the main thing is that you have found a setting that works, so you can at least get some footage in the meantime, but definitely send it back before the warranty runs out if you can't get everything to work correctly.