Filming in lower resolution saves battery life on all drones.

[Deleted member 177263]

@mavic3usa and @Droning on and on...
I've been filming in 2.7K you think thats good enough?

 

[mavic3usa]

@mavic3usa and @Droning on and on...
I've been filming in 2.7K you think thats good enough?

My personal opinion, as long as it's good enough for you but I would bump it up to 4K....it's time.

 

[Deleted member 177263]

My personal opinion, as long as it's good enough for you but I would bump it up to 4K....it's time.

it's like Droning on and on... said though how many people actually own a 4k monitor/TV

 

[mavic3usa]

it's like Droning on and on... said though how many people actually own a 4k monitor/TV

For a large part of America, it's streaming: Fire sticks, Fire TVs, Google TVs, Apple TVs....they're all 4K now and so are the TVs with built-in. PS, Xbox. After BF 2023, I think we are there. Certainly with laptops and monitors.

I'm starting to look at 8K TV but the cost is still pretty high.

 

[BobaFut]

Even if you only want to post/view in 1080, filming in 4K gives you a ton of room to crop/zoom/reframe without having to upscale. I shoot 8K with my mirrorless setup just because it gives me more flexibility with lens choice and framing and all that. I've got the storage and processing power, so why not?

 

[DARKSeifer]

Of course, anything that puts load into the inbuilt processor will consume some battery, like OA and recording.

But with most of the DJI drones flying for around 30 minutes these days battery is not a problem anymore, at least for the usual flights where people takeoff from the place they are going to take pictures/video from.

Batteries only feels short when long ranging several Km, but that will never be fixed because the more battery you have the further you'll travel.

 

[BigAl07]

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.

There are various reasons someone would opt to go 1080p. One reason is because many of us who do this for a living, provide what our CLIENTS ask for. Let me give you an example:

A good while back I was hired by The Travel Channel to shoot aerial video for one of their regular shows off the coast of North Carolina. Upon meeting with the production crew I was told,
"Do NOT shoot in 4K for anything you are providing for us. We are processing all of this in the field and will be downscaling to 1080p so why waste your time and our processing power. Shoot in 1080p and we will all be happy at the end of the day."

We shot for 3 days all at 1080p for the biggest client I've ever worked with to date. Such a broad statement re:1080p is a bit distasteful and rude tbh.

 

[Deleted member 177263]

the majority of TV stations in the UK still broadcast at 1080p

List of HD channels in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

 

[mavic3usa]

There are various reasons someone would opt to go 1080p. One reason is because many of us who do this for a living, provide what our CLIENTS ask for. Let me give you an example:

A good while back I was hired by The Travel Channel to shoot aerial video for one of their regular shows off the coast of North Carolina. Upon meeting with the production crew I was told,
"Do NOT shoot in 4K for anything you are providing for us. We are processing all of this in the field and will be downscaling to 1080p so why waste your time and our processing power. Shoot in 1080p and we will all be happy at the end of the day."

We shot for 3 days all at 1080p for the biggest client I've ever worked with to date. Such a broad statement re:1080p is a bit distasteful and rude tbh.

From the previous video by Matti, there are several instances cited where it is perfectly fine to shoot in 1080p. I agree with them. Particularly if your client asks for it, makes sense to set aside any personal thoughts and fulfill their wishes. In keeping with my previous statement, I've made sure to point out that my personal tastes for 4K are limited to cinematic video as I watch plenty of news footage, older footage, documentaries, talk shows, comedy, etc. in 1080p and several years back I used to like it quite much. Especially in 60fps. I'm only making the same statement I may have made several years ago about SD content and I took a lot of heat for that too so understandable; perhaps it is too soon but I like 4K alot. At least I'm not a ProRes proponent, you should hear some of the conversation going on there. But this is not my battle; just personal opinion.

 

[BigAl07]

...... perhaps it is too soon but I like 4K alot. .....

I like 4K and I shoot 4K about 25% of the time. I enjoy watching 4K but contrary to most, I don't have a 4K TV or a 4K monitor. The best visual pleasure I get is from video up to 2.7K but I'm sure my next TV will be 4K (or higher) ready.

 

[Droning on and on...]

A good one.

WAG, maybe 10%?

 

[Droning on and on...]

We shot for 3 days all at 1080p for the biggest client I've ever worked with to date. Such a broad statement re:1080p is a bit distasteful and rude tbh.

It's also a little odd, as 1080p isn't that old, and was quite the revolution when it started being common in broadcasts.

Probably just me being old. I remember how amazing 1080p looked when we were transitioning from the NTSC/PAL world 30 years ago. Even that was quite watchable.

 

[mavic3usa]

A good one.

WAG, maybe 10%?

Nearly 66% of Americans Own a 4K TV, but Is There Enough 4K Content to Make It Worthwhile? - IMDb

IMDb, the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content.

www.imdb.com

 

[Droning on and on...]

Nearly 66% of Americans Own a 4K TV, but Is There Enough 4K Content to Make It Worthwhile? - IMDb

IMDb, the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content.

www.imdb.com

Again, a GOOD one. Not $650 40" Samsung from COSTCO.

If you've never seen 4K footage on a $2,000 55" LG, then you've never really seen 4K.

 

[Red_Pyro]

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.

Thank you human er I mean custome er I mean some bot for your help.

Btw: Did you know that according to DJI support, charging your battery means you can get a longer flight time ?

 

[Droning on and on...]

Thank you human er I mean custome er I mean some bot for your help.

Btw: Did you know that according to DJI support, charging your battery means you can get a longer flight time ?

Whirrrrrrrr-beep buzzzz-clonk!

 

[marinsd]

Good to know, I guess,. But if I’m going to film something, I will choose resolution over a minute or two of battery Life almost every time.