9 ms·

They have a drone? Oh, they do, but it doesn't ship until the end of November. The Engadget review (dated today) [1] presents a good look at the device and how

by niftich 10y ago

They have a drone? Oh, they do, but it doesn't ship until the end of November. The Engadget review (dated today) [1] presents a good look at the device and how it compares to the competition -- different trade-offs. Nicer if you're in the GoPro ecosystem, but the competition is a better flyer. So perhaps the market for rugged cameras is fairly saturated by their own products, and the aerial market has partially sailed while they were working on theirs? [1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/03/gopro-karma-review/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/03/gopro-karma-review/

giarc 10y ago
I think GoPro suffers from two problems. 1. Many people buy these camera's that never use them, or use them a few times but realize editing videos takes longer than they hoped it would. So after a while of non use, they sell the camera. 2. They built a good product, one that lasts and is therefore good for the used market. People are comfortable buying a used GoPro because they know it's rugged and well built. So GoPro's have a good resale value and therefore many people that might normally buy a new one, instead turn to the used market which doesn't help GoPro at all.
- lbotos 10y ago
  Re: Video editing, whoever figures out how to make that _super easy_ is going to make a TON of money.
  - odbol_ 10y ago
    You mean iMovie? How can it get easier than "drag and drop your video, hit share button"
    - jinushaun 10y ago
      That's not editing. iMovie is only easy if you don't actually edit your videos--arrange, slice, add music and text, etc. Video editing is slow and difficult.
      - Fricken 10y ago
        I was thinking about the Snapchat glasses, which I initially regarded as stupid. But when I considered the intimidation factor associated with video editing, it dawned on me that Snapchat's 10 second time constraint effectively forces users to shoot video that is super easy for the masses to edit, arrange, share and aggregate, and within a universally defined set of constraints. So I think snapchat glasses could be huge success. They have a simple, low tech solution for the 'editing video for presentation is hard' problem, which isn't an immediately obvious problem, but it's critical.
        odbol_ 10y ago
        Even though the best Viners out there make amazing films with Tarentino-level editing in only 6 seconds. Editing is an art - sure you can automate it, but until we have strong AI it's not going to be a substitute for a talented editor.
        Fricken 10y ago
        I agree. And the snapchat glasses bring the fundamentals of editing down to the level of fingerpainting, which effectively democratizes it. No matter how skilled an editor you are, if you're publishing to Snap, you're on the same playing field as any 14 year old doing the same thing.
    - ghostly_s 10y ago
      A little bit of well-design AI would be huge in this space. Imagine you import your raw footage and a rough cut with typical shot selections for your content and pacing is already arranged for you...just tweak from there.
    - mikestew 10y ago
      I don't know what you call that, "dropping a steaming binary turd on your friends"? I dunno, but "editing" it is not. I've got literal hours of video of some dirt road in the Alaska tundra. No one wants to watch that, I've got to whittle it down to the highlight and parts that folks might enjoy, like the mountain goats in the middle of a blind corner or the moose running across the road. And that is time-intensive; literal hours for fifteen minutes of something I'd share with people. Not just finding the interesting parts, but captions and titles, and some kind of soundtrack, it all adds up to non-trivial amounts of time. One could just hit the "share" button, but no one's going to watch more than 30 seconds of it. One also quickly learns that from the camera's POV a lot of stuff looks alike. Our recent trip down the Icefields Highway in British Columbia looks like any of a hundred mountain roads when viewed through the lens of a camera. Makes me kind of wonder why I bother.
      - cuu508 10y ago
        When you've had to deal with the hours-of-video problem, you learn to be much more selective for when to start recording, and for how long to record. But even with that, and end even when you've learned the tricks of your editing software, and when you have given up the inner perfectionist, in my experience each minute of the final (amateur!) production still takes 10-100x more time to put together. Automated editing solutions would help, but compared to editing by hand, I'd say they would compare same way as Instagram filters compare to a photographer/retoucher working in Lightroom/Photoshop.
