Travelling and storing GO-PRO files without a laptop
 

Hey all.

I'm considering taking a Go-pro HD camera with me on my next our month trip. I don't want to carry a laptop as my trip is mostly offroad and I won't be near internet or electricity that often.

I've heard that the video files are HUGE so the 64GB cards will fill up fast. And I can't be buying 100 SD cards doh

Is there a way I can copy the data from the SD cards to a large HDD without an intermediate laptop.

I don't mind carrying an android tablet if that helps.


What are the options here ??

It depends how much shooting you're planning to do. HD files run roughly 2mb /sec so a 64gb card would last 3 or 4 hours. By the time you've filled a few of those up you'll have hours (days) of fun to look forward to editing it all afterwards.

My go pro alike is controllable from my iPhone and iPad via wifi and I can download files to it but you'll have to have a high end phone to take 64gb. An Android tablet that takes cards would probably be a better solution. Transferring big files that way is an exercise in frustration though as it takes ages.

Some 'smart phones' can operate USB like a computer .. USB OTG (On The Go) IIRC. Means you might connect up a USB Hub, a Hard drive and your Gopro... Lot smaller than a laptop, weights less ... but probably slower.

Good Luck.

Hard drives, being magnetic media and spinning ones at that, are a bad idea if you are mostly hitting offroad and the disk comes with you. Plus you will need electric for it to run.

Depending on how you are setup on the road, you could draw from the battery and power a raspberry pi, which can read the sdcard and interface with the hard disk as well.

If you do go down the route of a disk, i would highly recommend a laptop size disk 2.5" ones, and work through your redundancy options. Anything larger than a 1 TB 2.5" disk has terrible reliability. So your nett rate is going to be 1 disk per 16 to 18 of the 64gb sd cards.

256gb sd cards exist. And give you a better ratio to 1TB hard disks. Your storage concerns with those is going to be about the same as the hard disk except dont need to worry as much about shock.

The ruggedised laptops weigh a ton and are inconvenient to move with unless you are in a truck or have a tail vehicle anyway.

Finally you can get BAS boxes that are barely larger than a 3.5" disk that have a media copy function to copy sdcards to hosted disk. Also at 3.5" you can goto 4 TB disk with no loss on reliability. They need more power to run ( still ok to run off 12v ) and these disks are rated for desktop like storage and usage.

Hope this gives you a few lines of thought to chase.

I use a Kingston 5-in-1 Mobilelite device (comes with a memory card adaptor) and an external hard drive (1TB). Both of these can be charged via USB, so I use a 12v socket to USB converter on the bike for charging during the day.

You will need to download the MobileLite app to your smart phone.

Procedure -

1. Remove memory card from gopro and insert into mobilelite

2. Plug your external hard drive into the mobillite device.

3. Turn on mobilelite device. (it produces it's own wifi network)

4. Turn on the wifi on your smart phone and connect to the mobilelite network

5. Use the mobilelite app to select all files from your memory card and copy onto the hard drive.

6. Switch off and disconnect. Clear your memory card in the gopro for the next day(s).

There is a video guide on youtube.

Your mobilelite can also be used for charging your smart phone via USB.

Here's a link to one £27 free delivery good buy

MyMemory | Rakuten.co.uk Shopping: MobileLite Wireless G2 5-in-1 Mobile Companion

I ended up simply buying a bunch of 64GB micro-sd cards via Ebay. If you use a bit lower settings (i run 1080p 30fps) it will give you about 5h of recording on a 64GB card. That's a lot of video... I have 5 pieces class 10 cards and only used 1,5 of them during a two month ride. Cost me less then other external storage and no hassle with transferring. Although no backup in case of lost/corrupt card (i did upload content during the trip to online storage, as I also brought a tiny laptop).

