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GoPro's an interesting company. Conventional wisdom would say that the market for dedicated mobile cameras is getting eaten up by general-purpose mobile devices

by chasing 13y ago

GoPro's an interesting company. Conventional wisdom would say that the market for dedicated mobile cameras is getting eaten up by general-purpose mobile devices. Think of what happened to Flip. And, yet, they seem to be thriving. Anyway: They seem to have a good product and they definitely have been great at creating/expanding a new and distinct niche for mobile photography -- one not easily serviced by iPhones and other mobile devices. So: Congrats!

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
marvin 13y ago
Funny anecdote re: good product: I fly gliders recreationally. Last fall one of the guys in the club called me up and asked if I'd lost my GoPro. I hadn't, but from his description, it was probably the camera of a guy I flew a two-seater with in a competition a year earlier. Turns out that the camera had been returned by a hiker who found it while hiking on a mountain, approximately 10 kilometers from the airfield. Looking at the last footage in the camera, you could see three guys using a suction cup holder to attach the camera on the outside body of the glider. The video continued as the glider launched, and for approximately ten minutes of flight. Then, the camera detatched from the airplane. As it went tumbling down, there were a couple of frames where the glider was captured from below, rapidly disappearing into the sky. The camera landed on the mountain, where it remained through the winter. A year later, a guy hiking there found it and returned it, in working order, to the glider club.
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  Does GoPro do any kind of video stabilization? I am a bit worried about getting one of these and having a video that's completely unusable (I am thinking about taking it for some trail running). Also, are things like Gear Pro and other knock-offs worth anything?
  - calbear81 13y ago
    I don't think so (I have a Hero 3+ Silver). Lots of folks use post-processing software to stabilize it or you can look at a stabilizing mechanism to mount the GoPro on like (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/48127572/easygimbal-an-advanced-gopro-3-camera-stabilizer https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/48127572/easygimbal-an-...)
    - bambax 13y ago
      EasyGimbal looks fine but pretty expensive; the Tarot, which is designed for quadcopters, can be fitted on pretty much anything, is of super high build quality and costs around $200: http://www.helipal.com/tarot-t-2d-brushless-gimbal-for-gopro-hero-3.html http://www.helipal.com/tarot-t-2d-brushless-gimbal-for-gopro... It's only 2D whereas the EasyGimbal is 3D but I don't think pan stabilization is much useful, except maybe when filming with the camera in hand. When attached to something (a bike, a motorbike, etc.) 2D stab is more than enough.
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    I can't answer your question but I think iMovie added one click video stabilisation a few years ago that's pretty decent if you're on a Mac.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    There is plenty of postprocessing you can do that really cleans up the video. Even Youtube these days offers automatic video stabilization. Now, if you start doing dive rolls on your trail runs the postprocessing may not be enough, but it's been plenty for my bicycling & dirtbiking.
  - sp332 13y ago
    The wide lens helps, since vibrations will shake the subject proportionally less distance across the frame. It's not stabilization, but it's not as bad as you'd think from shaking a normal camera.
  - jesbickhart 13y ago
    Because of the "fish-eye" effect of the lens, it is hard to use stabilization plugins for editing purposes. In After Effects CS6 by Adobe they have a plugin called "Warp Stabilizer" that is pretty good but again it's not perfect.
ye 13y ago
There's no mobile phone camera that's even close to GoPro's video quality. I can't put a phone on my helmet and go skiing or windsurfing, it will simply not survive.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  There's also the issue of wind noise. GoPro hasn't completely solved wind noise, but they are leagues ahead of what a cell phone is going to achieve at 65mph.
- jesbickhart 13y ago
  I would call "windsurfing" and "skiing" extreme cases of POV usage. The normal application of POV cams could easily be filled by a more practical mobile device such as a cell phone.
  - jonknee 13y ago
    Why is a multi-function device without any real buttons or durability a more practical mobile device? I sure wouldn't want to put my phone on the outside of my car or on my quadcopter or try and use its capacitive touch screen underwater.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
JonLim 13y ago
