How to shoot bicycle "cockpit" video and turning it into a VR headset movie?
 

I think about starting to film my bicycle tours, which lead me criss-cross across the wonderful and most beautiful, romantic Tecklenburger and Osnabrücker Land, with a digital camera like GoPro, then editiing the "cocpkpit view" movie and have it post-processed and cut and finally making it viewable in a VR headset, not in 3D, but either in cinema movie size or even 180 or 360 degree mode. Thinking about my parents in the main, but also making an archve for myself.

Its just an idea. I know nothing about this kind of stuff, what I need in hardware, what to watch otu for in hardware details, and then software, and in general: how to apprach this thing. Especially the rumbling of the pic I expect to get when attaching the lens device to the bike itself.

Any tips? Any clues for a website that deals right with this kind of project? Any recommended hardware and software, preferrably not Microsoft-made?

I would accept to do this project not under Linux, but Win10, I simply assume that Linux will make success more complicated due to limited options and compatability.

The ideal result would be to have a 120km tour, my average length, summarised in a video of 20-30 minutes, displaying the highlights - which means beautiful landscape and idyllic places - in a movie-screen sized picture for a VR headset, preferrably with so stable, non-shaking picture quality that the viewer does not start to vomit after some minutes. My average tour last 5-7 hours, the device must have sufficient memory.

I am completely new to this kind of stuff. Any input? Is there a camera with so good an image stabilizer that it can neutralise the shaking of a bicycle frame?

I purchased a camera to film kayaking and hiking adventures. Because of the price of a Go Pro I went with a Chinese knock-off SJCAM M20. SJCAM Cameras can use most of the GoProp accessories too like the GoPro dog harness, helmet or bicycle mount.

Unfortunately I just don't use mine enough for detailed battery life comparisons. You would have to experiment to find that fine line between recording quality vs battery life. I get about 40-50 minutes of recording time with out stabilization. When all settings were set at maximum and stabilized I barely managed to record 20 minutes. Stabilization is nice but the image isn't all that bad without it either. Playing around with time lapse feature can make for some interesting footage too very useful during those boring portions of the trail.

Anyway I am by no means a professional camera man. But I am impressed with SJCAM I think for the price it cant be beat. I seem to remember reading somewhere that if you want a High Definition High capacity SD card you need to make sure the camera can record to it.

This is a great idea

Well, using Rockstars suggesiton for that Chinese thing as a start I reserached digital video cameras and action cameras a bit deeper and found that neither their battery life nor their storage capacity seems to be in support of my idea... While I do not need to shoot 7 hours continously, I definetly wanted more than just 30 minutes with stabilization full on. I thought about shooting without needing to stop and manually shoot, like with a photo camera, and then sorting and cutting the material at home. A video-blackbox, so to speak. It seems I have tremendously overestimated hardware'S capacities there...

And I wonder how a company can dare to price its latest Hero6 camera so high like they do, and then allowing it to have such monumental software issues on board...

And then, even for a 2D 180° or 360° you want to prefer having a high fps rate while having high resolution as well. I got the impression the tehcnology is not really there... The hero 6 again had 60fps and wanted high minimum resolution, but it is overpriced, and as said: problems with the software and inner life.

Sounded like a great idea to me, but I lose trust in it... :oops:

Nearest I've been to the above is a dash cam in the motor :doh:

My smartphone for navigation I can attach to the steering bar and have it consuming its electric power from the bike battery, via s small cable that links it to the display/computer unit. In principle something like that would be nice to have for a camera as well that is fixed on the steering bar. Still, there is the problem with the storage memory. 2 hours at 1080/60 with maximum (and good) stabilization it should be. I found no candidate. And also no option for linking a camera with a bike battery.

Then the camera angle, I would need an according optical lense (image quality, and angle) serving my need.

And then I do not want to spend a four digit price.

Think I wanted too much. Tech is not yet there.

I know someone that uses the ION Air-pro camera when he would hike/ride/etc.

He didn't remember if they were 60fps (the video editing software he used would default the final video to 60fps).

He has the first Air-Pro, from what he remembers:

1080p
Wide angle. (best guess ~150deg.)
Expect max visual range about 30 meters. ~100 feet.
Uses MicroSD cards.
Charges via USB cable.

