GoPro settings advice - going off-road!

[JLTraveler]

Hi all. Need advice for GoPro settings. Specifically- if I should turn on horizon lock and/or hypersmooth. I plan to have 2-3 cameras. If 3 - I’ll have one mounted on my windshield looking out with the hood on the bottom part of the frame. One attached to the tow hitch to get a view of the undercarriage and 4 wheels. And one hopefully behind the passenger front wheel. I might only have 2, in which case I am thinking to only have the windshield and tow hitch ones. Let me know what you guys think about this also. Hyper smooth is funny in cars - and I’ll definitely have it off for the windshield mount. I also think if I don’t have horizon lock on - it would give more of the feel like you are articulating. But let me k ow what you guys think that would make for the most visual appealing home video. Thank!!

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[JLTraveler]

Bump - really hoping to get some good advice from folks - my trip is tomorrow morning TIA

 

[JLTraveler]

If anyone wants to know for the future - I didn’t end up using horizon lock or hypersmooth and the videos came out great! Had one mounted in the windshield. And One on the front bumper clipped to the toe hook.

 

[BigMaCro]

Hey, I agree, having hypersmooth on in the camera just causes problems. I ended up disabling shake reduction entirely, and using stabilization in DaVinci Resolve during editing. Here's my results:



Yes, I like the articulation effect. I can share the DaVinci settings I used if you're interested.

 

[nU7OuxIx]

Why didn't you use hypersmooth?

I have horizon lock and hypersmooth enabled and my wife is the one that hangs out the window with the gopro. I'm currently trying to find better ways/locations to mount it since it's hard to get good shots with the jeep bouncing around. I would say that my videos are subpar, but I think it's mostly from not having a stable anchor point on the jeep.

I was watching a video yesterday where a guy had one mounted to the rock sliders and one mounted to a monopod bungeed to the side mirror. The rock slider one looked interesting. Some people will also clip them to a bullnose bumper, but others say that they like having the jeep in part of the video because it looks more interesting. Your hitch mounted camera sounds interesting, but I would be afraid it would get knocked off, depending on your terrain.

The guy also had the gopros in a waterproof case and had a string to anchor it to the jeep, just in case it fell off the mount point.

 

[JLTraveler]

Why didn't you use hypersmooth?

I have horizon lock and hypersmooth enabled and my wife is the one that hangs out the window with the gopro. I'm currently trying to find better ways/locations to mount it since it's hard to get good shots with the jeep bouncing around. I would say that my videos are subpar, but I think it's mostly from not having a stable anchor point on the jeep.

I was watching a video yesterday where a guy had one mounted to the rock sliders and one mounted to a monopod bungeed to the side mirror. The rock slider one looked interesting. Some people will also clip them to a bullnose bumper, but others say that they like having the jeep in part of the video because it looks more interesting. Your hitch mounted camera sounds interesting, but I would be afraid it would get knocked off, depending on your terrain.

The guy also had the gopros in a waterproof case and had a string to anchor it to the jeep, just in case it fell off the mount point.

Hypersmooth in vehicles just acts funny - in that it makes weird left right movements when turning and things like that. If you have good anchor points - the slight bouncing around I feel like gives a good immersive feeling. But the camera shouldn’t be shaking, just the shaking of the car - so the mounts have to be strong. I can try to find what I used on Amazon and post. It will take me a couple of days because I’m a bit busy at the moment. Also - horizon lock takes away from the articulation feeling imo. But I think these come down to personal preferences I think. It would be cool if someone posted footage with these things on and off - I just don’t have the bandwidth to experiment. So I just made a decision and went with it. Got lucky and I’m happy with the results I got.

 

[JLTraveler]

Hey, I agree, having hypersmooth on in the camera just causes problems. I ended up disabling shake reduction entirely, and using stabilization in DaVinci Resolve during editing. Here's my results:



Yes, I like the articulation effect. I can share the DaVinci settings I used if you're interested.

Your video came out great! Maybe put some chapter markers where some interesting things happen? Did you use any color correction? Yeah post your stabilization info. I use adobe - but maybe that has something similar that I can modify to what you did. Thanks for sharing!

 

[BigMaCro]

Thanks for the feedback! I did include chapter markers in the description, but YT is weird about when they show up in the timeline.

My mount was just the suction cup on the windshield. It's stable enough most of the time that you almost don't need to process it, but little vibrations do affect your ability to appreciate the scenery.

No, I didn't do any color correction on this video.

 

[SoCal JLUS]

Hypersmooth in vehicles just acts funny - in that it makes weird left right movements when turning and things like that. If you have good anchor points - the slight bouncing around I feel like gives a good immersive feeling. But the camera shouldn’t be shaking, just the shaking of the car - so the mounts have to be strong. I can try to find what I used on Amazon and post. It will take me a couple of days because I’m a bit busy at the moment. Also - horizon lock takes away from the articulation feeling imo. But I think these come down to personal preferences I think. It would be cool if someone posted footage with these things on and off - I just don’t have the bandwidth to experiment. So I just made a decision and went with it. Got lucky and I’m happy with the results I got.

While i didn't do any heavy articulation (or rock crawling!) , thus video might give you an idea with hypersmooth and horizon lock active. There is activity at the beginning and end especially.

 

[BigMaCro]

Hmm that worked well, i'll give it another try, but maybe it doesn't work great in trees & mountains where there's no level horizon.

 

[JLTraveler]

While i didn't do any heavy articulation (or rock crawling!) , thus video might give you an idea with hypersmooth and horizon lock active. There is activity at the beginning and end especially.

This does look great! Nice job. I think it comes down to preference and the look you are going for. For my eye, your video is definitely more cinematic, smooth, tells a story. Without horizon lock and hypersmooth to me it feels more immersive and VR like. I think next time - I’m going to try horizon lock and hypersmooth when getting to a technical challenge and then those settings off to get through the obstacle. That might be a cool look.

 

[JLTraveler]

Hmm that worked well, i'll give it another try, but maybe it doesn't work great in trees & mountains where there's no level horizon.

I thought horizon lock worked based on accelerometers and such and not the actual visual horizon. I think I saw a video when someone was using it under water and it worked well. So trees and such should be okay. But I’m guessing.

 

[SoCal JLUS]

This does look great! Nice job. I think it comes down to preference and the look you are going for. For my eye, your video is definitely more cinematic, smooth, tells a story. Without horizon lock and hypersmooth to me it feels more immersive and VR like. I think next time - I’m going to try horizon lock and hypersmooth when getting to a technical challenge and then those settings off to get through the obstacle. That might be a cool look.

I agree, that would look cool! Please post if you are able to do that.

 

[rohdawg]

I thought horizon lock worked based on accelerometers and such and not the actual visual horizon. I think I saw a video when someone was using it under water and it worked well. So trees and such should be okay. But I’m guessing.

It does. Has nothing to do with the actual horizon. It’s known as EIS, or Electronic Image Stabilization.

“The software in the camera uses the camera's gyro to measure the motion of the camera, then it moves the framing in the video from the sensor to counteract this motion.” - from GoPro

 

[FsT4WrD]

Check out : https://abekislevitz.com/category/gopro/

Also alot of youtube videos out there, it's mostly trial and error until you find what you like.

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