Hi everyone.
Today, I'm going to show you how to set up, shoot, and edit a slow motion video with your
GoPro camera, just like that clip of a hummingbird.
I'm going to be using a GoPro Hero 3 Black edition camera set to shoot 720 p at 120 frames
per second, narrow view and then how to convert the footage to slow motion with GoPro Studio,
which is a free software program.
The first step is to set up the camera to capture your footage.
Turn on the camera by pressing the power button on the front.
Then press the same button to scroll through the menu options until you get to the wrench,
which indicates the settings menu.
Then push the top shutter button to enter settings.
We first see the video mode, which is set on 1080p and we press top button again to
enter that menu.
I'm going to scroll down to 720p and select that.
Next, I want to select the frames per second.
It's set on 60 but I want to shoot at 120 frames per second.
Once I've got that selected, I want to scroll next to view.
It's set on wide but I want to change to narrow.
And I don't need low light, so I'll leave that alone.
Now just scroll to the exit option and press the top button.
You can use a short-cut to return to video mode, by holding down the shutter button.
Now the camera is set to shoot 720p in narrow view at 120 frames per second.
Next, let's look at how I set up the camera and filmed the hummingbird.
I attached the camera to a tripod and positioned it in front of a flower that I knew was frequently
visited by hummingbirds.
But it might be hours before one showed up, and I didn't want to be recording the whole
time.
So I remote-controlled the camera with the wireless option and the GoPro App on my iPhone.
Here's how that works.
Press the wireless button on the side of the camera to turn it on.
The light flashes blue when on.
Press it again to enter the menu and scroll to GoPro App and select that.
Now we have the camera ready.
Next, we set up the phone.
First go into settings and then to Wi-Fi settings.
Your GoPro camera should be listed as whatever name you gave it.
Select it and now the phone is wirelessly connected to the camera.
Next we open up the GoPro App, which you will need to download from the Appstore.
At the top, you'll see connect and control if everything is connected properly.
Tap on that and a screen opens with a view from your camera.
This is a real-time view as you can see the bumblebee flying around in the phone app viewer.
All you need do now is tap the record button to start shooting.
This remote control came in handy in this situation because I could leave the camera
and go sit out of sight with my phone and wait for a hummingbird to show up to start
recording.
It worked perfectly; I had to wait only about an hour before a hummingbird visited that
particular flower.
I also got some good footage of the bumblebee.
Once you get your footage, you then need to convert it to turn it into a slow-motion video.
For this, I'm going to use GoPro Studio, which is a free download.
You open a new project and make sure you have the first step selected in the gray bar at
the top.
Now just import the file from your camera or your computer by clicking on the blue bar
import.
Here's my file.
I'll double-click to start the import.
And it appears in the left-hand panel.
Click on that thumbnail, and it'll show up in the viewing window.
Now, I have a lot more footage than I need and so I want to trim this clip to remove
the part after the hummingbird flies out of the frame.
So I can move the playhead and scrub through the video clip until I find exactly where
the bird leaves the frame.
I click the out bracket to set the end point of the clip section I want to convert.
You can do the same for the in point if you need to, but I don't need to do that here.
Next, I'll go into the advanced settings.
The size is 720, which we'll leave as is.
But the next option is frame speed, which we want to slow down.
So I'm going to bring it down to 30 frames per second or one quarter the original speed.
And I'm going to select highest quality.
Next I want to name this new file, and I'll go down here and change the file name to hummingbird
slo-mo.
Then click the button to the right to add this clip to the conversion list.
Now you see a thumbnail in the right-hand panel.
Next, I'll click the blue bar at the bottom of the panel to convert that clip.
Depending on the length, this will take a few minutes to convert from 120 to 30 frames
per second.
Next, we click proceed to step two, which puts the converted clip into the left-hand
panel.
Click it to view in the center panel.
When I play it, I can see that it is considerably slowed down and shorter than the original
clip.
But I can slow things down a bit more with the video editing options.
Open up video and you see that there is a speed option.
And I'll try decreasing it to about 50%.
That slows the clip even more so that you can see the wing beats a bit more clearly.
Obviously not as good as you can do with a high-speed camera shooting at over a thousand
frames per second.
But the point is that you can use this approach to slow down action footage and create an
impressive effect in your videos.
In addition to speed, you can also change the white balance by adjusting the temperature
and these other options.
You can also change various image qualities such as exposure, contrast, saturation, and
sharpness.
And I think I'm going to leave them as they are for now.
The last step is to export your converted footage as a dot mov file.
Just name it, select the destination, and click export.
And once it's exported we can open it up and play it full-screen.
Well, that's a brief look at how to set up and use your GoPro to produce slow-motion
footage.
If you found this tutorial helpful, please click the like button or leave a comment.
You can find a lot more information about science videography in my ebook.
So please check it out.