GoPro Hero 4 Black - Capture & Editing Advice

[BoroRob]

Hi Guys,

I have just purchased a Hero 4 Black to use on my motorbike (Daytona 675R).

I'm fairly I.T literate ive worked in IT support for 15+ years but I'm totally new to video editing. I understand that codec's are different and that's about it..

I am looking for a bit of advice mainly on the editing side of footage. I record in 1080p 60fps, Auto white balance, No Protune. Some people recommend I should use ProTune but looking at the camera when recording in ProTune mode I will only get 2hrs 15mins recording time on a 64Gb memory card ?

Should I record in ProTune? I do have two memory cards? Is ProTune not just a LUT that you can apply afterwards anyway?

For the editing i've invested in a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro CC and have been messing around with the GoPro Free LUT from Ground Control. Finally managed to get it to export in a suitable time by Converting the MP4's from the GoPro to AVI first in the GoPro studio, Then editing in Premiere, if I put the raw mp4's in Premiere it takes 15hrs plus to convert. If I convert to AVI first using GoPro studio then edit that in Premiere it exports in under 30 minutes.

I just want to check the best process to use for getting the best out of my videos? and not wait 15 hours for Premiere to export my videos.

Also I really hate the fisheye effect on GoPro and because Premiere takes so long to convert using there "remove fisheye" effect, I tend to do that in GoPro studio first. Then just not apply it as an effect in Premiere before exporting..

After doing all this I do feel there is maybe a slight loss in sharpness on the outcome video, but colours are a lot nicer.

Could this be the issue..? How do I check ?


Any help welcome.

All my video's are going to be uploaded to YouTube only, I just want the best quality available.

Thank-you


Rob.

[Cornucopia]

GoPro's use AVC (h264) in MP4 container, usually about 25-40Mbps. ProTune ups that bitrate to 60-65Mbps (as well as use a more film-like sensor LUT, IIRC). To calc: Filesize = Bitrate * Running time.

Premiere can open it directly, but if your PC is in any way less than beefy, it may be sluggish because of the compression & long-gop stream construction. That's why for speedier edits & renders, it is recommended to up-convert that to an edit-friendly I-frame-only Intermediate codec. That's how pros do it. Your trouble ticket shows you/they (Adobe?, GoPro?) suggesting MPEG (2) I-frame. I personally don't recommend that (it IS slightly noticeable in artifacts at that bitrate as a Gen2 version, to me), but it's not terrible. If you can, I'd go with a less compressed format: Lossless (Lagarith, HuffYUV, UTvideo, MagicYUV, etc) or barely Lossy (Cineform, ProRes, DNxHD, Edius HQX). Those will produce files that are VERY HUGE or HUGE, respectively. But as long as you can handle the capacity requirements and the data rates, working in Premiere/etc. should be much more responsive. Then you could (should) render out to your "master" using the SAME intermediate codec format, and it ought to render much more quickly. Other option is to find the native Preview format used by your Premiere timeline and use that as your intermediate: that way, it will basically do a simple and fairly quick "file copy" come render time. Maybe that's where the MPEG I-frame came from.

re: fisheye,
GoPros are ultra-wide-angle, so you (and your audience) should expect some fisheye. Applying a reverse distortion can remove or reduce it, but it is non-proportionately stretching/shrinking your video. That's where the "softness" comes in. It is to be expected.

Regardless of when you change this, colors aren't really adjusted, that may just be a result of you adjusting colors along the way without realizing it.

Once you've created & rendered your master in intermediate format, then you can render/convert to something for uploading, etc. Of course, if you don't mind waiting, you can often upload your intermediate master directly to YT.

Hope that helps,

Scott

[shekh]

Converting mp4 to cineform can greatly improve performance. But you dont have to do this in Gopro Studio, IMO VirtualDub is more sane for this (you can use this version https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/378401-VirtualDub-fork-and-plugins).
When doing conversion, it is also good time to cut unwanted timeline and maybe apply color corrections etc (depends what you prefer to do in Premiere).
I also have a filter that can resolve fisheye.

I dont have hero4 but for my hero3, Protune mode simply preserves more detail and quality. I never turned it off. There is no need to care of special LUT.

[KarMa]

Premiere can open it directly, but if your PC is in any way less than beefy, it may be sluggish because of the compression & long-gop stream construction. That's why for speedier edits & renders, it is recommended to up-convert that to an edit-friendly I-frame-only Intermediate codec.

Seriously doubt a gopro has very beefy compression, and probably has GOPs like IPP.....PPI. To make up for this low compression they use high bitrates. Now editing a slow preset x264 is a different story.

[shekh]

Seriously doubt a gopro has very beefy compression, and probably has GOPs like IPP.....PPI. To make up for this low compression they use high bitrates. Now editing a slow preset x264 is a different story.

I see different samples. Some are IPPP... Mine are IBBPBBP..
But I doubt this tells anything. The problem is that seeking to random frame may require to decode 120 frames before it (example). This is long if you jump to random frames all the time. Otherwise ok.

[BoroRob]

Thanks guys,

I think I should use a lossless codec for the initial convert. Which should I use Scott and i'll just stick with it. Lagarith, HuffYUV, UTvideo, MagicYUV ?

Also what software do I need to convert the inital mp4 file?


Rob