I finally managed to get this video edited and posted. This video was shot using a GoPro Fusion mounted on the front of the right float. The video first had to be rendered into a 360 video using the GoPro Fusion studio. Then the 360 footage was imported into Adobe Premier Pro. This allowed me to add pans, zooms and scans (Fusion Studio only allows you to have static shots). I pulled the gauge information from the original GoPro footage using Race Render (the fusion has GPS built in which is encoded into the front facing camera feed). This was originally shot at 5K @ 30FPS. I was surprised not to see any jello effect using this low frame rate.



If anyone has any questions regarding shooting or editing with the Fusion, feel free to drop me a line, I'm still discovering what this camera can do but so far, I'm very pleased with what I'm seeing.

UPDATE**There seems to be an issue with linking this video. I'm pasting the direct link below to the video so it can be viewed on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvIMojEbTWc

video won't play for me

It's posting an error message for me; I'm sad now, its winter and I need a good float flying fix !!!!!

Mapleflt wrote:It's posting an error message for me; I'm sad now, its winter and I need a good float flying fix !!!!!

albravo wrote:video won't play for me

Don't know what the issue is, have tried a few different ways to post this thing but have now just included the direct link. Hopefully you can get your fix that way!

Ahhhhhh, that worked I like very muuuch !!!!!!!!

Nice job. That's a very unique perspective.

gdflys wrote:Nice job. That's a very unique perspective.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm discovering a few things as I edit. Such as it's great to be able to pan around, zoom in and zoom out "after the fact". However too much constant movement is a little distracting, so sometimes some fixed points of view help.

Also shooting with a 360 degree camera offers a lot of advantages, such as not needing to mount 3 different camera's just to get the one shot you want.

Cool video.

If you have the luxury of using a desktop machine to hover over the "youtube" button in the editor, you would see this:

"Insert the unique identifier code of the YouTube video that appears after the "v=" part of the URL: [youtube]abc123[/youtube]"

But on tablets and phones that's just not going to be seen, I know. Just trim the unique Youtube ID off the end of the URL, paste between the BBcode tags.

Zzz wrote:Cool video.

If you have the luxury of using a desktop machine to hover over the "youtube" button in the editor, you would see this:

"Insert the unique identifier code of the YouTube video that appears after the "v=" part of the URL:

"

But on tablets and phones that's just not going to be seen, I know. Just trim the unique Youtube ID off the end of the URL, paste between the BBcode tags.

Thank you for that! I had just read how to properly post the video on the help section of the forum, went back and noticed you had corrected it for me.

Next learning curve is color grading and making better titles.

Very cool video.

Whenever I watch these cool videos I think I should mount a camera but if it has taken me two years to adopt a camera it would probably take me a decade to actually edit any footage into anything worth watching.

Have you tried a strut mount? From the front of the float I really like the perspective when looking back at the plane but when looking forward I find it hard to pick up altitude cues. I'd be interested to watch a similar compilation from a different place on the plane.

albravo wrote:Very cool video.

Whenever I watch these cool videos I think I should mount a camera but if it has taken me two years to adopt a camera it would probably take me a decade to actually edit any footage into anything worth watching.

Have you tried a strut mount? From the front of the float I really like the perspective when looking back at the plane but when looking forward I find it hard to pick up altitude cues. I'd be interested to watch a similar compilation from a different place on the plane.

Video editors are actually getting very easy to use I find. Some of them offer drag and drop filters to give the footage that polished look while others (like the GoPro Quik app) will actually make the entire video for you. Wonder if you could even do a tit for tat, contact some video editing board, tell them you'll supply plane flight footage to them and in return they edit it to make it look good. You get a nice snazzy clip, they get something they can use for their portfolio.

I actually have some video I shot from two GoPro Fusions mounted on the tie downs of each wing. It was my first footage test so it was shot on an overcast day. I shot some nicer footage earlier this week but haven't had time to render it yet. However as a test footage flight, I was pretty happy with what I came up with.