That's pretty much what I did (am doing). The only issue I've had is that the cards are so small that a week later you've moved stuff around and can't find the full card you put in that little box in the left hand pannier. Five panic stricken minutes later you remember you moved it to that small bag under the seat as you'd never lose it under there. :rofl:

I don't think I got the best out of my GoPro on this trip as I didn't really think through where to mount it that well. Much of the stuff I would have liked to film didn't happen because I couldn't reach the camera while on the bike. By the time I stopped, got off, turned the camera on, noticed there was a squashed bug on the lens (that happened a lot), cleaned it, got back on and started riding again whatever I had wanted to film was long gone.

We had intended that my wife (riding pillion) would control it via the iPhone app but in practice she decided after one attempt that the chances of her iPhone ending up under a truck were too high. It did work well splashing around in the ocean though - and in waterfall intensity storms - as, unlike the other cameras we had, it didn't matter if it got wet.

Like generals always preparing to refight the last war I'll be going through the GoPro accessories catalogue as soon as I get back and work out what I should have done with mounting clamps etc. Next time it'll be perfect! :rofl:

I got one of these based on your advice. It works really well. Thanks for sharing.

720p ?
 

Just a thought on file size.....Do you really need 1080? 720 could be all you need, especially if you will be posting it online. We used 64g cards, a day's worth of 10 second clips hardly touched the capacity. I think the main risk with just using SD cards is losing them and having no copies.

Take plenty of batteries for the GoPro !!!!!

What are your objectives of the film?
How long you going for?
Why aren't you carrying a laptop?

I personally advise you to film at the best quality that is available at the time. So that future generations can enjoy what you did instead of making them suffer it.

However, I will also keenly point out that filming hours on end will really be a crap product in the end. Make a swatch of the experiences not trying film the whole experience and nobody got no time fo'dat! :nono: Learning from people who make good videos that I know, usually filming for 10-30 seconds at a time of vistas pretty much will cover you on the helmet cam angles. Unless you're narrating or doing something detailed that people might want to watch.

While it was suggested that OTG products exist, frankly they kill battery life of your phone/tablet and depending on the unit might not support the OTG device. So be aware of it. I have a unit that works great with my Samsung Galaxy S5 and allows me to stream 1080p to a screen for movies allows me to read cards and so on. Note that even with a charger plugged in the power consumption exceeds the charge supply.
Whlie there are products available on ebay like these: How do I Transfer Files USB to USB - Working with computer files and best data backup methods you might struggle to get some reliability out of them.

Good luck, having a couple of SDs is recommendable as time to time cards do fail. :)

A good habit is to always question yourself wether a certain event is worth filming.

Ive had so many video's of which, afterwards, I thought 'why did I film this?'

More than often, a Picture is more suited...

And otherwise a cellphone that can take sdcards is a good investment! Im travelling with just my Oneplus x and that has been More than enough to Manage my data

Possibly OT.

Im getting into OTG. I have a dongle that gets SD card and USB stick files into my tablet and then onto a cloud from hotel WIFI. Highly useful in the UK and Europe. I can get the tablet online via my phone.

The question is, how much data does this use? Will the interweb in hot places have a paddy over this amount of data?

I will certainly not be carrying a laptop anymore as the tablet lets me sort through the camera cards and get them onto small portable storage.

Andy

EDIT: OK who else didn't notice that this was an ancient thread? :D

Honestly, you kinda can. SD cards are cheap as chips. And for a GoPro, you can use a cheaper slow one. (The expensive ones have really high write speeds for mobile phones and professional photo cameras.)

The other thing is, the rate at which you fill them up depends on the mode in which you record. If you are recording in 4K at a high bitrate, as if for a TV show, you will go through them quickly. If you record in 1080p 24fps, which is as good as you will need for any TV or YouTube clip, a 64gb or 128gb card will go a long way.

There are HDD enclosures with built-in card readers. https://www.amazon.com/JU-SA0S12-S1-.../dp/B00YT6UI4O - first one that came up in a google search, I'm sure other brands are available.

An Android tablet will have, what, two SD cards' worth of storage? And a lot of that will be taken up by an OS. If you're taking a tablet AND an external HDD, you might as well get a cheap 10-inch netbook with a spinning drive at that point.