GoPro Hero 12 vs. DJI AVATA 2 - A Good Idea?

[@Bricenoma]

Waiting for the low light test. That's the real test needed to decide properly.

[@arkanos]

Bought the DJI Osmo Action 4 because of this. GoPro was struggling so much in low light.

[@andreschairez8825]

Thats a great ending scene! Love the 360 idea for sure.

[@Angelo_Guz]

The only reason I used to put my Gopro 9 on top of my Mavic Pro, was to put the Gopro Verticallly to make social media content videos.

[@andreas_rr]

as a neither professional nor drone user in general, the two usecases i can see for the GoPro is: 1. Having a backup recording (maybe with some different settings, idk) 2. point the GoPro backwards, or upwards, just like in the final clip you showed. asides from that, the 360 mounted on the drone actually sounds like a really fun idea. If it works well, maybe DJI might release a 360° drone, i mean, why not. Would make a lot of fun videos and it would definitely be a much more pleasant experience when the two cameras are already built into the drone

[@initialsjd5867]

As a beginner myself with the Avata 2 I really enjoy your video's regarding it and how you go more in depth about things other more experienced people don't talk about because they just find it so straightforward.So yeah great video man keep it up!!

[@mariokotlar303]

Since you asked, the benefit of GoPro over the Avata2 cam is million of customization option that it has via GoPro labs. For example, it can be used to significantly increase the bitrate of the recorded video, while for Avata 2 bitrate is actually it's quality bottleneck. This is especially noticeable in hard to compress scenarios like forest and grass with no motion blur, especially in the shadows, where with GoPro set to 180 Mbps bitrate you'll see individual blades of grass, where Avata will blur them together. Every 30 frames of Avata footage there is a keyframe where you'll experience higher bitrate, but then you'll have mush for the next 29 frames, and if you push the footage this can even cause a strobing noise effect. GoPro does not suffer from this issue. Note that these bitrate differences become noticeable either when zooming in or when delivering to 8k, otherwise KZbin compression will eat the difference anyways. Another example is Gopro's ability to adjust exposure compensation time (eg. !MDAMP=5 to set from default 1 sec to 5 sec) which will result in much more stable looking footage with regards to exposure. Flying with locked exposure is not always a viable approach, for example flying in and out of a forest on a sunny day. Another benefit is having the ability for GoPro to record with locked exposure while you yourself can fly Avata2 with auto exposure, giving you ability to see and fly safely indoors flight segments. GoPro supports recording to its native color space, which is wider and is able to capture gamut of colors outside of SDR, which is fantastic when mastering the footage for HDR delivery. Avata2 is color blind to anything outside of sRGB/rec.709 color gamut. GoPro supports max lens mod, which results with much wider field of view, offering much more powerful stabilization in post. I fly Avata 2 without GoPro, and those are the things I personally miss compared to my DJI FPV + GoPro setup. Avata has the benefit of having a larger sensor on the other hand, which is a huge deal for low light performance, and also enables it to have a wider dynamic range. Overall, it really depends on the situation, but I'd say all these GoPro features are worth the smaller sensor, though just barely, not enough for me to bother with buying the mount and mounting it on every time and suffering worse flight performance on an already underpowered drone.

[@conorstewart2214]

There is no reason to deliver in 8K. The avata 2 is only capable of 4K and the GoPro hero 12 is only capable of 5.3K. Upscaling to 8K to give to clients is generally a waste of time unless they specifically ask for it. Most of the people saying they give 8K footage to clients are basically scamming or misleading them. Having the exposure locked to a point where you can't see much indoors yet having a long enough indoor flight section that you wouldn't be able to fly like that would just make for a bad video, in your scenario it would just look like a long dark section on the GoPro so what is the point of that? If you are on about flying in between shooting videos then just change the settings or go another way around. The Avata 2 can do HDR as well apparently.

