GoPro Max Tutorial: How To Get Started Beginner's Guide

hi my name is jordan hetrick i'm the author of books about how to use gopro cameras and in this video i want to help you get your gopro max set up and get started so you can get out there and start filming with it gopro max is an amazing 360 camera that records full spherical photos and videos and also has some really amazing features for recording traditional video that really shouldn't be overlooked along the way i'm going to share some of my favorite tips and tricks so you can really begin to understand this camera and get to a point where you can get out there start recording and begin to edit i've also written a book for max that'll be really helpful for you if you're just getting started with your 360 camera there's a link in the video description below so be sure to check out the book if you want to know everything you need to know for gopro max so let's get started with your gopro max camera first we're just going to get the camera off the box here just turn the box around and lift up this locking plug here then you can squeeze these two tabs together and slide the camera off the base here just like that now i'm just going to show you what comes in the box here so grab the box and open it up here and on the top there's some paperwork you don't really need any of this except for the thing you should know about is gopro plus which is gopro's subscription program so you can get unlimited cloud storage you can also replace your camera if it's damaged and you can also get half off on mounts through gopro's website so that's good to know about you don't have to it's optional but just so you know so in this compartment here the protective lenses i'll show you more about these in a minute but just shows you a little paperwork about them and there's a little bag here you can keep your gopro max in and the protective lenses are also in there so if you turn the box over there's some more stuff included in here just open up this compartment on the bottom when you open this up you'll see there's the charging cable which we'll use to charge the camera there's also the rubber protective lenses that are going to protect the lenses when your camera is being stored obviously they're not see-through so you don't film with these there's also a curved adhesive mount which we'll talk about mounting in a little bit and there's the max battery here this is the battery we're going to use to power your camera let's remove the camera from this mounting base here just turn this thumb screw counterclockwise until it slides out of the holes and then slide the camera up and out of the base these here are the mounting fingers you can just flip them up we'll talk about those in a minute you can just flip them up so you can set your camera flat also let's peel off the sticker that was obviously just for display let's also remove this little tab here on the mounting base that was just for the display so just pull out and kind of flex it off of that base there just like that now we're going to get the camera set up so you can start using it we just need to insert the micro sd card charge the battery and update the firmware we're gonna put these little caps on the lenses while we do so you don't have to but i'm gonna do that just in case the camera falls over you wanna make sure this lens is nice and protected because that's the actual lens that's recording your videos and photos so you can just snap it on the front here these are the opaque rubber caps you don't use when you're filming but they just protect the camera's lenses you just snap those on now let's put the battery and micro sd card into the camera so you probably noticed there was no micro sd card in that box the gopro max doesn't come with a micro sd card and you will need one to store your videos and photos if you bought your camera from gopro's site they usually throw in a bonus micro sd card like this one and if you bought it from some stores some of the kits have a micro sd card included in the box but if your camera didn't come with a micro sd card make sure you get a class 10 or uh s1 micro sd card and you want to get at least 64 gigabytes to store the 360 photos because they're kind of bigger files now you can go up to 256 gigabytes max and that'll store a lot of videos and photos but you don't necessarily need that many and if you do it run into problems with your camera freezing and stuff it usually has to do with an incompatible micro sd card so make sure you get a good micro sd card it's going to be important so there's a door on the side of the camera here if you slide this little tab down you'll see some red then slide the door down a little further so it's like that then you can lift the door up under this door is where the battery and micro sd card go first we're going to put in the micro sd card because it's easier to get in when the battery's not in there so take the micro sd card so that the writing on the micro sd card is facing the touch screen on the back of the camera and insert it into the little slot there you just push it down and then it'll kind of click into place flush down with the camera next you can turn your camera around and take the battery so both gopro logos are facing you and just slide it into the slot there and that'll also go down all the way flush just like that now take the usbc charging cable and plug this in into the camera's usb port right up here at the top above the battery plug the other end of the cable into a usb port on the computer a wall charger or usb power pack just make sure if you're using a wall charger or a power pack that it's five volt and one to two amps once the camera starts charging you'll see a little red light come on here and that indicates that the camera is charging using a usb power pack or a wall charger should charge a lot faster than a computer but either way is a fine way to charge your camera it'll take a few hours to charge so you can push pause on this video and come back when this light turns off also if you want a faster way to charge your batteries and you want an extra battery check out the dual battery charger by gopro for max and it comes with an extra battery then you can charge your batteries when they're not in the camera once the light is turned off your camera's finished charging so you can just remove the usb cable here and shut this