Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

I've read a few threads (with particular attention to Dean's comments, as he has both cams) but am still stuck as to which to buy.

Seems like field of view is more natural/less exaggerated on the Replay. Sound is better on the Replay, and color is less saturated and maybe easier to play with in post. And it's smaller!

Gopro is watertight, and has more mounting options.

I don't have specific uses, but would like to film a bit underwater (for a doc I'm working on), plus hidden camera stuff (well, put in a bag with a hole cut out), plus mounting it on a motorbike, and on a headstrap (not helmet).

Any advice?

Unfortunately I can't try out as there are no camera stores near to the village i live in in Guatemala.

Thanks all!!

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

No cure all answers unfortunately.

I bought my Replay just before the HD2 came out. I don't know if I would have if the GoPro's were on the shelves.

The Replay gives a little less distortion but the sound seems as good on the HD2 as the Replay. I do a lot of hidden camera stuff and the Replay wins hands down.

The GoPro is the choice for underwater or rough weather photography.

Either works well on a helmet or car/motorcycle/bike mount.

Color is as good IMO on the HD2 as the Replay.

You really need both but if I had to take only one, it would be the GoPro. You will need to buy an aftermarket lens to get really good underwater pics with the HD2.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Thanks Don. Appreciate the input!

Yes the Replay certainly looks like the right tool for hidden camera. And interesting comments about audio.

Any thought on jello? The footage I've seen with Gopro showed a lot (I guess to be expected with CMOS sensors).

I've emailed/called replay to find out if there's a waterproof capsule for the 1080XD. I have a feeling if I could find an affordable one ($20-30) my mind would be made up.

Best
Dave

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

I think the GoPro2 also has an upgraded plug in audio capability, which might help your decision.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

It has a plug Bill. There wasn't anything to upgrade on the GPHD unless you wanted to hack the bus port.

I made a joke picture a long time ago and can't find it. I mounted a GoPro on one of my shoulder rigs complete with a mattbox, Video Mic, field monitor, H4N and video light.

The GoPro's strong suit is being small stable little action cameras without any accessories.

Of course now that I said that..I won't mention the case I modded to use 77mm filters or the protest pole I just finished.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Sounds like the Gopro Hero2 is the way to go then, yeah?

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

The Blur Fix mod is also conceptually interesting, in that it allows for sharp underwater video, and attaching rotating ND or other glass filters to the outside of the camera.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

My two cents here: if battery life is important, keep in mind the Replay will run from 1 to 2 hours, depending on the camera and the condition of the battery. No longer than that. And the battery is built-in, so there's no swap-out.

In my opinion, it takes a much better camera to get decent underwater footage. I use a Canon Vixia in an Ikelite housing and the footage so far has been surprisingly good.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Dave, for literally 1/3rd of the cost of either of these two (mighty fine) cameras, you could have one of these Extreme cams, complete with built-in LCD screen:

Crocolis HD - 1080P Full HD Extreme Sports Action Camera (Waterproof)

The bit-rate given over to the audio means it's so noise-riddled that it's only useful for picking up the motorcycle's engine, but the images are spectacularly sharp and the stills are quite remarkably good. The lens flares quite a bit, but what's a bit of flare between friends when the barrel distortion is so eye-widening?

I've yet to dunk mine under water, but I sure intend to.

tom.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Thanks Dean and Tom.

Dean - good point about battery life. Also good to hear about underwater shooting. I'd be doing very basic filmiing, say a foot underwater, so hope the Gopro would be alright.

Tom - you've added another player into the game. I'll check out the Crocolis and see if it meets my needs. So image wise you think it's similar to the Gopro 2? Audio wise it sounds like it's worse. What about physical size? Mounting options (I'd like to mount to a headband to get some POV shots from the bus drivers helpers down here who are always in and out and on top of the buses while they're careening down twisty mountain roads).

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Hi Dave,

I've used the GoPro1 and written it up for a magazine. For its size it's bleedin amazing and from what I've read the GP2 is an improvement in many ways. I'm still not sure if the GP2 shoots sharp footage under water, but the flat front element of the ExtCam suggests it will. It flares into the light more than the GP1 but looks every bit as sharp.

