GoPro Hero 7 announced

I shoot with a Hero 6 Black and Karma gimbal...very nice footage for what it's intended use is. BTW...if you don't need 4k (and I don't), you can shoot in LINEAR mode and it looks like a slightly wide-angle instead of a fisheye (think 24mm full-frame). Throw on a dark ND during the day, and it'll intercut pretty well.
 
puredrifting said:
I shot some hyperlapse and regular footage with the 7 on my car hood last weekend, the footage looks great. The only thing I didn't like is apparently when you are using the app on your phone, if the Hero 7 loses the connection, it stops the recording. This happened several times with me on that shoot. I finally had to pull over, shut off the app and just manually record. With the older Go Pros, if you are recording with the app and your phone loses the connection, the Go Pro just keeps recording. Not with the 7 apparently, which sucks. I need to shoot some car to car footage and without the app, I can't see how the shot is framed when I am trying to drivie side by side with the other car. It's weird because my phone was in my phone holder literally 2' away from the Go Pro on the hood, not sure why it kept dropping the connection?

I agree, all of thes new generation small devices like Go Pros and the consumer drones are data rate starved. My Mavic Pro only records UHD at 60Mbps, not nearly enough data to make clear, sharp images. Even the Mavic Pro 2 and the P4P are only 100Mbps, they really should be double or triple that. Same with the Go Pros. But consumers would complain if they only got a few minutes of 250Mbps 4K on their 16GB micro SD card. Remember, Pros are not the audience for Go Pros, consumers are.
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That stinks that it stops recording when it loses connection. Often it's not feasible to push record and leave it rolling for ever. Can it output via micro hdmi and run a cable into the passenger area for framing? A cable controlled remote would be great too.
How does it handle bumps when on the hood? Those are pretty fast and jarring.
Thanks for the testing and input.
 
firehawk said:
That stinks that it stops recording when it loses connection. Often it's not feasible to push record and leave it rolling for ever. Can it output via micro hdmi and run a cable into the passenger area for framing? A cable controlled remote would be great too.
How does it handle bumps when on the hood? Those are pretty fast and jarring.
Thanks for the testing and input.
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It looks pretty great on the hood, very little bumping and jarring. The Hyperlapse looks like it's on rails and the regular footage is very good too. The stabilization is a significant step above the Hero 5 and 6. Overall, it's a great camera, just hoping that this Wi-Fi disconnection thing isn't going to become a constant.
 
marvinhello said:
Yeah but it's really bitrate starved, with only 78Mbps at 4K 60P it's really hard to get pristine looking footage. With Yi 4K you can get 250Mbps with firmware mod.
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Keep in mind that the 78 Mbps on the GoPro is H.265 so that's a much more efficient compression codec than the H.264 encoding used by the Yi 4K+. Depending on the encoder 78 Mbps in H.265 is probably equivalent to about 125 to 150 Mbps in H.264. Which still could be better, but it's actually pretty comparable to what a lot of cameras record when using 4:2:0 Long GOP compression.
 
davedv said:
Keep in mind that the 78 Mbps on the GoPro is H.265 so that's a much more efficient compression codec than the H.264 encoding used by the Yi 4K+. Depending on the encoder 78 Mbps in H.265 is probably equivalent to about 125 to 150 Mbps in H.264. Which still could be better, but it's actually pretty comparable to what a lot of cameras record when using 4:2:0 Long GOP compression.
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Nah, that's HEVC's marketing trick. The up to 50% efficiency gain is only observed at extremely low bitrate (such as streaming), at higher bitrate the performance between HEVC and H.264 is identical.
 
marvinhello said:
Nah, that's HEVC's marketing trick. The up to 50% efficiency gain is only observed at extremely low bitrate (such as streaming), at higher bitrate the performance between HEVC and H.264 is identical.
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Do you have any links to high bitrate comparisons between the different codecs?

It's true that most of the rigorous codec comparisons I have seen tend to focus on lower bitrates as they are aimed toward the distribution side of things. For example:
Netflix: https://medium.com/netflix-techblog...264-x265-and-libvpx-a-sneak-peek-2e81e88f8b0f
MSU Video Group: http://www.compression.ru/video/cod...7/MSU_HEVC_comparison_2017_P5_HQ_encoders.pdf

But there is also a lot of performance variation between different encoders. So while H.265 encoders have been improving they are still not as mature as a lot of H.264 encoders. And this is especially true of hardware encoders which have usually tended to lag behind software encoders. And I'm also not sure how much of the performance (or maybe lack of performance) of in-camera H.265 implementations is due to the relatively weaker encoders rather than any limitations of the codec itself.
 
puredrifting said:
It looks pretty great on the hood, very little bumping and jarring. The Hyperlapse looks like it's on rails and the regular footage is very good too. The stabilization is a significant step above the Hero 5 and 6. Overall, it's a great camera, just hoping that this Wi-Fi disconnection thing isn't going to become a constant.
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Thank you again, puredrifting.
I will probably get one before year end for mounting on vehicles
 
markoconnell said:
I moved from my GoPros to a Sony FDR X3000 a couple of years ago and was/am much happier with it.
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Ive seen footage out of the Sonys that looks good. They'll have to up their feature game though to keep up with Go Pro, the 7 is really selling well from what I hear. Not sure if it's enough to save Go Pro from being taken over though.
 
