What determines video recording quality?

SixPapaCharlie

SixPapaCharlie

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I have a handful of cheap knock off action cams.
They are 4k, 1080p, etc but the video quality is crap.

Funny they get good reviews.
The GoPro quality is a million times better but what is it that makes the video look good / bad?

Here is some sample video from a flight today
The 1st 30 seconds was recorded at 4k @30 FPS. (look at the buildings. They look cartoon)
The 2nd 30 seconds was recorded at 720P and 60 FPS. (crap quality)
The 3rd 30 seconds was 2.7k w/ an actual goPro. (nice quality)

So obviously "4k" is meaningless. What setting, stat, feature tells you it will be decent quality recording?

 
try 60fps. even with my old chitty gopro I have it set to 720 but 60fps and that seems to be a good compromise between quality and battery life. can't speak for the el cheapo knockoffs. I was gonna try a new camera angle today but the flight was too short to get into it.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I have a handful of cheap knock off action cams.
They are 4k, 1080p, etc but the video quality is crap.

Funny they get good reviews.
The GoPro quality is a million times better but what is it that makes the video look good / bad?
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I'm just getting into the video thing so take all this for what it's worth. I think the answer is that gopro has really figured out their built in stabilization. I think that is one of the keys to make their action videos look great.

All I have tried is the two gopro's I've bought and posted both videos here in other threads. The first video I made was my BFR where I used 1080 60fps. It overloaded my editing with all those frames. On the most recent video I used 1080 30 fps and I like how it turned out. @eman1200 is probably right about 720/60. I haven't tried that setting.

I do like the angles you used on your test. As you already figured out, the gopro was night and day different than the other two.
 
Dunno nuttin bout picture quality. Usual Inappropriate POA negative commentary required. First off when are you going to wax your plane? The wings looked dull.
 
The difference in your samples is not optics. Seem to be some processing artifacts. Likely the the cheaper cameras have lower quality sensors and cheap electronics, but some of it may also be in your editing, especially when converting between framerates and formats. Also, 720p and 4k have the same aspect ratio, 2.7k doesn't. So there's stretching or squeezing going on when you combine them all in one video. To really test, you'd need to mount three cameras and film in the same lighting. Then view side-by-side at their native framerate and resolution.
 
Radar Contact said:
I'm just getting into the video thing so take all this for what it's worth. I think the answer is that gopro has really figured out their built in stabilization. I think that is one of the keys to make their action videos look great.

All I have tried is the two gopro's I've bought and posted both videos here in other threads. The first video I made was my BFR where I used 1080 60fps. It overloaded my editing with all those frames. On the most recent video I used 1080 30 fps and I like how it turned out. @eman1200 is probably right about 720/60. I haven't tried that setting.

I do like the angles you used on your test. As you already figured out, the gopro was night and day different than the other two.
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There's also the part of it where I'm kind of okay strapping a $20 camera to the outside of my plane. If a $500 camera went flying off my wing I probably just dive down and see if I could somehow catch it before it hit the ground
 
Lindberg said:
The difference in your samples is not optics. Seem to be some processing artifacts. Likely the the cheaper cameras have lower quality sensors and cheap electronics, but some of it may also be in your editing, especially when converting between framerates and formats. Also, 720p and 4k have the same aspect ratio, 2.7k doesn't. So there's stretching or squeezing going on when you combine them all in one video. To really test, you'd need to mount three cameras and film in the same lighting. Then view side-by-side at their native framerate and resolution.
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The butter melted one was the one that was the most disappointing. I had that one at 720p and 60 frames per second. That's exactly what the raw footage looked like before I edited it. But again I think it was a $23 camera
 
That was supposed to be rubber mounted. rudder not rubber I'm using speech to text. You can ping Peter, Cajun, or David we message frequently and my speech-to-text is always a Teen Wolf
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
The butter melted one was the one that was the most disappointing. I had that one at 720p and 60 frames per second. That's exactly what the raw footage looked like before I edited it. But again I think it was a $23 camera
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Try it at 30fps. Sensor size is also likely a big factor. The GoPro probably has a 1/2.5" sensor. The cheapo camera sensor may be half the size.
 
Is your soundtrack a Briggs nd Stratton lawnmower?
 
Lens quality, compression, codec, color depth, bitrate, write speed... Lots of things.

I think where the el-cheapo cameras fail are in the bitrate and the lens quality, in that order. Adequate (though not superb) lenses are less expensive than high-bitrate recording capability, especially at high resolution and frame rate. The cameras have limited processing power, so something has to give. You can't encode at high res and high FPS, with an adequate bitrate, using ****ty hardware. But because
most consumers know nothing about video encoding other than that 4K is "better" than 1920x1080, the manufacturers of cheap cameras emphasize the "4K."

