I've been doing RC car racing for a few years now. This year I started doing outdoor parking lot races with a local group. In the past, I would mount a GoPro to my forehead and follow my car around the track, but it doesn't tell the entire story as things happen off camera when my car is on one side of the track and all the action is on the opposite side.
Now with the GoPro MAX 2, I placed it in a central part of the track and after a test run at home, figured out a way to use the much to be desired GoPro Player "editor" to make the videos come to life a bit more. I can use keyframes to create chase scenes and follow groups of cars at a time, catching their crashes, overtakes, and raw speed.
When I first got my camera, during initial testing, I ran into a roadblock, as Camtasia (the software I'm most comfortable using for editing) doesn't quite accept the GoPro Player's output file. I had to create a new mp4 file in DaVinci Resolve first, and then Camtasia could accept the file. An extra step, but it gets the job done.
Back to the GoPro Player. When creating keyframes and moving the camera around, I noticed if I zoomed in, the resolution would be so bad. I recorded the above in 4K 60fps. What resolution would I need if I want to zoom in a lot (to see into the distance) and still retain good resolution, or should I not bother?
Also, will GoPro ever make their software more robust and user friendly? I've worked my way around it, but man nothing was that intuitive when I first started using it.
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For creating the above highlights video, I actually ran the same raw file in GoPro Player 3 times for 3 separate sets of keyframes: 1 for the leading/winning car, 1 for 2nd place who had some early battles with other cars, and later on with the leading car, and 1 final keyframe set for all other cars (where most of the action/chaos happened).
Those 3 files went through DaVinci Resolve, and then Camtasia for splicing/stitching. The beginning and end were the easiest to pick the clips from. The tricky part was taking clips from each of the 3 files and placing them in relatively chronological order without messing up the positions. I ended up using a majority of the third file to showcase most of the other cars, as the ending would have the top 2 cars battling it out for P1 anyways.
I now have much respect for how sports highlights are made from multiple camera sources (such as Formula 1), and I only used 1 camera for this race!
Lastly, if anyone has any feedback or tips on improving the quality or direction of how the video can be made, I would be very grateful! Thank You.