So are you working on your Private here in the area? Doing some float dual in Alaska is an awesome way to chip away at it.

Zzz wrote:So are you working on your Private here in the area? Doing some float dual in Alaska is an awesome way to chip away at it.

The Alaska video was the closest I have had to an actual flight lesson. My wife just bought me a pilot log book so it would seem that getting my private is on the cards alright. It makes sense to get it (since we have the plane) but I just need to find the time to fit it in. Hopefully for 2019 I can get myself more organized and come up with a workable schedule. I'm just having fun with the video editing and I really want to devote some time to that too. Right now there just aren't enough days in the week!

I like the perspective from the wing.

I might have to give that a shot this year. All ten or twelve of my Instagram followers would dig it.

Well good luck with the video, make sure you post a link. There's two more places I'd love to mount a fusion. One on the top of the tail of the plane (not sure there's a good mounting system for that) and one underneath the plane. However want to very closely examine the mounting options for both of those, ya know, safety first!

Nicely done.

I love that perspective.
I'm also impressed of the video quality.
No jello, too!

ZPilot wrote:Nicely done.

I love that perspective.
I'm also impressed of the video quality.
No jello, too!

Aye the lack of Jello surprised me too since it was shot at 30fps. The stabilization software seems to be almost supernatural in it's ability to get rid of any shaking etc. However the very last shot, I did have to cut out the take off as I think the mount finally may have loosened up. This didn't result in jello but more like shakiness in the very edges of the FOV.

Now wondering if there's any very thin plastic films that could act as an ND filter to put over the lenses. All about experimenting!

Great video. Very cool how you can choose the view that you see during playback. We are planning to do some flying next year with the same people and would like to record the flights. I have a few questions if you don't mind.

1) Is this all MAC compatible ?

2) Are the video file sizes huge since you're using two cameras in one housing ?

3) What do you really like about this outfit ?

4) Anything you don't like about the camera or software ?

Thanks.

Just a few not so quick answers to the questions about this video, unfortunately there is no simple quick answer!

1) Is this all MAC compatible ?
Yes.... However the video you saw was created using a paid version of Adobe Premier Pro, so there is a cost involved. You also need a pretty powerful MAC or Windows PC to be able to stitch and then edit the video. You also need a bit of video editing knowledge to be able to work with the footage.

The good news is that GoPro have released new software for the Mac that allows you to reframe (pan, zoom, tilt) your 360 footage for free that works with both the GoPro Fusion and the newer version of the camera the GoPro Max.

2) Are the video file sizes huge since you're using two cameras in one housing ?
With the GoPro Fusion, it is indeed two camera's in one housing, so you have files for the Front Camera and files for the Back Camera and each has it's own SD card. The file sizes for each camera are the same as a regular GoPro, there's just twice as many of them. However during the "stitching" process (joining the back and front camera footage into a single 360 spherical video) that increases the size of the files vastly as they are uncompressed video editing standard files. To give you an idea of the file sizes you would be dealing with:
Entire Flight Time 1Hr 35Mins
Entire File Size: 139GB
Stitched File Size: 321GB (and this could have been larger if I had exported in ProRes)
Time to stitch: (Depends on how powerful a system you have, but the average could be 2 mins per 1 minute of footage).
Edited File Size: 1.36GB

The newer GoPro Max only uses a single SD card and does it's stitching in Camera. So this is a huge workflow time savings, the downside is the bitrate is nearly 30% lower than the Fusion and for video editing on a Mac, you still need to convert the files for use with a video editor and this could take quite a bit of time.

