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Do you record from launch to recovery, or just when you need the video?

Blitzkrieg

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Whats the general consensus here? Do you press record when you are about to take off, or start when you are in a position to take a video, and stop when the shot you want is complete?
 
personally I make more shorter clips as I try to plan my moves while still on the ground to save battery life (which isn't the best thing on Mavic Air, to be honest). making continuous video from takeoff to landing wouldn't be good for me since I also take still shots pretty often when something interesting comes to my view during recording.
 
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When I first started flying, I forgot to hit "record" a few times. Ever since then, I start recording at take off. I'll stop to take some photos, the record again. Besides, if something crazy happens, I want to have it on video.
 
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Just when I want the footage, even if that does mean missing out on capturing things like bird attacks or other unusual in-flight events. Capturing, processing, and saving video will contribute to reducing the battery life, and I'd rather have as much flight time out of my batteries as possible - especially if recharging during the day isn't an option.
 
Depends on the purpose of the flight. If I want video of something in particular I might not record until I'm at that spot. If I were to record everything it would increase editing time. If it is a short flight and the take off and landing cane be used, I start recording right away. Some people simply want to record everything and never look at it again.

So the question is 100% open ended. It all depends on the person flying and what they are doing.
 
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the question is 100% open ended. It all depends on the person flying and what they are doing.

This is generally my approach.
I used to video (my main flight mode) from go to whoa, but find myself now quite often planning more and just shooting what I want.
Mainly to make editing quicker, any affect on battery life when recording has never been discernible to me.

making continuous video from takeoff to landing wouldn't be good for me since I also take still shots pretty often when something interesting comes to my view during recording.

This is true, though I always have an ND filter on in anything other than blue hour, so that’s a bit of a pain with getting the sharpest photos (M1P).

I found a little trick with video / photo swapping a few flights ago.
If videoing and you want to take a pic, just click the camera shutter button on the controller to stop recording video and take a shot.
Ditto to go back to video, click that button on the controller to resume video filming.
 
I've always started recording right when I launched and stopped when I landed. I've never flown and started midway through a flight. Personally I'd like to get the entire thing recorded but ran into an issue last weekend where I only had 3 minutes of record time left on my 3rd fligth of the day. I had to choose my shots, which wasn't too bad, but got me thinking about this.
 
I only hit record when I need to. Shooting in 4K the files get huge. Its not so much file size but I would rather go thru smaller clips than one big. And if you have a corrupt file you could be screwed if you only shot one long one
 
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I record before I take off and hit stop right after I land. It's easy to delete unwanted footage. You can't keep what you never took. It's a camera drone. It would suck to miss anything simply because you didn't press record.
 
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From take off to landing. There have been so many times that I capture a great clip unexpectedly when I review the footage. And it is super easy to delete/trim unwanted footage.

I do plan my movie shots ahead of time but I'd say 10-20% I capture something unplanned.
 
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Capturing, processing, and saving video will contribute to reducing the battery life, and I'd rather have as much flight time out of my batteries as possible - especially if recharging during the day isn't an option.
It has already been established that the current draw from recording continuous video has virtually no effect upon flight time. Seconds at best over a 25 minute flight.
 
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It has already been established that the current draw from recording continuous video has virtually no effect upon flight time. Seconds at best over a 25 minute flight.

Yeah, I was figuring that the motors would consume the lion's share of any battery life, it just never bothered me enough to go and find out how much.

As others have noted though, I think what works best will depend more on how and what you shoot, rather than there being any particular advantage to continual shooting. I guess storage limitations might be a factor too, especially if you're on a multi-day trip and like to have all your video at the highest possible quality.

In my case I do a mix of stills and video, often using angle-dependent filters like CPs and GNDs, so I tend to have a shooting plan (which might involve multiple flights) before I even leave the ground. Once I've shot that, plus anything I noticed once in the air, then I'll go and explore a bit and hopefully turn up something else of interest, but that's as likely to be a still as video. I suspect that on some level I probably also find it easier to make the mental video/still mode switch if I'm also physically toggling the drone between modes.
 
Yeah, I was figuring that the motors would consume the lion's share of any battery life, it just never bothered me enough to go and find out how much.

