Disappointing video!

Bala · Sep 30, 2019

Kilrah said:
It looks great... for a 720p video, which was outdated a decade ago
Yes, shot in 4K would be awesome.
You can always reduce quality in post if needed, but obviously not oncrease it - so you always want to shoot in the best quality you can.

That's GOOD news! Looks like i'm gonna have to take that flight again. Hope i don't have to wait another year to do it!

. I'm gonna follow this guys settings.

Dave Maine · Sep 30, 2019

Getting good footage is fairly straightforward.

1. Shoot the highest resolution possible - 4K. You can always reduce it later.

2. Either h.264 or h.265 is fine. The quality is similar. H.265 is harder for computers to play back.

3. Pick a color style that you like in the drone preferences. There are 2 schools of thought here. The best results can be obtained by shooting a flat, less saturated original, and tweaking it to taste in post (cinema-d). If you don’t want to post process, pick another color style. From what you have said, try vivid, for more saturation and contrast.

4. Make sure you are working with the video from the SD Card, not the tablet.

5. Don’t bother with any filters unless you are going for resolution of a particular problem - motion blur to reduce strobing from rapid camera movements needs a ND filter to get your shutter speed to 1/50 sec. Specular reflection problems can be reduced by using a circular polarizer oriented to reduce glare.

6. Make sure your lens is clean. A dirty lens will show spots, or just reduce saturation and contrast.

Bala · Sep 30, 2019

Dave Maine said:
Getting good footage is fairly straightforward.

1. Shoot the highest resolution possible - 4K. You can always reduce it later.

2. Either h.264 or h.265 is fine. The quality is similar. H.265 is harder for computers to play back.

3. Pick a color style that you like in the drone preferences. There are 2 schools of thought here. The best results can be obtained by shooting a flat, less saturated original, and tweaking it to taste in post (cinema-d). If you don’t want to post process, pick another color style. From what you have said, try vivid, for more saturation and contrast.

4. Make sure you are working with the video from the SD Card, not the tablet.

5. Don’t bother with any filters unless you are going for resolution of a particular problem - motion blur to reduce strobing from rapid camera movements needs a ND filter to get your shutter speed to 1/50 sec. Specular reflection problems can be reduced by using a circular polarizer oriented to reduce glare.

6. Make sure your lens is clean. A dirty lens will show spots, or just reduce saturation and contrast.

Could you explain how to set to h264 please???

Harro · Sep 30, 2019

Original video is fine, just seems that you prefer saturated colours if you like the second version. As mentioned shoot in 4k, and H264 or H265 if your machine/software can handle that. Adjust colours to your liking in post. Resolve has some of the most powerful colour correction tools that are available, Resolve is free, Resolve Studio is a paid upgrade (considering what it does it is very cheap, thank you DaVinci).

Bala · Oct 1, 2019

Thank you all for replying. All tips and advice have duly been taken onboard and have been acted on. The next video i put on here will be a vast improvement. Most grateful for your time.

DanMan32 · Oct 1, 2019

H.264 and H.265 are two different digital video encoding protocols. H.265 is better, but is newer and takes more processing to decode. Many systems are not compatible with it or may not have the computing power.

Bala · Oct 2, 2019

DanMan32 said:
H.264 and H.265 are two different digital video encoding protocols. H.265 is better, but is newer and takes more processing to decode. Many systems are not compatible with it or may not have the computing power.

As far as i can gather, the mavic pro uses H.264 by default and cannot be changed. I'm happy with that. Thanks.

Bala · Oct 5, 2019

The 'finished' product. I colour corrected as advised and added some music. Faded in and out music and video. This is my 1st time doing anything with -movie. My editing skills are stone age. I am much happier with what i see. The lesson here is, give it a go and develop from there. I am just so happy my flight and video weren't completely wasted. I have put it on facebook and have had many compliments. A flight to these island is just amazing for all the people that have never been there and probably never will. A start but a good one! Thank you to everybody who helped and gave me more confidence.

MAvic_South_Oz · Oct 5, 2019

So, so, so much better than the original, isn't it

Well done, and you're on the way to great flight footage there.

I would give it some more editing now to get it down to perhaps 2:30 - 3:00.
Edit (transition) out little glitches, long expanses can be edited out with transitions, speed up just a couple of notches in some places like long water expanses (can do this in 2 stages up / down to not appear obvious)

Bala · Oct 6, 2019

MAvic_South_Oz said:
So, so, so much better than the original, isn't it
Well done, and you're on the way to great flight footage there.

I would give it some more editing now to get it down to perhaps 2:30 - 3:00.
Edit (transition) out little glitches, long expanses can be edited out with transitions, speed up just a couple of notches in some places like long water expanses (can do this in 2 stages up / down to not appear obvious)

Thank you. i'm gonna play about with it some more. I found this tutorial very helpful. A good starting point for anyone.