Hello everyone thank you for clicking on my thread.
I have been recently looking into starting a 360 video project, and while there are plenty of consumer based options in my price range (around $800) there are little options in terms of an equirectangular projection greater than 4K
This lead me to the idea of using GoPros, and I was quite excited and ready to throw my money after some researching into it (currently printing a 6-GoPro mount). After some more research into it consulting with my friend who works in the industry, I discovered the issue of gen-lock and the other issue (after more research) of not being able to (kinda?) genlock anything below a Hero 3+ Black.
Unfortunately, used Hero 3 Blacks at $130 a piece on ebay then seemingly became obsolete for this projects needs compared to the $160 Hero 3+ Blacks which x6 lands me a bit out of my price range. (I would only need to order 5 hero 3 black gopros since I already own one of that exact model, keeping in my price range).
So feeling defeated, of course im just going to do more research. As I wait for my now useless gopro mount to finish printing. Thats when I stumbled upon the concept of a program like autopano doing the synchronization for me, maybe my mount isnt so useless!
The OVERALL QUESTION of this post is: Can a program like autopano really synchronize footage where before a gen-locking solution was the only answer for 360 footage? Can a program really make up for the deficiency between GoPro clocks? Is Gen-lock really necessary if my videos are only going to be shot in intervals of 5-10 minutes?