best way to transfer gopro videos to mac

This will give you access to the transport streams the GoPro creates for live-streaming to the respective mobile apps.

To access this low-res footage, head over to the live folder. But for preview purposes, that might just be enough. This can be downloaded much quicker, because the file size is much smaller (and the quality is lower too). On the mobile apps, it is possible to view a low-res version of the footage. Instead, to traverse up the directory, use your browser’s “back” button. To navigate up the directory structure, no. The web server in the GoPro is extremely basic. This is still a nice option if the camera is mounted in a hard-to-reach place though. It’s not a GoPro limitation, but rather a limitation of the “g” type WiFi standard it’s using – at least on my HERO 4. Note that this will take FOREVER due to the large size of those files, and the relatively limited transfer rate of about 1 MB per second. Clicking on it will usually try to play it, so instead right-click on a file and select “Download” or “Download As”. Footage is in the DCIM folder, usually in the 100GOPRO folder. Select the videos folder so see the same structure that you’d get if you would look at the SD card. The :8080 part of the IP is the port on which we’d like to connect. This will show you a very basic yet browsable file structure. The GoPro’s actually runs a web server and exposes part if its internal file system. Multiple devices can be connected to the camera at the same time, so your iPhone App and your desktop can “surf” the same GoPro created hotspot. We can connect to the same WiFi hotspot from our desktop and laptop computers, using the same password we had setup using the GoPro. Mobile devices need to be connected to it so that the respective GoPro can operate the camera. This leaves the SD card place and doesn’t disturb the (sometimes hard to reach or difficult to recreate) position of the camera.

Besides, it takes forever to do its job.Ī much more useful approach would be to hook directly into the GoPro and transfer files that way. Plus, there’s an additional compression step involved which can’t be good for picture quality. While that approach gets footage onto my iPhone, I still need to transfer the files to my Mac for editing.

Those apps transcode files and compress them for easier viewing, and to save storage space. There is an iOS and Android App available to transfer files directly from a GoPro camera to a mobile device.

Best way to transfer gopro videos to mac