He recorded 10 minute sections 9-10 times:

With a 16GB MicroSD he ran out of storage space before he ran out of power.


---

He got them at his local Walmart...

The first was $200.
He went back to get a second, and a they dropped the price because they had a newer model/combo-pack...
So the second was $100.


I did a search on google for the ION air pro camera, and found the Air Pro 3 listed on Ebay at ~$100...

Here is the web site:
https://usa.ioncamera.com/air-pro-lite-wifi/
https://usa.ioncamera.com/air-pro-2/
https://usa.ioncamera.com/air-pro-3/


It appears that 2.5 hours is the rated battery life.
Also seems (depending on model) 1080P @ 30fps, or 720p @ 60/120 fps.


Barracuda

Cant get the idea out of my head, and did some more research.



The Hero6 by GoPro has an impressively effectively stabiliser, but when I read customer feedback, saying that the item has serious techncial and software problems seems to be a polite understatement. Considering that it is at the top of the price scale, I scratched it off the list.


My current favourite is the Yi 4K+, which sometimes gets labelled "GoPro killer". Its cheaper, but offers also good image quality and stabilisation. It can use GoPro mounts and stuff.


It seems that with a 64 GB SD card, a fast one, i can expect around 70-90 minutes of film, and roughly around the same time drawn out of one battery pack. With two batteries and cards, I can reach into the range of playing time that I want and need, since I would want to focus on the visually more appealing parts of a track - the destination, so to speak - anyway. During a 120km trip, there is maybe 20-30 km of interesting track, so this may work out well. It also depends on choosen image/video format, of course. I assume that something like 2.7K/50, linear format, works well enough for my purposes and allows for some artistic freedom in post processing. Maybe even 1440 or 1080. I do not have nor need a 4K display, 4k does not make sense in TV screens that do not exceed a certain size. But then, there is the thing with the VR mask...





The only question that remains is how well an electric stabiliser will work if attachign the camera to the steering bar of a bike, even when not driving offroad, but plain asphalt. That is the lucky characteristic here in the Münsterland: even small sidetracks, locally called "Pettken", are asphalt, the whole bicycle infrastructure here is quite good. I have seen videos on youtube with Hero6 mounted to the steering bar and the image with EIS on being surpringly calm, i would not have believed that this is possible. I do not wear a helmet and do not want to wear one, I would drown in my own sweat, and it is too German as if I would like to comply with this. In the Netherlands, the people are laughing about German bike riders - and they like the sight, for they can see from far away already that there come the Germans again. :)


Next I need to check whether I am stuck with Windows for video editing, or if there is software for Linux that does nto make it difficult again or adds difficulty and complexity to the tasks.


Still engaged, the idea is not off the table.

Due to a juristic decision here in Germany about dahscams now being legalised by the federal constitutional high court, somebody I spoke with today warned me that filming a trail or track with a camera that is on for longer time, could bring me into trouble with any police patrol meeting me, and is at best legal grey zone, most likekly would end with me beign found guilty of violating data protection laws.

:o

In priciple everybody shooting a trail from his MTB or motorbike, is guilty before the law. Its not that you need to necessarily penetrate private grounds with the lenses, or that you indeed copy the face of some stranger on your sd card - the mere chance that this could happen, due to the camera running, being there, already is enough to bring you in conflict with the law.

Germany. Das Land der Spießer, Kümmerer und ewig Ängstlichen. What more do I need to say.

The court today ruled that dashcams still are not okay to have in cars, nevertheless if you end up in an accident and your camera'S film could help to defend your cause at later court proceedings, it now is okay to use it, the court must allow it. Schizophrenia that only bureaucrats can consider to be normal. Its absurd.

P.S. As I found, same in Austria. Note that the laws are aboiut not just dashcams, but every kind of camera that qualifies as a socalled action cam.

I am back to it. Recent research done and videos watched on the very, very good stabilization of the GoPro 7 Black, made me reviving this idea. There is footage available of normal bicycles travelling on the street with cam mounted to the bike frame instead to the driver, and images nevertehless are - smooth, stable. Also, mountain bikers show videos with this cam where thewy mounted the cam to their chest or hemlmet or arms, and again accieving previously unseen image stability when gpoing into the rough. GoPro has its issues, my research showed, but this trick names hypersmoothing - they mastered this one, really. Especially with the latest firmware update. They advertise the Seven as the Gimbal-killer - I start to see some of the truth in that slogan.


