OldRailfan

... in this case the Dragon Touch 4K Action Camera 20MP EIS Vision 4 Lite.
The pixelation using the 1080P/60fps setting is quite dreadful. Well it's going straight back to Amazon.ca.

Went through the menu to set it to the desired 1080P/60fps, EIS on, date/time to today, SanDisk Ultra XC1 Class10 64Gb (formated in the cam) all the rest left at default.
Then a short walk through the house with varying light levels.
The results:
VLC Media Player very bad pixelation
Windows Media Player some pixelation along with "start/stop" playback.
Cyberlink PowerDirector, better than the others but miles from smooth.

Iride01 

Is that class 10 sd card what it came with? That might be too slow for todays video standards.

OldRailfan

No, one has to buy the cards separately and yes that make is plenty fast enough with both the Brave 4 and the ACT 74 and conforms to the specs stated in the manuals.
So it's just "It is what it is".

canklecat

VLC isn't always the best player to evaluate video quality. It can be glitchy and often needs to be tweaked via the complex custom settings to suit a particular camera. And every time VLC gets an update, I need to redo those custom settings to suit some videos. Often I'll need to reset VLC to defaults, then go through the tedious process of changing one setting at a time until I get the best results. When VLC works, it's better than many media players. But when it's not set up ideally it's a PITA.

Before deciding about the camera, review the video using other media players.

Also, try comparing the camera plugged into the computer with just the media card from the camera. I often get playback glitches with VLC when I plug my Drift Ghost X cameras directly into the PC to play and charge simultaneously. When I insert the media card directly into the PC it plays fine. Also depends on the USB cord and port.

gpburdell

What's the write-speed requirement in the manual, and where did you find the write-speed spec for the card?

I looked the card up on Amazon and saw only the read-speed published -- as well as a variety of complaints about the card having a slow write speed.

It's possible the camera is fine but the card isn't up to the job.

Before sending everything back, I'd suggest testing the card on your computer with something like CrystalDiskMark or AmorphousDiskMark or BlackMagicDiskSpeedTest to see what the real sustained write-speeds are.

Barry2 

I'd copy the video files from the SD to the Computer disk drive and eval again from there.
That takes the card reader out of the equation.

Barry

OldRailfan

That's precisely what I did when I used CyberLink! Better, but still not as desired.

rumrunn6

fwiw - if you have a MAC & a .MOV file, Quicktime player has the best frame by frame advancement. also excellent at slo-mo forward using the right arrow key. very useful for single frame grabs