choppy film with my gopro?? please help.

[Travis B]

i am shooting film with a gopro and have went from the cheapest to the most expensive highest speed sd card( started with a c4 8G now c10 90mb/s UHS speed class 1 3D 16G) and am still getting choppy film?? could this possibly have anything to do with my laptop when i am trying to veiw it or am i doing something wrong?im trying to shoot HD video with my gopro hero camera,, i realize this isnt the camera of choice for pro photoraphers,, but im just looking to catch some footage of what i see and multi purpose with this camera.I have buddies with the same camera and thier film is smooth as butter,what am i doing wrong?

 

[fdog]

Yes, it certainly can be your laptop. What supports this is that you (if I read you correctly) have always had issues with playback of the video. You might try the following:

*While playing back video, hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, and from the Task Manager, select Performance. Check the CPU usage, if it's above 90%, you have inadequate computer resources. If memory is above 80%, same thing.

*Shoot in R1, this has the smallest data demands. Choppy video here could be either from a slow SD card, or computer playback.

*To further determine if it's computer, try playback with the VLC Media Player. This has the smallest footprint & smallest resource demands of any player I've seen yet - and it's free.

*If none of these help (notice how everything is centered around the computer?) then it's possible that the SD card is the problem. The GoPro HD is notoriously picky about the cards it will and will not work with. I have tried a PNY Optima C4 4 GB card that simply wouldn't work in the GoPro - but, it worked in everything else. I know for a fact the Sandisk Ultra II 4 GB and the Sandisk Ultra 16 GB SDHC cards do work.

Hope this helps!


All the best, James

 

[Travis B]

Thank you very much for a point in the right direction James. i will give this a shot when and see where i am,, When i shot film in R1 it turned out fine,, but shooting in R5 isnt working at all.

 

[Scubasw]

Try using the RGB cable that came with your Go-Pro camera to connect the camera itself directly to an HD television and play the video back there. That should narrow it down to the card speed. If it plays fine that way then it narrows it down to the playback device/laptop. I find that many of my videos are a litle choppy on my laptop due to processor speed and video chip limitations, but my more powerful desktop with a graphics card works perfectly.