GoPro Resolution Question

King85 · 30 Jul 2015 at 14:26

I purchased a Hero4 Silver yesterday for our holiday tomorrow (and future holidays) and I'm unsure of which resolution I'd be best of filming in. I currently have had a test with it running in 1080-60 Superview but as I'm using it with the Protune setting turned on this seems to level the recording time to 2:56 across the board (link).

If this is the case and recording capacity isn't going to be effected would I be better off using one of the higher resolutions or will this one be fine? Any negatives to increasing it? I'm a bit of a newb when it comes to these as I've not used one before so apologies if it's a bit of a daft question.

Setsuna · 30 Jul 2015 at 15:14

I would just use 1080P30 unless you plan to edit and do slowmo scenes. Also use protune if you don't feel confident with editing colour in post otherwise i would leave the flat image and edit afterwards.

I have a hero4 Black and the higher res stuff is a waste unless you have something to play it back on were it can be used.
Although if you are handy at editing you can use 4k to zoom as you can crop the image and keep detail due to the extra pixels in 4k so it can make editing more creative.

englishpremier · 30 Jul 2015 at 17:06

I'd use 1080p24 unless you want to do slow-mo, or use it on old PAL/NTSC TVs.

This will give the most cinematic feel. I'd also set it at it's highest bit rate. You can always downsample later if you don't need the quality.

4k on this device is worthless for video as the frame rate is far too slow, but you could use it to pull stills from.

King85 · 30 Jul 2015 at 18:23

Cheers guys i'll do that then.

Much appreciated!

Mads1 · 1 Aug 2015 at 01:40

I always use 1080p 60fps only cause if i want to do slowmo at 50% = 30fps you still have very good quality, if you was to use 1080p 30fps and you want to edit a slowmo section in post, then at 50% you will get 15fps, = will look like robots.

Sh4rkie · 9 Aug 2015 at 01:17

Use 1440 60 or 30p depending what action you're shooting. 1440 allows you to crop to 1080 in post which is very useful as you can shift the frame up and down to get the best view, extremely useful when using poles or mounted on a drone.

*edit*
Silver only seems to do 48fps max @1440 vs the 60 of the Black edition.

englishpremier · 9 Aug 2015 at 09:29

I wonder why everyone but me seem to advocate the use of 60 and 30? It seems an choice considering you never watch anything on TV or at the cinema (rarely) at those frame rates.

To be fair there isn't a huge difference between 25 and 30fps. It's practically impossible to see (some will claim they can though), but most of the world (bar N.America, a few places in S. America, and Japan) use 25fps, I use that, as the footage is what most people will be familiar with.

The best thing to do is probably watch some videos shot at different framerates and see which you best.

GTRacer · 9 Aug 2015 at 10:00

Here's what I usually use:
2.7k/24 for general stuff/timelapses (the extra res is useful for stabilisation, also for panning during timelapses).

1440p/48 for POV, the extra vertical field of view is always welcome and you can always dynamically stretch the frame to fill a 16:9 frame if you don't want to crop. The dynamic stretch will stop the important parts of the frame from being too distorted.

Finally, 1080p60 for slow mo.

I always have have protune on as I grade my footage afterwards.

Also, the difference between 25 and 30 fps is negligible but make sure that it's set to the correct frame rate for that country's power supply as you'll can sometimes catch flickering lights if you use 30fps in a PAL country for example.