GoPro Fusion Secrets to Extracting 5.7K Video from the 360 Camera

The Secret to Extracting 5.7K Video from the GoPro Fusion

Remember when the GoPro Fusion was first announced? There was wild speculation flying everywhere about the specs. When they were finally announced, there were many questions as to why 5.2 K and not 5.7 k for video. After all, it’s not that much of a difference, but it would be really cool to be able to have 5.7 K videos from the fusion.

Well, I’m about to show you the secret way of making that happen!

To start off, to accomplish this, we’re going to have to go into kind of a Time Warp bubble. Back to a time when the only way you can get things done in a computer was to type in simple line code known as command line interface or CLI.

For many of you, that might be something that you actually remember, or it may be so far in and scary that you may be reluctant to attempt it! But I’m going to go through this step-by-step and show you how it’s done.

Thre is one very BIG caveat. This is not endorsed or supported by GoPro. You do this at your own risk.

You might wonder why I wanted to do this. There are several reasons.

First, I love the GoPro Fusion! I am a total Fusion Fanatic and not ashamed to say it.

Second, I had a project that screamed for the Fusion, but the tech specs that were required were for 5760×2880 resolution.

So I set out to find a way to make it work and get the absolute highest quality professional render.

Thanks to a good friend who let me in on the secret I found out that this can be done by using the ms-dos command line interface.

This meant a much heavier user interface with the project. No opening up the wonderfully clean and easy to use Fusion Studio.

Instead, every clip must be rendered individually. This was no easy task with almost 200 shots to process this would be no easy task.

First, a little pre-prep. Find the Fusion Studio folder in the GoPro folder in Program Files in your C: drive

You can either work from that path or copy the folder and put it on another drive. In my case, I added the folder to my i: drive which is my raid.

Next, you will need to put all your Fusion files together in that folder or in a separate folder. I put mine into the Fusion Studio folder. This includes both the FRONT and BACK files from your GoPro Fusion camera.

These include the .mp4, .thm, .lrv and .wav files.

Once you’ve done that, you are ready to start.

 

Open a Command Prompt in any number of ways. My favorite is to right click on the windows icon and select Command Prompt from the list.

 

Once you have a little black magic window into the very soul of your computer open, you are ready for the next step. Namely, get some help. I mean literally, open the help file.

Here is what you will see.

Options:

-h, –help                                            display this help

–front <frontImagePath>                              path to the front file

–back <backImagePath>                                path to the back file

-o, –output <outpuFilePath>                          path to the output file

-d, –directory <directoryToBeParsed>                 Parse a directory to find sequences

-c, –calibration <calibrationFilePath>               path to the calibration file

–firstFrame <firstFrame>                             first frame of the sequence to process

–lastFrame <lastFrame>                               last frame of the sequence to process

–synchro <synchro>                                   synchronization shift between back and front videos

-w, –width <width>                                   width of the output image. Its height will  be set automatically                                                                                     by the program.

–pc, –parallaxCompensation <parallaxCompensation>   warp mode for parallax

compensation:

0 Disabled

1 Discrete+Continuous

(default)

2 Discrete

-b, –blending <blendMode>                            blending mode:

0 Multiband (default)

1 Master only

2 Slave only

3 None

4 Feather

-p, –projection <projectionMode>                     projection :

0 Equirectangular

(default)

1 Little Planet

2 Fisheye

3 Equirectangular with

horizontal seams

4 Rotated Sphere

Projection (RSP)

5 Equi-Angular Cubemaps

(EAC)

6 Cubemaps

–videoCodec <videoCodec>                             video codec for video

output:

0 H.264 (default)

1 CineForm

2 ProRes

3 VP9

–aspectRatio <aspectRatioMode>                       aspect ratio mode

(overcapture only):

0 1:1

1 16:9

2 4:3

–fov <fov (degrees)>                                 fov value in degrees

(overcapture only):

-s, –stabilization <stabilizationMode>               stabilization mode:

0 None

1 ShakeOnly

2 Full

–stabilizationFile <stabilizationFilepath>           path to the  stabilization file   (overrides GPMF). Only

relevant when a stabilization mode is chosen.