Here's the Action-cam test on the thing that swayed me:

Crocolis HD Extreme Cam - A review - YouTube

It's considerably cheaper than Go Pro and comes with many bits that Go Pro charge extra for. So I have an array of brackets, clips, attachments, chargers (even a car charger) cables and adapters. Spare batteries are 4.99 at 7dayshop, delivered. 3.7v 1800mAh. Not bad. Only thing it needs is a lens cap, but the top off my little WD40 can fits perfectly.

tom.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

So Tom, do you prefer it to your Gopro? Not that money is no object, but I've spent so much on video equipment, computers, HDs, etc, paying $150 extra is not a lot ... as long as the product is that much superior.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Do I prefer it? Difficult one that. At a third of the price the EC is a bit of a bargain but it's let down in the audio dept and it's physically bigger than the GP. You say you would like to film a bit underwater so the GP1 is no good - it needs more money spending on a flat glass housing, For your hidden camera stuff the two cameras will be equal but even using the supplied tie-clip mic the EC's audio is hissy-horrible. Mounting it on a motorbike wont be a size problem, though on a headstrap you might prefer the GP size-wise.

And I hated using the GP without its rear screen - even with its huge wide-angle the guessing as to pov and tilt/yaw felt like working with viewfinder-less film cameras - having to wait ages to see the results. So that's another GP expense, you'll need the little LCD screen.

Another thought. The GP would sell second hand in a flash - the firm's reputation and exposure backs up their product. You might nave a spot more trouble trying to sell the EC - though a quick demonstration would convince the sceptics.

tom.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Thanks Tom. Sounds like both have the positives and negatives. If sound was better I think I'd aim for the Extreme. Wonder if a firmware update would take care of the issues.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

I just received a Replay 1080XD that I ordered to fly on my drone. Video quality looks pretty similar to the GoPro but the camera itself is smaller lighter & more aerodynamic. The ergonomics of operating are better too e.g. it vibrates to indicate power on/off & record start/stop.

My GoPro seems to have acquired a speck of dirt on the sensor or inside the lens. From some Googling around they re prone to this & there are tutorials online showing you how to disassemble the GoPro & clean or replace the lens &/or clean the sensor.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

I love my Replays...the form factor is much easier to deal with and they now have a power adapter so if mounting to a car or motorcycle, you don't have to worry about battery life!

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Robert, is there a way to do remote start/stop recording with the Replay? For me wire would be okay; wireless would be much better.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

I'm new to GoPro having read a lot of glowing praise about these cameras, however I am finding the short-comings very annoying and would like something of a similar size for easy to place and discrete recording (not covert), but with some user control. I realised that this is designed for rugged/dangerous situations but with a bit more user control it could be so much better.
The things that I find make it unsuitable to integrate into my (mostly indoor) event work are:
Not having any direct means of attaching without the use of the housing, I'd rather a tripod socket on the camera so it can be used without a housing. I've found that when enclosed in the perspex bubble it is prone to flaring and internal fogging.
Not having any control over the exposure, it blows out the highlights all to easily. A simple +/- expo compensation or expo' lock would be useful.
Not having any control over the white balance, it is swayed by changes in theatre lights for example. A simple indoor/outdoor or push to set would be helpful.
The bit-rate could do with being higher, 15mbs leaves it looking phone quality when viewed on a large TV.

It seems that much of this is addressed by the Extremecam. Does anyone have an opinion and first hand knowledge on that cam?

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

I find the GoPro image quality a bit underwhelming although if I were a snowboarder or BMS rider I would be more enthused. GoPro's promised ProTune firmware update will apparently deliver 35Mbps recording plus "a Neutral colour profile – offering greater flexibility in colour correction & Log curve encoding – offering more detail in shadows and highlights. Reducing sharpening and noise reduction for improved professional post-production and colour design workflows."

You can change the white balance & exposure on the Replay 1080XD plus some other stuff but only by editing a txt file on the micro-SD card & doing an update.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Posts #9, #11 and #13 show that I have extensive knowledge of the Extreme cam George.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

I picked up a GoPro 2 to see how it performs and discovered it's much better than the GoPro 1.

There's now more detail in the shadows and the contrast is lower. Not as harsh. Color balance is a little better too, without excessive yellow saturation. The sharpening is still excessive with obvious unsharp mask outlines around objects. As I understand, the ProTune software is supposed to improve those characteristics, including turning down the sharpening.

