Faulty GoPro Hero 2?

I have been in some extended discussion with GoPro which seems to be going around in circles.

I recently used my GoPro for an event and, when I down loaded the footage was pretty horrified by the results. While GoPro won't admit the camera is faulty they also wont confirm that it is performing as expected .... funny that.

See what you think.

So far the suggestion has been to introduce some rubber between the roll bar mount and the roll bar. And the audio noise is, apparently, electromagnetic interference. I wonder why electromagnetic interference would be unrelated to engine revs but influenced by bumps?

And use the wide setting not the narrow setting - Well that would be peachy in the car. I might as well film myself sitting in the garage, just so long as I don't shut the car door as that makes the camera jump as well.

Does seem to be an issue. Is all footage shot in medium/narrow? If so, I would try in wide and see what you get. Might be some glitch in the firmware so would be worth trying a reinstall.

Bob

It was all narrow and the first time I used the WiFi back so I am wondering if that is having some influence. It was also damn cold so again I wonder if that was an contributory factor.

Am going to do some alternate set up tests to see what comes out but, as you can appreciate, I was pretty cheesed off with what I got on that day.

"Jelly" means that the camera was moving relative to the dashboard so clearly there is something about the mount that is not solid enough.

I don't trust any of their mounts to stay solid. The stuff for attaching the camera to you, such as helmet mounts, seem to be good enough but for mounting on a vehicle I prefer to use their "tripod" mount that gives a standard 1/4"x20 threaded hole and then rig up my own mounting solution.

The mount was something I printed and, to my mind, was pretty solid. If the issues was just relative to the roll bar mount I would agree with you but that doesn't explain the weirdness when the camera is mounted on a monopod.

I've seen that "look" before John. Not on my H2 but when these cameras are attaches to Quad Copters such as the DJI Phantom. Do a search on YouTube and be amazed!!! I so want a Phantom now!!!
Anyhow, 4 spinning blades that may be out of balance is extreme example of the Jello effect. I've never, ever seen it that bad with the camera mounted in a car. With the copters they say one of the best ways to solve the issue is to change to 60fps rate. Thus closely matching the inherent vibration of the copters blades. But you're not in something with spinning blades at close to 10K RPMs. The oscillations of a car are not that rhythm and that electronic sound is very, very odd. Seems like something is coming apart.

I have shot many clips from either inside my car or outside mounted on the body. I also just recently mounted my camera inside a Jeep that was going off roading over some heavily rutted dirt roads and big bumps. All the footage was spot on perfect. This was for a Nationally televised cable TV show so the footage needed to work. For that I used my Panavise suction cup mount with the GoPro tripod mount attached to the camera. No Jello footage at all. The other GoPro camera was mounted under the front end of the Jeep to capture the tire going over the road and obstacles. It was hard mounted to a sticky and armed out just a bit. If any of the cameras were going to shake, it would have been that one. Again, spot one images with no Jello effect and none of that electronic noise.

One suggestion I have is to get a thin layer of rubber to fit between the bar and your mount. It might help isolate the camera better, but is will also give the mount more grip as it bites down on the bar.

I'm with the others, do more wide and medium and narrow camera tests just to see if that's part of the problem. And if you can get another H2 to test your against the other camera. If you can. I have recently seen the price of the Hero 2 drop a lot. The H2 Outdoor kit, with the WiFi bacpac can now be had for $199. I might pick up another one.

Well I just watched the footage again. Do you have a GoPro rollbar mount to test the camera against? Also, what battery are you using in there? Some of the aftermarket batteries are made smaller so that people can pull them out easier than the tight fitting GoPro batteries. There is a reason why thos batteries are fitted so tightly. So they don't rattle around inside the camera and cause vibration issues. I have two aftermarket batteries and one GoPro battery. They all have a bit of clear tape around them so I can have a tab to pull the batteries out with. The aftermarket batteries have several layers of the clear tape around the entire battery so to make them fit tighter in the GoPro. Thus killing any rattling around.

Could that be your problem with the in car shots? The hand held stuff is a bit more of a puzzle. The jello effect isn't a top to bottom fluxtuation like the in car shots, but a side to side wiggling. Is it possible that you weren't a solid as you think you were? Again, it looks like you were on a narrow image setting. And much like hand holding a longer lens, this might be the same effect. Just some thoughts rattling through my head.

I'll do a test for you myself and post the video result. I'll mount my H2 to a monopod and try to replicate your footage. And I'll show you my in and on car footage I've shot. Hopefully we can solve some of this for you.

Top man Chas. I have printed a new roll bar mount with a piece of inner tube between the mount and the bar so I hope this will help.

I'm using a GoPro battery so that shouldn't be an issue.

It occurs to me it was a dreary day so perhaps the lack of light didn't help.

I have the GoPro rollbar mount and it has a piece of rubber about twice as thick as most bicycle inner tubes. I've been working on a time lapse I did yesterday at a corporate video shoot. So I'll get to my tests to copy your footage soon.

Wow, I bet that was a disappointment! I've done a lot of in-car/on-car shots and cam-on-a-stick shots with my Hero3 as well as my older Contour cams, and I've never had anywhere near that kind of jelly. I'm usually at a 30fps or above for those, but I have done some at 24 and they aren't that bad.

Even my old Flip cam mounted (none too sturdily) on the rear fender of my (road) motorcycle was better than that.