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Mergers: GoPro buys ReelSteady
  • GoPro is pumped to share that the small, but mighty, team behind ReelSteady, known for enabling mind-blowing cinematic effects for the FPV drone community, is joining the GoPro Family.

    “The force is strong with these guys,” says GoPro Founder and CEO Nick Woodman. “WOWing our customers is core to our DNA, and Robert and Andy have been WOWing users and viewers alike with their ReelSteady products in a way we think the GoPro community is going to love. Given Robert and Andy’s passion for next-level visual effects, we’re really excited for what our future holds with them as a part of our team.”

    The ultra-creative duo of Robert McIntosh and Andy Russell share backgrounds in film and video games, fostering a unique skill set that intersects the arts and technology and have a passion for enabling creators of all skills to easily make cinematic content that “looks expensive.”

    In a few short years, ReelSteady has built a passionate following within the FPV drone community with the cinematic features and effects their ReelSteady products enable.

    We expect their background, skills and passion will help us continue to grow our software efforts and develop more ways across our app ecosystem to help our customers create cinematic visual effects and premium editing features.

    You may recognize some content that has been powered by their products—like this Longboard Freestyle video and this micro-drone video that went viral a few years back (created by Robert, himself).

    “Everything we’ve done so far has had no official link to GoPro, and now as part of the team, everything we create will be embedded from within GoPro,” Andy says. “We are excited, especially for our customers, for what is to come—collaboration as part of the GoPro Team to create amazing things that will enhance the GoPro experience for everybody.”

    So what does this mean for ReelSteady customers? No changes in the immediate future. ReelSteady products will continue to be sold on the ReelSteady website and supported by GoPro customer support. But what all ReelSteady and GoPro customers should be excited about is the magic that Andy and Robert will bring to the work being done across the GoPro App ecosystem to enhance the cinematic output of your content.

    “Its feels kind of like we pulled the golden ticket and are going to Wonka’s factory to see how the products we’ve used for years are made,” said Robert. “We are huge GoPro fans. We built a company and product to specifically serve GoPro users and are fired up to join the GoPro Family to continue creating solutions from the inside. It is really exciting to be here!”

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  • My Review of ReelSteady GO with the Hero 8

    They key question is whether applying ReelSteady in post to completely unstabilized GoPro video is better than using Hero 8 HyperSmooth 2.0. ReelSteady GO uses the gyro metadata embedded in GoPro clips to stabilize. So it is in principle much better than any program or plug-in that does not use or cannot use this information

    The ReelSteady method gives you a three-generation loss while HyperSmooth gives you two - ReelSteady is not a plug in, it is standalone program that takes your clip and renders a new one that is stabilized. You then take that clip and color grade and merge etc. in another program and then render again.

    I shot a brisk walking video using 4K30p with no stabilization at all (required) for use with ReelSteady GO - you cannot combine hypersmooth with ReelSteady. I then re-shot the exact same walk/path using HyperSmooth 2.0.

    What is the quality of ReelSteady rendered clip? It is H264 at 139 Mbps using CABAC with 4 reference frames. It is hardware rendered, so that is good. Each clip has to be treated by itself, no batch rendering. You can trim the clip, and that's it.

    The big news is that it takes the original 16:9 video clip and reduces fisheye distortion and shakes, resulting in a cropped video at 2.25:1 aspect ratio: 3840x1678. To make the comparison more comparable I also cropped the clips not treated by ReelSteady.

    The question of which is better in IQ and stability - ReelSteady GO or HyperSmooth 2.0 - is answered by viewing this video: There is no question that ReelSteady does an amazing job in stabilizing a very shaky video.