Filming in lower resolution saves battery life on all drones.

[Deleted member 177263]

just confirmed this with a representative FYI.

 

[Meta4]

just confirmed this with a representative FYI.

Two things ...
1. Perhaps it does, but how much?
2. DJI support people are notorious for being completely unreliable sources of information.
If they don't have a script for the question you ask, they just make anything up.

 

[Deleted member 177263]

also this....

Two things ...
1. Perhaps it does, but how much?
2. DJI support people are notorious for being completely unreliable sources of information.
If they don't have a script for the question you ask, they just make anything up.

you know thats a good point, someone should do a real life test on this.

 

[Meta4]

I haven't tested, but I have a feeling that (if it's true) it wouldn't be enough to make any practical difference.

 

[slup]

...someone should do a real life test on this.

The absolute major part of the amp draw comes from the propulsion system, then followed by possible fan systems, not from different code processes that runs internally in the drone.

Mechanical movements driven from the battery will always greatly overshadow all other consumers... meaning that if you try to perform some tests, the drone should not be airborne as you never will be able to exactly repeat the fluctuating amp draw in real flying circumstances run after run, then also find a way to measure the amp draw during different conditions if the DAT log is encrypted.

My hunch is that the difference is so small that you will not be able to tell the difference...

 

[Anthony Ivory]

Why would I buy a higher resolution drone just to shoot at a lower resolution? Just buy an extra battery

 

[Deleted member 177263]

I'm still trying to

Why would I buy a higher resolution drone just to shoot at a lower resolution? Just buy an extra battery

I agree it's just good to know all options.

 

[Red_Pyro]

Two things ...
1. Perhaps it does, but how much?
2. DJI support people are notorious for being completely unreliable sources of information.
If they don't have a script for the question you ask, they just make anything up.

Can't wait for the day DJI support switches to ChatGpt

 

[Red_Pyro]

Why would I buy a higher resolution drone just to shoot at a lower resolution? Just buy an extra battery

To film 144 pixels UFO sightseeing videos

 

[BobaFut]

Using action cams as a less-than-perfect analog, a GoPro Hero 11 will record for ~137 minutes at 1080/30, and ~88 minutes at 4K/30. So obviously yes you will save on battery life. But I doubt it will be outside the variation you're likely to see under normal operating conditions since I don't think the sensor of a camera drone is as much of an energy draw as an action cam and it's a much smaller proportion of the overall battery draw for a drone. So best case, maybe you get like 5 minutes? I personally can't think of a scenario where I'd trade away 4K (or 5.1k on my Mavic3Pro) resolution for a few extra minutes of flight time.

 

[mavic3usa]

Using action cams as a less-than-perfect analog, a GoPro Hero 11 will record for ~137 minutes at 1080/30, and ~88 minutes at 4K/30. So obviously yes you will save on battery life. But I doubt it will be outside the variation you're likely to see under normal operating conditions since I don't think the sensor of a camera drone is as much of an energy draw as an action cam and it's a much smaller proportion of the overall battery draw for a drone. So best case, maybe you get like 5 minutes? I personally can't think of a scenario where I'd trade away 4K (or 5.1k on my Mavic3Pro) resolution for a few extra minutes of flight time.

We still have people, right here in this very forum, who still swear by 1080, ad refuse to record in 4K citing "various reasons." Honestly, I am barely able to watch a 1080 drone video that is supposed to be cinematic.

 

[GregS]

One reason to have several batteries. For me, videoing in a lower resolution defeats my purpose of taking video. I want the highest resolution possible. When watching a video of trees in 720p or even in 1080p, I can see the trees...but in 2k or 4k, I can now see the leaves on the trees!

 

[Deleted member 177263]

We still have people, right here in this very forum, who still swear by 1080, ad refuse to record in 4K citing "various reasons." Honestly, I am barely able to watch a 1080 drone video that is supposed to be cinematic.

I'd like your opinion on this video please comparing 1080 to 4k, he seems to know his stuff

 

[GregS]

I didn't have to go far to see the difference. When I opened this video it was in 1080p. I quickly switched to 1440 and saw a huge difference!

 

[Deleted member 177263]

I didn't have to go far to see the difference. When I opened this video it was in 1080p. I quickly switched to 1440 and saw a huge difference!

So you didn't watch the video then, you fell for it.
as he deliberately shot the intro in 720p
so may be those people were right in saying 1080 V 4k...?

 

[GregS]

I took it from opening in 720 to 1080 then to 1440. No I didn't watch it. Don't need to. I just don't watch videos in anything less than 1440 or 4k. I see the difference and I like the detail. Just my personal preference.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Can't wait for the day DJI support switches to ChatGpt

They haven't?

Some facts: A high-end CMOS laptop GPU when running peak draws about 50W.

While DJI doesn't specify operating power, we can approximate this by taking the battery energy capacity and divide by run time. For the Air 3, for example, we have 62.6Wh. Consuming this entire battery in a 30 minute flight, which seems typical, would be an average power consumption of about 125W.