[@mariokotlar303]

I don't work with clients, I upload to my own KZbin channels, and uploading in 8k SIGNIFICANTLY increases the bitrate. Do some test flying in a forest with no ND filters, and observe all the leaves and branches turn into a mushy blob on 4k, while being beautifully visible in bitrate that 8k KZbin compression allows for. Additionally resolution isn't as simple as a number that camera records to. GoPro for example can achieve native 8k using its 5.3k mode, but only in the center of the frame and only if image is recorded using the entire sensor and then undistorted linearly, with no stabilization, but it still actually is native 8k in the center then, and 8k resolution is required to not lose any detail at delivery. Yeah Avata can do HDR, I'm actually kind of an expert on that lol, I'll soon be releasing technical LUTs for exactly that. Since my previous comment I did some color science digging and it appears as if 20% undersaturation that I measured that D-Log M does, should in theory allow reconstruction of that much gamut outside of sRGB/rec.709, but I have yet to confirm this experimentally. Either way, assuming this is correct, this is in theory less precise compared to Gopro's native color space.

[@OriginaldoBo]

You are a good human

[@tristanturner]

The GoPro is what most FPV pilots use. It just matches better when using multiple GoPros for a bigger shoot

[@arkanos]

And the most important one... because they offer the Bones format. Weight matters in FPV.

[@FirdausZulfaa]

Having a two camera setup would work in a situation where I want the recording camera to shoot in full manual, but having the goggles cam to be in auto for a shot where im gonna go inside a tunnel and back out and dont want the cam to change exposure. Another case is to record in 30/24 fps. I like my goggles to be in 100fps so I can feel more confident when moving fast

[@clarkjamesdigital]

even if the image quality was identical on both cameras you might want to separate the recording and viewing camera because that allows you to say run your recording camera at 1 stop underexposed so that you don't blow out your highlights, or you could run your viewing camera brighter so you can see better in low light environments, also you can use ND filters to get a 1/50 shutter speed on the recording camera but keep the viewing camera at a faster frame rate for easier flying- but these are pretty niche, the image quality disparity isn't really much of a reason to fly with a second camera anymore, I actually prefered the image out of the avata 2 but it would be interesting to see how well you could grade them to get them looking their best, vs just putting on a 709 lut and calling it a day

[@aniket911]

In the end, that's what I thought too... 360d camera or GoPro with max mod would be interesting.

[@kaltask1]

The DJI footage has a bit more contrast and motion is smoother due to it's gimbal. Still the gopro is not bad though at all. idk if it's a good idea. 😂 How about action 4 or ace pro? x4? More bad ideas 🙃

[@LanceCadena]

I would use the insta 360 on top. I mounted it on my avata og and loved doing flights with it.

[@ANDJVisuals]

Great video David... Honestly I don't see the big difference now adding an extra camera like the Gopro on top of the Avata 2... for the Avata 1 or FPV yes, but now it's not worth the risk and weak performance of the avata 2 with the extra weight on it... Noooooow with the X4 360 it's a niceeee way to create different creative content...

[@JASONRASH]

David, loved the video. I'm new to the game. This video really helped to put everything into perspective. Where does one get the correct REC 709 LUT

[@nicobremer1278]

I think the main reason to put a GoPro on top is that you can have a clean videofeed on your goggles without motion blur. Maybe the Hero 11 Mini would be an option because it‘s not as heavy. I don‘t think it is worth it. You just have to get used to the motion blur.

[@danielschaller-digitalcrealab]

Cool video David. I don't see enough of a difference for the inconvenience of the extra weight. I can see maybe in case of super slow mo? But with the Insta 360, I don't really know the specs of if the weight and the form factor would be an issue, but fun it can surely be...

[@restreamchile]

i use on top a osmo action 4. One for slow motion and the other one for regular 4k 60

[@Milledge.Austin]

For me, I was able to tell because the GoPro footage looked just a touch higher than the Avata's. That was it. I was able to stop the video, compare how high or close something looked, and that let me know.

[@MatMora]

I would do it for shooting vertical 4K for TikTok, Reels and mobile full screen

[@conorstewart2214]

Why do you need that though? Neither tiktok nor instagram support higher than 1080p for videos and no mobile devices (phones and laptops) currently have a 4k screen. The avata 2 in 4:3 mode at 4k has enough vertical resolution to take out a vertical section for displaying on mobile devices without losing any detail.

[@MatMora]

@@conorstewart2214 for the same reason I use a professional full frame camera to make some TikTok’s/reels. Despite social media platforms reduce considerably resolution, the cameras color depth, dynamic range, sharpness, etc make the final footage look better online. A GoPro has better image quality than the Avata camera

[@alexkooistra]

Adding an nd will make the footage better.

[@seanfichera]

Love the end. I bet the 360 throws things off more than the gopro.

