Contour closes its doors | GTAMotorcycle.com

Contour closes its doors

My Countour Roam 2 was horrible. Worst audio quality out of any camera (Drift, GoPro, even the Ego was better! lol), horrible video quality even in 1080p (looks like 720p upscaled without anti aliasing). Video files get out of sync with GoPro and Drift videos (random dropped frames in the video file, gets bad over time).

Die Contour, long live Drift!
 
They got lost in the noise of upcoming action cameras...GoPro spends like a madman on advertising and product placement. You think its a coincidence that all the RedBull and other crazy action stuff is filmed with GoPro? Nooope.

I liked my Contour HD, i liked the slim factor but it kinda got BS when every 6 months another Contour comes out slightly better than the next, you already saturated the market.

and yes, audio was horrible.
 
+1 to horrible audio

All I ever hear is the wind =(
 
thats too bad, at least from the form factor standpoint the Contour was light years ahead of Go Pro.
 
They got lost in the noise of upcoming action cameras...GoPro spends like a madman on advertising and product placement. You think its a coincidence that all the RedBull and other crazy action stuff is filmed with GoPro? Nooope.

I liked my Contour HD, i liked the slim factor but it kinda got BS when every 6 months another Contour comes out slightly better than the next, you already saturated the market.

and yes, audio was horrible.

So what? Do you expect a company to stop releasing a product just so you have the latest? Is your camera not as good as it was when a new one comes out?

Here's a marketing idea. Release a "gold" version of a product for 3x the price and guarantee there won't be upgrades for 1.5 years.
 
Nooooooooo! Form
Factor wise they were WAY more appealing. I guess I'll look at drift. Eff gopro


Sent from my commodore 64 on dial up
 
thats too bad, at least from the form factor standpoint the Contour was light years ahead of Go Pro.

The last few vids of off-road stuff with our group has been with the Controur. Including your waterhole of lament :) I love that camera.
 
They got lost in the noise of upcoming action cameras...GoPro spends like a madman on advertising and product placement.

Couldn't agree more. If only they would spend a few bucks helping previous customers. I will never buy another and I'm sad that Contour is down because I thought they would be my next one.
 
WTF are you talking about? My comment was about the fact that people who wanted a Contour, bought one. Those people, including me, will not just dump theirs and buy another $400 dollar camera 6 months later because they made a few changes. The R&D and gear-up to manufacture a new product that is a "slight" improvement is a huge cost. Instead of addressing valid concerns, such as the horrendous internal mike they started to offer things that got lost in the jumble of other cameras who had it too.

In the end, once you hit 1080P, further refinements are hard, and they were trying to compete with a HUGE name brand, i mean, EVERYONE knows about the GoPro, it is in terms of brand recognition head and shoulders above the next known product.



So what? Do you expect a company to stop releasing a product just so you have the latest? Is your camera not as good as it was when a new one comes out?

Here's a marketing idea. Release a "gold" version of a product for 3x the price and guarantee there won't be upgrades for 1.5 years.
 
WTF are you talking about? My comment was about the fact that people who wanted a Contour, bought one. Those people, including me, will not just dump theirs and buy another $400 dollar camera 6 months later because they made a few changes. The R&D and gear-up to manufacture a new product that is a "slight" improvement is a huge cost. Instead of addressing valid concerns, such as the horrendous internal mike they started to offer things that got lost in the jumble of other cameras who had it too.

In the end, once you hit 1080P, further refinements are hard, and they were trying to compete with a HUGE name brand, i mean, EVERYONE knows about the GoPro, it is in terms of brand recognition head and shoulders above the next known product.

My point was that no one is forcing you to dump your camera and spend another $400. You still have the same camera that you bought six months ago. It's not like they can fix the MIC in the camera you bought Why did buy it and keep it?
 
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Okay we're discussing two different points i guess. I get what you're saying. I fixed the mike issue myself by adding an external mic plug.

What i was getting at is that Contour spits out a new Contour + or whatever 6 months later. Great, now most ppl are thinking "allright this is a better improved version that has the issues sorted". No, same ****** mike setup but now it has 1080P vs 720P or It has GPS vs Non GPS. But the underlying issues that turned off buyers in the first place are still there and known. Contour always had crappier image quality vs the same spec'd GoPro, so you'd think they would fix that.