The live video feed for the A3 is 1080/30, probably compressed using h264. The GPU is always busy working to produce this stream. It's very little work by the system to also record this video to the SD card.

Capture 4K/60 to the drone storage, and now the GPU is having to work on 5x the pixel count. If compressing the recorded stream to h265 increases the workload quite a bit more than 5x.

While I doubt the GPU in the A3 is drawing 50W, I wouldn't be surprised if it was drawing 20-25W running 100% load. In fact I'd be surprised (and way impressed!) If it could do simultaneous 1080/30/264 and 4K/60/265 streams for less power than that.

Nvidia would be impressed too

So some approximate, real numbers to judge. An A3 runs at about 100-150W during flight operations. Turning on 4K/60 is going to draw roughly 20W. How this will impact run time is left for the reader to judge.

 

[mavic3usa]

I'd like your opinion on this video please comparing 1080 to 4k, he seems to know his stuff

I can see the difference in what I mentioned which is most cinematic drone video posted on Youtube. However I cannot tell the difference in the clips posted in Matti's video. I agree there are situations where the difference is negligible or difficult to discern. When someone is talking to the audience (like a video from Pilot Institute), I'm ok with 720 or 1080. When someone is flying the Avata high-speed and low thru an abandoned building....not so ok.

I dunno, maybe I am not blessed like others to be able to sit down and watch a 720/1080 cinematic video drone flying over Vietnam and still see all the details and the beauty of the land. Someone like me, I need to change the setting to 4K and then things come alive for me. I wish my eyes could see like others....but I can't. Or, perhaps it's the other way around. Some people just can't see the enhanced beauty and the finer details brought with 4k/5k/8k video. They love what they see in 720/1080 and when they switch, nothing changes for them (hence "I don't see any difference."). Honestly, that would suck.

Anyone who isn't super impressed when they go into a Best Buy and look at a real 8k video projector or TV and see likely one of the best videos clips ever....I see this and I say "Wow!" And if you see the same clip on your 1080 computer at home and you don't say "wow" that makes me believe you can't see it, which is a shame. But we had those battles before, back in the day with SD/HD when I was told I wasted money on a 720p TV set. I was accused of seeing the difference because I *paid* for it so I somehow had to see the difference. My brother claimed there is no difference between SD and HD and it's a marketing gimmick and he couldn't see the difference himself and neither can you. But's it ironic his house is full of HD monitors today but he claims it's because you can't buy an SD set. He's being disingenuous because even if you could get an SD tv, the HD feeds that are only available would still give him a pretty good picture on a bigger TV. Remember back in the day when SD was channel 12 and HD was channel 1012? After he got his HD TV, I caught him still watching channel 12 and when I switched him to channel 1012 he claimed he couldn't see any difference so he switched back. He didn't understand not all programming was yet in HD. So it's complicated and so is 4k which is why I haven't tried to convince him to switch to 4k.

Anyway, Matti's video is old. The debate is old. Matti continues to shoot and post in 4k. Pretty rich that all his expensive equipment is 4k/5k/8k cameras and monitors. If you asked him to shoot only 720/1080 during his next fancy trip to Iceland, I'm sure he would decline.

So yeah I get it, 4k is not for everyone. I'm just happy I can appreciate it and I respect (for the most part) anyone who says otherwise because I feel the variables make it a personal thing. Anyone who claims the video from the original Mavic Mini is just as good as the video from the Mavic 3 Pro and when they look at both they can't see the difference, I feel sad for them....really sad. Because the video from the Mavic 3 Pro is a thing of beauty and it's getting to the point like music where you need to have the right ear and the right equipment and the right software to fully appreciate it. Only once have I had this experience with music at a friend's place with his best-in-class equipment and I immediately could hear that I had been missing out on a lifetime of beautiful music which I had never heard before. Going forward I completely refrain from claiming all music sounds the same. But I understand, it's not for everyone.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Following up on my earlier post:

Found some info on the Ambarella CV5, almost certainly the GPU in the A3 (or a newer generation of the SoC). The datasheet states the following:

"...it achieves power consumption below 2W for 8K video recording at 30 fps, and below 5W for 8K video recording at 60 fps."​

This is a much more accurate guess at GPU power consumption in the A3. Just a rough guess, simultaneous live feed and higher resolution/compression is more like 5-10W.

So, A3 operates at around 100-150W, high res/fps/comp recorded video is going to cost an extra 5W or so, very roughly speaking.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Or, perhaps it's the other way around. Some people just can't see the enhanced beauty and the finer details brought with 4k/5k/8k video.

In my experience it's mostly this, and not because of their eyes, but rather the viewing hardware.

The precision of the display is everything. So so so so so so important. There are tons of cheap "4K" TV's out there that really aren't 4K, after the cheap noise filters and other junk in the image path clean up the signal.

From what I've seen, any 40" 4K TV under U$1,000 is a waste of money.