Does the DJI mission app provide the ability to get cinematic footage autonomously?

Deleted member 185796 · 2024-11-03T09:45:36-0500

Since Litchi and Dronelink are not options with the newer DJI model is it possible to get any truly cinematic footage with the DJI mission app?

I am not asking about straight line flying; but combined changes in yaw and gimbal that are smooth. The M2P was just barely acceptable with Lithci and Dronelink, but not close to what the 3DR Solo could do on it's own. This is what was possible 8 years ago with out stick input:

MARK (LI) · 2024-11-03T10:03:05-0500

I find the waypoints flights to produce better, smoother video than I can get on my own.....it takes ( for me, anyway) a lot of patients to enter the flight...I have fat fingers, a stylus does make it a bit easier...but if you do take your time and enter all parameters for the flight, and then at the end check that you did not mistakenly change something that you entered they come out quite good

wco81 · 2024-11-03T14:13:39-0500

MARK (LI) said:
I find the waypoints flights to produce better, smoother video than I can get on my own.....it takes ( for me, anyway) a lot of patients to enter the flight...I have fat fingers, a stylus does make it a bit easier...but if you do take your time and enter all parameters for the flight, and then at the end check that you did not mistakenly change something that you entered they come out quite good

Do waypoints flights automatically record or you're just letting it doing the flying and you're controlling the camera including swiveling the gimbal?

Chris Mitchell · 2024-11-03T14:33:53-0500

wco81 said:
Do waypoints flights automatically record or you're just letting it doing the flying and you're controlling the camera including swiveling the gimbal?

You can program the waypoint mission to completely control the drone, gimbal and camera.

wco81 · 2024-11-03T14:50:21-0500

That's very interesting. So the movements would be far smoother than manually controlling the drone and camera?

And you can abort it out of the automated mission at any time?

Like say it's headed for an obstacle, would it automatically go around it and resume the mission or do you have to take control and then have it resume the mission after you got around it?

MARK (LI) · 2024-11-03T15:53:38-0500

For each waypoint you select to either do nothing, start or stop a video, or take a picture...you can select points of interest along the way, and you coordinate each of those points with how many waypoints you want...so, either one or several waypoints when setting up the flight, you decide what you want the camera to do at each one of them....you can also chose to hover at a waypoint for a length of time that you determine ....I never thought that I would be able to figure out how to set up a waypoints flight, but it turned out to be not so hard....I did watch several youtubes....I thought this one was the most helpful

Chris Mitchell · 2024-11-03T17:53:35-0500

wco81 said:
That's very interesting. So the movements would be far smoother than manually controlling the drone and camera?

And you can abort it out of the automated mission at any time?

Like say it's headed for an obstacle, would it automatically go around it and resume the mission or do you have to take control and then have it resume the mission after you got around it?

It depends on the skill level with manually flying but in most cases the automated flight in a waypoint mission will be smoother. The trick is getting each drone move and gimbal/camera move set the way you want it. You can always cancel the waypoint mission at any point in the flight. The drone will avoid obstacles during the waypoint mission but unless it’s the Air 3s it won’t sense obstacles at night. Of course common sense would say to not always trust the OA system 100%.

The cool thing is that you can reuse the waypoint mission over and over, day or night. And upload them to different drones from the controller you created them on. I’ve used waypoint missions to create some amazing videos in the Mavic 3 Pro, Mini 4 Pro and Air 3 (and now the Air 3s.

Deleted member 185796 · 2024-11-03T18:42:13-0500

What separates the great Mission apps is the ability to ease in and out of all the changes in yaw and pitch with ramping. I have yet to find any that could match what the Solo could do 8 years ago (example in first original post). Litchi and Dronelink got close before DJI decided to cut them out after the M2. In those days the fly app wasn't even in the same ball park. I am was hoping to hear that it has been dramatically improved since then. It take more than flying to a point and turning to a POI to make the results cinematic.

MARK (LI) · 2024-11-03T19:13:08-0500

I am not an advocate for dji, but, as I said in post #2, if you take your time and set up the flight carefully using the dji waypoints ....you will obtain a decent quality cinematic video......of course, minus audio

MARK (LI) · 2024-11-04T09:23:19-0500

wco81 said:
That's very interesting. So the movements would be far smoother than manually controlling the drone and camera?

And you can abort it out of the automated mission at any time?

Like say it's headed for an obstacle, would it automatically go around it and resume the mission or do you have to take control and then have it resume the mission after you got around it?

