I have been working with GoPro Hero cameras on almost every photoshoot for over a decade now. Like any camera if you setup the video incorrectly it can be a complete headache in post. The GoPro captures phenomenal footage with a vibrant “stylized” look. That look however, will become your worst nightmare when it comes to color correcting and or shot matching. Here’s the settings I’ve found work best without baking that GoPro look into your footage.
GoPro Hero 12 Video Settings
I currently own a GoPro Hero 12 Black. I tried the HDR and Log profiles but didn’t like the added stress in my workflow. I tried several LUTs for the log profile. I even tried creating my own LUT but in the end the Standard profile was much easier to use. The Standard profile is close to a Rec709 gamma (Broadcast) and I can easily color match other cameras from Sony, Canon, Panasonic, etc. It doesn’t seem to clip, crush, or crunch the exposure either.
5.3K & 10-bit Color Depth as a rule of thumb I always try to record as much information as I can when I do a photoshoot. I cannot say how many times I had wished I’d more detail in the file (video clip) to work with.
Color Flat seems to be easiest to map to other cameras. I also feel is closes to what my eye sees. The other Color settings seemed to be in a larger color space than Rec 709, which is what YouTube uses. I spent countless hours until I found this setting adjusting the GoPro clips to fit in Rec 709. Now they just fit right off the recording! Note you risk colors clipping if you render to Rec709 and don’t map your footage to Rec709.
Sharpness if you have any people in your shots DO NOT use High sharpness. Medium is still a touch too sharp for people in my opinion but is acceptable. I think I found “Low” to be almost digitally softened (cannot fix in post). You’ll want to double check that though as I settled on Medium years ago. Medium maybe the sensor native setting.
Underexpose 1/2 Stop It’s a bit more paranoia than anything. I ask the camera to meter by -1/2 stop to avoid potentially clipping any highlights. This maybe overkill as I seldom see the GoPro clip footage. You maybe able also have more flexibility with the log profile which I haven’t much experience on.
Color Depth
About a year ago I switched to Davinci Resolve. I also bought the GoPro Hero 12 just to have 10-bit color and never looked back. The color space in Davinci Resolve is much larger compared to the editor I was using previously, Magix Vegas. Vegas would do 32bit ACES but software performance made non functional.
You can get away finessing 8-bit clips a bit in Resolve because of that larger color space for editing (the other editor would just round off clip adjustments, making it impossibly hard to edit 8-bit footage).
The large Davinci Resolve Color Space allows you to stretch 8-bit footage a bit, using your primaries, curves, etc. However, if you stretch too much it’ll start breaking apart (banding) regardless of the resolution your editing system has.
High Efficiency Video Codec h.265 versus Advanced Video Codec AVC h.264
I prefer to work with HEVC versus AVC. The files are smaller and retain more detail for the size. There’s a LOT of misinformation online about HEVC saying it’s not as sharp but those comments are incorrect. For the same size file the HEVC holds approximately 150% the detail of AVC.
The GoPro will use HEVC for some of these larger resolutions / higher bitrate files. This is a blessing as some cameras still using AVC require SD cards which are multiples more expensive yet retain no more detail in the recorded file than a HEVC capable camera with lower bitrate and less expensive SD card.
Modern NLEs such as Davinci Resolve utilize hardware acceleration to decode the HEVC codec making it feasible to work with in timelines as well. If you have a really old system you can utilize Proxies (Resolve automatically generates them).
Summary
That’s about all I have to say on my GoPro settings. Feel free to contact me if you have any further questions.
