GoPro Player 2.0 update for GoPro MAX and Hero: 7 differences

GoPro updated its GoPro Player app to combine it with Reelsteady Go 2.0, and to add other new features.  Here are 7 differences between the old app and the new app.

GoPro Player is the app for stitching and reframing GoPro MAX (reviewed here).  With this update, GoPro decided to integrate GoPro Player with Reelsteady Go.  Here are the differences between the GoPro Player 1.0, the standalone Reelsteady Go, and the new combined GoPro Player + Reelsteady.

1. Reelsteady option for Hero cameras (even Hypersmooth was enabled).  The biggest difference is the option to add Reelsteady 2.0, a stabilization software for GoPro Hero (note: as of April 11, 2022, Reelsteady does not work on GoPro MAX).  Compared to the Hypersmooth stabilization in GoPros, Reelsteady has two major differences: first, its cropping is variable.  In scenes where there is more movement, it will crop more tightly for better stabilization.  Where there is not much movement, it will use a wider field of view.  Second, Reelsteady doesn’t just examine the gyro data from a single frame.  Rather, it analyzes a few seconds of footage at the same time to find the smoothest stabilization.
   Because of these differences, Reelsteady can produce much more steady video than Hypersmooth or any other stabilization software I’ve seen.  Reelsteady isn’t free — you’ll need to pay $99.99 for it but if you already have Reelsteady Go, you can upgrade for free.  Just click on the Reelsteady menu and login with your Reelsteady credentials.
   Please note that Reelsteady works best with unstabilized GoPro footage shot in 4:3 aspect ratio.
2. Faster Reelsteady.   The standalone Reelsteady Go is extremely slow.  It takes more than 5 minutes to render 1 minute of video.  With the new GoPro Player + Reelsteady, you’ll see the stabilization in just a few seconds.
3. Reelsteady batch exporting.  With the standalone Reelsteady Go, you had to apply Reelsteady on each video, one by one.  With Player + Reelsteady, you can now batch export several videos with Reelsteady stabilization.
4. Lens correction for Reelsteady.  On Reelsteady Go 1.0, it would apply a rectlinear projection to the stabilized.  With the new app, you can control the distortion to make it look more like a fisheye video or a rectilinear video.  Tip: for a rectilinear video, adjust Lens Correction to 50.  Please note that the stabilization will perform better when the projection is set to rectilinear.
5. Improved dynamic range.  Although Reelsteady cannot be applied to GoPro MAX videos (as of the date of this post), the new app does improve the dynamic range of the GoPro MAX, as shown in the sample video below.  On the new app, the video is not as contrasty, and you can see better shadow detail on my clothes, and better highlight detail in the clouds.
   
6. Lens correction for GoPro MAX.  Previously, there was only one projection mode for reframed GoPro MAX videos, which was somewhere between rectilinear and fisheye.  Now, you can adjust the lens correction for every keyframe.  This means you can use rectilinear on some keyframes and transition to fisheye on other keyframes.
7. World lock option locked out.  One disadvantage of the new app is that when you’re reframing GoPro MAX videos, you cannot turn off the World Lock option (forward facing stabilization).  Turning off world lock lets the video point wherever the lens is pointed, and it can save a lot of time for editing videos where you are constantly changing direction, such as on a roller coaster.  I hope that future versions of the GoPro Player + Reelsteady app will restore this option.  Meanwhile, if you have the previous version of GoPro Player 1.0, don’t delete it.  Note that their icons are different: the old one has a white background while the new one has a black background.