I only had one time where I was over water at about 80 feet altitude....probably 300 feet from the shore line when I got message that the flight was aborted because of an obstacle....there was nothing there at all....the drone just hovered there until I hit RTH..I tried it several times and it repeated the same activity at the same spot in the flight....I brought it back and turned off RTH and it worked fine.....I don't know what it "thought" that it saw...and not sure how it is supposed to react in that situation, but once it detected an obstacle ( that did not exist) the waypoints flight was over and I had to take it back myself

Chris Mitchell · 2024-11-04T09:38:43-0500

This video (courtesy of yours truly

) may add some context or additional data points to the conversation of DJI waypoints:

PHZ · 2024-11-04T11:24:37-0500

D:
I am curious as to why you feel that Litchi and the Mavic 2 Pro were “barely acceptable”.
I am not familiar with the 3Dsolo but you have piqued my curiosity. I still use Litchi with my M2Pro and am very happy with the results. One of the best features is previewing the flight at my desk with Google Earth Pro, then tweaking waypoints, camera angles, flight heights over obstacles, etc., before ever stepping outside my office or burning down a battery. Thank you Wes Barris!
I welcome your insight and experience. Thank you.

parkgt · 2024-11-04T13:13:56-0500

PHZ said:
D:
I am curious as to why you feel that Litchi and the Mavic 2 Pro were “barely acceptable”.
I am not familiar with the 3Dsolo but you have piqued my curiosity. I still use Litchi with my M2Pro and am very happy with the results. One of the best features is previewing the flight at my desk with Google Earth Pro, then tweaking waypoints, camera angles, flight heights over obstacles, etc., before ever stepping outside my office or burning down a battery. Thank you Wes Barris!
I welcome your insight and experience. Thank you.

The ramping in and out of transitions with Litchi or Dronelink in those days was not up to the standard that the Solo was capable of. If you watched that video you may have noticed how fluid the transitions were. You can not detect when a change in yaw or tilt is beginning or ending. Back then with Litchi or Dronelink you could. I am imagine they have both improved since then and if you are happy with your results that is all that matters.

PHZ · 2024-11-04T15:30:28-0500

parkgt said:
The ramping in and out of transitions with Litchi or Dronelink in those days was not up to the standard that the Solo was capable of. If you watched that video you may have noticed how fluid the transitions were. You can not detect when a change in yaw or tilt is beginning or ending. Back then with Litchi or Dronelink you could. I am imagine they have both improved since then and if you are happy with your results that is all that matters.

Thank you for the reply and insight. Your video certainly was exceptionally smooth. I will have to take a look at some of my Litchi video. All the best.

Droning on and on... · 2024-11-04T17:41:10-0500

parkgt said:
The ramping in and out of transitions with Litchi or Dronelink in those days was not up to the standard that the Solo was capable of. If you watched that video you may have noticed how fluid the transitions were. You can not detect when a change in yaw or tilt is beginning or ending. Back then with Litchi or Dronelink you could. I am imagine they have both improved since then and if you are happy with your results that is all that matters.

I'm truly puzzled.

That video was nothing extraordinary in my experience. I've been flying missions as smooth as that, and often more complex, with litchi for 10 years. First with the Phantom 4.

I saw nothing in that 3DR video that would be challenging to reproduce with litchi on any supported drone.

The waypoint feature in Fly is just as capable of smooth cinematic transitions controlling yaw and gimbal tilt. As with litchi, it requires correct selection of waypoints, POIs, and programming camera direction, angle, and control for each waypoint and flight in between.

parkgt · 2024-11-04T18:00:27-0500

Droning on and on... said:
I'm truly puzzled.

That video was nothing extraordinary in my experience. I've been flying missions as smooth as that, and often more complex, with litchi for 10 years. First with the Phantom 4.

I saw nothing in that 3DR video that would be challenging to reproduce with litchi on any supported drone.

The waypoint feature in Fly is just as capable of smooth cinematic transitions controlling yaw and gimbal tilt. As with litchi, it requires correct selection of waypoints, POIs, and programming camera direction, angle, and control for each waypoint and flight in between.

I guess that is the difference; the 3dr took care of all that overhead by itself. With the M2P it took a lot of work to get close and yet I never could get there and didn't see anyone post an example at the time that was. Dronelink was slightly better than Litchi but again it took much longer to set it up.

Glad to hear that the new Fly app is that capable; thanks for confirming that. My EVO2 has a great camera but it is a flying brick in comparison to even the M2P that I passed along.