[@jc4evur661]

I would imagine it making the drone really top heavy.

[@KidsOfThe9Xs]

Could immediately tell which one was the GoPro. The GoPro had a much better dynamic range plus it wasn't as choppy. Do you need to do it? No, is it better? In my opinion yes lol

[@LW-ry7vp]

assuming to pull a still shot at one hundred twenty fps instead of thirty fps from the drone. Its depending on the shot 4k 5k etc... That is what I was thinking.

[@ugpfpv361]

It's the same as this matchup has been for a while, once you notice it you can't un-notice it... Look at the shadow details... the Avata is like mush compared to the GoPro and you can't get it back in post, once DJI solves this problem and if GoPro just sits on their hand like they have been it bye bye GoPro. Of course there's always GoPro labs you can install on the GoPro to kick it up a notch higher if you're comfortable with color grading.

[@jsalvemini3439]

What about the weight difference? Does it put it in the FAA range?

[@KevinLe]

I bought this mount and put my action 4 on it and knew immediately it was too top heavy and it’d effect the flight so I decided to just stick to the avata 2 camera lol

[@michaelcaraballo9642]

We would do this to achieve 24fps or 30fps without having to deal with the latency you get when you set your DJI settings to a lower frame rate. And of course 24fps is not even an option. The comparison you are showing is not a fair comparison because you are showing footage on an evenly lit bright day too with the camera in what seems to be set to auto shutter. 30&24fps at 1/60th or 1/48th with an ND filter will introduce motion blur giving you a sense of speed. Log gives you more headroom from the darkest to brightest shades and you are just applying a standard lut (not pushing colors creatively to your choosing). These answer lie in something FPV racers and freestylers have come to realize before DJI released their FPV drones to the general public. I also notice some KZbinrs saying “why hasn’t DJI given us 24fps natively”….. well that is because your latency will increase to the point that flying in manual mode will be extremely difficult. That is why we have 2 cameras… one feeding the live view to the goggles while the other records the footage we want to show the viewer. All of this said, DJI has certainly created an amazing camera in such a tight package. Some of these issues I mentioned can actually be mitigated through post production techniques like synthetically adding motion blur in the video editor without an nd filter.

[@CristianKuhn]

Hi David, I have the following question: Assuming I am flying indoors the speed is quite slow: (for indoor videos) a) Will the drone fly 100% flat/horizontally? b) Thus, does the GoPro also need to be positioned at 90°? Is that correct? So, in this case, if the camera is placed in the middle of the drone and I use the wide-angle lens, my specific question is: won't the front part of the drone appear in the shot? Many thanks for your attention!! Kind regards Cristián

[@DVS-DroneVisuals]

Any mount from the bottom for insta360? Thank you

[@TheSshadow7]

I don't know the specs of each, but maybe the (I assume) higher frame rates of the Hero might be handy for some ultra slowmo.

[@m4vf]

Can you fly it with the montion controller and the GoPro mounted?

[@raven_fpv]

I'm curious, what is the "stuttering" or "jerking" motion I see on both cameras @6:19? I've seen this stuttering/jerking on many other videos on many other channels. What is this phenomenon?

[@DavidManningvlog]

That's the lack of ND filter which makes the cameras run a super high shutter speed in bright light scenarios. If I had ND filters on both you would see more motion blur and a smoother overall look👍

[@MckWells]

It looks like jitter/interpolation from a frame rate mismatch. Like putting 30fps footage in a 24 fps timeline. This can usually be solved by changing frame interpolation, using a higher fps timeline, or matching the timeline to the footage FPS.

[@HellbellyUK]

If you were going to mount the X4 camera, I wonder if using a cage and mounting it on its side with the less pointing left and right might lessen the top heavy-ness a little. This would put the stitch line front and centre though, but I don't know how visible it would be considering how far away things would be. Still might have a use case, maybe flying parallel to a vehicle at speed through terrain? or flying in front of something like that?

[@Outloud444]

Use the Max Len 2.0 Superview on the GoPro 12

[@manfredteh]

did you used any reelsteady on the gopro? it feels like it's not as smooth as the usual gopro footage with reelsteady as it should be.... sometimes when you swing left to right, it looked like there's a little bit sudden jerk.

[@MarcosAlvarezOK]

Exactly, I even liked the stabilization of the Avata 2 camera better

[@MrEddieNunez]

I spotted those ribbed ryders miles away!