        nothrabannosir 10y ago
        I'd say they would compare same way as Instagram filters compare to a photographer/retoucher working in Lightroom/Photoshop. So... they would propel you and your company into the stratosphere of success? :)
      - photojosh 10y ago
        Maybe not iMovie, but I've been having great fun with the 'Memories' feature in iOS 10. I used it to make a 4min video of our recent family holiday in 30min on the plane. - Imported photos from our waterproof camera (compact-style, not GoPro. Cheaper than GoPro!) via the Apple Camera Connector. - Used mainly photos from the iPhone, but because I have Live Photos turned on, it was the 6-sec video that got put into the final clip instead of just the still. I agree with your premise; the hard part is definitely finding the interesting bits. Actually putting them together is easy after that. There's some good stuff happening with "exciting moment detection" based on other sensors; like peak heart-rate and speed if you record those on Garmin.
  - pierrepoutine 10y ago
    this. i want to be able to edit pro-looking video on my phone with the same ease that i can stitch multiple photos together in Instagram's Layout app
    - amatix 10y ago
      Vee for Video on iOS is pretty nice for quickly editing and publishing videos. Supports all the common edits and is pretty intuitive. Not affiliated, just a happy user.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - lsmarigo 10y ago
    there are a few orgs working on this using AI/Machine learning on the b2b side for news/journalism orgs, no offerings for general users yet but it's on the horizon for sure.
  - zelos 10y ago
    The TomTom Bandit is an attempt to do that. The editing app is pretty decent, and it uses motion sensors and GPS on the camera to auto-detect interesting highlights in the video. (disclaimer: I do work there, but not on that team)
  - bambax 10y ago
    Can't find the link right now but I think Microsoft is working on auto-cut software that automatically detects interesting moments in a video and stitches them together?
- chmars 10y ago
  I belong to group 1 – but because of the low battery endurance of the newer models. And the touch GUI and the apps aren't that great either. If I don't need a rugged camera, I can directly use my iPhone.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- pravda 10y ago
  I think people have just figured out that competitors offer much more value.
- pja 10y ago
  Equally a strong resale market should encourage people to try them out because the risk factor is relatively low. Don’t get on with it / use it? Sell it on & only have to eat a relatively small proportion of the price you paid.
- mkagenius 10y ago
  > They built a good product, one that lasts and is therefore good for the used market. They should sell like apple - "we are launching best ever go pro, 67% brighter than any other go pro" lol
  - jsemrau 10y ago
    Now you need 3 dongles to get your movie out of the camera
- odbol_ 10y ago
  If only they made crappier products that break more often, at least then their stock shareholders would think it's a good company. This exemplifies everything that's wrong with capitalism and planned obsolescence.
  - duncan_bayne 10y ago
    In what way do you think that strategy is an inescapable consequence of capitalism?
    - sdegutis 10y ago
      Capitalism isn't a bad idea, it just needs proper regulation. What we have is an unregulated mess which gives both stupid and unscrupulous execs the advantage.
      - duncan_bayne 10y ago
        That doesn't answer my question, at all. What is it about capitalism that makes the strategy you describe a) inevitable, and b) worthy of regulation (since you brought that up)? Also, I disagree that the modern economy is unregulated. Quite the contrary, in fact. And it's regulation, bailouts and crony capitalism that protect companies who make awful products.
        rhizome 10y ago
        What is it about capitalism that makes the strategy you describe a) inevitable, and b) worthy of regulation (since you brought that up)? The profit motive covers (a).
        wyager 10y ago
        No, it doesn't. Consumers value products that last a long time. This is a big reason Apple is the world's largest computer computer company despite charging more for the same transistor counts. People are actually willing to pay a huge premium for reliable stuff that they don't have to junk after a year. The market gets it right.
