Some exciting news from GoPro & NAB - ProTune FW: 35mbps h264, flat color, no in-camera sharpening/de-noise/etc, 24p. Makes HERO2 look like a new camera!
Stay tuned for official announcements soon!
Biggest improvement is in snow and surf - lots of latitude for color correction, white balance is fixed, and compression is gone.
BELOW > Side by side uncolored 1080 in high motion, moving camera super fast side to side (which is almost all the time for POV)
OLD FIRMWARE VS NEW FIRMWARE
Wow that's night and day!
Yep, mix much better now with the GH footage, i use these as on-boards mounted to surfskis etc.
Good news.
How soon we'll see 12bit RAW?
How soon we'll see 12bit RAW? > haha, yeah good to see technology filtering down to the small POVs, don't know about 12bit RAW but 35mbps was needed badly for motion as was the correct handling of the exposure.
This was shot with the new Firmware - check the 1080p selection
One thing which surprised me a lot when I first tried out the gopro was the amount of jello / rolling shutter.. Surprised me in the sense that it is supposed to be an action camera. I wonder when they will introduce global shutter on these?
Most of the jello is caused by the flex or looseness in the plastic mounts they supply. Shooting 720p 60 and wide helps, but good isolation from vibration is key. As far as global shutter, i don't see it happening, the jello doesn't stop Broadcast or Myth-busters from using them.
@Rambo Thanks for posting the YouTube link. That shot at 0.37 is amazing - where you have speeded-up clouds and people together with the slowed-down snowboard. What a fab effect!
:-)
@Rambo Fab - didn't think it was yours but it's an inspired idea. GoPro seem very clued-up about their marketing too and the videos are great fun to watch - especially people doing things I'd never have dared to do even when younger!
Thanks for information. Hope that you'll be posting more GoPro related things with time :-)
It is very interesting niche.
Nice, clean and gradable GoPro footages ... I definitely have to use one on some projects :D
One of the cool things about the GoPro is that it is light enough to attach to a Parrot AR Drone. Check out this hack, which uses that combination, and a modified RC circuit for better range.
And here's the standard AR Drone 2.0
I love this. The Hero2 is already an amazing pocket rocket of a camera. This makes it much more usable for intercutting with GH2 footage.
@rambo re: jello, you are right about that it rarely makes much difference.. It just so happened that the first time I used it was because I needed a camera that could cope with getting rotated pretty quickly. I assumed it would cope well with rotating shutter...
just ordered one for a project at work, then learned this news tonight.. all I can say is awesome news !
@RRRR you seen the jello remover on AE? Pretty sweet for GP footage.
Any idea on when this high latitude stuff will be released?
link (tutorial) ?
Summer 2012, probably same time as wifi bacpak, both require a FW upgrade to enable the camera.
I tested the jello remover in AE for a magazine (DP, Munich), and now that I'm out of NDA I can say it does a great job on pans and handheld, even an iPhone shot can get fixed pretty well.
But, like all others, it can't handle moving objects very well. Once a large object comes in, dominating the frame, it'll focus on that and the background tilts again. When the object leaves the frame, it moves it's attention to the background again. This is with the simple mode.
The advanced mode, which seems to work with local vectors, is doing a bit better on large areas, but produces local artifacts similar to Flow Motion.
So, no simple cure for RS, I'm afraid.
Why can´t they just add possibility to mask out moving objects...
I know you can use a mask when using Warp Stabilizer so I bet you can do it with the jello remover too. There is a good tutorial on the WS on the adobe site I believe that shows you how.
Well, at least I'll be able to get a few more good years out of my gyro before technology makes it useless.
@Rambo I am thinking of using HD Hero2 to film gymnasts in an indoors settings. I updated to the latest firmware. Am I automatically setup with Protune ? The flat color profile and 35 mbps bitrate ? I changed the metering to spot. Is there any other way to increase the shutter speed ? My setup involved a completely dark room with light in the centre, where the gymnasts will do their tricks.
I was even thinking of adding lights at the edge of the POV - pointing straight into the camera to force the shutter to go up to a higher value. With a flat color profile, I hope there will be enough details in the shadows once its converted to Cineform, even with the additional underexposure. Later on I will use Motion Optical or Twixtor to slow mo the video.
ProTune is not released yet, you only downloaded the latest Version of FW. Spot mode is not that tight on the GoPro, it will still meter most of the frame. You will have a very bright blown center where the light is and black noisy horrible vignette around the edges. The DR on the GOpro is really poor, better to light the entire frame evenly with flood light but you still won't have a fast shutter like you want.
It's the wrong camera for what you are proposing.
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