What's really nice is the WiFi remote. In addition to remotely turning the camera on and off, and triggering recording, the wrist remote also provides the camera's battery status and recording time.

Turning the camera on is just a single quick press, and recording can be triggered almost immediately and at distances of a few hundred feet. I can follow a kayak fisherman, for example, and be able to turn the camera on from a chase boat and know that the camera's running or when the battery needs to be changed.

While the WiFi back has its own internal battery, it will feed off the camera's battery when the internal battery is run down.

The wrist remote's battery lasts for several hours, but not enough to cover me for a 10-hour day. I can charge it up in the field so that's a workflow I'll have to sort out.

I picked up a second camera and WiFi remote. Both cameras can be triggered simultaneously off a single remote, but I opted instead to trigger each camera independently, which means wearing two wrist units. For geeky people like me, that sort of jewelry isn't unusual.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Tom, sorry I should have acknowledged that I'd read your fine contributions, what I was trying to get was a wider view regarding the problems I'd had with the Hero2 and how/if the Extremecam dealt with them any better. That is the lack of expo control, lack of white balance lock, and the problem with fogging lens when used in the bubble.
I know that I'd probably find this by scouring the web, and to some extent I have, but I've found that one of the delights of DVinfo is the way that many people with direct experience are happy to relate their opinion on equipment they've used which can often uncover answers to some of the questions I'd not thought of asking, or suggest ways that the shortcomings can be overcome.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

George... regarding the fogging, there are dessicant strips that GoPro sells which solve that problem. If direct exposure to water isn't an issue, then you can use the skeletal back or skeletal housing.

And if you want, you can remove the housing's lens, too.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Thanks Dean. I can see that for your productions these small inexpensive POV cams must be great when you are shooting wild and wet adventure but my needs are less physically demanding; I've called over here from the wedding and event forum. You probably know that some of us less adventurous mortals are using GoPros to grab interesting or difficult points of view during wedding days or theatre productions. These can involve setting the camera and leaving it and hoping for the best, unfortunately so far I've not been able to get the best due to the factors I've mentioned above. I think that either I'm expecting too much from them or I'm too critical or they are not the right tool for my style of work. Still I can always clamp it to my car and hope I pick up some 'interesting' drivers' manoeuvres which I can send to Harry Hill.

Cams left and right are locked off Sony cx550 on auto expo -2 and they match well with my HM700 centre cam but the Go Pro is on a different planet colourwise, over compensating for the blue lighting. A simple ability to lock the white balance would have avoided that.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

George... Yikes! What a difference in color! However, it doesn't look like you have too much trouble with seawater hitting your cameras. :-)

I think the ProTune software is supposed to allow you to lock the white balance. But it's not available yet, unfortunately. We're all waiting.

The problem I face is the housing preventing the camera from hearing anything. I'm looking at ways to use the skeletal housing and sealing it up with something thin but waterproof. Although I'm not using the audio from the cameras, I still could use a decent track to help synchronize them with the other cameras.

Are you using the GoPro 1 or GoPro 2?

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Dean water is definitely not a problem for me, unless it keeps raining here and water rises to stage level.

On the sound note, the GoPro did actually get me out of a situation with this show. I had placed it without the housing so the mic was clear. One of the performers did a solo without a house mic so I had nothing other than the music track going to my audio from the desk and the sound on the two locked-offs was not very good as they were at the back of the auditorium, the little mic on the GoPro picked it up fine if a little dynamically thin, so I may just keep it on for that.

I'll keep an eye out for news on the ProTune, that would be a great help as well as a bit of +/- exposure compensation.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

If you don't need a waterproof action camera then the GoPro is very expensive for the quality of video & facilities it offers. You will get far better video for a fraction of the price using a little point & shoot camera e.g. a Canon Ixus HS 220 costs less than half the price of a GoPro yet has a 5X optical zoom lens & manual control of WB etc

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Dean it's Hero2.