3) What do you really like about this outfit ?
The ability to Pan, Zoom, Tilt the footage in post production. This is far better than using a fixed view camera. Have you ever been flying and seen something out of the corner of your eye and thought "I hope I caught that on camera" only to find out later it was JUST out of view of the camera lens? Well not a problem with a 360 Camera as you can turn the view around later on. Before shooting in 360, I had tried buying a 3 camera mount that attached to a wing strut. So basically to get certain shots, I would have had to use 3 different camera's, work with 3 different video tracks and this would have been 3 times the work. Now I can use a single camera and make it look like I have a multiple camera setup. Also the stabilization when shooting in 360 is fantastic. With the GoPro Max it's done in camera, with the GoPro Fusion it's done during the stitching process. Either way, it's amazingly smooth stabilization. All the footage you saw was shot at 30FPS. if you did that with a standard GoPro you'd see nothing but Jello in the footage. Not so with the GoPro Fusion.
GoPro's mobile app can also be used to edit short small clips very quickly if you have a compatible phone. The app used to be horrible however this year they really did put a lot of effort into updating the app and making sure 360 video was supported on it and I have to say, it's now pretty darned good and it just keeps getting better. So they really made some good choices by concentrating on that.
GoPro also recently updated their VR plugin for Adobe Premier Pro. Good news is that it's fantastic and has some amazingly useful and powerful bells and whistles while being even simpler to use.


4) Anything you don't like about the camera or software ?
Oh yes, shooting 360 has it's disadvantages. Overall, it's a much lower resolution than shooting with a standard GoPro. When you think about it, with a standard GoPro, you have a much reduced FOV that's being filmed in 4K. With the GoPro Fusion and GoPro Max you're shooting in higher quality (6K reduced down to 5.6K once stitched) but that covers an entire 360 degree sphere. So the same FOV as a standard GoPro could actually end up being less than 1080P. This means that the 360 footage is great for up close shots, but shots of the horizon or anything far away isn't going to look as clear or sharp.

It takes a lot of time to get the footage prepared with the Fusion due to the fact that stitching and stabilization needs to be done on your PC or Mac before you can edit the footage. So you need a lot of hard drive space, a very powerful PC or Mac and spare time. I found that with large file sizes like this it was best to prep the footage and let it stitch overnight so it was ready the following day.

Currently the best way to work with 360 footage is to get and Adobe Subscription so you can use their video editing software which allows for 360 editing. This will set you back a minimum of $24 per month. So it's an ongoing cost. There are alternatives out there, but the reliability and quality isn't there yet. GoPro does have free software for the Mac and there is a PC version being worked on, but I haven't used either yet so I can't comment on they work or what the quality is like, but I'm guessing it will be as basic as their mobile app.

When working with the footage and editing it, you still need a pretty powerful system, you also need a very fast large hard drive. Working from your primary drive is always best as external USB drives tend to be a lot slower than people think. Their access times can be much slower, they could also have built in sleep functions to preserve their durability and this all affects working with your footage.

If you want gauges on your footage that's another cost. Currently only the GoPro app has the ability to add gauges to 360 footage. So if you want gauges on your 360 footage on the Mac or PC, you need to use another program to create them and it's a bit of a chore to insert them into your footage.

The new Plugin that GoPro released for Adobe Premier Pro only works with Premier Pro 2019. Adobe recently upgraded their editing software to a 2020 version and it's caused issues with the plug in. So GoPro is working on an update but until it's ready you need to edit with the older version of Premier Pro (which is an issue but it isn't a huge issue).



So I hope that answers your questions. I know it was a bit of a slog but just wanted to make sure that you have all the relevant info. If you have any further questions or need anything more in depth, feel free to ask. My overall thoughts are that with shooting 360, you get back exactly what you invest into it. The more you invest (money and time) the better the return.

Great Videos. Both the Float Plane and the Wing Strut. You have peaked my interest in this Camera. Im using a Hero4 and it is time to upgrade. I do have Premiere Pro (paid) and a good PC for editing.

Need to sell off all my Camera Gear Im not using and buy some new Camera Gear . I have a couple of DJI Inspires collecting dust