I guess what i'm saying is that the improvements made would not make a regular guy go and buy it over an older model. They werent improved enough to spend coin as opposed to GoPro going to GoPro2 or whatever.

Tough segment to be in as in the end its a toy, whatever recreationg you want to spend money on, you can enjoy it just as much without a video camera strapped to your head. And 4, 5 years ago, HD video cameras were big $$$ to the point that a GoPro or Contour or whatever made sense....

My point was that no one is forcing you to dump your camera and spend another $400. You still have the same camera that you bought six months ago. It's not like they can fix the MIC in the camera you bought Why did buy it and keep it?
 
With the gopro hero 3 fiasco, I'm surprised it's not gopro in trouble.. But then again gopro won't admit there's a problem with the hero 3.

Do a google on go pro hero 3 freeze problem to see why the hero 3 is flaky
 
Couldn't agree more. If only they would spend a few bucks helping previous customers. I will never buy another and I'm sad that Contour is down because I thought they would be my next one.
If you have a Hero2 I can flash it for ya, doesn't matter how bricked it is, even if it won't charge or turn on I can fix it.

Do a google on go pro hero 3 freeze problem to see why the hero 3 is flaky
My Hero3 (black) would record videos that were completely black, randomly, for no reason. About one out of four videos came out black. Found out after I deleted the black vids and got rid of the camera, that you can "repair" the videos. Oh well.
 
If you have a Hero2 I can flash it for ya, doesn't matter how bricked it is, even if it won't charge or turn on I can fix it.

My Hero3 (black) would record videos that were completely black, randomly, for no reason. About one out of four videos came out black. Found out after I deleted the black vids and got rid of the camera, that you can "repair" the videos. Oh well.

Me thinks you're full of ****...
 
Me thinks you're full of ****...
About which part?? lol.

Fix for black video in Hero3: http://blog.skrabal.me/how-to-fix-damaged-gopro-hd-hero3-mp4-video-with-black-screen/

Fix for bricked Hero2 (DON'T try this unless very familiar with the tools, you can permanently destroy your Hero2): http://goprouser.freeforums.org/boo...ero2-camera-over-usb-experimental-t11626.html

Like I said, if you need to unbrick your Hero2 I can do it for ya no charge. Even water damage is easy to fix with $15 ribbon cable.
 
Me thinks you're full of ****...

Do you know how video containers work?

The ContourROAM had a very similar problem. The ROAM records using .mov containers so there is x amount of bytes allocated at the start of the file for the header. The header, for some reason, was corrupt/missing on a bunch of my recordings. If you went into the file with a byte editor you could literally c&p the images (a video is a bunch of images with a sound track) so I knew it wasn't broken. Anyway, some hacky copy and pasting from working recordings fixed most of the issues.

I could go on but I'm not surprised that the Hero3 has a similar problem or that someone can fix it.
 
油井緋色;2055817 said:
Do you know how video containers work?

The ContourROAM had a very similar problem. The ROAM records using .mov containers so there is x amount of bytes allocated at the start of the file for the header. The header, for some reason, was corrupt/missing on a bunch of my recordings. If you went into the file with a byte editor you could literally c&p the images (a video is a bunch of images with a sound track) so I knew it wasn't broken. Anyway, some hacky copy and pasting from working recordings fixed most of the issues.

I could go on but I'm not surprised that the Hero3 has a similar problem or that someone can fix it.

Nice. Do you think you could do that for and MP4 that I recovered from accidental deletion that won't play? And do you think you could tell me if another of my MP4 vids is actually missing the audio track, or if it just isn't playing because of some glitch?
 
About which part?? lol.

Fix for black video in Hero3: http://blog.skrabal.me/how-to-fix-damaged-gopro-hd-hero3-mp4-video-with-black-screen/

Fix for bricked Hero2 (DON'T try this unless very familiar with the tools, you can permanently destroy your Hero2): http://goprouser.freeforums.org/boo...ero2-camera-over-usb-experimental-t11626.html

Like I said, if you need to unbrick your Hero2 I can do it for ya no charge. Even water damage is easy to fix with $15 ribbon cable.

Ok...I believe you now. I guess I shouldn't have doubted you, considering I fixed my bricked PS3 by blowing into the vents with a hair dryer...
 

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