- noarchy 10y ago
  >People are comfortable buying a used GoPro because they know it's rugged and well built. My GoPro 2 is still going quite strong, despite having hit the asphalt on at last two occasions at high speed (well, high for a bicycle) due to their plastic mounts breaking. I switched to a third-party, metal mount, and haven't looked back.
  - giarc 10y ago
    So perhaps the issue is that they made a good product that never needs replacing. Is 4K recording a large enough draw? What is the saturation of 4K TVs so far? Could all contribute.
- ghaff 10y ago
  I'm not convinced that GoPro is unusually affected by #2 but resale values seem relatively strong, so maybe to some degree. There's also more competition. I'm inclined to think point 1 is significant though. This seems like one of those products/product categories that was a hot ticket for a while. Then most people who bought them realized that they didn't actually jump off cliffs and, after the 10th time, the video of them going down an intermediate ski run was sorta boring and not really worth the trouble to make. So, like many fads, it didn't go away but it wasn't a must-have gadget for the would-be daredevil (or those who wanted to think of themselves in those terms).
- gamble 10y ago
  GoPro 2 was rock-solid, but 3 and 4 had huge quality problems. Terrible customer service as well. I used to like GoPro, but since the GoPro 2 they've completely soured me. I don't know if the GoPro 5 is any better, but the Amazon reviews are terrible.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    The wifi on gopro 3 is spotty at best. I wouldn't put GoPRo in the "quality" camera department, since it's essentially just another CMOS sensor with accessories.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
    I've used a Hero 4 and bought the Hero 5. The 5 is better IMO. The 5 also turned out to be a little cheaper for my use case than the 4.
- mhb 10y ago
  So GoPro's have a good resale value and therefore many people that might normally buy a new one, instead turn to the used market which doesn't help GoPro at all. That's not necessarily true. The counterargument is that having a good resale value allows you to charge more for your new sales because of the added value.
  - usrusr 10y ago
    That counterargument only flies when sellers are repeatedly selling to get yet another upgrade. First time buyers rarely think about resale value. But giarc's point wasn't so much about resale value (despite his claims of the opposite), it was about an active second hand market due to (1) confused first time buyers and (2) a reputation of ruggedness. It basically boils down to: more people buy gopros than there are people with a real usr car for them, this is why the second hand market exaggerates market saturation effects more than usual.
    - mhb 10y ago
      I think you don't understand the point which I consider to be whether GoPro's profits are helped or hurt by a robust market for their used products. Whether or not GoPro generates more total sales as a result of their products' value in the used market, they are able to charge a higher price for new sales because of it. It may be that the higher price does not offset sales competition from used products, but that is another question.
- jayjay71 10y ago
  Shred Video (http://shredvideo.com/ http://shredvideo.com/) is trying to solve the editing problem.
  - totalZero 10y ago
    Phenomenal! Do you know of anything similar that is available for Android?
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Plus, the whole filming yourself riding your bike or skiing thing is a fad that people grow tired of. My Facebook page hit peak GoPro video 3 years ago.
kordless 10y ago
> DJI now says early Mavic Pro orders should be processed in “seven to eight weeks” I was going to talk smack about getting my Mavic before GoPro shipped theirs, but now I'm just sad.
bambax 10y ago
The DJI Mavic is sooo much better -- although, apparently, DJI is also experiencing major shipping delays.
patorjk 10y ago
From what I can tell, I think you're right about them being too late into the drone market. I've been researching Karma and DJI Mavic Pro because I'm planning on buying a drone. Most reviews say Mavic is much better, and some reviews have been absolutely scathing towards Karma (ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xmqthgCvxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xmqthgCvxk).