side door by pushing it flush to the camera sliding it up and then make sure this tab is up also so you don't see any red when this door is closed your camera is waterproof so you want to make sure that door is always closed securely next you can turn the camera on just press the power mode button here on the side of the camera and the camera will turn on so we'll go through a few basic setup items you can just select your language you can scroll if you want to select a different language and then tap it agree to the legal stuff by tapping agree here turn on gps and then it's going to prompt you to connect to the gopro app we're going to go ahead and do this so that we can update the camera's firmware and get you the most current settings available for this camera using the goprop to update the firmware is the easiest way to update the camera's firmware so if you don't have the gopro app go ahead and download the gopro app from the app store it's a free download and you can just search gopro app and it's this one here it says gopro and it's free so go ahead and download that to your phone and once you've downloaded that open up the app and click on the camera icon down here in the left corner and it says you don't have any cameras connected you can just click add a camera or if you've already had cameras connected you can click the plus symbol at the top to add a new camera so click add a camera and it should start searching for your gopro mac since we're in the pairing mode here so it says we found your gopro connect camera and it should automatically connect to your gopro max so now the camera is connected you can change the camera name or you can leave it the same i'm just going to leave it as gp with the long letters just as it is it's going to connect and it should prompt you to do an update so there's a camera update available you want to make sure you update your camera's firmware so you've got the latest features with the gopro max for example this one adds slow motion and 360. so when you're recording 360 you can choose a slow motion setting so you definitely want to update your camera when these are available it's going to download to your phone and then you can follow the prompts here to update your camera just click update camera it's telling you what the new features are tap update accept and continue and it's going to start transferring the update wirelessly to your camera you just go ahead and follow the prompts through and finish updating your camera and come back to this video when it's finished updating it'll take a few minutes for the update to transfer over to your camera then when it updates finished you'll see a check mark on both screens and we can continue on i can show you some more cool things about the gopro max so there's a lens on the front here there's also a lens on the back so the camera basically records everything it's got two wide angle lenses the videos are then stitched together into a full 360 video it's also got built-in microphones to pick up full surround sound and it's got the mounting fingers here on the bottom so you can mount the camera to a variety of mounts the shutter button is up here on the top and the touch screen is here on the back for changing settings and also viewing your footage now i want to give you a little tour of the camera so you can understand how to use the buttons and also how to use the touch screen to change modes and settings so if your camera is not on just push the side power mode button to turn your camera on so the camera will power on into video mode so let me show you the icons on the touch screen first so this is the video touch screen these are the icons when you're in video mode at the top here you can see the icon is a video camera if you swipe it to the side it'll go to photo mode and if you swipe it back the other way it'll go to time lapse mode i'm going to go back to video mode and you'll see the icon here on the top of the screen showing we're in video mode you can also use the side button here to change modes so that's just going to change over between photo time lapse and video mode the icon in the top left corner here shows the amount of space on your micro sd card in the current recording mode so because we're in video mode it's two and a half hours of video about you can get and this is just the 64 gigabyte card that came with some of the cameras on the top right here is the battery power so 78 battery life remaining here and that'll count down pretty quickly as you record videos where the w is in the circle here that's an on-screen shortcut so that is going to change depending what mode you're in but right now it's allowing you to choose different lenses depending on the look you want to go for your video over here in the bottom left corner is a really important icon and that's what determines whether you're recording in hero mode which is a traditional video or photo or whether you're recording in 360 mode so if you tap that icon it's going to switch over to the sphere which means you're in 360 mode now all of the modes that you switch to here will be in recording in 360. i'm going to switch it back to hero mode just to finish showing you the screen here these are the current settings those are the current video settings your camera is set to i'll show you how to change those in a second and this here is to switch lenses so when you're recording in hero mode you're recording a traditional video and it's just recording out of one of the lenses so if you tap that switch lens icon it's going to record out of the other lens and you have to do that before you start recording if you're in a 360 mode that will just change the view of what you're seeing since it's actually recording the full sphere it's just a preview using one of the lenses and this here is another on-screen shortcut and that can change depending on which mode you're in i have all the presets in my book for the best icons to use depending what mode you're in this is just the default icon which is horizon leveling for the hero video mode so if you want to go in and change your settings you just hold down where it says video and it says the video settings you hold it down it's going to open up the settings dialog you can go in and change your video resolution all of the different extra features that you can use with the mode that you're in the protune settings and also