The festival of joy and love is close, and today I decided to love myself and gift me enjoyment, so I dived deep into my pockets, and bought the cam, plus some basic stuff. More of it is coming, hopefully before the christmas shutdown: cables, charger, mounts, memory cards.

Did not now completely what to expect. As a reminder, I was looking to shoot longtime movies of my bike tours, and then editing them at home, offline. At the same time I wanted to avoid the social media stuff and always-online enforcement that GoPro demanded ni the past. I did not know what memory size would translate into what playing length, and then the problem with power.

I had a rough start this afternoon. Some things did not work as I learned on the web, for example manual offline updating of the firmware. Impossible on Linux and on Windows, since the cam and its card do not allow external files being moved to them, they allow me only to export from them. I needed to use the smarttphone app, which again did not go smooth, but finally I managed to get it done, and then deactivated all the special rights the according app demanded to track me. So far, so good. Latest firmware update is live. Smartphone can connect to the camera, if wanted (for control or as a monitor). and since some months GoPro do not force the user to create a user account and hand them rights to watch all their private content. I can edit the wav files and mp4 files offline, like any other such files, with according software. Should even be possible under Linux. There must even be software and codecs allowing to burn normal Tv-DVDs.

So, obviously file export also worked flawless. I now know, depending on resolution and colour and light conditions, that 1 minute takes 500-800 MB in 4K. I most likely will use lower resolutions of 2.7 16:9 or even 1080, with frames of 60 or 120, I must test and check the results. With 64 and 128 GB cards I can achieve what I originally aimed for: hoursd and hours of recording time.

Next issue: power. The cam eats batteries like I eat Haribo Goldbären. I am a Haribo bear killer, and the cameras has a deep-rooting blood feud with batteries. To my great relief I tested and found out that the cam can be run with external powerbanks, even better: it does not only charge by it, but operates fully even if I take the battery out and leave the slot open. That is relevant not only due to the longer operating time, but also because:

The cam has a known heat problem, and by the feeling of the case in my hands I think it is both the processor working and the battery decharging that create lots of temperature. The battery material probably also stores and saves the heat better, making it more difficult for the inside of the case to cool down again. With the battery taken out of the equation, my outlooks look brighter again. With the wind when driving, even more so. In spring, not summer, I again win some degrees.

So, it looks that if technology works stable, I will be able to record hours and hours indeed, by strapping a powerbank to my bike and connecting it with a cable to the cam.

Next I must check whether there is a way to get it work ing on the bicycle battery. I ordered an according cable (USB-C to USB-B 2.0), and then will connect it to the bike computer which has an output connector - it works with my smartphone (navigation software in use), I must see whether the output is good enough to maintain the camera.

The camera is not too good in low light, so I could not test a lot today regarding images and videos, but what I was able to do, is stunning, an eye opener. Unfortunately the GoPros have now a reputation of occasionally breaking down or freezing, so it is not the most reliable piece of kit, needs to be given a cold reboot (battery out and in and rebooting it when it has frozen). I aleady had one freeze today, but did a lot of button dancing, so... how it will be if just switched to record and then let it running on, I will see. This is the big question mark for me that remains: reliability, software stability. Energy is solved this way or the other way, and memory is solved as well.

Just this one box more to tick, and I am through! :yeah: Mounting kits for both bike frame and body are hoped for before end of this week. That was all an awful lot of money, but I am optimistic now. Not totally, irresponsibly optimistic, but optimistic. It really looks as if I can get things working like I wanted them to. I even already had watched a short 1 minute clip I shot for testing in VR, via Virtual Desktop and then a virtual cinema, watched in up on that huge screen. :D This kind of technology holds risks and invitations for abuse, it makes me scream and curse at times - but when I race in Assetto Corsa or Raceroom, or when it works out well like today, I certainly also realise that it also holds miracles and wonders.

:yeah: This boy goes to bed very happy today. :salute:
.P.S. Physically, the little case has a satisyfying, heavy feel to it, solid and well-manufactured. It looks light, but it seems to be quite robust for sure.

I think while I slowly sneak upon my target of achieving a longtime-shooting installation, I post my test results over the coming days. The camera is good, very good, and maybe somebody is interested in some tech feedback in numbers and results and finds this helpful.