[@MrEddieNunez]

........ my takeaway from this video. DAMN! David Manning has a sick back yard!

[@jbholland1987]

why use gopro... the dji is awesome camera wise !

[@ZeMaxim]

It’s probably because of the 8 to 7 ratio so you can record vertically and horizontally at the same time

[@jking7519]

Would Go Pro be better in low light flying?

[@DavidManningvlog]

The Avata 2 got the same 1/1.3" sensor from the Action 4 while the GoPro 12 still has a 1/1.9" sensor. If you check out my GoPro vs Action 4 video, you'll see that the Action 4 does quite a bit better in low light

[@RonaldBrown59]

Nice testing.

[@GaetanoCrisci]

why not one of the 2 camera is fluid? both scattering, is just my impression?

[@MaDMaXz69]

Dji avata 2 latency increases at 30fps compaired to 100fps so if u want nice cinematic feels with 30fps and not have loads of latency in your goggles then thats where a gopro comes in

[@xselfcreative]

at the moment gopro is not necessary for the upcoming years with the gopro 13 and 14 mounting will be a better option. 🤷‍♂️

[@jc4evur661]

If one of the prop guards fell off in flight, wouldn't that knock off the drones balance? Wouldn't an unbalanced drone crash? I'm asking for a friend.

[@Sky_is_Blue69]

I got one for my Avata but only so I can film in vertical mode.

[@Weedeogram]

probably gopro facing rear instead of facing front, then it will be probably useful 😅

[@nucik]

Have you watched til the end? ;)

[@birolkaplan9789]

You don’t need to put go pro on avata 2 😅 it make more sense on avata 1

[@christopherconkright1317]

For the Avata it’s not a good idea. If other FPV systems. Walksnail(not 4k version) HD0 etc

[@cirkuscederstrom]

dji looks better imo. while you are at it, why not throw the insta360 x4 on the avata :D

[@DavidManningvlog]

Last scene in the video👍

[@cirkuscederstrom]

@@DavidManningvlog wild!

[@shannoncooper1598]

Link to those guards

[@DavidManningvlog]

They're linked down in the description!

[@LoVeAmBiEnT]

The guards are horrible completely ruins the flight characteristics there’s a new ones now that basically wrap around the guards perfectly without affecting the performance. They just came out like a week ago.

[@CodyMorgan-s9o]

Its' because of low light brother - the camera can't hold a candle to the GoPro

[@KrisLuckPhoto]

Great minds think alike 🤓

[@ARTIKUL777]

Avata is better than GoPro 🧐

[@MaelstromFilm]

LoL no it fucking isn't.

[@LoVeAmBiEnT]

@@MaelstromFilmhey. Say fuxkijg more. Ya know. The Avata 2 is insane. Go pro is the shit tho but now w 100fps and color grading w gyroflow. Ya. Fight me already

[@MaelstromFilm]

@@LoVeAmBiEnT There are are dozen comparisons between avata and gopro out there and gopro always comes out better. Air 4 transmission camera is good, but its not as good as gopro, end of story.

[@toddjustice8032]

Don’t know what you’re looking at but both cameras struggled with different shots

[@RGMGFitness]

100% just don't do it! Putting a full sized GoPro on the Avata2 is destroying the flight characteristics of this cinewhoop. Your not gaining anything in video quality by doing this. Guess someone had to do it...keep up the great work! 😉😉😉

[@chumcool]

You would do it for 24fps. Avata doesn’t shoot cinematic.

[@jacobellis83]

First love your videos

[@DavidManningvlog]

I appreciate you watching brother!

[@majidalavi5031]

Bad test..... gyro gopro and see result

[@villarroelxD]

I love the video but i have a really good point to test this right. What shut speed did you configure in each camera? couse the day is really sunny and if th shutter speed it's automatic we cannot se the real difference :C

[@conorstewart2214]

That doesn't really matter when you are just comparing the quality of each camera.

[@nikoshi3438]

avata 2 in bad light scenerio (including inside) is bad, bad idea.

[@setas1616]

hello❤❤

[@reelsallday953]

24fps that's why

[@injectionAI]

A downgrade

[@zozialstudio833]

always too much headtalk, boring

[@theerthaallu1633]

avata 2 is beter

[@NavyBluntChris]

Why u attach junk to your DJI?