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

[Skybird]

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.

[Skybird]

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?

[Skybird]

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... )

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...)

[Rockstar]

Ever look into splicing in aerial imaging into your bicycle trip? There's drones out there now that follow you around.

[Skybird]

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 . 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.

[Skybird]

Ta-daaa - so this is what it was all about. The time of testing just the basics and learning the very essentials, is over, etudes and finger exercises will rank second place only from now on. I am waiting for the better season to arrive, and this is not exemplary for the long-time movies than I plan for anyhow - but still I consider this to be my first okay-done movie, more or less.

[deleted April 18th 2020]

I had two cams on the steering bar, the other cam shot in normal speed and with other colours and contrasts so I have the full tour in normal mode as well, ten times as much material. I had meanwhle done experimental films for testing only, up to two hours long. Technology-wise, regarding external batteries and temperatur in the cameras, it all worked well and reliable. Proof of concept is successful - the only thing that may knock me out, still, is the much higher temperature in summer when the sun hits the cams spot on with full power. Well, I need to wait and see. Spring should be fine. Autumn too. Summer - I may be at risk.

Hope you enjoy the little teaser. The one thing I learned from it is that for bicycle speed, timelaps films, even when fully stablised, with 10x acceleration already are too fast. For bicycles: 2x and 5x, for pedestrians and foot-trekkers: 10x and 15x. Now I know. I plan one or two walking tours, too, in the Hüggel area at Hasbergen, Osnabrück.

[Catfish]

^ Very nice, impressive

[Skybird]

Thanks.

The video is okay, but too fast. Timelaps with 2x or 3x really is enough with bicycle speeds.

Point is the "Timewarp"-called timelapse the camera offers, is superior to having a normal film and then timelapsing it in an editor. That film would include all movements and steering corrections I made when driving, and they would make the animated images "un-calm", nervous, due to the acceleration. The camera on the other hand offers a mode where it already calculates timelapse while still filming - and comparing actual images with the previous material and horizon, treating such steering inputs by me as rumbling from uneven surface - and using digital stabilization to choose images and edit them on the fly, smoothening things out. Its incredible, and a top feature. Unfortunately, this Timewarp mode is avialable only woith the action-oriented colour- and contrast mode of the cam, and only for 2x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 30x. 2x is a bit too less when you want to compromise a tour leg of 2.5 hours. 5x already is the upper limit when driivng with 22-26 km/h. 3x would be ideal. I can acchieve that in the editor, yes, but the image is not as smooth as it is if I leave the job to the cam.


Not a biggie, however. I am in love with these two little boxes, they work fantastic.

Heck, I can drive and hop over railtrack planks, and the cam levels it out - even this pretty serious rumbling is invisible on film.

[Skybird]

Found this video. It illustrates the difference between normal time-lapse, and stabilised time-lapse that is called Timewarp by GoPro.





Beside the gimbal-killing digital stabilization called Hypermsmooth, Timewarp is the other killer feature of this cam.

[Skybird]

I tested the acceleration thing more thoroughly today. I shot normal speed with one cam, and simultaneously with the seocnd cam at timewarp 2x. I then had the 2x accelerated stabilised stuff in the editor and there accelerated it another 1.5x times, making it runnign 3 times as fast as normal, while still being stabilised.



I was a bit surprised that the difference between 2x and 3x would be so apparent to the eye. With bicycle speeds (15-25 km/h), 3x already starts to look a bit hectic, not so much to be unbearable, but it is really the upper limit, considering that I plan for movies that after editing will be 45-60 minutes long. Whats more, I had ignored so far that maybe I also want to see/show it in VR, on a huge virtual screen in a virtual cineplex. To have a film running at frantic speed in VR, might not be a too pleasant experience.



Therefore I decided to stick with 2x speed. Any further shortening of the shot film will be done via cutting and ddeleting, therefore - the tour legs that will form one film each, are 140-190 minutes long, with timewarp recording that is down to 70-95 minutes, I want it to be cut to 45-60 minutes. Should be managable without loosing content and important sights.



Testing which acceleration works best when rambling on mark-I dualpods - that maybe will become a whole new ballgame again. When a touring bike travels at 15-25 km, and a pedestrian at 5 km/h, and I like the bioke footage at speed 2x, it travels at 30 to 50 km/h then, so as a walker I would need to choose 5x or 10x in the cam, with the one probably beeing too slow and the other value beign too high already. Since less distance gets covered when hiking, cutting out and deleting stuff from the footage necessarily means a bigger share of vidsual informaitonn gets deleted, so cutting may be more tricky. Maybe I need to go back to that trick of filming with 5x and then accelerating it in the editor by another factor 1.2 or 1.3. Decisions, decisions. This all may turn me in the end into a true pedantic.