the on-screen shortcuts i'm not going to go into all those right now because there are a lot of different modes but i do cover all of those in my book in depth so you can understand each individual mode so if you switch over to the 360 mode by tapping that icon there you're now in 360 mode and you're going to see different on-screen shortcuts as well as different video settings swipe over you can go to 360 time lapse mode there's more than one video recording option available you can tap on that for example in 360 time lapse you can use time warp or time lapse mode timewarp's an awesome setting you're going to love it you can record your time warps which are stabilized and then when you go into edit you can add a bunch of creative filming techniques to really move around those time warps that's one of my favorite recording modes definitely to add some spice into your videos once you're in the recording mode and you've chosen your settings go ahead and press the top button here this is the record button and your video will start recording you'll see a time indicating how much video you've recorded when you want to stop recording you press the shutter button up here again and you'll stop recording when you've changed all your settings and you want to start composing your shots you can tap the screen the icons will all go away tap it again and the icons will come back if you pull down from the top of the screen here put your finger at the top and pull down this is the dashboard and this offers you some different setting options such as turning on voice control adjusting the volume of the beeps turning on quick capture and locking the screen which is good to do if you're going in the water or if you have your camera in your pocket for example you can also turn on a grid which is not useful for 360 but it can be for composing your hero mode shots and this is a orientation lock to lock the orientation of the screen to vertical or horizontal if you tap on the preferences there's some more icons here and this is how you reconnect to the gopro app as well as change some of the other general preferences you can press the side button to escape out of that or you can just drag up from the bottom of the screen if you want to view your media pull up from the bottom of the screen and the latest video you recorded will be there now it's only showing it out of one of the lenses this is a full 360 video but you can't see it until you load it into the gopro app so you can also delete clips here you can switch the view you're previewing you can scroll through to find different sections of the clip you want to watch and you can add highlights to the most exciting parts of your clip this little icon here in the corners to turn on or off the audio this little icon here is going to go to a thumbnail view of all your media we only have one icon because i've only recorded one video so far and when you want to escape out of that you can always just push the side button to escape back to recording screen if you want to use voice control you can also turn voice control on to start recording that way so you can just swipe down from the top to open up the dialog and press this little icon here and now voice control is on now you can use voice control to start and stop recording and to control other features of your gopro so if you want to start recording a video say gopro start recording it'll start recording video you say gopro stop recording and it'll stop recording this is really useful for 360 videos and photos especially when the camera is out on the end of a pole and you want to start and stop recording when it's further away from you when you're done recording you want to turn your camera off you can either turn it off using voice control or you can hold down the side button for about three to four seconds and your camera will power off mounting your gopro max camera is one of the most exciting parts of using your gopro camera because you can mount your camera in so many different ways and with 360 you can get that invisible camera effect that is really cool looking these here are the accessories that came with your gopro max camera as you can see it's kind of a limited assortment here i'll just show you the pieces and how to use them and then i'm going to go into some of the better mounts that you can use for macs so these here on the bottom of gopro max are called the mounting fingers and they're folded down right now so you can mount it to a mount or a buckle like this one so you can also fold these mounting fingers up if you want to set it on a flat surface and record like that but right now i'm going to show you how to mount max so we have these lower down and you insert these mounting fingers into the mounting buckle here you'll see there's three tabs there you slide in between take the thumb screw through the screw the thumb screw in so it's nice and tight this will prevent your camera from moving in the mount if it's nice and tight you'll see here in the original gopro thumb screw there's a phillips head attachment there so you could actually tighten it using a phillips head screwdriver if you want to get it really tight and then this here is a curved adhesive mount this is the only adhesive mount that comes with the gopro max but gopro also makes a flat adhesive mount as well as some other adhesive mounts that you can use to mount your camera so the curved adhesive mount is obviously curved on the bottom and this works better for mounting to helmets or other curved objects such as a vehicle sometimes whereas a flat adhesive mount is completely flat on the bottom and works better obviously for flat surfaces if you're recording in hero mode it's okay to mount your camera like this flush to the curved adhesive mount but usually when recording in 360 you want to get a little height from the mount to get that invisible floating camera effect and i'm going to show you how to do that these adhesive mounts also make a great base for an extension pole so you will end up using these and you'll probably want to get a variety of other ones the adhesive mounts are for more permanent use because you can't easily unstick them and stick them back on so once you have your adhesive mount adhered to the surface you just lift up the black locking plug on the buckle here and slide your camera in to the mount making sure that it clicks into place