–stabilizationCalib <stabilizationImuCalibFilepath>  path to the IMU

calibration file

–stabilizationDump <stabilizationDump>               dump stabilization

files

(sensors,timestamps,..)

to that directory (must

exist).

–iq <iqMode>                                         IQ pass (GoPro Look):

0 disabled (default)

1 enabled, with the same

implementation as the

GUI

2 enabled, with the CPU

implementation

3 enabled, with the GPU

implementation

4 enabled, GPU for

preStitch only

5 enabled, GPU for

postStitch only

–denoise <value>                                     denoise parameter to

use for the IQ pass,

between 0 and 255. Only

used if IQ pass is

enabled

–flatMode <value>                                    flatMode parameter to

use for the IQ pass,

between 0 and 255. Only

used if IQ pass is

enabled

–globalContrast <value>                              globalContrast

parameter to use for the

IQ pass, between 0 and

  1. Only used if IQ

pass is enabled

–localContrast <value>                               localContrast parameter

to use for the IQ pass,

between 0 and 255. Only

used if IQ pass is

enabled

–sharpness <value>                                   sharpness parameter to

use for the IQ pass,

between 0 and 255. Only

used if IQ pass is

enabled

–temperature <value>                                 temperature parameter

to use for the IQ pass,

between 0 and 255. Only

used if IQ pass is

enabled

–tint <value>                                        tint parameter to use

for the IQ pass, between

0 and 255. Only used if

IQ pass is enabled

–wave <waveSoundPath>                                path to the wave file  for ambisonic output

–amb, –ambType <ambType>                            ambisonic channel

ordering:

0 Stereo (default)

1 Ambisonic Channel

Number (ACN)

2 Furse-Malham (FuMa)

–yaw <angle(degrees)>                                yaw orientation of the

output

–pitch <angle(degrees)>                              pitch orientation of

the output

–roll <angle(degrees)>                               roll orientation of the

output

-l, –logLevel <logLevel>                             log level:

0 None

1 Critical

2 Warning

3 Info (default)

4+ debug levels

–exportGpmf                                          export the GPMF

metadata in a JSON file specified in the output file argument

–advancedDebug <debugDirectory>                      export extra debug

images (for developers & nerds only)

–profiling <svgFilename>                             export profiling SVG

image

–benchmark                                           print benchmark   information

 

You now have the ammunition that you need to create your 5.7K video files. You just need to put together the string of commands.

In my case, it looked like this.

Fusionstudio_x64.exe –front GPFR2082.MP4 –back GPBK2082.MP4 -w 5760 –videoCodec 1 –pc 1 –stabilization 2 –iq 1  –flatMode 255  –output I:\Fusion-04-Day-3-02-19-2018-Al-Stereo-Fight-VIDEO_2082.mov

 

Let’s break it down so you can understand what is happening.

First, I told the program what two files to stitch together, one from the Front and one from the back. Then with the ” -w 5760.” I instructed the program to make a 5760×2880 file.

Using ” –video codec 1 –pc 1 ” the commands for using the Cineform codec and with the ” –pc 1 ” instruction the program would use the Discrete+Continuous (default) form of parallax compensation.

I wanted the clips to have a flat color profile, so I used  ” –iq 1  –flatMode 255 “.

And in this clip, I wanted full stabilization so the command ” –stabilization 2 ” If I had used ” –stabilization 1″, it would do Shake Only stabilization.

For my audio, I wanted to level one ambisonic audio so hence, –wave GPBK2082.WAV  –amb 1

Finally, the last set of commands were used to tell the program where to put the finished file and what to name the file, ” –output I:\Fusion-04-Day-3-02-19-2018-Al-Stereo-Fight-VIDEO_2082.mov”

Once you input that command, the Fusion Studio program will render, frame by frame, your clip.

As I mentioned before, with 200 clips that make for a long process of sitting in front of your computer doing each one, changing the file numbers and sometimes the stabilization required. Definitely, using the beautiful GUI based software created for the task is so much easier. But when you have the need, it’s nice to know that you can get such fantastic quality for this fantastic little 360 cameras!

There are many commands that I did not go in to, but for the brave souls out there, that leaves it open for you to try! Experiment, try new settings and see what works. Please do not ask GoPro for help with this because it is undocumented and not supported.

 

 

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