Firsts go first: I tested whether the camera runs with external power supply, a powerbank (for the bicycle battery I still wait for the cable needed). Well, the camera does work with my external powerbank, via USB-C to USB cable, even better: it works so without having its own internal akku put in. Leave the battery out, therefore, and only use an external power source. Passed! - The bike battery thing I must test later.

I have a Sandisk 64 GB Extreme Pro micro SD card in use currently. Testing in 4K with 60 frames, which has hypersmooth support, the camera told me That I can record up to 2 hours 2minutes with that storage capacity.

I tested a one hour continiuous shot with that resolution. At the end of that time, 1 hour, the previously loaded internal battery was down to 9-10%. Sitting inside its mounting cage, the camera got warm, very, on both sides (battery left, electronics right), and the one metal part there is, the ring around the protection glass on front, got very hot indeed: I measured it and estimated it as good as I can by comparing the feel on my lips to that of warm water, and used then a tea thermometer: I got a value on the ring of around 50-55°C, and the cage frame around 40°C. I read somewhere the lockdown temperature of the camera is around 65°C. Room temperature is around 20°C currently. However: the camera did not lock down. - Passed!

The camera cut the recording into several individual pieces of 3.9 GB lengths, all in all 25.3 GB were consumed of 59.4 GB available - that is less than 50%. - Passed!

I did some still image shots as well, used the camera as a pohtoo camera indeed. The images were crispy, razorsharp, and definitely full HDR. Indeed they were better than with my old Canon powershot 595IS which has 8 MPixels and is several years old. The ProGo has 12 Mpixels. The GoPrpo shows everythiong from 1 cm to the distant horizon as sharp as if it were stamped with a laser. A photocamera leaves you more freedoms, so is to be preferred, but if you only have this with you, do not think it makes no sense to use this option - it definitely makes an awful lot of sense indeed!


I also noted the very good microphones, three of them. I have currnetly a house construction site nearby, maybe 90-100 meters away. They have a crane, and quite some machine gear in use. I can hear them calling at times, but cannot understand what they say, its muffled, tioned down. When doping a testshot on my balcony this morning, the workers obviously were recorded as well, and when I chekced the film on computer, with headphones , I understood EASILY every single word they were talking - some curses included. Really, very good, life-like sound there is, in stereo. Better than the two main mikes I still have flying around somewhere in my room. They write the camera can also identitfy to a certain degree monotonous sounds like wind or engine noise, and tone it down to some level. I will see when doing bike tests.


Next I will test external powerbank with no internal akku, and filling the SD card, to see whether that works. The resolution I will set to 2.7K, 60 frames, superwide view, and 16:9 ratio. this or frames 120 will most likely be the setttings I use for the bicycle touring thing. 4K just makes no sense for me. I do not have no monitor or TV with 4K, nor would I need one, and currently I have no codecs installed to process 4K on computer.


4K/60W - hypersmooth on - 1 hour - internal battery consumption 90-91% - memory consumption 25.3 GB - temperature 40-50°C (room temp 20°C, no wind or sun)

This is - for my purprose - the perfect demonstration object. The camera is mounted on the bicycle frame, not on the driver, and the road surface is exactly like what I am driving on 95% of my time when being on a day's tour, the surface of the tarmac and the state it is in, are practical identical.

He starts driving at around 3:25.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkJFmi0PCbE


The pixelation and artifacts you may note here and there, are youtube compression, not the cam.


Super-dooper impressive, if I would not already have been on a fix, I would be now. Perfect choice for my intentions! :yeah: I am in danger to directly eject into orbit. That little box is a game changer.

Brace yourself - Spring must come!


Second test session is on the way over here. Worth to note: not a single freeze so far today. And during the photo shots earlier today I noticed that the image saving works almost instantly, less than half a second. It was written two months ago that that can take up to 12 seconds, but it seems one of the firmware udates since then has made short process of this issue, too. Burstshots can do up to 30 pics per second.

2nd test done. This was far over two hours.

Resolution set to 2.7K at 60 frames, superwide view, Hypersmoothing on, external powerbank as power supply, no internal battery. The cover on the side that usually hides the connectors, was taken off completely to make it mountable in the cage, then the power cable was plugged in. The just formatted 64 GB Extreme Pro micro SD by Sandisk was read by the camera to provide 2:02 hours of storage after fresh formatting.

