Episode: 3114
Title: HPR3114: Using the Akaso EK7000 Pro
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3114/hpr3114.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 17:03:48

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3114 for Thursday 9 July 2020. Today's show is entitled
using the Akato EK7000 Pro. It is hosted by Ahuka,
and is about 11 minutes long
and carries a clean flag. The summary is
some tips on using the camera based on my limited experience on one trip.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Music
Hello, this is Ahuka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio
and another exciting episode. In this case, I'm going to follow up on something that I did recently
talking about a camera that I got. And that was the Akaso EK7000 Pro.
And I just want to add a little more information to what I talked about in that previous program.
So, you know, this is what is sometimes referred to as an action cam.
It comes with a waterproof case, it's small, it's light.
So, it's very similar in many respects to a GoPro.
You know, in fairness, the GoPro is, I think, a better camera with more features and also a lot more expensive.
Still, this is not a bad camera and it does the four modes you might expect.
It can do video, still photos, burst mode and timelapse.
Now, you select the mode using the mode button on front, which also doubles as the power button.
Thankfully, it is labeled with the word mode and with the symbol for power.
So, it's pretty easy to see that.
So, you push and hold on that button to turn it on or off and then push to cycle through the modes.
Now, video is probably the prime user case for an action cam.
So, how does a video work?
Well, when you select video, you can just start shooting by pressing the button on top of the camera
next to the red power on light.
This button is called the shutter select button because it does these two functions.
When you have turned it on and selected video, you can make some choices.
This is where the touch screen is used.
The screen on the back will show a wrench icon, which is for settings.
Tap it and you can set the video resolution.
You have five different options.
One is the 4K option, 4K at 25 frames per second.
Then there is a 2.7K at 30 frames per second, a 1080p at 60 frames per second, a 720p at 120 frames per second.
And finally, if you really want low file sizes, 720p at back down to 60 frames per second.
Now, you move up and down the list of resolutions using the up and down arrows.
These are buttons on the side of the camera.
Now, what I ended up choosing after a little experimentation was what I thought was a reasonable default for someone who is quite obviously very much an amateur.
That's me.
Note that all of these resolutions have a 16-9 aspect ratio.
So, what I chose was the 1080p at 60 frames per second.
Now, if I was going to do slow motion, I would probably do the 720p at 120 frames per second.
But what I chose, I think, worked fairly well for what I wanted to do.
Now, this camera also has image stabilization, which you can turn on underneath the video resolution option.
You just touch the screen and select on.
Now, at this point, just a note.
The touch screen is not accessible while the camera is in the waterproof case.
So, if you plan to do any shooting where things are going to get wet,
you should make your settings in advance and then lock everything up inside the waterproof case for safety.
So, as I said, I chose 1080p at 60 frames per second. This worked out pretty well.
Now, one thing I found, I don't know how common this is with action cams.
Maybe they all work like this.
But I discovered that videos will not be longer than three minutes.
If you keep shooting, the camera just starts another video file.
So, if you wanted to shoot five minutes of video, you'd get a three-minute video and then a two-minute one right after it.
Now, for posting videos to social media platforms, this does kind of make some sense.
Generally speaking, you're not going to be posting huge videos.
Now, file sizes can vary a little depending on the content and so on.
But, with these settings, my three-minute videos were pretty consistently in the 450 to 475 megabyte range.
So, assuming a conservative 475 megabytes per video, my 64GB SD card would hold around 134 three-minute videos or over six hours of video.
Now, since many of my videos were less than three minutes long, I was never in the least danger of running out of storage on our trip.
Now, the other thing you can do with this is take photos.
Now, to switch to photo mode, press the mode button on the front of the camera when it says photo, you're there.
Now, again, pressing the wrench icon can get you into the settings, but it is completely non-intuitive.
At least, was not intuitive to me.
I finally figured it out.
You need to press the down button to angle, tap that once, hit the back button on the touch screen,
and now the down button will get you into some options that were not there before.
And what are those options?
Diving mode, loop recording, time lapse video, date stamp, exposure, photo resolution, burst photo, time lapse photo, continuous lapse.
So, photo resolution was what I was looking for, and I had to go through all of that stuff to get there.
Now, if you select photo resolution, you can get, it's just based on pixels.
16 megapixels, 14 megapixels, 12 megapixels, 8, 5, and 4.
I did a little testing.
So, I found that these tend to produce the following file sizes.
These were test photos, I don't know how much variation you might get, but I think these would be pretty close.
For 16 megapixels, it was 2,590 kilobytes.
14 megapixels was 2,364 kilobytes.
12 megapixels was 2,023 kilobytes.
8 megapixels was 1,294 kilobytes, 5 megapixels, 906 kilobytes, 4 megapixels, 759 kilobytes.
Well, I have a 64 gigabyte microSD card in this thing, as I discussed last time, so I did a quick estimate of the photos I can store.
And basically, it runs from at 16 megapixels, I can take 24,000 photos.
And, you know, it goes up from there as the size goes down.
24,000 for 16, 27,000 for 14, 31,000 for 12, 49,000 for 8, 70,000 for 5, and 84,000 for 4 megapixels.
Now, given these numbers, you know, I shot our photos at the highest possible resolution, because why wouldn't you?
Now, I did take along extra SD cards, but as it happens, I never needed to use them.
Between the videos and the photos, I probably didn't use more than 4 or 5 gigabytes total, you know.
It did not chew through a whole lot of stuff.
Now, what about deleting?
I didn't do much deleting on the camera itself, although it's pretty easy to do.
You can delete photos or videos very easily, because when you open it on the bottom left of the screen, it looks like a play button, or in other words, a right pointing arrow in a square.
Now, if you press this, you get a screen where you can select either videos or photos.
They will display on the screen one at a time, and you can hit the trash can icon to delete them.
In practice, what I actually did was I just left everything on there, because I knew I was going to be going through the photos and videos, and deciding whether they were worth keeping.
Once I got back home, and I would do that on my regular computer, my desktop.
So that is some practice how I did that.
When I did, I had two sets of photos and videos to work with, one set from this camera, and one from my Pixel 3A phone.
I have to tell you that Pixel takes much better pictures and photos than this camera does.
On the other hand, this camera did allow me to do some shooting under circumstances where I would never take my phone.
Going up a waterfall in Jamaica, or snorkeling in Virgin Islands, things like that.
There is a use case for it.
Again, in round numbers, it is roughly about $100 investment I made for all of this.
To me, it was worth it to spend that kind of money to be able to document some of the things that we did, and I have still got it.
If we get another chance to go out and do some snorkeling, I will take it along.
So this is a hookah for Hacker Public Radio.
I want to thank all of you and remind you as always to support FreeSoftware.
Bye-bye.
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