Litchi Waypoint has focus bug

Robert · Jan 7, 2017

I bought Litchi app so that I can plan my flight path ahead of time and get super smooth footage. During the flight, I taped to focus many times. I got the focusing sound, but immediately it got out of focusing again. The entire trip was out of focusing.

Does anyone else have the same issue? Any suggestion as how to fix it.

Thanks.

CruisingOffDuty · Jan 9, 2017

Robert said:
I bought Litchi app so that I can plan my flight path ahead of time and get super smooth footage. During the flight, I taped to focus many times. I got the focusing sound, but immediately it got out of focusing again. The entire trip was out of focusing.

Does anyone else have the same issue? Any suggestion as how to fix it.

Thanks.

I Just had the exact thing happen to me. I was flying my Mavic on a set route using the Litchi app for the first time and the video was totally out of focus. I kept hitting centre focus or tapped the screen to focus but it would immediately go back out of focus. Does anyone have a fix for this????

Robert · Jan 9, 2017

I did more tests on it. The focusing issue is not behaving consistently. Every time I tap to focus, it causes a vibration to the footage, very annoying. The simplest way to fix the issue is that whenever the record button is pressed, it should automatically perform a focus. I was trying to find a way to give the feedback to the Litchi development team, but I cannot find any proper channel. I have an impression that they have a big user base, but surprised to find that there were less than 10 total reviews for the app on the iOS side.

GerdS · Jan 10, 2017

Just report bugs to support(at)flylitchi.com.

waverider969 · Jan 11, 2017

Hs this been resolved yet? Is this on iOs or Android or bott?

NoPro · Jan 11, 2017

Ohhh.... I was wondering if it was my fault or of the camera was dodgy....

Kilrah · Jan 11, 2017

Litchi is wrong/misleading. When you tap it does the "focus beep" straight away THEN actually starts focusing, when on every camera on this planet the beep is there to confirm successful focusing at the end of the procedure, IF it was successful.

So when you tap don't go move the camera straight away after you hear the beep, let it quiet for 5 seconds with its focussing subject right where it is without moving it.

You also don't need to tap 1000000 times per flight, do it once (well, or more until you get a good focus lock) before starting the mission then don't touch anything anymore.

Robert · Jan 11, 2017

waverider969 said:
Hs this been resolved yet? Is this on iOs or Android or bott?

It is iOS. I don't know if Android version has the same issue or not.

WolfgangStiller · Jan 11, 2017

I haven't had any issues with focusing while flying Litchi waypoint missions. I always confirm correct focus prior to starting the mission. Kilrah made a very valuable observation about the beep on the a tap to focus. Could that be part of the problem?

Robert · Jan 11, 2017

Generally speaking, it is a good idea to lock on a focus before a mission starts. But sometimes, you may need to re-focus again if an object's distance has changed significantly. This is what you may get into trouble. There are definitely bugs with the waypoint focusing that they need to fix. I also confirm that the focusing beep behavior, definitely not right. Hope Litchi can fix these issues in the next release. The app in general has a lot of great features that DJI Go does not have.

Logger · Jan 11, 2017

Why would the supposed bug be specific to waypoint focusing? Litchi does not focus the camera on WPTs. It keeps WPTs in frame in the sense that it points the camera at them - thats all. Any other lens focusing would surely be an API call to the firmware/camera just the same as DJIGo. So you should see whatever the issue is in all Litchi modes. Have you isolated the issue to Litchi IOS? Does it happen in DJIGo for you?
I dont see any focus issues specific to Litchi, but I mainly use the Android flavour. Will just run a mission now with IOS on my iPad. I am fairly certain it will work just fine though.

Logger · Jan 12, 2017

Just took my IOS Litchi for a Waypoint Mission on my iPad Air 2 and the focus (for me at least) is just fine.
However there is an issue when compared to android. The video stream to the iPad is soft once in flight, giving the illusion the image is out of focus when it is not. I wonder if this has been the cause of your Litchi issues. Image looks out of focus on screen when actually the camera is in focus?
Here is a video showing the Focus operation working fine in Litchi Waypoint mode (sped up 200% hence focus pip instead of beep) followed by a section of video shot during a WPT mission. The first snip is what the iPad displays (blurry) followed by the sharp actual footage.

Robert · Jan 12, 2017

Logger said:
Just took my IOS Litchi for a Waypoint Mission on my iPad Air 2 and the focus (for me at least) is just fine.
However there is an issue when compared to android. The video stream to the iPad is soft once in flight, giving the illusion the image is out of focus when it is not. I wonder if this has been the cause of your Litchi issues. Image looks out of focus on screen when actually the camera is in focus?
Here is a video showing the Focus operation working fine in Litchi Waypoint mode (sped up 200% hence focus pip instead of beep) followed by a section of video shot during a WPT mission. The first snip is what the iPad displays (blurry) followed by the sharp actual footage.

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I noticed that you tap to focus before the mission starts, which seems to work fine. The issue that I ran into is to perform a focus in the middle of a waypoint mission. The issue does not always reproducible. But once it happens, you won't be able to get focus at all for the entire mission. It happened to me with iPhone 6.

Logger · Jan 12, 2017

I noticed that you tap to focus before the mission starts, which seems to work fine.

Ironcally that actually buggered up my focus in this instance

The mission I just did was seven minutes long and covered 3.3km. When I took off & flew to WPT 1 it was clearly way out of focus - simply because the last thing I had done was to run those demo focuses for the video in close. Tapped C2 and bang in focus again. .

Then good as gold the rest of the flight, with maybe 3 or 4 C1 presses, mainly because the iPad display was misleading me. Just ran through the 7 minutes vid and all sharp.
Another thought is that you have a poor connection RC to Mavic your command might not be getting through.

J-Dub · Jan 12, 2017

Your first WP was out of focus on your device, but all was sharp, So during a mission do we need to tap-to-focus? I'm about to try WP myself iPhone 7+.

Logger said:
ran through the 7 minutes vid and all sharp.

Logger · Jan 12, 2017

I generally do a single tap to focus at the start of any flight. It cannot hurt. . It was out of focus (because if you observe the video) I was playing around focusing in close to show how the focus works. Then I started motors and took off. So the camera was focused in the foreground and not the distance at the 1st WPT. Had I just took of having done nothing chances are the focus might have been at distance from previous flight. It is no big deal I find.

photoholic · Jan 12, 2017

Logger said:
I generally do a single tap to focus at the start of any flight. It cannot hurt. . It was out of focus (because if you observe the video) I was playing around focusing in close to show how the focus works. Then I started motors and took off. So the camera was focused in the foreground and not the distance at the 1st WPT. Had I just took of having done nothing chances are the focus might have been at distance from previous flight. It is no big deal I find.

that was useful thanks

dmanisgnarly · Jan 12, 2017

Android on a dedicated Note 4(no cellular service/deactivated) and no problems here.

Kilrah · Jan 12, 2017

Robert said:
But sometimes, you may need to re-focus again if an object's distance has changed significantly.

You should never need it, unless you're suddenly deciding to film something that's less than about 3m/10ft away from the aircraft.

photoholic · Jan 12, 2017

Litchi Support just wrote me:
Hi, "Focus on POI" means that the aircraft/gimbal will keep the POI in the center of the video frame. It does not mean focus as in the camera's focus feature. You will need to tap anywhere on the video preview to have the camera focus at that location/distance. In most cases, you will want to have the camera focus at "infinite", which can be achieved by tapping on an object at a relatively far distance (30m+) at the beginning of the mission.

Hope that helps... John