Hero8 Black Choppy Playback

[ReefHound]

A couple more things to make your brain hurt. Gopro uses a custom Cineform codec that may not be installed on your system. Also, h.264 used to be the standard for MP4 and was universally supported. Then h.265 (HEVC) was brought in for higher res higher frame rate videos and it is not as well supported. Gopro determines the format based on resolution and frame rate. Perhaps that is what is causing the native Gopro files to stutter? It could be they are h.265 and your BluRay doesn't support it but MM transcodes it to h.264.

 

[JamesBon92007]

It says the GoPro is set for h.264 so I thought I was OK for that anyway. That was probably the first issue I came across when I began troubleshooting. My memory isn't what it used to be but it seems like whenever I had missing codecs in the past, a window would pop up and lead me to Microsoft.com where I could get the needed codecs. I don't remember exactly what I did on this occasion but I did go looking for the codec but I think I determined I already had the h.264 so I probably stopped there. Maybe I need to take another look. I did try playing the files on other, newer, more powerful computers so is it unlikely that none of them are capable of playing the GoPro files? Two of them are less than two years old and belong to a friend who does not skimp when buying computers. I did come to the conclusion that not all MP4 files are the same, so that's something.

 

[JamesBon92007]

I just compiled another home video using Windows Movie Maker (Win 7 version) and it plays back just fine so I would go so far as to say it's reliable. One thing I noticed was that while shooting with the stabilization "Boost" turned on in 1080p I was losing detail in the highlights and shadows, so I would say don't use it unless you really need it. I did some jumping up and down and diving into the pool and I think the stablilization is very impressive.

One thing that became apparent on iMovie was if you stabilize you can choose the per centage of the effect. What it seems to do is zoom in so it appears less shaky, which is not quite the same thing as what the GoPro does. And since it's zooming in it becomes pixilated and loses definition. The Roll and Shutter feature focuses on your subject and keeps it centered so you end up with black edges that keep changing, but it does a great job of smoothing things out. I figure that there is a fine balance between the Roll and Shutter and zooming in to remove the black edges, it's just gonna take a lot of tries to find the sweet spot. Some better instructions would be very helpful.

Meanwhile, I've been looking at ads for Smart TVs and it looks like I'll need to take my SSD along with me to Best Buy or someplace and stick it in and see if it can read it. You'd think I was the first person to ever try it judging from the lack of info on the subject. OTOH it's easy to find info for a External Hard Drive that plugs into the back of whatever device.

 

[GJC]

Your SSD requires power supplied from the USB port to operate. USB memory sticks do not require power from the USB port. Most (or maybe all?) smart TVs do not supply power to their USB ports, so you might not find a TV that will power your SSD.

Try to find a knowledgeable salesperson at Best Buy that can tell you if there are any TVs that power their USB ports.

 

[JamesBon92007]

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

I read that Windows 10 will format a SSD drive using Fat32 so I borrowed a laptop and took a look. I could not find any Fat32 option so I followed another set of instructions that I'd found and picked NTFS and selected 32K for the allocation (?) units. That worked! I can now plug the SSD drive into my Blu-Ray and watch the GoPro videos! Also, and this probably should have been obvious, it works if I remove the SD card from the camera, put it in a USB SD Card Reader adaptor! Not only that, but for some unknown reason, the Blu-Ray decided it would connect to the home network (I had tried before, but no luck) and I can access some of the files on my desktop computer. Now I need to figure out how to get it to access the underwater video files. The folder they are in is "shared" so maybe there is a network setting I need to find. I also was accessing my DirecTV reciever but would not play back the movies on the hard drive (wrong format or something). Not that there is any point to doing that, but that might be an indication that I could play back the files from my computer

@GJC Thanks for that valuable little piece of info! I read that Samsung TVs (at least some of them) support ExFat formatting but that doesn't address the power supply issue. I have no idea if some USB memory sticks use ExFat but I know that some HDDs do, so maybe it will work.

Now to try shooting at a higher resolution and see if the Blu-Ray will play that back! I also have a Samsung tablet on it's way so we'll see how that goes. They seem to have mainly five star and one star reviews--people either love them or hate them. It would be nice not to have to haul around my vintage Compaq laptop, power supply, keyboard, external speakers, and mouse. I assume the tablet comes with some kind of video player.

Has anyone recently contacted GoPro customer support? My son-in-law is considering getting a Hero8 or hero9 which currently come with a subscription (free broken camera replacement) but I was unable to contact them so I'm wondering if the subscription is worth anything or not.