Actually it became 2 hours 18 minutes before the camera beeped to me and signalled by that that the card was full.

The cage again became warm, but on the left side (with just an empty, but closed battery slot) not as warm as before, the right side with the electronics maybe as warm as in the test before, or slightly less so. The metal ring around the protective lense cover again became much hotter. But then, maybe again not as hot as before, that is hard to say.

After 45 minutes I had placed a small ventilator in front of the camera, 2m away, at low setting, to simulate a mild breeze when driving in the open. The temperatures then dropped significantly. I stopped that after 20 minutes, and the remaming 1+ hours was done without "wind".

As long as during high summer with daily temps of 30°C the strong sun does not directly burn onto it, I do not expect temperature issues anymore, it seems they can be taken care of in mild climate at least like over here.

Passed!

Tomorrow I see for 2.7K at 120 frames, and Timelapse videos, which this little cutie also does better than other cams, making them too smooth and fully stabilised. I also will check quality and memory for 1080 res videos.

New stuff learned while playing around:

while experimenting with settings and options, I noticed the cam can be toggled between NTSC and PAL. Available frame rates are slightly different (120/60/30 for NTSC, 100/50/25 for PAL. When comparing test videos, I noticed that the inroom lights were flickering with NTSC. Online research showed that this is due to the different electrical frequencies in PAL countries/Europe: its the same like the frame rate for NTSC, and so there is interference. Lesson from it: when shooting indoor with artifical lights, use PAL.

However, if there is a video shot, and I want to edit a slow motion into it, its better to have more frame rates in the pool. So I will mostly shoot in NTSC, outdoors. In the test videos, i did not see a visual quality difference between PAL and NTSC, although the TV resolution should be slightly inferior with NTSC, compared to PAL. In video editing, different frame rates can be mixed and edited into one film as long as all snippets are made with the same norm, NTSC or PAL. Both should not be mixed, could lead to stutterings, I read.

I also learned that the camera for a 1080p resolution reads the sd card with 64 GB as capable of storing 3 hours 45 minutes at frames 25 and 50. :doh: Wowh. Memory will not be a problem.

Earlier I also read that 128 GB cards are not recommended, since their production process compromises some of the cell structure advantages of lower capacity cards, increasing the risk for data failure, and shortening the longevity of the card in general.

The cam writes with UHS-1 class speed only. No need to buy faster UHS-II cards (which are four times as expensive over here!!), their speed advantage is not beign made use of.


Tomorrow I will test 1080 resolution more intensly. Possible that this will help to keep temperatures down. 2.7K at 120 is cancelled, since it does not support hypersmoothing, which is an essential feature for me. There are also limitations for using higher resolutions and higher framed together with high viewing angles, something I have so far ignored. Very possible that I settle down with 1080 in the end, and have all options available and no limitations that way. I will never have a bigger flat than I now have - 4K screens in my living room with the according huge monitor size simply do not make sense. 4K is for big screens and bigger viewing distances, not for smaller screens at smaller viewing distances. Finally, high frame rates may find their reward when viewing it indeed in a VR headset (with their low resolutions, and I cannot see them skyrocketing all of a sudden any time soon).

More testing completed.



With 1080p @ 60 frames, the internal battery was down to 14% after 1 hour 20 minutes. In this mode, the camera said the sd card with 64 GB would store movielength up to 2 hours 38 minutes. After 1h20m, the display said 1:26 recoidng time remaining, which would already trabslate into a total of 2:46 hours. The projected capacity thus is not totally correct. The film took 26.8 GB on the card, with 32.5 GB still free. Simple math tells me that 177 minutes, or close to 3 hours, would fit on the card in this video mode 1080/60. Temperature did not seem to vary much to those tests with higher resolutions yesterday.


The timewarp function works like a charm. Different to time lapse films made by single phto frames tacked together, this movie is absolutely smooth, and again stabilised, it can be shot in 4K or 1080, with wide (no super wide) viewing angle. The speed can be varied over sdeverla factors (2x, 5x 10x for driving tasks, even more like 15x, 20x, 30x when you move slowler or stand still). I can see using this with 2x and 5x a lot.