As others have noted though, I think what works best will depend more on how and what you shoot, rather than there being any particular advantage to continual shooting. I guess storage limitations might be a factor too, especially if you're on a multi-day trip and like to have all your video at the highest possible quality.

In my case I do a mix of stills and video, often using angle-dependent filters like CPs and GNDs, so I tend to have a shooting plan (which might involve multiple flights) before I even leave the ground. Once I've shot that, plus anything I noticed once in the air, then I'll go and explore a bit and hopefully turn up something else of interest, but that's as likely to be a still as video. I suspect that on some level I probably also find it easier to make the mental video/still mode switch if I'm also physically toggling the drone between modes.
I treat every flight as an additional opportunity to explore, and recording continuous 4K video, as I explore, provides an opportunity to see what I missed on the FPV, after the flight is over on a large 4K desktop monitor. Storage is cheap. Decent still frames worthy of at least an 8x10 print can easily also be extracted from the 4K video in post. I also frequently shoot spherical panoramas, but still record continuous video in between the panos. Full flight of 4K is less than 20GB of video. 8TB hard drives are $120. That's enough to hold a year's worth of raw video. Add another HD for a backup. Add a third HD for rendered output. Upload all output to an unlisted YouTube account. Swap microSD cards every time you swap batteries. Have enough 64GB microSD cards to cover all flights until you get back home. Works for me!
 
It is much easier (at least with my workflow and editing style) to plan each clip and edit multiple smaller ones rather than dividing and reassembling one long one.

However, I tend to record the screen on my phone for the entire flight in case something goes wrong and I want to analyze it (this is easy to do on my iPhone and probably an Android). Of course, if I lose transmission downlink that won’t help, but it provides more info than just a video (at least without correlating telematics afterward), and if something happened and I lost the drone, I’d have video saved on my phone with all the data. If it’s a routine flight on my own land with no chance of losing it even if it falls out of the sky, I might not bother, but I usually do.

99% (probably more) of the time I delete the video from my phone shortly after I land, but I like knowing I’ve got a recording of the entire flight if I need it.
 
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It is much easier (at least with my workflow and editing style) to plan each clip and edit multiple smaller ones rather than dividing and reassembling one long one.

However, I tend to record the screen on my phone for the entire flight in case something goes wrong and I want to analyze it (this is easy to do on my iPhone and probably an Android). Of course, if I lose transmission downlink that won’t help, but it provides more info than just a video (at least without correlating telematics afterward), and if something happened and I lost the drone, I’d have video saved on my phone with all the data. If it’s a routine flight on my own land with no chance of losing it even if it falls out of the sky, I might not bother, but I usually do.

99% (probably more) of the time I delete the video from my phone shortly after I land, but I like knowing I’ve got a recording of the entire flight if I need it.
Recording the live flying screen is definitely a benefit. Until recently, it was difficult to do on any iOS device. I try and keep the device resources as free as possible, to leave them all for the GO 4 app, and haven't yet taken adbpvantage of that option, and my flying iPads are also still on older iOS versions that don't support screen recording, and it would likely tax them severely, as they are also several years old.
 
Recording the live flying screen is definitely a benefit. Until recently, it was difficult to do on any iOS device. I try and keep the device resources as free as possible, to leave them all for the GO 4 app, and haven't yet taken adbpvantage of that option, and my flying iPads are also still on older iOS versions that don't support screen recording, and it would likely tax them severely, as they are also several years old.

That’s a fair point. It’s been an option since iOS 11, I think, but not always easy to fine. System resources might be an issue on older devices, but worked fine on my old iPhone 7, at least.
 
From take off to landing. There have been so many times that I capture a great clip unexpectedly when I review the footage. And it is super easy to delete/trim unwanted footage.

I do plan my movie shots ahead of time but I'd say 10-20% I capture something unplanned.

This is also my approach.
 
It's better to edit and delete footage that you don't want, than to miss some great shots because you didn't have your camera on.
I start recording right after I get the "home point set" msg. and stop recording after I land.
Memory is cheap, so buy the biggest and the fastest you can.
 
Like above recording starts as soon as she tells me homepoint had been recorded...
Also, can/may help to find your AC if you lose it by looking at the last footage.
 
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