Perhaps this is anecdotal, but the launch of the HERO3 Black was personally very anticipated. It was shipped to my house a few days after launch, as I had pre-ordered, but the camera just does not last beyond half an hour when recording 720p@120fps. This seems a bit... silly, but I was willing to chalk it up to launch day jitters. Nothing was fixed as time went on. I have emailed support regularly, to the tune of once per week for the month and have received zero response. I wanted to just ask about why my battery dies so quickly and what would they suggest. Nothing. For a company with such a great product, they sure make a champion of their product and once-happy customer feel worthless. Sorry for getting off track, it just bothers me still.
- cdk 13y ago
  I had a similar experience. I purchased a GoPro to use for a trip to Mexico. I had heard great stories about how durable and reliable they were from friends. So I didn't hesitate to buy one on Amazon. Long story short all the footage from my vacation were unusable as many of the videos and pictures were corrupted/distorted which was annoying. Tried customer support but weren't able to fix the issue so I ended up returning it.
- modoc 13y ago
  FWIW the framerate has a big impact on the battery life for me (Hero3 Black). 30 fps = longer batter life. That said the battery life on the Hero3's isn't great, especially in the cold. I have the battery backpack thing, and a few spare internal batteries for this reason. The upside is the video quality, and low light performance, is WAY better than previous generations. So PITA but worth it for me.
jonknee 13y ago
GoPro's are most useful in situations you wouldn't want your phone near (mounted on a helmet, attached to the outside of a car, underwater, etc). They tie in with phones though so you see the current video from your camera on your phone (handy if the mount is in an awkward spot).
- jesbickhart 13y ago
  It is clearly a nitch in the market place but is it large enough to sustain and grow in a publicly traded company? That is the question. Mobile phones are only going to start taking bigger bites out of the market. And sure we may not mount our phones on submarines or airplane wings like we could a GoPro but apart from the extreme cases, our phones will be much more convenient than another piece of hardware right?
  - showerst 13y ago
    Right now GoPros seem to be mostly in the extreme sports/recreation community. When I mention them to friends & family I often hear "what's a gopro?". I think that there are a ton of use cases in markets they haven't broken into, or among more casual users. If every urban biker in the western world bought one, that's a $BN company right there. As they get cheaper/better there are things like dashboard cams that you wouldn't use your phone for, so I think they have plenty of market left to grow into.
    - nether 13y ago
      I think they could break into science per my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7197879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7197879. It'd be like the inverse of Nalgene.
    - reustle 13y ago
      My sister works at a small ski resort in our are and all the kids these days want a gopro for skiing and snowboarding.
    - jesbickhart 13y ago
sp332 13y ago
I thought Flip was popular, they were bought by Cisco and summarily cancelled.
- jmathai 13y ago
  They were popular. Cisco bought them at their height. Shortly after the purchase Cisco saw the cliff.
- Encosia 13y ago
  Flip was cancelled just ahead of nearly every smartphone having capability to record comparable quality video. It was a smart move by Cisco. It seems less likely that phones will be able to supercede GoPro in the same way, since you'd never want to subject such an important device to the physical situations that you would a GoPro. The lens issue is also non-trivial. For a general purpose camera (i.e. smartphone), you wouldn't want a wide angle lens like you would for PoV video, and making a smartphone's camera lens interchangeable for a small segment of its customers probably isn't happening broadly if ever.
sheetjs 13y ago
I think the wisdom is "the market for dedicated general-purpose mobile cameras is getting eaten up by general-purpose mobile devices", and Flip didn't have a compelling niche. On the other hand, GoPro cameras have a reputation for usability in some very extreme situations, use cases outside of the smartphone story (if you are going to mount a device on your helmet or elsewhere, you better hope that it can withstand the elements and a crash or two
- LanceH 13y ago
  I've been very pleased with mine. Not just the durability but how it handles jitter and rapid lighting changes, two things that are very important for filming moving things while on the move.
- jmharvey 13y ago
  Flip's compelling niche was that it was easy to get the pictures off the camera. But as easy as an integrated USB plug is to use, wireless is even easier.

by chasing 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

marvin 13y ago

Funny anecdote re: good product: I fly gliders recreationally. Last fall one of the guys in the club called me up and asked if I'd lost my GoPro. I hadn't, but from his description, it was probably the camera of a guy I flew a two-seater with in a competition a year earlier. Turns out that the camera had been returned by a hiker who found it while hiking on a mountain, approximately 10 kilometers from the airfield. Looking at the last footage in the camera, you could see three guys using a suction cup holder to attach the camera on the outside body of the glider. The video continued as the glider launched, and for approximately ten minutes of flight. Then, the camera detatched from the airplane. As it went tumbling down, there were a couple of frames where the glider was captured from below, rapidly disappearing into the sky. The camera landed on the mountain, where it remained through the winter. A year later, a guy hiking there found it and returned it, in working order, to the glider club.

IgorPartola 13y ago
Does GoPro do any kind of video stabilization? I am a bit worried about getting one of these and having a video that's completely unusable (I am thinking about taking it for some trail running). Also, are things like Gear Pro and other knock-offs worth anything?
- calbear81 13y ago
  I don't think so (I have a Hero 3+ Silver). Lots of folks use post-processing software to stabilize it or you can look at a stabilizing mechanism to mount the GoPro on like (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/48127572/easygimbal-an-advanced-gopro-3-camera-stabilizer https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/48127572/easygimbal-an-...)
  - bambax 13y ago
    EasyGimbal looks fine but pretty expensive; the Tarot, which is designed for quadcopters, can be fitted on pretty much anything, is of super high build quality and costs around $200: http://www.helipal.com/tarot-t-2d-brushless-gimbal-for-gopro-hero-3.html http://www.helipal.com/tarot-t-2d-brushless-gimbal-for-gopro... It's only 2D whereas the EasyGimbal is 3D but I don't think pan stabilization is much useful, except maybe when filming with the camera in hand. When attached to something (a bike, a motorbike, etc.) 2D stab is more than enough.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  I can't answer your question but I think iMovie added one click video stabilisation a few years ago that's pretty decent if you're on a Mac.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  There is plenty of postprocessing you can do that really cleans up the video. Even Youtube these days offers automatic video stabilization. Now, if you start doing dive rolls on your trail runs the postprocessing may not be enough, but it's been plenty for my bicycling & dirtbiking.
- sp332 13y ago
  The wide lens helps, since vibrations will shake the subject proportionally less distance across the frame. It's not stabilization, but it's not as bad as you'd think from shaking a normal camera.
- jesbickhart 13y ago
  Because of the "fish-eye" effect of the lens, it is hard to use stabilization plugins for editing purposes. In After Effects CS6 by Adobe they have a plugin called "Warp Stabilizer" that is pretty good but again it's not perfect.

ye 13y ago

There's no mobile phone camera that's even close to GoPro's video quality. I can't put a phone on my helmet and go skiing or windsurfing, it will simply not survive.

sliverstorm 13y ago
There's also the issue of wind noise. GoPro hasn't completely solved wind noise, but they are leagues ahead of what a cell phone is going to achieve at 65mph.
jesbickhart 13y ago
I would call "windsurfing" and "skiing" extreme cases of POV usage. The normal application of POV cams could easily be filled by a more practical mobile device such as a cell phone.
- jonknee 13y ago
  Why is a multi-function device without any real buttons or durability a more practical mobile device? I sure wouldn't want to put my phone on the outside of my car or on my quadcopter or try and use its capacitive touch screen underwater.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

