GoPro Fusion trick with unsupported Android phone

[Bob Eisenman]

My Moto G6 Play was determined to be an unsupported Android device for my new GoPro Fusion. This is not surprising since the phone can't play 4k video and is limited to 1080p. As an unsupported device the Android app fails to find the Fusion camera. 

I followed a YouTube video 'trick' which allows the camera to be recognized and the app used in a limited context (no imagery display) with fully functional (on/off) choices for photo and video and other device settings.

Since the rendering that needs to be done (merging front/back video/photo files, etc) will take place on a Windows 10 laptop running 'GoPro Fusion Studio' software the 'trick', applied once, has allowed my Android phone app to recognize the camera and run the limited interface control on subsequent video/photo sessions.

Here's the trick:

Of course the camera can be operated independently from the Android App by using the camera buttons or voice control.

Rendering is a time consuming process on my laptop and higher output resolutions increase both rendered file size and render time.

An 'overcapture' window from a 360 video at the lowest resolution (YouTube 2k) @1080p required a render time of about 16 minutes per half minute of 1080p video produced.

The output (for YouTube)1080p file size using h264 encoding for a half minute of rendered/over captured 1080p video from 360 source video is about 120 MB.

Actual data:

360 Clip length = 35 seconds

Rendering time for 'overcapture' = 16 minutes

Final 1080p video file size = 120 MB

 

Edited July 15, 2019 by Bob Eisenman

[Bob Eisenman]

Following an system update to Android 9.....the Android app failed to perform using the 'trick'....the GoPro Fusion still operates normally in manual mode with post processing using GoPro Studio.