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Virb 360 or GoPro Fusion

k16pa

'15 R1200GSA
I am riding the MABDR in September. I’m thinking I’ll finally break down and get a video camera (on me- helmet? Or On the GSA somewhere? Ideas welcome!). I’ve been reading up on these two lately- as I’m thinking I want a 360 cam to capture anything I’m riding thru and the resolution and stabilization on these looks really good (DCRAINMAKER). Couple of things: I want to be able to turn the cam off or on EASILY with gloves on AND I want to be able to talk along with the video with my Sena 20S Bluetooth. For those of you with experience with these two cams- which one do I want? Or do I want something else? Thanks for the chat.


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Vince, if you have just the one bike, 2015 GSA, than I would consider mounting it to the bike, for safety reasons. There are very valid reasons why you don't see "appendages" hanging off any high-end helmet and the primary one is that they would not pass safety testing. Helmet manufacturers go to great trouble to reduce exposure to risk and the top companies like Shoei and Arai are quite vigilant. Arai has some good verbage on their sites about the importance of having as smooth an outer shell as possible to reduce the possibility of having your neck twisted in an accident. I've not gone as far as they have and have added my Sena comm unit and a Sena Prism camera (small tube-type). Both are on relatively low-pressure breakaway mounts, but they still are more than I'd prefer. I would not mount a full-blown camera, but to each their own, this is just my safety concern.

I have a camera-setup that will be mounted to my bike this winter that will be wired to the ignition and set to loop, so I don't have to remember to turn it on or off and don't need to charge it.

If you have a Nav-VI on your GSA the Virb 360 can have some of it's functions operated by the bike's wonder-wheel via the Nav-VI. That can come in handy if it is mounted on your bike, but is extremely handy if it is mounted on your helmet.
 
I noticed one response to the choice given in one of the threads in the Similar Threads pane at the bottom of the page.
 
I have both cameras and neither is ready to meet our current expectations for image/ video quality.
If you have to pick, the Virb wins overall.

The Virb has a better form factor if you are going to affix it to your helmet and has a on/ off slider you can get used to with gloves.

Unlike the Fusion, it also offers the option to swap lens covers if you ever damage them.

One microSD card instead of two required for the Fusion.

The GoPro companion app is better than Garmin's.

It does have Bluetooth and can pair with a Bluetooth mic. Not sure about Bluetooth coms such as SENA. You may have to capture the audio separately and overlay it onto the footage when you do your editing.

RE: editing, rendering Fusion files take an unreasonable amount of time on a powerful computer.

Battery life is terrible and so is the image quality in anything but bright/ sunny lighting conditions.

360 cams need to get to at least 12K resolution to make the extracted "flat" (non 360) footage quality acceptable.
Right now, if you are planning to extract HD footage from the 360 content you capture, the quality will be about the same as a GoPro from 3-4 years ago.
 
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