you just want to make sure these two tabs go past the end of the curved adhesive mount and it's nice and secure in there and then once that's done you can just push down the black locking plug and your camera is secure on that mount one of the accessories you're going to need for your gopro max camera is a pole or a handle and you're going to want to find a pole that is about the dimensions of the outside of the lenses of your gopro max that way you can use it to create an invisible tripod effect this here is the max grip and this one is an extendable grip so it extends out which is nice because you can get your camera further away from your hand you can also extend it back in for a variety of lengths it also has a monopod base that you can extend out which makes it pretty versatile to use with your max camera this here is the 270 pro pole it's extendable up to 10 feet so when you use that pole it actually almost looks like your max camera is on a drone or you're getting an aerial view so that's really versatile they have this one that extends to 10 feet or a backpack one that has five different extension lengths that works a lot better because then you don't have to go all the way to that 10 foot extension which is a huge pole and looks kind of ridiculous but it's also really useful to get some great shots so it's kind of a catch there if you're willing to use it you're going to get some cool shots also when you're mounting max and you're recording in 360 mode you want to make sure that the camera is lined up directly with the pole and that's going to allow the pole to disappear in your 360 shots especially when you extend it out the further away from your hand the better the stitch lines are going to be but you definitely want to make sure your camera is straight in line with that pole if you angle it like this the pole is going to be cut off halfway somewhere along the shot and you're going to see it in your 360 shots but if you're recording in hero mode then you will want to rotate on the pole like that and when you're looking for a pole make sure that the mount on the top is direct to the gopro so it's got three prongs like this and it is also straight in line with the pole you don't want one that's offset because that's going to make the pole show up more easily in the shots so mounting your 360 camera is very fun it's great way to get unique shots and i cover every mount you're going to need in my book and the different ways to mount your camera so definitely check that out and i think you'll enjoy it another accessory you're going to want to use especially for filming in 360 is an extension pole an extension pole is a great accessory to lift your camera up off the mounting position so that you can get that floating camera effect can be a little hard to find an extension pole that works well with max but there are a few options out there this is the sp gadgets pole it's a section pole it's 12 inches long and one of the nice things about this one is that it floats so if you are using your camera in the water it'll help float your camera and you won't lose it as easily and this here is just a homemade extension that i made with a pvc pipe a couple mounting pieces and some epoxy glue and that's also a good option if you can make sure that it's secure so you don't lose your camera so another accessory you're going to want is a monopod if you get the gopro grip it's got monopod legs on it so you can use that and that's nice and versatile or you can get some separate monopod feet that you can attach to a section pole or you can just get a full on extendable monopod which really depends what you're filming but you'll definitely want a monopod base so you can set your camera down and record empty scenes and also record so your camera looks like it's floating above the scene around it gopro max is waterproof to 16 feet deep but it's not really the easiest camera to use in the water because water spots on these lenses really show up easily and kind of ruin the shots the best thing to do is try to keep these lenses clear of water unfortunately underwater videos directly using the max camera come out a bit blurry so it's not really an underwater camera unless you decide to get an expensive case for it max does come with these protective lenses they're not designed for underwater use and they can fill up with water so they don't really help with the problem of the blurry images underwater the protective lenses are good to use for action sports when you might actually break that lens as long as you keep these really clean because the dirt shows up even better on those protective lenses using the gopro app with macs to compose your shots is a really useful tool since you're recording in 360 often times you want to disappear from the shots the gopro app allows you to see through your camera's lens to see what you're recording and make sure that you've set up your scenes properly you can also change your settings and modes using the gopro app so it's a really useful tool to disappear out of the scene and control your camera since you've connected to the go prop already to update your camera's firmware it should be easy to reconnect when you just open up the icon for the camera you should see an icon of your gopro max and it should say camera found if it doesn't say camera found there's a possibility that your camera's wi-fi is turned off or your camera is too far out of range so the best thing to do is turn your camera on if that doesn't solve the problem go back into the connections dialog in the dashboard and click on the gopro app again to put it into pairing mode once you've reconnected can click on the control your gopro icon once it connects it's going to ask if you want to see a live preview just click yes so you can see through the camera's lens and you can also click the check mark if you want so you don't have to go through that dialogue again and if for some reason your live preview won't connect the best way to solve that problem is to close the app completely go out of it and reopen it and it usually solves the problem to allow you to see through the camera's lens so once you're connected to the gopro app and you can see the live view through your camera's lens you can switch between hero and 360 modes depending on what you want to record if you're recording videos in hero mode when you start recording you're