The difference in resolution quality between 2.7k and 1080 is not apparent to my eyes on my 1950x1080 monitor at 24", or my TV with same resolution and a diagonal span of ~80cm.



I had a first deeper look at the backgroudn settings that can be unlocked, usually the automatic takes care of them (and does a terrific job!). The image sharpness can be varied in three levels, and I can see that when shooting photos and only watching them on a monitor, not printing them on paper, there might be benefits if reducing sharpness from high to medium. The differences are visible between sharpness levels, but not dramatic. ISO msettings, upper and lower limtis, are mor eimportantk, again the automatic takes good care of them, but one must say that shooting in low light conditions is not the strength of the GoPro 7 Black. Images become grainy. The camera in general has a tendency to soften contrast and lighten up the image overall, which works very good in dalyight, since else trees and bushes with dark fooliage often are just too black-ish in the video, many other comaeras for my tatse are way too harshg there, prioritiozie harsh cinbtrasts too much, the GoPro is easier and gentlier there, and I appreciate that very much, it reveals more details in dark and in very bright parts of the image as well. There is an alternative colour toning available, which is more natural in its palette than the original processing filter, sicn eht elatter is more focussed on indeed making the action shine in some more saturated colours. Usually the action filter works good and nice, and its good to know there is a more natural filter available as well in case I shoot an environment that already is very ich inc olours and contrasts in reality. Addtionally you can of course influence the white balance alignment, but again the automatic does a vey good job here, but you can chnage the colour temperature manually as well, which may sometimes be the better option when shooting inside rooms at low light with lamps on. The camera by automatic tends to brighten such dark scenes up very much, which is good, since you can see details still, and is not good, since it is no longer that dark - but the difference between unlit dark spots and the light radfiuation around lamps it nevertheless works out nicely.



I tried the photo camera, and it delivers surprisingly good results again. Additonal post processing is possible, but mainly automatic. The HDR option works very, very good. The camera can take up to 30 photos to calculate the best exposure for various picture parts of brightness and darkness, I founf that here the image saving indeed can take 1-2 seconds. Without any such processing, the camera works as fast as any digital camera, and saves in a split of a second.



I think I am done now with the purely technical testing of battery and memory card endurcance at various resolutions and options. The mounting gear shoudl arrive later todfay, and now it is about getting out and testing image quality in the wild.



Worth to note, since there are so many complaints: like yesterday, today I still have not had a single freeze or system lockdown. No overheating alert, nothing. It gets warm, and thats all.



I have started to really fall in deep love with this little thing. Definitely worth the money.


P.S. Worth to note: after the test described, after running for 80 minute, battery was down to 14%, and with the manipulations I did in the following two minutes, it went further down to 9%. Then I left it alone and the camera cooled down. When I turned it on again, the battery showed 19%. The high temperature obviously lets the capacity suffer, like cold would do with batteries as well.

Stuff arrived, several mounts: head, shoulder, chest, handwrist, bicycle handle bar. Much of that, pretty much all, is "Amazon Basics". Looks like goog quality, well manufactured, but at very reasonable prices much lower than stuff by GoPro. Their prices for supplying stuff are ridiculous. Good stuff, but totally overpriced. Now I must find out what works best. I assume the bike mount and the handwrist mount will be the solutions I will use most. Plus a single grip handle with extension like a selfiestick and an inbuild tripod - the only original GoPro gadget I ordered: and for what it feels like, overpriced.

For those thinking about my idea - the bicycle battery, in this case a 500A/h battery by Bosch, does not feed the camera. I think the problem is that the power goes from the battery to the bicycle computer and from there to an external USB device connected. Works with my smartphone, for navigation, but does not work with the camera. I assume the power consumption is higher than what the small interface provides. The tech specs should be flying around somewhere, but I have not looked them up so far. Well, no big deal, I will use some external powerbank attached onto the frame.



Darkness falls here. First testride will need to wait until tomorrow.

Can anyone recommend a stable and reliable video editing software that does not cost several hundreds of coins - and does not constantly CTD, which seems to be a huge problem with these kinds of programs, I read in feedbacks? It should be able to handle bigger files, not just 5 minute clips for youtube. Several GB's and resulting movie lengths of half an hour, are what I look for. Own music import is wanted.


Also, a software solution to burn it as an ordinary video DVD to be played in a DVD player for TV is wanted.