Nigel that makes sense, I think that I was so swayed by some of the footage and enthusiasm posted that in my desire to inject another dimension into my work I turned a blind eye to the Hero's shortcomings, which reading back were all there to be found. I would definitely find something along the lines you've suggested equally easy to work with as the Go Pro with potential a more useful outcome. The impact of the signature 'fish eye' or ultra-wide effects of the GoPro is only useful in very small doses anyway.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

One problem with the Ixus... I have an Ixus 500, and it does pretty good HD video and reasonable sound (video can be 1280x720 or 1920x1080). But it only records for about 12 minutes, or whatever the 4GB file limit is. If you lower the settings, you might get longer.

I'm not sure if that applies to the Ixus recommended above, but George mightn't want to have to keep popping down to the stage every 10 minutes to restart the camera!

I can't help but wonder if a simple £300 handycam (with a WA adapter if needed) might be a good idea for things like this.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

That is something that I had forgotten but as a workaround CHDK (that ancient ancestor of Magic Lantern for the Canon DSLRs) does have a facility for running a script that will restart recording once the 4GB limit is reached Continuous Video Scripts - CHDK Wiki

That is indeed a separate discussion that is already ongoing over on another sub-forum http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/wedding-...handicams.html

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Nigel,

Wow, that's neat, I didn't realise you could mod the little Canons as well! Thanks very much for the link.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Hi Mike.

I'm already doing that, the two at the side are Sony Cx550s. The centre stage one is a bit more difficult to place as even a handycam needs a tripod and although small is noticeable where as the hero can sit under the stage mic or next to a footlight without any appreciable intrusion or drawing any attention to itself. In fact even the theatre technician didn't realised that I place it or even what it was when I pointed it out to him. That and the place-and-forget battery and long period recording were what drew me to the GoPro.

I hadn't considered that PAS cameras had the short record time so they are out as even a brief stop and re-start would play havoc with my post work as I just like one sync point and I'm away, I wouldn't want to be re-syncing every 12 minutes.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Neither would I which is why I would just let the software do it for me. FCP X does a good job all by itself but for other NLEs then PluralEyes works like magic.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Nigel, are you using those Canon cameras in long form recordings?

As for Plural Eyes, I find it too long winded and convoluted to use with Premiere (my system). I usually have just one sync point (well one for each half) for a theatre show which I can do using an audio spike across four cameras almost as quickly as it takes to open the Prem project in Plural eyes, never mind the time it takes to sync it nd then import the synced folder. I believe in other NLE and now CS6 it is integrated plugin which I guess is more streamlined in operation.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

No, I just offered the Ixus HS 220 as an option as my wife has an earlier model (HS110) that shoots very decent 720p video in a body that's about the size of a box of Swan Vestas. The HS220 shoots 1080p & I have considered buying a couple to mount on gorilla pods.
For the real time portions of wedding coverage (ceremony & speeches) we just dump all the footage on the Premiere timeline then set PluralEyes doing its thing grab a cup of tea then open up the new sequence. It's not as slick as FCP X but is pretty quick & simple.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Hi Nigel, even for weddings, or at least the ceremony/speeches I keep all cameras running, a bit more cutting in the edit but again only need to sync once. I've only used Pluraleyes a few times on the 30 day trial so I'm not very familiar with it but when I did use it it split the audio into two mono tracks doubling up the audio lines when I opened the new timeline. Do you know if that's usual when exporting/importing back to Premiere?

I realise I'm taking this away from the GoPro discussion, I should look for the Pluraleyes thread.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

I don't think so. That would be a useful thing for me too as I mount these in aircraft. Some of the locations are a pain to get to and starting several cameras under the pressure of a flight going up sucks!

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Same here, and I don't want the cameras running for a two hour flight to the shoot. Seems there's no perfect camera; I may stick with GoPro and Wi-Fi. I swap out the lenses on GoPro to get away from the fish eye look, which can be a pain, but this may be my best bet.

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

Hey George

Thanks for the PM.

Seriously I wouldn't even think about using a GoPro in a theatre situation so you are very brave...I would, as already suggested, wait for the new firmware which will at least address your bitrate issue and probably a lot more. I don't even use mine at receptions!! only in fairly well lit Churches and outdoor ceremonies ... I would say that it's not designed to handle the high contrasty situation that you find in theatres!!

Chris

Re: Gopro Hero2 or Replay 1080XD for General Use?
 

What about making a "low boy" mount with a small plate, a bolt and a small ball mount? It might end up two inches high, quite unobtrusive.