camera settings and video

pgoodman · Aug 25, 2016

I just got my P3P. Its a real cool upgrade from my P2 vision. I am playing with the camera settings and the video settings. I use the DJI GO app right now. The app will let me make a video and add music etc etc. But the final movie that I download to my iPad is not very good quality and is not a smooth flowing video.
Video is set to:
4k/24fps
mov
pal
Camera is set to:
4;3
raw

Does anyone have any suggestions?? I'm not trying to make super perfect movies, but i feel like the camera has the capabilities to do much more.

sonof40 · Aug 25, 2016

I'm in the same boat. A lot to learn. All I could think of is maybe try JPEG for the photos.

shockwave199 · Aug 25, 2016

You have to use the video on the sd card, export it, and you'll see a much better quality. The app only assembles a final video at low resolution. Don't do it that way.

pgoodman · Aug 25, 2016

Shockwave. When put the sd card into my laptop i still have the same problems with videos stop/start. I use Quicktime to open and view my videos. Thats why i think i have a setting wrong in the camera itself. Do you have a certain video maker software that you use to edit for movie making??

Shep · Aug 25, 2016

pgoodman said:
Shockwave. When put the sd card into my laptop i still have the same problems with videos stop/start. I use Quicktime to open and view my videos. Thats why i think i have a setting wrong in the camera itself. Do you have a certain video maker software that you use to edit for movie making??

If you are going to record and edit in 4K - you MUST have a computer that can handle it. Most older computers cannot handle the 4k resolution without completely bogging down. Try recording @ 1080P and see how your computer handles it.

pgoodman · Aug 25, 2016

Thanks Shep.

David_Cambridge · Aug 25, 2016

Folks are having problems playing 4K footage. The problem lies in the CODEC used in encoding the footage. It is very processor intensive. There is a free player 5k Player, that will play the footage on most Macs. Don't know if it exists for Windows.

Another alternative is to transcode it to something more processor friendly. On the Mac, ProRes works well if you have a Mac with iMovie or better installed. Adobe Media Encoder may also be a Windows alternative. You will have to find a codec it has that will work, as it doesn't directly support ProRes.

EditReady for the Mac does the job, and is the fastest encoder around for this purpose.

Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

Vertigo · Aug 26, 2016

Ive got to wonder exactly how old a computer has to be, in order not to play 4K video smoothly. I have core2 duo based hometheatre pc. That cpu is ~10 years old, it has no problems playing 4K smoothly. Tablets is a different story.

What is probably a more common problem is the USB interface. If you are playing the video from the sdcard, you're probably going through a USB card reader. If that is USB 2 (which it probably is), its not fast enough for 60Mbit video. Copy the video to your local disk, and it will probably play back just fine.

David_Cambridge · Aug 26, 2016

I don't think it is the USB interface. The interface will support 480 Mb streams. I can play DJI video just fine through a USB2 card reader with the program 5KPlayer on my Mac Pro 3,1, which is an early 2008 machine. Other programs, QuickTime, FXPX, and Resolve cannot - they stutter badly. The USB2 port on my Sony 4K TV also plays the DJI 4K footage just fine.

If you try copying the file to your local disk, it will also not play smoothly.

If you re encode the video to something more computer friendly, like ProRes, despite having a bit rate 10x the original, it plays just fine.

Vertigo · Aug 26, 2016

Then perhaps its the card reader rather than the USB interface, but I know it stutters on my fairly highend desktop when I play from SD Card. Obviously it plays fine after copying.

That a old Mac Pro cant play 4K flawlessly with just about any program is pretty surprising to me. It cant be the CPU, it has 8 of the same Penryn cores as my HTPC, which only has 2 such cores and much less on chip cache. Probably a OS-X GPU driver issue.

David_Cambridge · Aug 26, 2016

In my testing, it is very clearly the CODEC that is used in the video. AVC at 4K is known as being very difficult to decode without stutters. Transcoding to ProRes entirely solves the problem. When you copied the file, what CODEC was used in making the copy?

The Mac I am using is older than 3 years i it is an early 2008. Some of the newer Macs have a hardware decoding chip that deals with the decompression problems with the AVC codec. Without that hardware capability, or a Chinese free program called 5KPlayer, it is not possible to play 4K AVC files. Note as well that the graphics capability of the computer must support the 3840x2160 pixel dimensions of the 4K footage. Not all graphics systems can.

David_Cambridge · Aug 26, 2016

One additional note - all my comments refer to 4K footage only. Standard HD can be played just fine on most machines, as it is only 25% of the frame size of 4K.

shockwave199 · Aug 26, 2016

I use movie edit pro 2016 and it provides an option to proxy render high res files so they can play back during editing with no trouble. Then you can hit the option to drop resolution to the proxy and it's perfectly smooth playback and the resolution is completely acceptable for editing. Rendering the completed video renders as high a quality as you want. Proxy render can take ten minutes or so depending on the length of the original clip and the processing power of the computer but it's a small price to pay for smooth playback during editing. Mep is a worthy consideration for an editor.

David_Cambridge · Aug 26, 2016

Using proxies is also a fine alternative. I prefer using full res images, as they are closer to the reality of the finished output render. At this point we are simply debating how one wants to structure the editing experience. The ultimate outcome will be the same.