Some cameras may also lack sufficient write speed to record video at the highest quality. Even using fast media, you'd be limited to the camera's ability to write to it.

The other area in which the cameras are different is in terms of the codecs they use. Some of the better ones are still under patent, and makers of $20.00 video cameras are not about to pay license fees.

To further complicate matters, there are multiple implementations of codec standards that aren't all the same, but have the same nomenclature. For example, there are three versions of h.264 (Apple, MainConcept, and x264). Apple and MainConcept are proprietary. x264 is free; but when used to encode into H.264/MPEG-4 AVC file, the final encoding process is (I believe) still subject to patent.

There's an awful lot more to this. Books have been written about it. But the summary answer is that cheap cameras don't have the hardware capability to do justice to their maximum resolutions, and generally won't use any codecs that are patent-protected.

Rich
 
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As an aside, I find 1920x1080 @ 24 Mbps very nice, with frame rate suited to movement.

Rich
 
I'm no pro, but I've done a fair amount of messing around with action cams. In my opinion, 1080p @ 30fps makes the best vids. Even slightly slower as Rich suggested would be fine. 60fps just looks weird. Can't explain it but it doesn't look natural. 30fps is smooth and natural looking. I have no experience with 4K, but from my research, I've gathered that most folks prefer 1080p. One thing that more expensive cameras might have is better image stabilization. Some cheaper ones can be susceptible to the jello effect when mounted out in the wind. If you have excess vibration, you can use a mount with some kind of shock absorber to help smooth it out. Some folks have had decent results using neutral density filters. ND filters can also help with prop blur when filming on airplanes. It basically forces the camera to use a slower shutter speed, which lessens the distortion. Now digital cameras don't really have a shutter speed, but that's it is layman's terms. Maybe write speed or scan rate would be better terms? Like I said I'm not an expert.

In summary, just use 1080 @ 30fps and you'll probably be fine. Mount the camera where there is the least amount of vibration, or use a vibration damping mount of some kind. And finally, if you're getting unsightly prop blur/distortion, use an ND filter. In the daytime, you'll probably want ND 8.

That's my two bits. Take it for what it's worth. Nada.
 
Listen to Rich, he knows what he's talking about, IMO.
 
I'm calling BS on you @SixPapaCharlie. The end of that video was featured in your "turns around a squirrel in a plastic plane" video so it couldn't have been shot today.

I'm so disillusioned I may not be able to finish my next few beers.

[Edit: of course the buildings look cartoon like. It's not like they are at a REAL airport :)]
 
The last 3rd was definitely the best. But I love the view from the tail over the top of the plane when coming in for a landing. Great perspective for a landing.
 
Ravioli said:
I'm calling BS on you @SixPapaCharlie. The end of that video was featured in your "turns around a squirrel in a plastic plane" video so it couldn't have been shot today.

I'm so disillusioned I may not be able to finish my next few beers.

[Edit: of course the buildings look cartoon like. It's not like they are at a REAL airport :)]
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HHahahahahahahahaaaa!
52F is the best!

Hicks would be nothing without the beacon :)
 
How did you mount the cameras? Not saying that is the cause, I'm asking because I'm trying to figure out how to mount some to a Cardinal.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
There's also the part of it where I'm kind of okay strapping a $20 camera to the outside of my plane. If a $500 camera went flying off my wing I probably just dive down and see if I could somehow catch it before it hit the ground
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Well y0u do have Cirrus parachute experience. Rig up a parachute for the cameras and if one falls off the chute activates (trip wire?) or maybe you can find a remote to activate the chute. I know nothing about this topic, however, I once stayed in a Holiday Inn Express, so I got that going for me. You're welcome.
 
Here are some clips from a few days ago using the $80 RunCam 2. I was just doing a test run, so wasn't interested in editing into an entertaining video. I did 1080p @ 30 fps. I have trouble getting the video to render in equal quality to the original recording. It looks okay if in 720p on YouTube, but none of the landscape in the video looks as crisp as it does in the original recording. Can't seem to get the YT vids to not look a little grainy. My internet connection won't allow me to watch in 1080p, so I have no idea what that looks like.

I recorded this vid a sunset to see how the cheap camera would handle varying and low light recording. I thought it fared fairly well in the original recording. On YT, it's just so so.
 
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Bitrate is a big one. I have a Polaroid Cube which can record either in 720p or 1080p, but the funny thing is the bitrate is identical for either one...only 8Mbps.

Fortunately there is a hack to increase it to 13Mbps but this can only be done in the original cube, not the newer "Plus" model.

Btw, GoPro stole the idea for the Hero Session from this, not the other way around as you might have expected. There's a whole soap opera story of lawsuits between the two companies, not sure how that ever turned out.
 