by niftich 10y ago

giarc 10y ago

I think GoPro suffers from two problems. 1. Many people buy these camera's that never use them, or use them a few times but realize editing videos takes longer than they hoped it would. So after a while of non use, they sell the camera. 2. They built a good product, one that lasts and is therefore good for the used market. People are comfortable buying a used GoPro because they know it's rugged and well built. So GoPro's have a good resale value and therefore many people that might normally buy a new one, instead turn to the used market which doesn't help GoPro at all.

lbotos 10y ago
Re: Video editing, whoever figures out how to make that _super easy_ is going to make a TON of money.
- odbol_ 10y ago
  You mean iMovie? How can it get easier than "drag and drop your video, hit share button"
  - jinushaun 10y ago
    That's not editing. iMovie is only easy if you don't actually edit your videos--arrange, slice, add music and text, etc. Video editing is slow and difficult.
    - Fricken 10y ago
      I was thinking about the Snapchat glasses, which I initially regarded as stupid. But when I considered the intimidation factor associated with video editing, it dawned on me that Snapchat's 10 second time constraint effectively forces users to shoot video that is super easy for the masses to edit, arrange, share and aggregate, and within a universally defined set of constraints. So I think snapchat glasses could be huge success. They have a simple, low tech solution for the 'editing video for presentation is hard' problem, which isn't an immediately obvious problem, but it's critical.
      - odbol_ 10y ago
        Even though the best Viners out there make amazing films with Tarentino-level editing in only 6 seconds. Editing is an art - sure you can automate it, but until we have strong AI it's not going to be a substitute for a talented editor.
        Fricken 10y ago
        I agree. And the snapchat glasses bring the fundamentals of editing down to the level of fingerpainting, which effectively democratizes it. No matter how skilled an editor you are, if you're publishing to Snap, you're on the same playing field as any 14 year old doing the same thing.
  - ghostly_s 10y ago
    A little bit of well-design AI would be huge in this space. Imagine you import your raw footage and a rough cut with typical shot selections for your content and pacing is already arranged for you...just tweak from there.
  - mikestew 10y ago
    I don't know what you call that, "dropping a steaming binary turd on your friends"? I dunno, but "editing" it is not. I've got literal hours of video of some dirt road in the Alaska tundra. No one wants to watch that, I've got to whittle it down to the highlight and parts that folks might enjoy, like the mountain goats in the middle of a blind corner or the moose running across the road. And that is time-intensive; literal hours for fifteen minutes of something I'd share with people. Not just finding the interesting parts, but captions and titles, and some kind of soundtrack, it all adds up to non-trivial amounts of time. One could just hit the "share" button, but no one's going to watch more than 30 seconds of it. One also quickly learns that from the camera's POV a lot of stuff looks alike. Our recent trip down the Icefields Highway in British Columbia looks like any of a hundred mountain roads when viewed through the lens of a camera. Makes me kind of wonder why I bother.
    - cuu508 10y ago
      When you've had to deal with the hours-of-video problem, you learn to be much more selective for when to start recording, and for how long to record. But even with that, and end even when you've learned the tricks of your editing software, and when you have given up the inner perfectionist, in my experience each minute of the final (amateur!) production still takes 10-100x more time to put together. Automated editing solutions would help, but compared to editing by hand, I'd say they would compare same way as Instagram filters compare to a photographer/retoucher working in Lightroom/Photoshop.
      - nothrabannosir 10y ago
        I'd say they would compare same way as Instagram filters compare to a photographer/retoucher working in Lightroom/Photoshop. So... they would propel you and your company into the stratosphere of success? :)
    - photojosh 10y ago
      Maybe not iMovie, but I've been having great fun with the 'Memories' feature in iOS 10. I used it to make a 4min video of our recent family holiday in 30min on the plane. - Imported photos from our waterproof camera (compact-style, not GoPro. Cheaper than GoPro!) via the Apple Camera Connector. - Used mainly photos from the iPhone, but because I have Live Photos turned on, it was the 6-sec video that got put into the final clip instead of just the still. I agree with your premise; the hard part is definitely finding the interesting bits. Actually putting them together is easy after that. There's some good stuff happening with "exciting moment detection" based on other sensors; like peak heart-rate and speed if you record those on Garmin.
- pierrepoutine 10y ago
  this. i want to be able to edit pro-looking video on my phone with the same ease that i can stitch multiple photos together in Instagram's Layout app
  - amatix 10y ago
    Vee for Video on iOS is pretty nice for quickly editing and publishing videos. Supports all the common edits and is pretty intuitive. Not affiliated, just a happy user.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- lsmarigo 10y ago
  there are a few orgs working on this using AI/Machine learning on the b2b side for news/journalism orgs, no offerings for general users yet but it's on the horizon for sure.
- zelos 10y ago
  The TomTom Bandit is an attempt to do that. The editing app is pretty decent, and it uses motion sensors and GPS on the camera to auto-detect interesting highlights in the video. (disclaimer: I do work there, but not on that team)
- bambax 10y ago
  Can't find the link right now but I think Microsoft is working on auto-cut software that automatically detects interesting moments in a video and stitches them together?
chmars 10y ago
I belong to group 1 – but because of the low battery endurance of the newer models. And the touch GUI and the apps aren't that great either. If I don't need a rugged camera, I can directly use my iPhone.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pravda 10y ago