I just tested two freeware solutions, one of them claiming to be the most promient GNU software of its kind, and they worked unreliable, unprecise and not satisfactory, plenty of stuttering. No trust.


Cyberlink Power Director 17, maybe?

Finally I had the weather and opportunity to test it all in the real world, yesterday, and today. Yesterday it was a clear sky around noon, sunny, and blue sky with a few clouds. Today it was scattered, sometimes more blue, sometimes more clouds and grey. The camera is hard-mounted on the steering bar. Up and away into the Rieselfelder!

What they advertise, and what many people say - its all true! For my purposes and when driving on grounds like bicycles usually do, this cam is a gimbal killer. Adding a gimbal i, cannot add any more good it. Gift me a gimbal, and I happily sell it and take the money. I cannot imagine when and where, for my purposes, to need it. I do no mountain biking.

This cam is a stabilization wonder. I drove over

- fine & smooth asphalt
- old & broken asphalt with surface damages and rough tar seams from repairs
- through rough sections with gravel, small stones and and small tree branches/branchlings lying on the surface
- other broken-up sections with plenty of small potholes and tree roots having broken up the asphalt
- uneven grass, mud, gravel
- fine cobble stone
- coarse cobble stones
- passing over railroad crossings
- wooden planks and metal grids on the ground

The stabiliser ate it all. I tried my best to make it shake just one time - just once. I failed. :)

I tested under many different camera settings and viewing angles, in fact I went through the possible combinations quite systematically, like in a lab, yesterday 3 hours, today again almost 3 hours, and drove with each setting for 5-10 minutes or so, sun in my back, and into the sun. Then watched it unedited on TV, full HD, 80cm.

This cam is a beast and almost perfect for the task I bought it for.

With 1080p at 50 frames (PAL), sharpness set to medium, -0.5 exposure, the so-called "matt" colour profile, wide viewing angle (which is the medium one of the three available), the camera delivers image quality and colours and contrasts that are as life-like and realistic and professionally TV-like like as it can get. I never had a video cam before. This amount of visual quality I did not expect. I am blown away. Crispy and sharp contours from 20 cm before the lense out to the distant horizon.

The stabilised Timewarp mode, which is their version of time lapse, also delivers very good, smooth results. I only see it suffering from the fact that it uses the "GoPro" colour profile, which accentuates colours and high contrast, and sets sharpness to "high". The videos are supersmooth, I can see myself making use of the 2x, 5x and 10x settings quite some times (it goes up to 30x).

That "GoPro"profile could be improved in its usefulness, imo, the high contrast often leads to dark picture areas blacking out. The sharpness set to "high" makes areas with many finy details and lines shimmering. It may have its usefulness on higher resolutions 2.7K and 4K, I do not know - but for full HD, it is a counterproductive setting, not only not doing something good, but actually doing some mild damage to picture quality. However, as a general automatic mode, "GoPro" is okay and may work very well indeed for actual action movies at close range (sports etc) - while I focus on landscape documentation. Thats quite different stuff.

I am very happy and can full-heartly recommend this little magix box, it took my heart by storm. The 400+ coins they ask for, is imo okay and justified, due to the unbelievable picture and the good manufacturing quality. Their original addon stuff, however, is a mixed back in quality, and always overpriced, sometimes so excessively that I would call it a rip-off. Other producers however offer comparable or better stuff for the GoPro, sometimes for just a fraction of the prices.

If you look for a cam for projects like I described, or a good stabilisation, trust this one. I can fullly recommend it. Its great and excellent value for money, imo. And you can then draw faster than Wyatt Earp.

I have not even tried longer any object-filming, and experimenting.

P.S.

They wrote, in the beginning at least, that the camera freezes and must be unlocked, and not rarely, be removing the battery and putting it in again. Well, I had that just once, on day one, while sitting and testing it at the desk. That was while fiddling with the menu. I had one delay on reaction while shooting yesterday, keeping the main switch pressed for several seconds, solved it, and it worked on, and did not reboot. I had not a single failure so far while the camera was shooting and me not handling it. I have so far shoot around 8-10 hours of test material. When it films, it seems to be pretty fail-safe. One of the firmware updates they have had, seems to have done a good job. Also, sometimes the finger-wiping and wishing on the screen does not get recognised. Well, thjt happend some times to me yesterday, with a cold fingtertip that felt very dry (5°C outside), but it happened not often, and only then, and not different than with my smartphone screen as well. This is a non-issue, in my eyes. Power consumption goes up steeply with high resolution filming, with 1080p/50 I get one hour out of one battery, more or less, and an SD card with 64GB holds almost 3 hours of film. The thing can dive as deep as 10 meters without needing a diving cage. The microphones are - very good. The wind supression works well to really tone wind down (mono then, one mike in use: it tones wind down, it does not completely supress it), in stereo with all 3 mikes being used, the sound quality is imo very, very, very good for somethign of this size (if there is no wind... :D )

