Gimbal Synchronous Follow. What is it supposed to do?

[asainz320]

I have been asking and searching about this issue Im having with the Mavic and I dont know if it is just me or everyone else has this problem with their Mavic. The thing is that I haven't seen anyone else complaint about this. I saw a video of a guy showing the difference having the setting on or off, but it was a Phantom 3 and you can tell there is a difference. With the Mavic I see no difference at all, it doesn't matter if the setting is on or off. Can you please take a look and let me know what you guys think. Thanks!

 

[Bunny Too]

Are you referring to FPV or follow mode on the camera gimbal? I am not sure what you are asking.
Regards,
-d.

 

[asainz320]

The setting called Gimbal Pan Synchronous Follow, thats the one Im referring to, sorry for not being clear.

Thanks!

 

[asainz320]

In this other video you can see better what I mean. Skip to minute 7:25 if you don't want to see the whole video.

 

[rydfree]

"It allows the yaw to simply smooth out and 'catch up" . It minimises the sharp robotic yaw movements in video. However, some don't like the feature because the 'lag' in yaw confuses the pilot when s/he is following a subject and hard to predict for framing. Turning it off will lock it to the Mavic but if you make hard Yaw movements the video will not look as fluid ."

Found this with a google search .

 

[asainz320]

Right! This is what I see as text all over, but I haven't been able to find it in practice! In my videos you can see that there's no difference what so ever switching between on and off, and I also can't find any videos of anyone showing otherwise. Thats why Im here in the forums asking other Mavic pilots if they see a difference when they mess with this setting, it might just be my Mavic not reacting to the setting changes.

 

[Kilrah]

When enabled it preempts your yaw input. Basically your yaw stick translates to camera yaw, with the aircraft potentially lagging behind. When disabled your yaw stick translates to aircraft yaw, and the camera will lag behind. Disabled will lead to smoother video if you're too harsh on the stick, but will be awfully imprecise when trying to fly by video. Best is to have it enabled and train to be smooth enough on the stick.

 

[asainz320]

Theory is good, but what about practice? Is it really working like this? is not working like that for me.

 

[Kilrah]

Yes my report is based on my tests. So unless it's changed since I tried with it off a couple of times about 3 months ago it would still be expected behavior.
It's quite subtle and I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't notice the difference if they're not used/sensitive to these things.

 

[asainz320]

ah! Nice! Well not nice for me, my Mavic is not doing what it is supposed to then, but at least you're the first person that tells me it works. By any chance do you have any footage showing the difference? Thanks!!

 

[GlenT]

You can also see it working when activated and you have the Mavic powered up (but not airborne) when you yaw left and right the camera follows the yaw input to a small degree.

 

[asainz320]

That is correct, I showcase this in the video. I can see it change when not in flight, but there's no difference while flying. Maybe this feature is for flying up to a tall building and landing on the edge and then you can move the camera around without having to keep the Mavic flying lmao!!!

 

[Kilrah]

By any chance do you have any footage showing the difference? Thanks!!

Footage pretty much can't show anything. With gimbal follow on and smooth input you will get video that's as smooth as with it off with harsh inputs.
The lag with it off can only be felt in real time while flying by the aircraft not going where you want it to (i.e. crabbing), when watching footage it would be indiscernible from intentional yaw input. You could notice the crabbing if you knew the pilot was intending to fly straight forward.

 

[asainz320]

I would have to disagree with that. You should be able to see a difference with harsh inputs. With the setting on you should be able to see a hard start stop of the pan motion, with the setting off you should see a smooth or soft start and stop of the pan motion.

Update: Never mind my comment. I misunderstood what you said. Yes, I do agree with what you said lol. I would like to see this in action to determine if it would work better for my style of video

 

[Kilrah]

If you give the same harsh input in both cases yes, but there's no reason I'd do that intentionallly so I won't have footage showing it.

But what you can definitely see live is that if you have a subject that you want to aim at, with the setting on if you yaw and release the stick right when the subject is in the middle it will stay there. With the setting off, if you release the stick when the subject is in the middle the camera will overshoot by maybe about 20%. You can compensate for it by anticipating and stopping yaw in advance, in which case it won't be apparent in the output footage

You're trading dampening for precision basically. Both can be manually compensated for, and I guess there are people who prefer being able to be harsh on the stick and anticipating, and others who hate having to anticipate and will rather train to be soft (I'm in the 2nd category).

Again it's rather subtle... there are people who post videos with pans that look awfully jerky and harsh to me but they see nothing wrong with them.

 

[asainz320]

YES! Thats exactly how I picture it should be working, but is not for me. Since most of the time I fly like you describe, with slow yaw movements, its really not a deal breaker for me, but I would like to give a try myself to see if it would prevent unintentional harsh inputs.