A Couple of Issues With The HD GoPro
In the previous post I mentioned a few issues with the HD GoPro Camera. I hope to address those here.
First is a relatively minor image quality issue that most people probably won't notice. There is a noticeable amount of chromatic aberration in the GoPro's image. Chromatic Aberration (CA from now on) is one of those things that once you know what it is and see it once, it jumps out at you in every image you see. Here is a frame from the GoPro:
Notice the blue and yellow "highlights" on the tree in the upper right of the image:
So what now? This makes the image look, well, not as good as if the CA wasn't there, so is there a way to fix it? Well I wouldn't be posting this if there wasn't! For still images, Photoshop has a filter to remove and adjust CA. Its in the Filter > Distort > Lens Correction menu. For video, the best color grading tool I know of is Magic Bullet Looks. It's not cheap, but it is a really powerful tool, is super easy to use and is really a lot of fun! Take a look at the image after I adjusted it with MBL:
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The second issue I had with the HD GoPro was editing the footage. The files the GoPro generated are h.264 .mp4 files which are very generic and although not the ideal format to edit, should work just fine. The files play back fine in VLC and Quicktime, Premiere Pro CS4 however, had issues. Crashing, freezing, very slow performance and several of the files would not even load up correctly, the image would be all green or black. I'm not sure what the issue is here. PPro should be able to edit the files.
Luckily, I was able to come up with a work around. It requires quicktime pro to convert the .MP4 files to .MOV. Just load up the original source file into Quicktime, then go File > Save As. Keep the default setting and save the file:
It's not going to reencode the file, it just has to save a new copy so the process doesn't take too long. Then import these .MOV file into Premiere Pro and you should be good.
A few things:
-The issue I had with PPro was with the 720 60p clips. I haven't shot anything in the other frame rates / resolutions so I don't know if the problem is just this format.
-I'm using Premiere Pro CS4.1, the latest version
-I'm not sure what is wrong here. My guess is that there is something with the way the GoPro generates the .MP4 file that makes Premiere go bonkers. Converting it to the .MOV wrapper seems to work just fine.
-I'll try to update this post as I learn more
First is a relatively minor image quality issue that most people probably won't notice. There is a noticeable amount of chromatic aberration in the GoPro's image. Chromatic Aberration (CA from now on) is one of those things that once you know what it is and see it once, it jumps out at you in every image you see. Here is a frame from the GoPro:
Notice the blue and yellow "highlights" on the tree in the upper right of the image:
So what now? This makes the image look, well, not as good as if the CA wasn't there, so is there a way to fix it? Well I wouldn't be posting this if there wasn't! For still images, Photoshop has a filter to remove and adjust CA. Its in the Filter > Distort > Lens Correction menu. For video, the best color grading tool I know of is Magic Bullet Looks. It's not cheap, but it is a really powerful tool, is super easy to use and is really a lot of fun! Take a look at the image after I adjusted it with MBL:
------------------------------------------------------------
The second issue I had with the HD GoPro was editing the footage. The files the GoPro generated are h.264 .mp4 files which are very generic and although not the ideal format to edit, should work just fine. The files play back fine in VLC and Quicktime, Premiere Pro CS4 however, had issues. Crashing, freezing, very slow performance and several of the files would not even load up correctly, the image would be all green or black. I'm not sure what the issue is here. PPro should be able to edit the files.
Luckily, I was able to come up with a work around. It requires quicktime pro to convert the .MP4 files to .MOV. Just load up the original source file into Quicktime, then go File > Save As. Keep the default setting and save the file:
It's not going to reencode the file, it just has to save a new copy so the process doesn't take too long. Then import these .MOV file into Premiere Pro and you should be good.
A few things:
-The issue I had with PPro was with the 720 60p clips. I haven't shot anything in the other frame rates / resolutions so I don't know if the problem is just this format.
-I'm using Premiere Pro CS4.1, the latest version
-I'm not sure what is wrong here. My guess is that there is something with the way the GoPro generates the .MP4 file that makes Premiere go bonkers. Converting it to the .MOV wrapper seems to work just fine.
-I'll try to update this post as I learn more
posted by David Aldrich at
8:51 PM
4 Comments:
Thanks for the update Dave. I'm looking forward to getting mine and uploading files to Final Cut Pro. I'll be sure to let you know if there are any problems using FCP on the mac. I would hope not since h.264 is native, but that really will be the test. Travis
By
Indoor Air Currents, at 3:25 PM
Dave, I have exactly the same issue - Premiere Pro CS4 doesn't know what to do with the H.264 MP4 video out of my HD Hero. Frustrating that such an expensive, high end piece of software can't interpret video that Quicktime, Media Player Classic, Windows Media Player (with K-Lite Codec Pack), ... can play without issue.
By
Manai'a Explorations, at 2:27 PM
I just tried the QT Pro "Save As" trick with PPro CS4 with no luck... video is recognized but doesn't play smoothly on a quad core with 4gb of ram..... soooo frustrating....
By
joe, at 5:13 PM
It's going to be slow Joe, no way around that at the moment. h.264 is just not a good codec to edit with. Too much CPU is needed to decode the video.
I have discovered a much better work flow for these files in PPro CS4. It involves making low res proxy files. Google making proxy files in PPro. If I get a chance I will blog a tutorial. Its not too hard.
By
David Aldrich, at 8:50 PM
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