I just upgraded form Hero4 Black to the 7 Black and its pretty impressive. The hyperlapse is "on-rails" as mentioned above (suction mount to the windshield)... and even 4K/60 is pretty smooth just holding the camera out the window.
https://vimeo.com/sunnyandmild/review/295489168/494a22b81f#
pass: test

I did have it freeze up once and had to pull the battery. But nothing since updated all firmware & the app. Fingers Crossed.
 
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Harry Pallenberg said:
I did have it freeze up once and had to pull the battery. But nothing since updated all firmware & the app. Fingers Crossed.
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THIS is what I'm curious about, because it's what makes the 6 completely unusable for professional work. The freezing, shutting-down, resetting and file-loss/corruption. Which is a shame, because I actually thought the 6 was the easiest GoPro to set-up and use.
 
Well since my 1 and only freeze, I've put about 3 hours of footage on it. LOTS of start stop, a few 30+minute clips, lots of changing settings and so far so good. I'll keep running the camera through its paces.
 
FWIW, the Refuel 6 hour batteries we have used for a year with our Hero 5 and 6, the housing and USB-C port are identical on the 7 but the 7 randomly shuts down when trying to use the Refuels. Makes the 7 of very limited use to us as the stock batteries only give you 40 minutes of recording. Other than that, recording is great, no freezes or reboots needed, video looks great.
 
puredrifting said:
FWIW, the Refuel 6 hour batteries we have used for a year with our Hero 5 and 6, the housing and USB-C port are identical on the 7 but the 7 randomly shuts down when trying to use the Refuels. Makes the 7 of very limited use to us as the stock batteries only give you 40 minutes of recording.
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Obviously this is only relevant for fixed positions, but I've had good results with the 5's and 6's mounted inside cars (a la Carpool Karaoke) by cabling all cameras to a quality USB hub that is then powered by an Anton Bauer battery (more than a full day for all cameras).
 
CharlesPapert said:
Obviously this is only relevant for fixed positions, but I've had good results with the 5's and 6's mounted inside cars (a la Carpool Karaoke) by cabling all cameras to a quality USB hub that is then powered by an Anton Bauer battery (more than a full day for all cameras).
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Yes, we've done that as well, have not tried USB powering to the 7 yet though, hopefully it works. That's good for fixed positions and some interior car stuff. We've been shooting a documentary on women outrigger paddlers for the past year and a half, the Refuels have been a Godsend as when the paddlers leave the beach, they often paddle up to 45 minutes just to get to the start line off shore. With the stock batteries, the Go Pros would die before the race even begins. We covered the 26 mile Newport to Catalina race and several of our Go Pros lasted the full five hours, kind of amazing.
 
CharlesPapert said:
Obviously this is only relevant for fixed positions, but I've had good results with the 5's and 6's mounted inside cars (a la Carpool Karaoke) by cabling all cameras to a quality USB hub that is then powered by an Anton Bauer battery (more than a full day for all cameras).
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Several months ago I needed to run three 6's for an extended period in a vehicle and decided to do basically the same, except each camera was going to it's own battery instead of a hub(may steal your idea IF there is a next time). It didn't seem like we could get more than 30 mins before one would screw-up(probably overheat).
 
Run&Gun said:
Several months ago I needed to run three 6's for an extended period in a vehicle and decided to do basically the same, except each camera was going to it's own battery instead of a hub(may steal your idea IF there is a next time). It didn't seem like we could get more than 30 mins before one would screw-up(probably overheat).
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We've had ours overheat even on the outrigger boats with the ocean breeze and spray cooling them down. It happens. That's why we never shoot 4K 60p. We either shoot 2.7k 60p or 4K 30p. I like 30p for a 23.98 timeline, it gives a nice dreamy quality to the footage, not slow motion, but not RT either.
 
puredrifting said:
We've had ours overheat even on the outrigger boats with the ocean breeze and spray cooling them down. It happens. That's why we never shoot 4K 60p. We either shoot 2.7k 60p or 4K 30p. I like 30p for a 23.98 timeline, it gives a nice dreamy quality to the footage, not slow motion, but not RT either.
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We were shooting plain 'ole HD... 24p. We even had one overheat just while we were setting them up and getting them positioned. As I said before, it's a shame, because I thought they were the easiest to set-up and use GoPro's I had ever used.
 
puredrifting said:
We've had ours overheat even on the outrigger boats with the ocean breeze and spray cooling them down. It happens. That's why we never shoot 4K 60p. We either shoot 2.7k 60p or 4K 30p. I like 30p for a 23.98 timeline, it gives a nice dreamy quality to the footage, not slow motion, but not RT either.
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Which one is overheating? Hero 7 or 6?
 
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