Strummervision! - Fun With GoPro

Finally got my new GoPro camera and shot some quick footage the other day.  Didn't spend a lot of time planning things, just set up a tripod and shot for not even 2 minutes.  Light was terrible and snow is always challenging.  Spent more time with the post editing software than I did shooting video but the preliminary results are pretty good.

Strummervision - Fun with GoPro from colliebrains on Vimeo.


The camera has an extra wide angle setting and that's what I used here because it's the default but the last clip is the only one showing the wide angle.  GoPro's editing software has a zoom/crop function and I used it on all the other clips.  The first and last clips are the only ones not edited except for slo-mo (and zoom/crop on the first clip).  I played around with different settings on all the other clips and you can see the difference in the color of the snow, sharpness, etc.  The original footage was atrocious as far as the lighting goes, couldn't see the expression on Strummer's face at all.  It's amazing how much it improved with some quick, simple editing.  I'm hoping this means the end of craptastic video from now on.

The camera is mostly meant to be a hands free camera for shooting action footage like while mountain biking, skiing, etc. and I can use it underwater to film myself swimming so it'll have a lot more use to me than agility.  Plus the good low light capability, super wide angle lens and remote control should make it easy for me to film myself at trials without having to pester other people to film me or leaving my camera running and having tons of footage to edit.  Looking forward to seeing how it'll work.

This thing is like a Barbie doll for grown ups because there are zillions of accessories you can buy for this thing.  All manner of mounts and hooks and clips and whatnot.  Very clever marketing.  I've got a couple few mounts on order, didn't go too crazy and found some made by companies other than GoPro at a big cost savings and they still got good reviews.  Not a big fan of having to figure out all this Stuff to buy but I think the camera's going to be a lot of fun and I have a few ideas for some fun video projects.

Camcorder Recommendations?

We had a fun weekend of agility and I'll post about that later but for now I have a more pressing issue. My JVC miniDV camcorder is at least 8 years old, maybe older I can't remember exactly when I got it, and has been acting flaky lately. After Sunday's trial I came home and tried to upload the footage I shot and the camera locked up completely with an EO4 error message. I did some internet research and found that JVC cameras are rife with this problem, whatever it is, and it seems amazing that mine lasted as long as it did based on the experiences of others. Someone was even starting a class action lawsuit because JVC apparently has known about the problem for years and done nothing about it. Not sure how the suit turned out but I did find 9 suggestions for getting the camera to work again. I tried 8 of them to no avail (didn't have a can of compressed air at home to try #9) then came up with my own idea of let's bang the camera on the ground and voila it worked like magic, camera is now up and running. However it sounds a bit sickly and I don't trust it to run for much longer so I'm in the market for a new camera. I thought I'd replace it with another miniDV and found this Canon camera but after some research found that miniDV is supposedly a dying format and I don't want to buy something that shortly will be obsolete. My next choice is a flash drive but then I can't play back my miniDV tapes that I already have and have to hope that my old JVC holds out long enough to transfer the tape to DVD's to be archived.

I've tried doing some internet research but I don't have a clue and the info. I'm getting is confusing. Some say miniDVD is best, others say it is outdated and many of the answers are gibberish to me, for example:

There is no advantage to tape anymore. If you need high capacity at cheap cost, you can get a HDD based camera.

The codecs used for HD cameras on Tape are generally well past their "use by" date, and don't produce better quality images than modern codecs, even at about twice the bitrate (Which also translates to twice the storage and performance hit while editing-- for no quality benefit.)

The question now is Flash or Hard Drive.

Uh, yeah, I don't speak that particular dialect of geek so maybe someone out in agility land can translate and/or recommend something. I don't need anything fancy, looking to spend $250-$350 max.

I don't think those cheapo HD cameras are a good choice for me because my laptop is oldish (at least 5-6 years old I think) and I don't think it can handle the high def conversions and I'm not sure how to check.