GoPro vs Virb Elite

Need some help. I want a camera to use for everyday use and aviation related stuff (cockpit and wing mount).....what experience do you guys have with the GoPro vs Garmin Virb? I use Garmin Pilot, so that makes me lean toward the Virb. But tell me your experiences, pro and con for each.
Thanks in advance...

Jimmy

I have used GoPros for years and at OSH this year I picked up the new Garmin Virb XE. It would be hard to say which is better. They both have poor battery life and grainy video for anything beyond 100 yds. My overall opinion is that these types of cameras still have a long way to go to rival the hand held digital video cameras of five years ago. Here are some advatages to each:

GoPro Advantages
- Seperate replacable case/lense cover
- Better suction cup mount
- More mounts included in package
- Non proprietary charging/sync cable
VIRB XE Advantages
- Excellent remote BT to phone/tablet that enables you to change settings
- Can view current view on remote to adjust white balance, zoom, aspect ratio, etc.
- Uses same mount bases at GoPro's so you can use old GoPro mounts
- ALL THE GREAT DATA it adds to the video. Built in GPS and other sensors.
- Decent editing program that allows you unlimited types of customization of all the data imbedded into the video
- It BT's to my OBDII reader for use at the track so I get all my track data overlayed on my video and customize it to how I want it to look and which data to include. (Speed, RPM, G-Force, Acceleration, Braking, etc...)

Video quality of each is about the same unless you are doing ultra HD video for professional purposes which also takes a ton of data storage space. The GoPro has the edge here but us normal people would never want to record at this level, it would take forever to download it to your computer and work with it with our amateur video editing programs.

Knowing what I know if someone lined both up in front of me and said pick one it would be the VIRB XE. I like being able to add in all the sensor data especially for the track.

Take a look at the ReplayXD.

I have two and one GoPro and much prefer the ReplayXD's.

down and dirty

I use a Mobius Action Cam (google it). $79 bucks.... not disappointed at all.

Thanks

Many thanks guys. I'll be looking and deciding in the next few days.

I have both. Thought the virb's data would be the cat's meow....found it to be horribly unreliable. Shows 100knots while sitting still or 30 knots while wide open. Useless.

So it comes down to video quality...which I see very little difference in.

Virb GPS Performance

ColoRv said:

I have both. Thought the virb's data would be the cat's meow....found it to be horribly unreliable. Shows 100knots while sitting still or 30 knots while wide open. Useless.

So it comes down to video quality...which I see very little difference in.

Click to expand...

Hello Bill,

Quite a surprise to read your posting. The Virb, Virb Elite, Virb X, and Virb XE cameras have excellent built-in high sensitivity GPS receivers that even use special software common to our aviation products to enable them to work well in the dynamics of flight.

When developing these cameras, we flight test them and compare the GPS data against similar data collected by our aircraft GPS. These cameras certainly do a great job of tracking ground speed.

When developing the Virb XE we even reviewed data collected on our Citation jet.

Are you sure your camera was mounted in a location where it could see the GPS satellites and maintain a good GPS fix? Without that, the camera has no way to accurately measure and log ground speed.

Thanks,
Steve

Virb speed errors.

I have a virb also and it does the same thing, once it passes 125kts it resets the speed to zero. If you see 27kts on the display while in the air it is really 152kts. Very frustrating for a "aviation" camera. I've seen other videos from the virb on this forum that don't seem to have that problem. I have had multiple contacts with Garmin support about this. Ultimately they're only solution was to buy the new model. No thanks.

Doug

I have a friend with a few of these. If you're not real picky about perfect quality video then these are the ticket. They work well and you can get 6 for the price of a go pro.

http://www.amazon.com/Astak-CM-7500-1080p-Action-Camcorder/product-reviews/B00B3LRGL6

Garmin Virb Orphaned?

I've been using my Virb basic and Virb Elite for over three years now and, up until lately, have been very pleased. They take great 1080p video. The main thing I like is that their cross section is much smaller than the GoProp when mounted outside the aircraft. The 3 hr. battery life is insufficient for a long cross country, but I've fixed that with an external battery for my tail cam. Both the battery and memory card will now handle six hours. Several problems with Garmin's free editing software have popped up lately, though, which may force me to switch to GoPro (or something else).

The most annoying problem is that their editing software chokes on speeds over 127 Kts. When my speed increases above that, the display starts over at 1 Kt and counts up from there. It could be a problem with my computer or their editing software, but I've politely asked their tech support on the Garmin Virb Edit forum but they don't even answer. See Thread. It's pretty clear that aviation isn't a priority for the Garmin video department, as evidenced by their software having no feet-per-minute option for vertical speed; Many pilots have requested that, with no response. Apparently Garmin is all into motorcycle racing, skiiing, bicycling and fitness, but not aviation.

A bigger problem is that Garmin has "moved on" from the original Virb cameras and are now pushing their 360 degree cameras and 4K cameras. They've pushed several "upgrades" to their Virb Edit software to support those new formats, but the upgrades messed up the editing of the original virb cameras. What the new v5.x.x software did was to offload a lot of the computing requirements onto the GPU (video card) to take the burden off the CPU. I had to go out and buy a new video card just so I could keep editing my old videos. I still had to revert back to an old version 4 of Virb Edit.

Last week, come to find out, Garmin is no longer manufacturing some of the mounts for the Garmin Virb Basic and Virb Elite cameras. The "flush mount" for my tail cam got damaged and when I went to buy another one, I found that they are "unavailable" in the U.S.

I really like these cameras, but it seems they're orphans now.