Drone footage

<p>I recently purchased a DJI Drone (Quadcopter) with a gimbal mount for a gopro camera.</p>

<p>I'm looking for input. Here's my first video - all I did was use Adobe Premiere to cut the video together, the video is pretty smooth, no jello effect.</p>

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<p>I wanted to get it smoother, so I used the warp stabilization feature built into Premiere and this was the result : </p>

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<p>I'd like to hear your thoughts on the differences.</p>

<p>Finally, I tried a different video, this time I did the stabilization and Adobe's ability to correct lens distortion, rendering took forever, but the output produced 'glitches' which I'm at a loss to explain. You'll see the glitches in the first part of the video, but I turned of lens correction on the last 2 clips starting with Comerica Park - hence no 'glitches'</p>

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<p>Thoughts?</p>

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<p>Welcome to The Fraternity Of People Who Will Inevitably Crash Their Drone Into Something. <br /><br />Those Phantoms are pretty tough, actually. I'm using one along with a bigger bird for different tasks, and the Phantom (along with the gimbal) have put up with abuse and lived to fly another day. <br /><br />Your first clip looks familiar. A bit of a breeze and the Phantom's familiar trouble with maintaining a steady yaw. That problem is much less pronounced in calmer air. The only real way to deal with it is a bigger bird carrying a 3D (rather than 2D) gimbal. For now, you're dealing with it the right way: stabilization in post. <br /><br />I can't comment on why your rendering process introduced those bad frames ... something's definitely not right about however those were cached/rendered along the way. Make sure your machine isn't too busy, that drives aren't going to sleep, etc.<br /><br />Here's one suggestion to make things easier: shoot with the GoPro in Protune mode, then use GoPro's studio software (free) to de-fish the wide angle distortion and to tweak tone/color. Use that output to put together the finished work over in Premiere. <br /><br />Personally, I use the GoPro with a "medium" view while shooting aerial video. Less to mop up that way! But do try GoPro's free software - it's a pretty good way to handle and tune up Protune-flavored clips, and can deal well with the barrel distortion.<br /><br />Have fun and stay safe!</p>

<p>Not bad. Are you using or planning to use FPV at some point?</p>

<p>Rick H.</p>

<p>Regarding the Protune mode - I am looking to do stills and video at the same time and as I understand it, you can't do video and stills at the same time with Protune turned on?</p>

<p>FPV is my next investment. When you're sitting on the ground and the drone is 400 feet up, it's hard to even guess what the camera is seeing. I lucked out on the Grand Hotel shots.</p>

<p>I'd love to be able to fly the drone around light houses, getting closer to the window, or through Comerica Park.</p>

<p>Tudor: How do you plan to switch between video and stills while in the air? Mostly, just want to be VERY sure that you're not intending to use the GoPro's native WiFi remote features. You must must MUST turn off WiFi on the GoPro while it's on that aircraft - too much interference on the same frequencies that you're using to do flight control. DJI is very clear about that issue, and for good reason. <br /><br />So, that means that you're back down on the ground between shooting modes and can kick in and out of Protune mode when you switch in and out of video. <br /><br />I must say, one of the more pleasant features of my bigger gimbal on the larger hexa that carries an NEX7 for me is that I use a separate controller to tell the gimbal controller what to do, and it has enough control channels to let me kick video on and off, and also trip the shutter for stills ... but of course I'm still at the mercy of the lighting conditions and the exposure mode I've chosen on the ground.<br /><br />Just because I happen to have a shot online here already, here's my quad hovering in the background right around sunset. In the foreground is my downlink rig. I won't use goggles, because I like the situational awareness that comes with watching the flight directly ... and so I rigged up a platform to pop on a C-stand, and put the video RX, LCD display, batteries, etc., right there at chest level. It's worked really well, but of course your movement on the ground is limited.<br /><br /><img src="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00b/00bz6Y-542438284.jpg" alt="" width="559" height="700" /><br>

Yeah, I put down the transmitter to take the shot! How's that for trusting the flight controller's GPS lock! </p>

<p>I have the GoPro 3+ Black which now does simultaneous photos and video</p>

 