I think people have just figured out that competitors offer much more value.
pja 10y ago
Equally a strong resale market should encourage people to try them out because the risk factor is relatively low. Don’t get on with it / use it? Sell it on & only have to eat a relatively small proportion of the price you paid.
mkagenius 10y ago
> They built a good product, one that lasts and is therefore good for the used market. They should sell like apple - "we are launching best ever go pro, 67% brighter than any other go pro" lol
- jsemrau 10y ago
  Now you need 3 dongles to get your movie out of the camera
odbol_ 10y ago
If only they made crappier products that break more often, at least then their stock shareholders would think it's a good company. This exemplifies everything that's wrong with capitalism and planned obsolescence.
- duncan_bayne 10y ago
  In what way do you think that strategy is an inescapable consequence of capitalism?
  - sdegutis 10y ago
    Capitalism isn't a bad idea, it just needs proper regulation. What we have is an unregulated mess which gives both stupid and unscrupulous execs the advantage.
    - duncan_bayne 10y ago
      That doesn't answer my question, at all. What is it about capitalism that makes the strategy you describe a) inevitable, and b) worthy of regulation (since you brought that up)? Also, I disagree that the modern economy is unregulated. Quite the contrary, in fact. And it's regulation, bailouts and crony capitalism that protect companies who make awful products.
      - rhizome 10y ago
        What is it about capitalism that makes the strategy you describe a) inevitable, and b) worthy of regulation (since you brought that up)? The profit motive covers (a).
        wyager 10y ago
        No, it doesn't. Consumers value products that last a long time. This is a big reason Apple is the world's largest computer computer company despite charging more for the same transistor counts. People are actually willing to pay a huge premium for reliable stuff that they don't have to junk after a year. The market gets it right.
noarchy 10y ago
>People are comfortable buying a used GoPro because they know it's rugged and well built. My GoPro 2 is still going quite strong, despite having hit the asphalt on at last two occasions at high speed (well, high for a bicycle) due to their plastic mounts breaking. I switched to a third-party, metal mount, and haven't looked back.
- giarc 10y ago
  So perhaps the issue is that they made a good product that never needs replacing. Is 4K recording a large enough draw? What is the saturation of 4K TVs so far? Could all contribute.
ghaff 10y ago
I'm not convinced that GoPro is unusually affected by #2 but resale values seem relatively strong, so maybe to some degree. There's also more competition. I'm inclined to think point 1 is significant though. This seems like one of those products/product categories that was a hot ticket for a while. Then most people who bought them realized that they didn't actually jump off cliffs and, after the 10th time, the video of them going down an intermediate ski run was sorta boring and not really worth the trouble to make. So, like many fads, it didn't go away but it wasn't a must-have gadget for the would-be daredevil (or those who wanted to think of themselves in those terms).
gamble 10y ago
GoPro 2 was rock-solid, but 3 and 4 had huge quality problems. Terrible customer service as well. I used to like GoPro, but since the GoPro 2 they've completely soured me. I don't know if the GoPro 5 is any better, but the Amazon reviews are terrible.
- bduerst 10y ago
  The wifi on gopro 3 is spotty at best. I wouldn't put GoPRo in the "quality" camera department, since it's essentially just another CMOS sensor with accessories.
- 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
  I've used a Hero 4 and bought the Hero 5. The 5 is better IMO. The 5 also turned out to be a little cheaper for my use case than the 4.
mhb 10y ago
So GoPro's have a good resale value and therefore many people that might normally buy a new one, instead turn to the used market which doesn't help GoPro at all. That's not necessarily true. The counterargument is that having a good resale value allows you to charge more for your new sales because of the added value.
- usrusr 10y ago
  That counterargument only flies when sellers are repeatedly selling to get yet another upgrade. First time buyers rarely think about resale value. But giarc's point wasn't so much about resale value (despite his claims of the opposite), it was about an active second hand market due to (1) confused first time buyers and (2) a reputation of ruggedness. It basically boils down to: more people buy gopros than there are people with a real usr car for them, this is why the second hand market exaggerates market saturation effects more than usual.
  - mhb 10y ago
    I think you don't understand the point which I consider to be whether GoPro's profits are helped or hurt by a robust market for their used products. Whether or not GoPro generates more total sales as a result of their products' value in the used market, they are able to charge a higher price for new sales because of it. It may be that the higher price does not offset sales competition from used products, but that is another question.
jayjay71 10y ago
Shred Video (http://shredvideo.com/ http://shredvideo.com/) is trying to solve the editing problem.
- totalZero 10y ago
  Phenomenal! Do you know of anything similar that is available for Android?
Spooky23 10y ago
Plus, the whole filming yourself riding your bike or skiing thing is a fad that people grow tired of. My Facebook page hit peak GoPro video 3 years ago.

kordless 10y ago

> DJI now says early Mavic Pro orders should be processed in “seven to eight weeks” I was going to talk smack about getting my Mavic before GoPro shipped theirs, but now I'm just sad.

bambax 10y ago

The DJI Mavic is sooo much better -- although, apparently, DJI is also experiencing major shipping delays.

patorjk 10y ago

From what I can tell, I think you're right about them being too late into the drone market. I've been researching Karma and DJI Mavic Pro because I'm planning on buying a drone. Most reviews say Mavic is much better, and some reviews have been absolutely scathing towards Karma (ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xmqthgCvxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xmqthgCvxk).