I bought a GoPro Hero HD Helmet for filming my paragliding adventures. I used the 960p resolution, because it captures the widest field of view both vertically and horizontally. 4:3 isn’t sexy but useful

I strapped it to my thigh right above the knee with the vented helmet mount and a homemade ring of rubber strap. So far that worked quite well. I’ll have to try the shoe or “below knee” positions, too.

I spent a week testing different video editing programs. I wanted to use Adobe Premiere but just couldn’t import the GoPro 960p mp4-files. It only showed the audio, green/blue/black video, crashed the program or showed some other error message. The solution for this problem can be found below.

Summary:

This is the software I tried:

• Pinnacle Studio: Everything is fine, but I could not find a H.264 codec for rendering the final movie. With all other settings the image quality was rough edged and somehow smeared/unfocused.
• Cyberlink PowerDirector: I just didn’t like it. Not enough features. There is a “great” community sharing their templates to do all those abysmal pet/kids/party/etc. flicks with a shitload of the cheesiest effects making your eyes bleed. That’s what it’s good for.
• Magix Video deluxe: You will need at least the “plus” version to import HD-MP4 files. It works, but on my machine the preview was so slow that I only got 1fps. That’s not enough for even getting an idea of what you are doing. But that can be a completely different matter for you since I only used a notebook with Intel graphics chip.
• Adobe Premiere: I like Adobe software so it was my favorite from the start. Not very intuitive, no steep learning curve but in the end you can do everything you like. If it wasn’t for the importer. I just couldn’t get it to import my 960p mp4-files. But now I have found a solution that works for me:

Solution for Adobe Premiere:

1. You cannot use a sequence template for the R4 960p resolution. If you shoot in R5 or R2 you can skip this step. You have to make your own sequence template by choosing the “Desktop” template and tweaking it to the resolution of 1280 x 960pixels with a pixel ratio of 1:1 and progressive (non-interlaced) frames. Save it to “GoPro 960p” template and you are good to go for this resolution.
2. You cannot import the GoPro mp4-files directly. Use this free software to change the video container to mov: MPEG Streamclip. This is a completely lossless and very fast process since the video data itself remains untouched, only the container changes.  Open your video file(s) and choose “Save as…” and then “MOV” as output. That’s it. I haven’t tried it yet but there is a batch processing feature, too.  Don’t use the export features, they re-encode the video, take a lot of time and most likely degrade video quality.

Hopefully this post saves you some time. If there’s anything to correct or add please leave a comment.

This is one of my early inspirations when going analog. Most of the pictures are digital, but they sure don’t look like it. No polished and over-saturated standard photos but pics with a statement and character. Check them out HERE.

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Police space invaders, look at the contrast and the dodge/burn-work. It guides your eye and looks like having been added in a real darkroom, sloppy you might say, but definitely bold and matching the style of the picture.

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For grain lovers.

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A large amount of shots showing huge buildings and shiny advertisements with crowded streets in contrast to the poor dwelling amongst it all. No trees to be found there…

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And yet another one. I don’t like it quite as much as the previous two but it still gives some thought-provoking impulses. Am I allowed to mention that it can be found on p2p networks? I hope so since i can’t find a link to a dvd on their page, which is btw.:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Earth2100/

Have you seen this movie yet? If not you should definitely change that, to me this is the essence of everything that should be important to everyone. And in addition to its message the pictures are awesome. A photographer making a movie – what else would you expect it to look like?

Find the movie in HD, in a multitude of languages, for free here:
HOME homepage
Youtube page

In Germany it is copyrighted, but for you this might work as well: