When I record videos with my GoPro HERO7 Black, I usually shoot at 2.7K resolution in a 16:9 aspect ratio and with “High Efficiency” format (more on this below). I like the 2.7K resolution because I usually make home movies in 1920x1080 resolution, and the extra pixels allow me to crop or rotate my original videos without having to upsample and lose video quality. Recently I was asked record videos of my daughter for her after-school drama class. Since their in-person performance was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, they asked parents to upload videos to a Dropbox account so they could stitch together a virtual performance. Fantastic idea!
I decided to shoot with my GoPro because we were asked to provide full-body footage for the dances, we don’t have wide-open spaces in our home, and the GoPro captures wide angles (albeit with some fisheye effect which I can live with). I decided to change the video compression setting from “High Efficiency” (i.e., H.265) to “Most Compatible” (i.e., H.264) format. I thought that the person doing the video editing would most likely be able to handle the H.265 format, but I erred on the side of caution and made the switch to H.264 anyway, recognizing that my files would take up significantly more space.
After more than an hour of shooting multiple takes each of several dances and songs, my daughter reached the limits of her patience, and we called it a day. After transferring the video files to my computer in preparation to upload to Dropbox, I previewed one of them and gasped in horror. The videos were all in 4:3 aspect ratio and 1920x1440 resolution. What the heck happened? I discovered that it had to do with a usability issue in the GoPro iOS app:
If you can see from the video, the mere act of changing the video compression setting ALSO automatically resets the aspect ratio to 4:3 and resets the resolution to 1440. I could understand if the app automatically changed a setting if the user chose an impossible permutation. For example, let’s say that I was recording 1080p at 240fps, and then I changed the resolution to 4K. Since the GoPro HERO7 Black can only record 4K at up to 60fps, I would expect it to drop the frame rate from 240 to 60 when switching the resolution from 1080p to 4K. However, when changing the video compression setting, it is totally unnecessary to alter the resolution or aspect ratio. Furthermore, if the developers had to compromise on app functionality, at least they could have warned me that they automatically changed my aspect ratio and resolution settings so I could change them back. Very few people would have thought to double-check those settings, especially since the aspect ratio and resolution settings are ABOVE the video compression setting. So if you’re reading this, hopefully this will save you some grief.
In an effort to further help out other GoPro users, I decided to submit feedback to GoPro via GoPro’s Contact Us page. After filling out their form and pressing the “Request a Call” button, I received an error message: “Invalid Captcha. Please retry.” However, I was unable to retry because as you can see from the following screenshot, a Captcha image was nowhere to be found:
Ugh, another usability issue! Strike two. Fortunately GoPro did not strike out, as I was able to click the “Start Chat” button instead, and a live chat agent was able to receive my suggestions and supposedly pass it along. I also learned that a more appropriate place to submit feedback was through the Feedback page. Hopefully GoPro will be able to address the settings issue in a future release, but in the meantime just remember that after changing the video compression setting, you may want to scroll up and re-enter your desired aspect ratio and resolution settings.
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