Beginner's luck with a GoPro video camera

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DeeAnna

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I know this isn't soap related, but I have to share my story --

Santa brought me a GoPro video camera for Christmas and I had to play with it and learn how to upload videos to YouTube. I am an utter newbie to all this, so I really struggled to get the video made in the first place, and then to edit it properly, add a simple title, and include music. But I had fun with the process ... at least most of the time.

The end result is this time lapse video of today's huge snowstorm that turned the entire state of Iowa from brown and green to stark white: https://youtu.be/5VJ_uT5kdvE

What you see in the video is my little farm as seen from my front windows. After almost 20 years, the beauty of this secluded little valley still takes my breath away.
 
Nice work! Looks like your critters weren't afraid to brave the elements. My poor pooch only left her blankie pile on the couch to potty twice today lol.
 
DeeAnna, that was great! You have really "weather hardy" animals around your house. Our female Australian Healer won't go out to potty if there's a tiny bit of rain but our 16 yr old Russian Blue cat loves to jump through the snow drifts. It's just so interesting how we all adapt to our environment. You have a beautiful piece of property with an amazing view. Thank you so much for sharing your special "minute"!
 
We have Norwegian Fjord horses (national horse of Norway) and a quarter horse who thinks he's a Fjord. The Fjords have warm winter coats that are 3-4 inches long. The hair is thick and downy soft next to their skin. They seem to enjoy winter weather unless it's blowing really hard or sleeting. The QH seems to weather it pretty well too, although Duncan doesn't have the plushy hair that the Fjords do. He's gotten cold enough to shiver just a few times over the years, and when that happens I've put him in the barn until the weather settles down and he dries off and warms up, but we don't have stalls for any of the horses -- they don't get coddled too much.

We also have four dogs -- Ellie an elderly long-haired collie mix, Parker the mournful basset hound, Gypsy my German shorthair pointer princess, and Ocho a fun-loving pitbull. The shorthair and the pibble are utter wusses when it comes to snow and cold ... unless there's a squirrel on the horizon, and then they're gung ho to charge out and do battle with the forces of squirrel-evil. Five minutes later, however, they're shivering at the back door and wanting in NOW! I have coats for those two to wear on rainy or blustery days (like today). The other dogs could care less.

My five house cats come and go as they please ... but they mostly stay indoors on ugly days like today. Cleo and Tish, my two girl cats, are often on the rug in front of the warm woodstove as they supervise the household activities. :) It's striking that the girls are much more involved in what's going on in the house and interacting with me, DH, and the dogs. My three boy cats mostly just hang around and chill out.

HoW -- I dread the morning too. Snow is supposed to taper off by midnight, but I'm sure there will be plenty of shoveling to do. Ugh!
 
Oh DeeAnna, what a great job! Your farm looks so peaceful in the snow. How you must love it there. I envy you all that space to keep animals. I too have a Go Pro. I got it from the place where I worked when I retired. I have yet to have much time to look at it, but although I've had cameras of all sorts over the years, the process seems a bit daunting to me. I'm wondering...did you teach yourself to do what you did by trial and error, or did you run across some good tutorials? I have a friend who lives across the country, and she's been asking me to make a video, showing her how I make soap. If there are any good tutorials you think might help, I'd appreciate it if you could point me in their direction. Which was harder, figuring out the camera, or the Facebook uploading and editing part?

As for the snow......I'm writing from the, until today, balmy northeast, where we received our first dusting today. Usually, we'd have much more than that by now, but we got a reprieve this year. We knew it couldn't last, but oh my, it was nice while it did! I feel for those of you who are digging out. Our day is coming.

Cold-BundledUpLg.gif
 
Lovely video DeeAnna:) It was almost like looking out my own window, lol, except we have gotten three times as much snow here (had days with a lot of snow coming here and minus 12 degr. below too, brrrrr)
Thought it was something familiar with the horsies too, living in Norway I see those on a regular basis around here we live. You are so lucky to have all that space to be able to have animals.

Thanks for posting that vid, I really enjoyed the timelapse!
 
"...did you teach yourself to do what you did by trial and error, or did you run across some good tutorials?..."

Like I said, I'm an utter newbie to this, so I read the manual (kind of helpful to learn more about the buttons and displays) and that was okay. YouTube has a ton of videos on getting started and some of those are really helpful. It was harder for me to figure out how to use the camera and edit the video. The uploading to YouTube part was pretty easy once I survived everything else!

Here are a few resources to get you going --

The basics of getting started. Beginner and intermediate techniques for using the camera. By HowToUsePOVCamera. https://www.youtube.com/user/HowToUsePOVcameras/playlists
How to set up a time lapse video: [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp0T90ULEs0&index=7&list=LLaLCRvvau4acqQ4eLGZUywA[/ame]

More basics. Gadgets to use with the cameras. By Kyle Martin. https://www.youtube.com/user/kylemartn101/playlists
Kyle is a do-it-yourselfer so he shows how to make gadgets inexpensively that let you use the Gopro cameras for different activities. For example, if you ever want to mount a Gopro camera on a glove, Kyle explains how to do it.

How to use GoPro Studio (video editor software). By Village Park Source. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnWrVWj1APWsUbqzLQb6i_JiT3PfKfhNb
If you absolutely don't know anything about video editing or about this free software (that would be me!), these videos are really helpful. Each one is SHORT and to the point, so you can watch just the techniques you want to watch -- as many times as needed. His videos gave me enough knowledge to edit the video to remove unwanted footage and to put the title, video, and music together.

How to upload a video to YouTube by TheGoodCooks1. [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVFYOq89spw[/ame]
YouTube's own help info for uploading videos: https://support.google.com/youtube/topic/2888648?hl=en

I'm sure there are other good YouTube videos that cover the same ground, but these were the ones I watched and thought were particularly helpful.
 
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Yes, the horses (and my dogs) add a lot to the video; I'm glad the camera included a nice view of the cornstalk piles (lower center) and the horses' barn (far left). The elderly, arthritic horse you see wandering closest to the house on the left hand side of the screen is Mike. He is quite the gentle soul. He is living in our yard for the winter so we can feed him extra and he won't be harassed by our bossy middle-aged gelding Talisman (Tally). Tally doesn't believe in karma, so he runs Mike around and picks on him mercilessly, just because he can.

There's more going on in the video than I realized at first. In the high definition version, I can see the local deer herd browsing their way along the hillside that is in the distant left of the video. You'll see them as tiny black far-away dots that move around like fleas on a dog. They show up best about halfway through the video. Even one of our eagle neighbors shows up in a single frame -- not much to see in the video except a fleeting black dot, but I did pick him out when I was editing.
 
Your land looks so peaceful in the snow. It's just the sort of pastoral landscape I'm considering relocating to in the near-ish future. Right now North Carolina is my front runner. I love the mountains in Colorado, but I really want goats, chickens, and a llama (of course) to protect everyone. Good land near viable job centers is very expensive/impossible to find here, and I think the winters might be too rough on me to plan on retiring in one day.

I actually just got done window shopping farms there; I hopped over to SMF; and what do I see... a lovely bit of land. I'll take it as a sign I should go back to land window shopping!
 
Very cool video...literally!

I've had a GoPro for a couple of years, bought it to record my bike trips through the mountains. My problem is with the editing, I just don't have the patience or inclination to do it! Thanks for the links, Maybe I'll get off my lazy behind and learn how to edit things properly!
 
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