DJI All-I video question.

[brett8883]

Not quite sure what you are saying. Seems you are first saying the issue...the problem..is limited to newer Silicon macs with hardware decoding enabled. The M1 is silicon..does it not have hardware decoding enabled?

Newer Apple Silicon Macs, particularly the M4 apparently. M1, for whatever reason, doesn’t seem to be as affected.

All-I is not listed by Apple as a supported codec so I can't imagine any of the Macs have hardware encoded support. Don't know how this could be worked out.

All-i is not a codec. Like I said in my longer explanation above, it’s just a generic term that refers to any codec that encodes every frame of video independently. The DJI all-I is some form of h.264 which is the most commonly used codec in the world. The problem is h.264 is this really deep rabbit hole of specifications so clearly there is some mismatch of options that is causing some kind of issue.

Seems to me DJI decided not to pay to license ProRes and I doubt but hope that Apple will at least support it via software but Apple doesn't even support avi natively so not much hope on that front.

They will. This is just launch bugs that need to be ironed out. It’s probably a little bit on DJI and a little bit on Apple.

 

[brett8883]

this page is illuminating. Blackmagic Forum • View topic - DJI Mavic 4 Pro ALL-I codec - problems with DRS20b

Yep, there you go.

 

[Split-Infinitive]

If converting any of these files is required it will give me pause when/if the drone is ever available in the U.S. Really dumb on DJI's part as far as I'm concerned. Did anyone try the "change the file type" trick?

Not DJIs fault. Theyre using an old, established industry standard protocol and file type.
If someones computer or poor choice of NLE wont support it, thats not DJIs problem.

They have to squeeze a ton of data into the stream. There are only so many ways to do that.

 

[akdrone]

Not DJIs fault. Theyre using an old, established industry standard protocol and file type.
If someones computer or poor choice of NLE wont support it, thats not DJIs problem.

They have to squeeze a ton of data into the stream. There are only so many ways to do that.

Previously they supported ProRes which is huge for a large number of pro editors (which I am not). All Mac systems support ProRes natively and as can be seen in the link provided in another of my posts, PC systems are choking on this codec. The only reason I can see for using this codec is not wanting to pay for the licensing for ProRes but I will bet money the Mav4 Creator combo will be avoided by the exact demographic it is trying to reach. It may be that Mac users are such a small part of their previous Cine line that it's unimportant to DJI but I'd be surprised at that. Perhaps ProRes will be made available in a firmware update. We'll see...but requiring (as is now needed for all Mac and many PC users) a user to convert to another codec is not realistic. We'll see in time how DJI deals with it, if they do. I seriously doubt that Apple will ever support the codec given their implementation of ProRes.

 

[brett8883]

Previously they supported ProRes which is huge for a large number of pro editors (which I am not). All Mac systems support ProRes natively and as can be seen in the link provided in another of my posts, PC systems are choking on this codec. The only reason I can see for using this codec is not wanting to pay for the licensing for ProRes but I will bet money the Mav4 Creator combo will be avoided by the exact demographic it is trying to reach. It may be that Mac users are such a small part of their previous Cine line that it's unimportant to DJI but I'd be surprised at that. Perhaps ProRes will be made available in a firmware update. We'll see...but requiring (as is now needed for all Mac and many PC users) a user to convert to another codec is not realistic. We'll see in time how DJI deals with it, if they do.

I think that is probably overstating the importance of ProRes vs ALL-I h.264 a bit. What was “huge” about Mavic 3 Cine from a video editors perspective was that it was the first small consumer grade DJI drone to offer an All-I recording mode, that it came in the form of ProRes was icing on the cake.

Keep in mind other video camera manufacturers like Sony and Canon don’t have internal ProRes either and instead use a similar h.264 All-I implementations to what DJI is doing now which work just as well or almost as well as a recording codec as ProRes. There’s no widespread demand for a change to that.

Btw, the ProRes license cost might not be as small of an issue as you presume. The Inspire 2 offered an optional ProRes license and even way back in 2016 it cost an extra $500. No hardware difference, just the license. Now we have no idea how much of that was Apple’s cost but at least it gives some data point on the subject.

This current issue with the DJI footage seems to me to just be a new product growing pains and should be resolved quickly. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened and won’t be the last.

 

[akdrone]

It's only my guess but I still think that the cost of the Pro Res codec license was the reason behind choosing not to use it and adopting another vanilla form of All-I. For mac users there is a big difference between ProRes and other versions in that the hardware is, I think, created to specifically deal with ProRes. Other versions of All-I are not the same and will not be handled nearly as efficiently. At least that's my understanding of it.

 

[brett8883]

For mac users there is a big difference between ProRes and other versions in that the hardware is, I think, created to specifically deal with ProRes. Other versions of All-I are not the same and will not be handled nearly as efficiently. At least that's my understanding of it.

Apple Silicon Macs have dedicated hardware for both ProRes and H.264 and the same will be true of PCs with newer dedicated GPUs. It’s certainly not a “big” difference or even a noticeable difference between the two.

The benefit to ProRes is probably more that you don’t risk compatibility issues like they are experiencing right now. Again this will be fixed but you avoid all that with ProRes most likely.