actually still going to be able to see that live view of what you record because it's only recording in 1080 however when you switch over to 360 mode so you can pinch the screen to zoom in and out you can drag your finger around to rotate and you'll be able to see that your camera is in a good position you're not actually affecting what you're recording unless you physically move your camera because it is recording a full 360 scene so it's more of just a preview once you're ready to start recording and you press the shutter button the live view is going to go away until you stop recording but the video will be saved to your camera's micro sd card you can also add highlights with this little icon here you can also switch between modes over to time lapse modes or over to photo mode by swiping these icons here and the goprop's really useful for taking 360 photos so you can be out of the scene and snap that shutter remotely you can also go in and change all the settings for the current mode that you're in so if you want to change resolution or any of the protein settings you can do that directly in the gopro app and you can also go in and change the basic camera settings by tapping this icon up here and that'll take you into the general camera settings so you can change those if you want to [Music] after you've recorded your gopro max footage you're going to want to transfer it over to a phone tablet or computer i'm going to show you the easiest way which is just to use the gopro app to transfer it over to your phone or tablet you can also transfer it over to a computer for editing on a desktop or a laptop but i'm just going to get you started with this because the easiest way there are so many different options for editing your max footage whether you want to output 360 video a flat reframed video or photos that are flat or reframed there's a lot of different options so i'm not going to go into all the editing options here of course i cover every single thing you need to know in my book but i'm going to just help you get started to transfer footage and get started with some basic editing so just open up the gopro app and connect your camera to the gopro app like i showed you before and once you see your camera icon here on the home screen you can tap on the view media icon that's going to take you to see the media that's currently on your camera's micro sd card once it opens up you'll see thumbnails for all of the media when you see a sphere icon with a time code that's going to mean it's a 360 video and when you see a sphere icon with a camera icon that means it's 360 photo a traditional video camera with time code is a regular video shot in hero mode and if you have any photos that are taken in hero mode it's going to show a regular photo camera any media that's already been downloaded to your phone or tablet has a check mark by it so you already know which files have been saved so you can scroll through your media to preview it and tap on any icons you want to save so this one here is not saved yet so i'll tap on that one and right now it's showing you a low res preview you can see here it says low res preview and that actually is looking at a different file than your original 360 file so it's just giving you a preview it's not the same quality so don't be surprised when you look at it and it looks grainy or poor quality that's because it's actually not the real 360 file once you download it it's going to save the original file to your phone or tablet so to save this file to your phone you can just tap this icon here and that's going to give you options to download it to the app or to share it you can share it directly to somebody else if you want to you can also use this icon down here and this is a download to your app icon it's going to save it to the gopro media library in the app here the icons will vary slightly depending on what type of media you're looking at this is for a 360 video and it's got a trim icon so you can trim your videos before you save them the download icon like i just showed you you can also grab a 360 photo out of your 360 video so when you save that it's going to save it actually in 360. so you can still reframe it and pan around it and then there's the highlight option here so once you want to download it just tap the download icon or this one it's going to save it to your phone it's going to save it in the media library of the gopro app so if you click here it says download complete view media that's going to take you into the media gallery of the photos and videos that are saved to your camera's phone now these aren't the ones that are on your micro sd card they could still be but these are actually saved to your phone so you could delete them from your camera now and you have a copy of them you can also get to the media library by pressing this icon down here that's going to take you to the same place once the media is saved to the gopro media library you can open it up and do some editing such as reframing in the gopro app so this here is the editing screen and you can trim your clips here you can also go into the keyframe dialog to start reframing your shots which moves from one key frame to the next i'm not going to go into all of that right now because there's actually a few layers of editing involved there you can also take a photo from that and you can highlight it the gopro app offers some really cool tools for editing your 360 footage and reframing it so i think you'll really get to like it once you get to know it i'm not going to go into all the techniques right here because there's a few different layers you can get into but you're going to love it it's really cool and it's a great way to maximize your 360 footage be sure to subscribe to my channel i've got some exciting projects coming up that i think you'll be interested in also check out my book for gopro max on amazon or ibooks it's a great tool to use to learn everything you need to know all in one spot the link is in the description below thanks so much for watching and have fun with your new camera

Channel: JORDAN HETRICK

Views: 239,914

Keywords: GoPro, Get Started, Intro, Instructions, How To, Tutorial, beginner's guide, Settings, 4k, Unboxing, Mounting, HyperSmooth, Stabilization, easy, presets, Max, 360, Spherical

Id: fNtIezFvAKk

Length: 28min 21sec (1701 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020