I picked up a Hero 5 Session.
Flying JCranford to brunch today. I am going to strap it t the tail beacon.
 
Tspin said:
How did you mount the cameras? Not saying that is the cause, I'm asking because I'm trying to figure out how to mount some to a Cardinal.
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Sticky pad to keep it from shifting.
Strap goes around the beacon very tightly.

The under wing, I just mounted it to the Pitot tube using the bicycle handle bar mount.
I know Cessna pitot tubes tend to be a bit smaller so that might not work.

For the above wing mount, I actually screwed the mount base into an existing wingtip screw hole.

000002.jpg 000001.jpg
 
OkieFlyer said:
Here are some clips from a few days ago using the $80 RunCam 2. I was just doing a test run, so wasn't interested in editing into an entertaining video. I did 1080p @ 30 fps. I have trouble getting the video to render in equal quality to the original recording. It looks okay if in 720p on YouTube, but none of the landscape in the video looks as crisp as it does in the original recording. Can't seem to get the YT vids to not look a little grainy. My internet connection won't allow me to watch in 1080p, so I have no idea what that looks like.

I recorded this vid a sunset to see how the cheap camera would handle varying and low light recording. I thought it fared fairly well in the original recording. On YT, it's just so so.
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That's pretty
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
That's pretty
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Thanks. I wish I could figure out how to get the YT vid to look as good as the original. The el cheapo RunCam is really a nice little unit for so little money. It's was really developed for the RC world, and is really small and light It doesn't have a screen, but it has Wifi and the phone app works well.
 
OkieFlyer said:
Thanks. I wish I could figure out how to get the YT vid to look as good as the original. The el cheapo RunCam is really a nice little unit for so little money. It's was really developed for the RC world, and is really small and light It doesn't have a screen, but it has Wifi and the phone app works well.
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Did you edit the video before uploading it?

Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Did you edit the video before uploading it?

Rich
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Yes I did. Recorded in 1080p @ 30 fps. Edited in Cyberlink PowerDirector. I ended up producing the video as MPEG-2 1920x1080/60i (25 MBPS). What do you suggest, Rich?

P.S. Bryan, let me get a quick answer, and I'll stop hijacking your thread. Many apologies.
 
And to the OP, I think your videos look really good most of the time. It's the content that's the problem. You could use a better looking actor to boot.
 
OkieFlyer said:
And to the OP, I think your videos look really good most of the time. It's the content that's the problem. You could use a better looking actor to boot.
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and some 'splosions too
 
OkieFlyer said:
Here are some clips from a few days ago using the $80 RunCam 2. I was just doing a test run, so wasn't interested in editing into an entertaining video. I did 1080p @ 30 fps. I have trouble getting the video to render in equal quality to the original recording. It looks okay if in 720p on YouTube, but none of the landscape in the video looks as crisp as it does in the original recording. Can't seem to get the YT vids to not look a little grainy. My internet connection won't allow me to watch in 1080p, so I have no idea what that looks like.

I recorded this vid a sunset to see how the cheap camera would handle varying and low light recording. I thought it fared fairly well in the original recording. On YT, it's just so so.
Click to expand...

That looked good. I mean if you hadn't said it was better quality before you loaded it to YT, I wouldn't think anything about it. Still looks good. I was thinking about a GoPro but I could get several of those for what one GoPro costs. And if you accidentally lose one, not as big of a deal.
 
BrianNC said:
That looked good. I mean if you hadn't said it was better quality before you loaded it to YT, I wouldn't think anything about it. Still looks good. I was thinking about a GoPro but I could get several of those for what one GoPro costs. And if you accidentally lose one, not as big of a deal.
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Thank you. Yeah, I use my action cams almost exclusively for aviation and RC aviation. I just couldn't bring myself to stick, strap, or screw a GoPro to the outside of an aircraft. Some of the RC jets I stick the RunCam on fly in excess of 300 mph. I'm just about to try one of the cheap GoPro knock-offs. I'm leaning toward Akaso or DBPower for my next one.
 
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OkieFlyer said:
Thank you. Yeah, I use my action cams almost exclusively for aviation and RC aviation. I just couldn't bring myself to stick, strap, or screw a GoPro to the outside of an aircraft. Some of the RC jets I stick the RunCam on fly in excess of 300 mph. I'm just about to try one of the cheap GoPro knock-offs. I'm leaning toward Akaso or DBPower for my next one.
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Quick question about that cam. I was researching the RunCam 2 after I read your post and I read something that seemed to be saying depending on the rate, etc, you used, that the camera would divide the video into 5 min segments, I think due to how large one video can be. Is there a resolution that still looks good and you can get a whole longer flight in one video? Or did I read that wrong?
 
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