Incorrect Time Stamp on P4P Camera Files

6f1d0886aec1344135f9ef651b482d3a.jpg

My video files are recorded with wrong creation time while photos taken during the same flight are not.

I did some research and I think I know what happes, just not why or how to fix it. For some reason the P4P writes files to the card with wrong creation times, yet includes the correct times in photo EXIF. While on the memory card, both photos and videos show wrong times (unless you check the exif data), but once files are moved over to Windows, the OS seems to lookup up the proper EXIF data stored with the photos and displays that as creation date instead of what was set initially. Since videos do not come with EXIF data there's nothing to look up but the original creation date of the file (which is off) and hence the timestamp difference between videos and photos. WTF?

Here you can see what I'm describing - The first window are files on the memory card, the second window are files on the PC, the third one are one of the photos properties (EXIF creation date) and the fourth one portrays the lack of any such creation date in video EXIF.

960117ecf51597304cbaf593fda502d6.jpg
 
Unfortunately embedding apparently butchers "panoramic" images...
 
My P4Pro videos all have a time stamp that's 12 hours in the past. Stills record correctly.
 
Hmmm... I just switched SD cards. The one with the incorrect readings was a SanDisk 64 Mb card. It may be one that was intended for Android phones and tablets. The new card is a 32 GB SanDisk Extreme, and all the video I've shot with it has the right time and date stamp. Interesting. I'm going to do a full (long) format of the 64 GB card to see if that fixes it.
 
Hmmm... I just switched SD cards. The one with the incorrect readings was a SanDisk 64 Mb card. It may be one that was intended for Android phones and tablets. The new card is a 32 GB SanDisk Extreme, and all the video I've shot with it has the right time and date stamp. Interesting. I'm going to do a full (long) format of the 64 GB card to see if that fixes it.
You gonna format it with your PC? What settings are you gonna use? Let us know about the results...
 
I reformatted it with NTFS (full format), then exFAT (full format). That didn't work - still off by 12 hours on videos only. Then I got "Format FAT32" and formatted the card with FAT32. That reformatted the card to FAT 32, but still no luck. The videos are still 12 hours pre-dated. I guess this is another of those things where DJI uses us all as Beta testers, and 64 GB cards just don't work yet.
 
  • Like
Reactions: bkushner and Zzz
I tried to go through the DJI Go 4 app and can't find any wat to set the clock on the camera. Has anyone had any luck finding this??
 
I haven't found anything from DJI on this.

You mentioned Litchi, are you using that on the p4p, everything I've read it doesn't support it, I wanted to get it but was waiting for them to support the pro
 
I haven't found anything from DJI on this.

You mentioned Litchi, are you using that on the p4p, everything I've read it doesn't support it, I wanted to get it but was waiting for them to support the pro
I've was using beta but they released the full version yesterday. Works great.
 
So I've had an issue similar to what those above have mentioned. My P4P camera files are consistently 14 hours behind the actual time. After double checking to make sure all the date time settings on my iPad were correct (and after confirming that I could reproduce the problem with my iPhone as well), I decided to do some testing. I have 3 micro SD cards at my disposal:

SanDisk Ultra 64 GB, SDXC
SanDisk Extreme Plus 64 GB, SDXC
Panasonic 16 GB, SDHC (stock card that came with the drone)

I inserted each card into my P4P (confirming all firmware and software is up to date), formatted each card within the DJI GO 4 app, and then took a 5 second video and a still photo on each. I found that both SanDisk cards continued to write time stamps that were 14 hours off while the Panasonic card reported the correct time.

Remember that all three card were freshly formatted in the P4P itself. I opened up all three cards in Disk Utility on my Mac and discovered that the SanDisk cards had been formatted to ExFat while the Panasonic card was formatted FAT-32.

My best guess here is that this problem stems from a combination of the way that the P4P treats formatting for SDHC cards vs SDXC cards, and then how the drone writes files to ExFat formatted cards in general. To further test this idea, I manually formatted the Panasonic card to ExFat and inserted it into the P4P. I was greeted with a "format suggested" warning, but was still able to record a file. Sure enough, when formatted as ExFat, the Panasonic card wrote files with the same 14-hour discrepancy. Formatting that card again within the drone reset it back to FAT-32 and eliminated the problem. By the same token, I then manually formatted one of my SanDisk cards to FAT-32 on Mac, inserted into the drone, and lo and behold, it recorded files with the correct time.

So to conclude (until DJI fixes this), to avoid this problem, either only use SDHC cards (32 GB or less) or manually format your SDXC cards (64 GB and higher) to FAT-32 on your computer, and then avoid manually formatting those SDXC cards within the drone itself.

Hope that helps anyone else who has encountered this issue.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rom3oDelta7
So I've had an issue similar to what those above have mentioned. My P4P camera files are consistently 14 hours behind the actual time. After double checking to make sure all the date time settings on my iPad were correct (and after confirming that I could reproduce the problem with my iPhone as well), I decided to do some testing. I have 3 micro SD cards at my disposal:

SanDisk Ultra 64 GB, SDXC
SanDisk Extreme Plus 64 GB, SDXC
Panasonic 16 GB, SDHC (stock card that came with the drone)

I inserted each card into my P4P (confirming all firmware and software is up to date), formatted each card within the DJI GO 4 app, and then took a 5 second video and a still photo on each. I found that both SanDisk cards continued to write time stamps that were 14 hours off while the Panasonic card reported the correct time.

Remember that all three card were freshly formatted in the P4P itself. I opened up all three cards in Disk Utility on my Mac and discovered that the SanDisk cards had been formatted to ExFat while the Panasonic card was formatted FAT-32.

My best guess here is that this problem stems from a combination of the way that the P4P treats formatting for SDHC cards vs SDXC cards, and then how the drone writes files to ExFat formatted cards in general. To further test this idea, I manually formatted the Panasonic card to ExFat and inserted it into the P4P. I was greeted with a "format suggested" warning, but was still able to record a file. Sure enough, when formatted as ExFat, the Panasonic card wrote files with the same 14-hour discrepancy. Formatting that card again within the drone reset it back to FAT-32 and eliminated the problem. By the same token, I then manually formatted one of my SanDisk cards to FAT-32 on Mac, inserted into the drone, and lo and behold, it recorded files with the correct time.

So to conclude (until DJI fixes this), to avoid this problem, either only use SDHC cards (32 GB or less) or manually format your SDXC cards (64 GB and higher) to FAT-32 on your computer, and then avoid manually formatting those SDXC cards within the drone itself.

Hope that helps anyone else who has encountered this issue.

Thank you for this, will try today.
 
Note to Windows users. The Windows GUI format utility (right clicking on the drive) will not let you choose FAT32 as a formatting option for a 64GB card. Instead, you'll either need to use the command line or a FAT32 utility like this one. Also, FAT32 limits file sizes to a maximum of 4GB.
 
  • Like
Reactions: KevMo Photog

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,054
Messages
1,467,297
Members
104,919
Latest member
BobDan