<h6>Simultaneous Video and Photo</h6>

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<tr><th>Photo Resolution</th><th>Photo Capture Interval</th><th>Video Resolution</th><th>Video fps</th></tr>

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<td>12MP</td>

<td>5, 10, 30, 60 second intervals</td>

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<li>1440p</li>

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<li>24</li>

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<td>7MP</td>

<td>5, 10, 30, 60 second intervals</td>

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<li>1080p</li>

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<li>30</li>

<li>25</li>

<li>24</li>

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<td>5MP</td>

<td>5, 10, 30, 60 second intervals</td>

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<li>720p</li>

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<li>60</li>

<li>50</li>

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<p>Ah! On the quad, I'm using the lowly, primitive, non-"plus" version. Interesting that it can do that! Very handy for aerial stuff, that's for sure. Alas if it doesn't let you use Protune, since that really does give you a lot more latitude in post. <br /><br />All of which definitely does you no good if the camera isn't framing the shot correctly! So I'm sure you'll end up with some flavor of FPV/downlink shortly. Not that there's a lot of room in that Phantom chassis, but I also crammed in the iOSD-Mini, which overlays lots of good telemetry along with the downlinked video. So, you know exactly what sort of voltage, altitude, GPS head count, and other crucial stuff you're dealing with. Very useful.</p>

<p>what did all that do to your battery life? I hear rumors of a higher capacity battery, have you heard anything about that?</p>

<p>Well, that EATS batteries, of course. The Phantom I've got rigged up weighs 1197g, AUW. So, that's at the hairy edge of what DJI says is viable. Sure enough, it doesn't behave anything like an out-of-the-box machine. More like driving a cargo van instead of a nice new sports car. But then, I really don't care about zooming around at high speeds - my goal for aerial video is a more stately sort of motion. The main challenge with the extra weight is in maintaining a good stable hover without the flight controller twitching around to try to keep it where you left it.<br /><br />On higher-capacity batteries: yeah, it's coming. LiPo technology continues to improve. But for the $, the stock DJI 2200mah 3S is really hard to beat. I've got a bucket of them, and a 4x charger so I can keep plenty cooking along. The forthcoming newer Phantom (v2) will have a larger battery compartment and I believe a heftier battery. The batteries I use for my bigger hexa are heavy hogs by comparison. Either way, it's a lot like shooting from the ground. I find that if I plan my shots well, I have a lot less post work to do, and I'm rarely in the air for more than 5 minutes anyway. I like to go up and down more often, and have lots of battery headroom, rather than stay up a long time and shoot stuff I'll mostly be cutting away anyway. All depends on the subject matter, of course.<br /><br />Mostly, the Phantom is for a me a less intimidating drone that I can trot out in places where the big bird would freak people out, or where I'd feel a lot less comfortable. The Phantom is certainly no toy, but it's more likely to make pretty much anybody come over and ask lots of interesting questions instead of taking their children indoors :-)</p>

<p>Videos were great. Very stable and well done. What's the angle of view for tghe camera or lens equivalent in mm? How far and high can these Phantom drones go? Cost?</p>

About 3000 ft line of site.

<p>Thought you guys might be interested in a camera-copter crash in China while National Geographic was filming. Not something we like to think about but every safe landing is a blessing!<br>

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<p>@Tudor Apmadoc</p>

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<p>Regarding the Protune mode - I am looking to do stills and video at the same time and as I understand it, you can't do video and stills at the same time with Protune turned on?</p>

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<p>I may be a little late here as you posted this a while back. I really liked the video, especially your choice of song. I don't know what software you have got but you can extract images from you video footage using an Adobe Lightroom Plug-in (if you even have that) called <a href="/video-forum/hdrinstant.com">HDRinstant</a>. Not only can you extract images from your video but you turn them into HDR images too. Whats good about the go pro 3+ black is that it does 60 fps at 720p so you can obtain images with very little motion blur- you can take action shots (with the plugin).<br>

I'm thinking of getting a drone soon but waiting until I have enough money!<br>

Andy</p>