The people I read complainig about this cam and mocking its stabilising, almost always were mountainbikers. I can imagine that under such expreme driving conditions a gimbal indeed works better, videos showing them shooting with the 7 Black while being on trail shows how extreme their movements are. But the word to watch out for, is "extreme". Ordinary bicycle drivers, race cyclists - you will find it hard to find conditions that defeat the digital stabiliser. I have not found the limit so far, and believe me - I really searched for it. I also tried it on chest mount, handwrist mount and head mount, also held it free in the hand, and then walked normally and climbed chairs. What should I say? - "Smooth". :)

Certain combos of high resolution and high frame rate and superview (the widest) viewing angle do not allow hypersmoothing, and will fall back to the standard stabiliser already used in the GoPro 6. They should not be mistaken. The GoPro 7 Silver and White are not just other colours, but technically different as well., They have not the hypersmooth stabiliser, for exmaple. Thats why they only cost half as much.

P.P.S.

If the cam has a weakness, then it is pitchblack night outside. The pictures become grainy quickly then. However, with ISO limited to 100-800, I shot great shots in my flat with candle light and 2000K LED lights on, some Henna-lamps on as well. The cam needs a bit longer to adapt to changing light conditions then, still the results I foudn to be convicning and fully satisfying, sometimes even being stunning, especially colour representaiton (with white balancing set to automatic...)

Ever look into splicing in aerial imaging into your bicycle trip? There's drones out there now that follow you around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiAXcSvP688

Drones, its densely populated over here, and I have no car to get somewhere, and controlling one from my bicycle is a bit tricky while driving :D. And for the time being I focus on "firsts go first".

I have now good control of the camera, experimenting a bit with mountings still, but right now its not the weather and time of the year where I want to start shooting - that is before the summer turns the green on the trees dark, means: late winter with early flowers, and spring with light fresh green, yellow fields and flowers in the meadows, maybe again in autumn. Summer is not really that interesting for photography, I found in the past. Spring and autumn are so much better. Right now its all just muddy and triste and grey and brownish. Bäääähhhhhhh....

Mind you, my tours last 7-10 hours, you really do not feel tempted to carry a drone in a Rucksack round all that time. Additional to a second battery, 2-3 liters of drinks, and some kit.

Right now I am engaged with PowerDirector 17. Last time I used such a software must be over ten years ago, something from Magix it was, and Windows Media Player. This Cyberlinks package now is even more polished, and is superbly self-adapting to my hardware: when rendering, all twelve threads are busy with a load not below 97%, and the fast GFX card I have also gets tasked with rendering. Its options are beyond what I hoped for. And I once again enjoy to just playing around with it. Its a great game. :)

The cam cuts long shots into heaps of 4GB, it should be no problem to edit lets say 6 hours of footage into a 30-45 minute film.

I could imagine to maybe even get a second cam, one on the bike looking forward for coinstant filming, the other on my handwrist for mobile selective filming to the sides. But I first will test how it goes with what I have. The cam is great, but expensive.

If all goes well, maybe this time I even end up with two or three films on youtube later this year. Teutoburger forest, Osnabrücker and Tecklenburger Land are very romantic, beautiful places. The infrastructure for bicycle is ideal around Münster.


Will try the fireworks tomorrow. I plan with full HD PAL, 25 frames (better light per frame than if I use 50, and probably shutter speed that is more fit for the task), ISO 100-400, zero exposure correction, white balance at 4000K due to GoPro colour profile used instead of the more natural "matte" profile, GoPro profile will add some more intensification of colours, and do some HDR tricks and high contrasts. Just want to see how it works out. If anyone has suggestions for better chances to get good shots, I am interested to learn about them.