Harry's GPS Suite Forum

Or, to put it another way, is the Gopro Hero4 more trouble than it's worth? Harry has a warning in his document on video recording that the Hero4 can very very tricky to configure as HLT's primary video device, and also can be challenging to keep it that way. It took me a solid hour on the phone with a rep from Gopro to be able to run on my Hero4 from within the Gopro app on my ipad mini2, even though it had worked in the past. Once we got this working, HLT finally recognizes my Hero4 as the primary video recording device - but for how long, I wonder?

Anybody else have similarly frustrating experiences with the Hero4? Tomorrow is my first track session with my set-up, which is an ipad mini mounted on a RAM mount in my Porsche 968 just below the level of the top of the dash, running HLT with an XGPS160, and the Hero4 mounted to the roll bar. If it goes back to not recognizing the Hero4, I'm tempted to return it in exchange for a Hero3, but would first like to hear some other peoples' impressions. Thanks very much.

Pros and cons from my point of view. Connection making is super complicated as the HERO4 mixes WiFi and BTLE plus a complicated pairing mechanism for their cam. It is over engineered and not fully revealed ton3rd parties. In the other hand, the 4 has better processing capabilities and at least allows to do some type of video browsing and downloading from within LapTimer. Same issues with connection making, but the HERO3 is worse. In terms of video quality - differences are mainly in the 4K / higher fps ranges. LapTimer is planned to get 4K support in v20.

- Harry

Out of curiosity, is there another camera that works better with Laptimer? The place I got my Hero4 has a very generous return/exchange policy, and I will do anything to reduce my frustration level at this point. Thanks.

It seems wireless connections to actions cams are never easy to manage. It is a mobile wireless network with low power devices. That's simply a difficult scenario. Besides Sony and GoPro I'm not aware of cams providing a 3rd party interface. Operating the cam manually defers complexity to the later overlay synchronisation, so again pros and cons. I'd personally would keep the HERO4. I have good hope we can control it through Bluetooth LE instead of WiFi some time.

- Harry

Hero4's Wifi is way faster than Hero3 and Hero3+, so downloads to the phone are much quicker.

How about creating a desktop app? Video file management is truly a headache and the overlay process is comically slow. While neither of these are necessarily the app's fault - let the power users have the option of doing all this on a desktop/laptop.

sn0wcr4sh3d wrote:How about creating a desktop app? Video file management is truly a headache and the overlay process is comically slow. While neither of these are necessarily the app's fault - let the power users have the option of doing all this on a desktop/laptop.

There is a discussion in the Feature Request forum. I planned to have it available but needed to shift it due to other priorities. I will never provide a Windows solution by the way, it will be MacOSX. File management will not go away with a PC either, and speed depends on the availability of hardware accelerated video encoding (at least 80%). This means an iOS device will mostly overlay as fast or faster than a desktop solution. Android overlays are slow because this hardware feature has not been available since Android 4.3 to apps and is not well implemented for the largest share of today's smartphones. I assume this will change over time.

- Harry

Won't file management go away because I no longer have to worry about getting the GoPro video onto the cell phone? I just have to get the video and the overlay info onto the PC and do my processing there.

This may also open up opportunities to address the issue when there's a large variance between the video length and overlay length. The current tools to sync overlay-to-video on the app are not very intuitive, there's probably a better way with a bigger screen and ability to preview both at the same time.

Harry wrote:

sn0wcr4sh3d wrote:How about creating a desktop app? Video file management is truly a headache and the overlay process is comically slow. While neither of these are necessarily the app's fault - let the power users have the option of doing all this on a desktop/laptop.

There is a discussion in the Feature Request forum. I planned to have it available but needed to shift it due to other priorities. I will never provide a Windows solution by the way, it will be MacOSX. File management will not go away with a PC either, and speed depends on the availability of hardware accelerated video encoding (at least 80%). This means an iOS device will mostly overlay as fast or faster than a desktop solution. Android overlays are slow because this hardware feature has not been available since Android 4.3 to apps and is not well implemented for the largest share of today's smartphones. I assume this will change over time.

- Harry