So, I've seemingly gone to great lengths to point out what this camera isn't much good at, but really, when you use it for what its intended use, it is fantastic. If you're doing something fun outdoors and want to share the experience with other people, or just play it back for yourself later, this is perfect. Here's some footage from the GoPro mounted on the front of my Yamaha R6, going along a mountain road. You can see the fisheye lens capturing all the action and surrounds, adjusting to changing light settings and providing mostly smooth, vibration-free footage from what is a fairly bumpy and rattly environment.
The quality of that video might be slightly lowered, because I edited it. In fact, that highlights another potential issue - video editing. I'm no expert in this field, so maybe there's a more obvious solution that I missed, but I ended up delaying this review quite a bit while trying to find something that would let me edit the videos the GoPro produces. All the previous videos in this review are the whole thing, from when I pressed record to when I pressed stop. So that's easy to upload in one hit to YouTube, etc. But the bike video has a few boring minutes at the beginning, of me starting the camera, turning the bike around and getting underway. Then about halfway along the road I ran into some traffic which again made for boring viewing. So I simply wanted to cut the boring parts from the beginning and end of the video, and upload the interesting bit in the middle. Sounds simple, but if you're a regular joe without expensive video editing software, it's not so easy.
My main PC has Windows Vista Home Premium on it, which comes with Windows Live Movie Maker, but that doesn't support H.264 .MP4 files. With my much older tape video camera, you can connect it via FireWire and Movie Maker pops up, asks if you want to import the whole tape, then splits it up nicely into scenes where you started and stopped recording. Choose the one you want, trim it to size, apply effects, export, off you go. Not so with the GoPro. So either you need to convert the file to a format which WMM likes, losing quality on the way, or find a free editor which works. I tried various things but there really didn't seem to be an obvious answer. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was recommended to try a program called Xvid4PSP, which does have basic trim capabilities, can export into a zillion different formats, and is free. So that's what I used for the video above, but I just used the default export options. Exploring the capabilities of Xvid4PSP would be another whole article, and I did make a better quality video at one point in my experimenting, but it was nearly 2GB in size. So, feel free to let me know if there's a better way to edit the GoPro's videos.
Other People's Videos:
Anyway, I'm sure you didn't come here to see some thirtysomething geek playing guitar, so here's a few videos where some much cooler people than me are enjoying their GoPros:
But the one video that really says the most to me, about how well-regarded these things are by people who take their sport seriously, is this video from Mount Panorama last month. Here we have Jenson Button doing a hot lap of the mountain in his Vodaphone McLaren Mercedes F1 car:
Now I have to admit I couldn't find any official confirmation as to whether that's filmed with a GoPro or not, but the footage looks and sounds exactly like other onboard GoPro footage, and I managed to find this photo which clearly shows a GoPro HD HERO mounted in line with the left front wheel, exactly where the footage is shot from in the video, given the camera viewpoint passes directly over the inside curb in Turn 1. So I'm convinced, and if that footage doesn't convince you of how cool these little cameras are, nothing will!
Pricing and Availability:
I got mine from the manufacturer at GoPro.com in the USA. But they seem to be available on eBay and Australian stores too, so maybe shop around. When I first discovered this camera, $299 USD with a bag of goodies included sounded like pretty good value - expecially considering the strong Australian dollar at the time. But that was when I was considering it as a general purpose HD camera as well as a tough sports type camera. I now know that this won't really take the place of a general video camera for household use. It's too specialised for that. When you add in the mildly painful shipping costs from the USA, the need to get an SDHC card and maybe few extra goodies, the pricing starts to add up. But let's be realistic - the target market is people with probably fairly expensive hobbies already, so spending a few hundred bucks more to show off their gnarly moves to their mates isn't going to be much of an impediment.
Conclusions:
Well, this gadget first caught my eye because it simply oozes geek appeal. It's tiny, which is always a plus. It shoots HD video, which ticks off another buzzword. YouTube is full of cool people doing cool things with one of these little grey boxes strapped to them. I knew I was doomed to own one as soon as the first Google Ad caught my eye. Realistically though, if you just want a general video-the-kids type HD camera, there are a lot of cheaper options out there, probably better suited to the task. But man, do I wish I had this camera five years ago when I was doing a lot of motorcycle trackdays and racing go-karts. For capturing the thrill of virtually any outdoor activity, this really is a fantastic little gadget. Spend half an hour looking at GoPro videos on YouTube or Vimeo and you'll see what I mean.
All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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