I also learned about another weakness of the cam today. When shooting today, both cameras freezed and had to be unlocked. It was cold, the outside temp was -6°c. It seems the cams do not like such low temperatures. They worked for around an hour while not beign manipulated and just recording, but when starting to manipulate them, they both bogged down and had to be reset. If it is linked to low temps, it is no problem for me, my intentions aim at spring, summer and autumn anyway.



Confirmed further is that a 64GB card will hold out for 2:30 hours in PAL and full HD, with using timewarp altering that value in a range between 2:00 and 3:00 hours. One battery pack in these temperatures gives me roughly one hour of operation, if not manipulating the cam a lot and just letting it record (screen off). One battery holds 1220 mAh, I have four of these, plus two powerbanks with 6000 and 10000 mAh. Should be enough for my purposes.




Will do the video from yesterday again, with 2x. Need to find a second music tune matching the first.



I am surprised time and again that the camera does a good job in full automatic mode already, I tend to step back from manula control and instead leave it all to the cam. Colours, light and contrast get a bit over-accentuated (by intention, since it is meant for action shots), but at this time of the year with muted colours and greyish sunlight anyway, that does not come unwelcomed. If need arises, all that can be tioned down manually by chosing other cam settings, and then there sitll is the post processing in the editor.



Since I upgraded to 32 GB, that software works absolutely smooth now, not even one hickup at all (Cyberlinks PowerDirector 17).


Plotting a springtime project currently, along the Dortmund Ems Channel, Münster to Haren, and back, two days tour, ~240 km



I am surprised that these cameras are quite good in dealing with sunlight hitting the lenses frontally. As a photographer, I would have expected much, much worse. Digital processing already during shooting really has its payoffs. That is the reason why smartphones wiht their inferior optics can shoot images as good or evenb better than digital comoatc cameras with superior optics nowadays. Its not the smartphone's optics - its its processing power that makes the difference and beats the compact camera.


Last tip for today: if owning a GoPro, do not store it away mwith a RAM card and battery loaded. The RAM will eat the battery over night. If not using it, store the cam away with no battery loaded. The battery alone will be at 100% even after having been stored away for a week.

[Skybird]

Na bitte, besser.


This is on the castle garden in Münster, shot in Timewarp 2x. I rendered the visual material in 2x and 3x and compared it, I found that 3x is too much already, on bike it is 2x for me from now on, basta, done and over. Much more relaxed and enjoyable to the eye. 10x - what devil had ridden me in the first video...?


Just wonder why my mike is humming, yesterday it was all clear, I chnaged nothing in the setup. Using an external USB soundcard to connect it. If anyone has tips for mike setup and avoiding bad background sounds, let me know. For my sleep-invoking voice I cannot be held responsible . My former boss said to me: if they are coming after you and you cant shoot them - talk them to death. Now I know what he meant.

[deleted April 18th 2020]

[u crank]

Very nice one Skybird. What a beautiful place. 2x is good, just right. Any chance for one with English narration in the future?

Look forward to seeing more of these.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by u crank

Very nice one Skybird. What a beautiful place. 2x is good, just right. Any chance for one with English narration in the future?

Thanks. Never thought so far of doing an English version for these two, but written subtitles. If I ever do a "documentation" of real focus and value, a spoken English version is possible, however.

Look forward to seeing more of these.

There will come more, much more, promised. Just not in the coming weeks already. Give me a spring and summer, fresh juicy green on the trees, colourful flowers, yellow rape fields, and by the end of the year you will know the region between Münster and Osnabrück better than you ever expected that you would. Its a very idyllic region, and I know the secret ways and hidden trails quite well by now.


Per leg of these treks, 50-65 km will be covered. That was the whole idea behind all this from beginning on, since years: documenting these ridces, and in longer than just 10 minute clips.



Just not now, not in brownish, grey and muddy winter. Maybe another one or two from the city itself, to have something to do.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by u crank

Any chance for one with English narration in the future?

There you have it - English subtitles now in the palace garden film.


P.S.
Correction: both videos are subtitled now.

[Rockstar]

Me thinks x2 is perfect as is the scenery and choice of music, all of it is very well put together. Great job!


When does the European tour start?