GoPro Launches QuikStories

We live in a world where like it or not people just love to share. We share pictures, videos and stories about our daily life at a prolific rate. It’s very easy to know exactly what that long-lost school friend is doing via a quick perusal of their Facebook profile. We love a selfie, a pose or a feet at the beach brag picture. GoPro really kicked off high quality video content that could be simply captured but until now not as easily shared or edited, especially when it came to integration with smartphones.

Now your experiences can be doled out quickly and most importantly pretty dam professionally across the usual social platforms almost autonomously. A new GoPro app feature called QuikStories draws footage from the latest HERO5 camera onto your phone. A short QuikStories video is born by simply pairing a HERO5 camera to your phone and opening the usual but now enhanced Capture GoPro App. The app then drags all your latest GoPro action footage onto your phone allowing for the automatic creation of polished and easily shared videos. There are a raft of filters, effects and music that you can play around with and of course the ability to manually create your own production.

GoPro took us on a bucket list experience to showcase the new app and gather some of our own footage. There was no shortage of content with the itinerary including a seaplane flight across Sydney Harbour taking in the Harbour Bridge and Opera House followed by a trip north along the coast to Palm Beach, or Summer Bay of Home and Away fame for those interstate or further afield.

Armed with a HERO5 and Karma Grip we obviously had any number of landmarks and scenery to capture. After an epic climb to the top of Barrenjoey Head to see its famous lighthouse we gathered around at lunch to try and cut our QuikStories. What became obvious is the need to shoot very brief moments, trying to sync in some cases more than 80 videos of varying lengths from the camera to phone via Wi-Fi is both time consuming and heavy on the batteries.

My own video will be available over the weekend and I can faithfully report that while I may need to master my GoPro skills the app itself is rich with features and simply fun to use. You can add text, speed effects and adjust the overall video length. It’s even possible to chuck in your own footage filmed by your smartphone. I’d like to spend some more time with the app itself before I give my complete report, but after a relatively brief introduction it’s apparent GoPro is headed in the right direction.
QuikStories is now available for HERO5 Black and HERO5 Session users. To get started, download the new GoPro App from the Apple App Store or Google Play.