Since early 2013, GoPro cameras have included an expansion pack of settings to get the best image quality possible. Depending on the environment and light conditions, Protune settings can cater to the desired shot in a variety of modes. In the graphics below, we cover both settings for Video and Time-Lapse Photo. This covers both moving images and stills as a foundation to work with depending on what you want to capture.

PHOTO

In order to take advantage of these settings, turn your camera ON and set it to Photo Mode to start with. Then tap on the bottom bubble that includes the mode information, and a screen similar to the image below will appear. Feel free to copy our default settings as these tend to be the best blanket settings for any condition. Let’s break it down though so you can adjust the values if/when needed.

Interval: is the time a photo will be captured per second. 0.5 seconds is the fastest the camera can capture a single photo and is what we use.

FOV (or Field Of View): is the lens perspective. Anything other than Wide is a digital crop. The effect of a Medium or Narrow FOV is a “zoom” lens but ultimately loses data. So we leave it at Wide and crop in post if we want to punch in.

RAW: is an option when the interval is set to 5 seconds. While it would be nice to have this feature enabled, it’s better to have more frames to choose from versus less compression.

Protune: is the option must turned ON in order to activate the following settings

EV Comp (or Exposure Value Compensation): is an option to override the native light meter. Best use case is if it’s extremely sunny out and snow is on the ground, setting EV Comp to -0.5 or -1 will override the camera’s light meter and set exposure to a darker value. The opposite will occur if you set the values to a positive number like +1.

White Balance: is the value the camera establishes in order to make whites look white (as apposed to green/magenta or blue/orange). Since the release of Protune, GoPro’s Auto value has become quite capable of establishing a proper white balance but if you want to go manual, here’s a chart below to aid in setting a correct value.

ISO Min: is the film speed, or in other words, how fast the camera will capture light for each frame. The higher the number, the more light allowed into the frame (which can over-expose and image. Setting this to the lowest value at 100 is in best interest so the camera is allowed to capture proper light values in well-lit environments

ISO Max: is the cap or top of the spectrum when it comes to film speed. If this value is set to a low value like 400 and records something inside a poorly-lit room, the shadows/dark colors will likely become a true black. This means the data recorded is not able to be recovered when lifting the pixels’ light value in post. If this value is set to something near 3200, the camera will capture more data in dark areas, but introduces noise. For photos, we always shoot with the ISO Max at the highest value to make sure the film speed can keep motion blur down to a minimum. This way we can keep up with the action as we can handle the noise in post.

Sharpness: is the amount of contrast added to detailed lines. High often crunches the detail too far and Low will introduce in-camera noise reduction processing which is not something we want the camera to do. That leaves us with Medium which literally is the happy medium when it comes to creating quality images.

Color: is the two opportunity to choose from two options for a preset color profile. Since these JPGs are compressed and don’t offer lossless recorded data, GoPro color is the best bang for the buck. FLAT works in a hypothetical way where you have a neutral ground to color grade from in post, but the recorded data less than that of GoPro in order to maintain the neutral appearance.

PT Settings: is your option to reset to default in case you hate everything you just setup. Tap this value and you’ll have the option to edit>redo in a way all the way back to how the camera came out of box (notice: this is just for Protune settings, nothing else will be reset). 

So all of these settings to say… we can apply these settings to other modes to get great results straight-out-of-camera. More specifically, we can setup our video modes to capture top-notch color and light just like we did for photo. 

VIDEO

Video is a little more complicated as there are more options to choose from in Protune, but still is a manageable way to improve your content. Except for a couple settings, you’ll find that most of the options to adjust are the same as Photo Protune options. Here’s our go-to settings when recording video.

Since we already covered much of the settings above, let’s just address the video-specific options:

RES|FPS (or Resolution|Frames Per Second: is the overall video canvas size and recording speed. There’s a lot in here so let’s break it down. Before we get to resolution, we have “aspect ratio.” Aspect ratio is the shape of the rectangle when the video is recorded. For example, a 1:1 aspect ratio means the length and width are equal so the canvas is a square. No mater how big or small the resolution, the canvas will always be a square. The most popular aspect ratio is a 16:9 which looks like a horizontal rectangle. Most TVs and computer screens are based on this ratio which is why most people shoot in this format. However, we like to shoot in 4:3 aspect ratio as it sets up the video to capture more real estate on the top and bottom of the frame compared to the 16:9. With aspect ratio covered now we can move on to Resolution. This is the amount of pixels the camera paint into the canvas. The higher the resolution, the more detail/quality and overall data recorded. In the image above we have 2K selected because that is the highest resolution we can shoot in a 4:3 aspect ratio and record in 60 frames per second. 60FPS is a great value for action because it serves the purpose of capturing motion with an option to slow down the footage to attain the “slo-mo” effect. Normal values for FPS is 24 or 30. Since the camera is capturing 60, that means we can slow it down two times before we get back to 30. If we selected 120FPS, that would allow four times slow motion. However unless the shot really calls for a slow motion effect, the quality of the video trumps the frame rate. Here’s a scale to better illustrate what the various resolution options look like:

Low Light: is GoPro’s unique feature that allows the camera to double expose a frame in order to allow more light into the lens. Essentially it makes footage brighter in dark environments by leaving the shutter open longer to allow more light hit the image processor.

Stabilization: is the amount of in-camera video counteraction. In layman’s terms, how stable you want the shot. In the later HERO cameras, they offer a mode called Boost which revolutionized the action camera industry. It makes hand-held recording look as if it was taken on a professional gimbal. This option sacrifices a digital crop though which is why we normally stick to ON  Hypersmooth 2.0. This option leaves a decent amount of the frame without cropping in and at the same time does some mind-blowing stabilization.

Shutter: is the value used to force a certain shutter speed. If you shoot in 60 frames per second, the camera may use a 1000/s shutter speed to accommodate for bright sunlight during the day. Auto is generally the best option since the camera will handle it, but if you add a neutral density filter like these from Polar Pro, you may want to control the shutter speed to capture motion blur.

RAW Audio: is the ability to have RAW sound paired with recorded video. GoPro’s community lists the options like this: Low – Applies minimal processing; ideal if you apply audio processing in post-production. Medium – Applies processing based on your Manual Audio Control setting (wind and/or stereo). If you have Manual Audio Control turned off, the camera automatically switches between wind filtering and stereo audio. High – Applies full audio processing (automatic gain and AAC encoding).

Mics: is mainly an option if you plan on using external microphones via USB-C. We leave it to Stereo for a quality left and right track using the on-board mics in the camera. But if you need extra preferences, use the Standard Mic+ if your microphone doesn’t have its own battery or Powered Mic+ if the mic is powered.

We hope this clears up any questions you may have about GoPro Protune and the settings we use. If you didn’t find the info you’re looking for, check out GoPro’s support article here.