So I got a GoPro. Now what?

[thatoneguy]

The lovely Mrs. Thatoneguy got me a GoPro Hero 3+ Silver thingy for Christmas. Yay! Any GoPro users here who can provide any tips of what accessories will be useful, or other ideas for how to get the most out of it?

It will mostly be used for video & stills of bass fishing with me, my boys, me and Meat Run, etc. Any and all advice is appreciated.

Merry Christmas.

[skocsuhs]

Need a 64GB Sandisk class 10 card, 32GB will only get you half a day.

Get some Digipower Wall Chargers (they come with a battery) get a few chargers.

For a full day recording need around 5/6 extra batteries. only get about 1.5hrs of recording per battery filming in HD.

Use the 5 minute looping in the camera's setting or your files will be huge to upload.

You can do an image capture using google's free picasa3 photo editing software for stills. can also use picasa3 to upload pics directly to picasaweb if you use that as a photohost...

with a PC you can use Movie Maker for simple editing that comes with windows. Gopro has some software to download also.

You can download free software that has a trial period like Corel video studio to play around with.

[leech~~]

One thing I would suggest to do is to start looking for a lot of creative ways to mount it no matter what you are using it for. It's kind of interesting that you can mount these on a helmet and go busting through the woods on a dirt bike or snowmobile and the videos will come out pretty nice. But, you try and hand hold these little small things and your videos will come out all shaky!

For Turkey hunting I have a nice small tripod that works pretty well.

[thatoneguy]

Great stuff guys - thank you. Keep the ideas coming!

[skocsuhs]

if you don't use the loop deal, after a fish shut the camera off then turn it back on. so when your going through your files later its easier to find your catches since they'll be at the end.

[slopmaster]

If your on the boat get a suction cup mount. I have a fiberglass boat and there are a lot of different places to mount it, the windshield being my favorite. I also have the curved adhesive mount on my boat motor which works well. The shot just looks a bit far away whereas the suction cup on the windshield is up and personal.

I usually record until I catch a fish and then shut it off as skocsuh said. After about 8-10 minutes without catching a fish I will start a new video so they don't get to long. Downloading videos longer than 10 minutes onto your computer takes a looong time.

They also have the new jaws flex clamp that looks interesting. I personally don't know anyone who has used it, but if it works well it would be very versatile.

Here are 2 different videos I took this year to show the difference of the suction cup on the windshield and an adhesive mount on the boat motor. PS: If you don't like dubstep (music) mute the first video. Also make sure you click on 720 or 1080, the videos are much clearer.

[live4chrome]

The head straps are nice. It's what I used in ak this summer. The chest straps get a lot of footage of your hands/arms

[smalliehunter]

Tie a float onto the suction cup mount or tie it off to your boat. Had one fall off my boat in 16 feet of water. Had 3 guys try diving for it with no luck. 3 years of pictures and videos. I learned the hard way to back everything up. I bought a computer and after every outing I save everything..

[polarsusd81]

I got one too, and several mounts to go with it. Got a chest mount, grab bag of mounts, wasabi batteries and charger, and ordered up a tripod mount, seatpost mount, and a frame kit for plugged in recording. The frame kit was only 11 bucks on amazon today, marked down from 40 so I added it to the order.

Got it Friday night and both Saturday and Sunday mornings, woke up and couldn't go back to sleep imagining several cool shot sequences with it for both fishing in the boat and out on the ice. My wife was worried that I had lost interest in the GoPro cameras since I stopped talking about them about 3 months ago. I told her not to worry, one of the most exciting gifts I have received in a long time.

[thatoneguy]

Awesome ideas. I'll be getting a tripod mount and head straps for sure, and I can think of a couple good places on the boat where the clamp mount would be good.

The only thing I don't have is a memory card, but that should be here tomorrow or Saturday courtesy of Amazon. Can't wait to test it out!

[serpent]

I got one for xmas this year too. I got the lcd touch bacpac with it too and that thing is awesome.

[skocsuhs]

Keep in mind having the wifi on and/or LCD screen attached the gopro will eat up batteries even faster.

[skocsuhs]

another thing, if you have an old slow puter. uploading and editing is going to be painful. usually the software and editing issues you may run into will be due to your computer being inadequate.

ideally you want a pc or mac with the fastest processing power. like one with an i7 processor.

i'd also suggest if you going to store vids to get a separate external hard drive in the TB/terabyte range. each individual gopro file will be in GB's. if you sit and save them all on your computer, your going to eat that HD up.

[thatoneguy]

My PC won't be an issue. Me and my boys are gamer nerds so we have plenty of processing power and a powerhouse video card the PC has a 2 TB hard drive, but I think I may get a separate hard drive for storage, just for the sake of having all the pics and video all in one place.

[bucketmouth64]

I just bought a vivitar action camera of all places at Kohl's at half price($49.99). I had kohl's cash along with a 20% coupon so it didn't cost me anything.

[Meat-Run]

We used the GP on our helmets sledding and it gets to shaky.

MR

[turn_in_poachers]

Good tips guys. I also got one from the Mrs. and shot a couple clips last week.

http://youtu.be/eykHFi0td3k

I got the chest mount. It's ok, although I notice my hands are pretty ugly from the view. I'm going to buy a head strap and try it out. Also need to work on the editing part. What program do you guys use to edit your videos?

[skocsuhs]

Did you download the cineform studio software from gopro, start with that. Also whatever program you use, save the video to your computer first then upload with Youtubes uploader. The vids seem better this way for whatever reason vs uploading directly from the video editing software.

The chestmount/harness imo is garbage for fishing. Besides your hands in the way, when you set the hook and are fighting the fish your upper body with turn then your target is all out of frame.

A hat cam can be made quite easily and works well if you can be conscious of head movement and try to minimize that as much as possible.

[Meat-Run]

I have a buddy who mounts his on his windshield and a separate pole that he can spin to face toward front or back of boat works pretty good too.

MR

[leech~~]

Dubbing music into videos is nice.

But, you miss all the "Whao, um, nice one, holy sht, she's smoken line" play-by-play.

[Connan]

There a billion different ways to mount them. I got the bike handlebar mount attachment and found it works great for a bunch of different stuff, not just on a handlebar. I attached it to my rear-view mirror and it works great as a dash camera. I don't drive without it recording now. In fact recently I was hit by some drunk driver and he never even stopped. I followed him and got him and his plate number on camera and submitted it to the police.