JonLim 13y ago

Perhaps this is anecdotal, but the launch of the HERO3 Black was personally very anticipated. It was shipped to my house a few days after launch, as I had pre-ordered, but the camera just does not last beyond half an hour when recording 720p@120fps. This seems a bit... silly, but I was willing to chalk it up to launch day jitters. Nothing was fixed as time went on. I have emailed support regularly, to the tune of once per week for the month and have received zero response. I wanted to just ask about why my battery dies so quickly and what would they suggest. Nothing. For a company with such a great product, they sure make a champion of their product and once-happy customer feel worthless. Sorry for getting off track, it just bothers me still.

cdk 13y ago
I had a similar experience. I purchased a GoPro to use for a trip to Mexico. I had heard great stories about how durable and reliable they were from friends. So I didn't hesitate to buy one on Amazon. Long story short all the footage from my vacation were unusable as many of the videos and pictures were corrupted/distorted which was annoying. Tried customer support but weren't able to fix the issue so I ended up returning it.
modoc 13y ago
FWIW the framerate has a big impact on the battery life for me (Hero3 Black). 30 fps = longer batter life. That said the battery life on the Hero3's isn't great, especially in the cold. I have the battery backpack thing, and a few spare internal batteries for this reason. The upside is the video quality, and low light performance, is WAY better than previous generations. So PITA but worth it for me.

jonknee 13y ago

GoPro's are most useful in situations you wouldn't want your phone near (mounted on a helmet, attached to the outside of a car, underwater, etc). They tie in with phones though so you see the current video from your camera on your phone (handy if the mount is in an awkward spot).

jesbickhart 13y ago
It is clearly a nitch in the market place but is it large enough to sustain and grow in a publicly traded company? That is the question. Mobile phones are only going to start taking bigger bites out of the market. And sure we may not mount our phones on submarines or airplane wings like we could a GoPro but apart from the extreme cases, our phones will be much more convenient than another piece of hardware right?
- showerst 13y ago
  Right now GoPros seem to be mostly in the extreme sports/recreation community. When I mention them to friends & family I often hear "what's a gopro?". I think that there are a ton of use cases in markets they haven't broken into, or among more casual users. If every urban biker in the western world bought one, that's a $BN company right there. As they get cheaper/better there are things like dashboard cams that you wouldn't use your phone for, so I think they have plenty of market left to grow into.
  - nether 13y ago
    I think they could break into science per my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7197879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7197879. It'd be like the inverse of Nalgene.
  - reustle 13y ago
    My sister works at a small ski resort in our are and all the kids these days want a gopro for skiing and snowboarding.
  - jesbickhart 13y ago

sp332 13y ago

I thought Flip was popular, they were bought by Cisco and summarily cancelled.

jmathai 13y ago
They were popular. Cisco bought them at their height. Shortly after the purchase Cisco saw the cliff.
Encosia 13y ago
Flip was cancelled just ahead of nearly every smartphone having capability to record comparable quality video. It was a smart move by Cisco. It seems less likely that phones will be able to supercede GoPro in the same way, since you'd never want to subject such an important device to the physical situations that you would a GoPro. The lens issue is also non-trivial. For a general purpose camera (i.e. smartphone), you wouldn't want a wide angle lens like you would for PoV video, and making a smartphone's camera lens interchangeable for a small segment of its customers probably isn't happening broadly if ever.

sheetjs 13y ago

I think the wisdom is "the market for dedicated general-purpose mobile cameras is getting eaten up by general-purpose mobile devices", and Flip didn't have a compelling niche. On the other hand, GoPro cameras have a reputation for usability in some very extreme situations, use cases outside of the smartphone story (if you are going to mount a device on your helmet or elsewhere, you better hope that it can withstand the elements and a crash or two

LanceH 13y ago
I've been very pleased with mine. Not just the durability but how it handles jitter and rapid lighting changes, two things that are very important for filming moving things while on the move.
jmharvey 13y ago
Flip's compelling niche was that it was easy to get the pictures off the camera. But as easy as an integrated USB plug is to use, wireless is even easier.