DJI Mavic, Air and Mini Drones
Friendly, Helpful & Knowledgeable Community
Join Us Now

First Post - 40 second Canadian Roadtrip video

Good scenes. I wouldn't speed up the clip over the river as water always looks best at natural speed. Use speed ramping to cover distance in real-time clips.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Metallic Hawk
Here's a video on speed ramping drone footage

Also, here's one for using Warp Stabilizer for drone footage. Very useful for smoothing out yaw movements that are less than perfect (the most challenging moves in droning).

Thanks a lot!! I need information like this.
 
Thanks a lot!! I need information like this.

Yeh, so do I. I hadn't used the warp stabilizer for drone footage before, so that will come in handy.

With a long distance clip you're anticipating using speed ramp in post, make sure you're flying straight. Unless/until you've got a very deft touch with the yaw, fly straight as a general rule. Avoid yaw until you can do smooth combination moves with altitude and yaw (left), forward/backwards and gimbal tilt. A straight shot flown slightly off axis always looks better than a yaw correction to maintain the axis. Sometimes it looks better to just fly a crossing axis.

It's most important to soften your gimbal settings and yaw. I set my yaw to the lowest setting of 30%. I wish it went to 20% because I'm barely moving the joystick off the center position. Together with elevation change (at 11:00 or 5:00), it's hard to do smoothly. The POI can take some of the challenge out of manual control, still leaving you with controls for elevation and right gimbal for an expanding/contracting spiral (my newest fav move).

Gimbal tilt creates your easiest and most dramatic cinematic moves. It looks good forward and backward, up and down, etc. IMO, a gimbal tilt-down should be accompanied by an increase in elevation, maintaining the axis between the gimbal and center point of the frame you started the tilt. Looks like a convex curve. A gimbal tilt up is often accompanied by a decrease in elevation, creating a concave curve like you're swooping in. Get your gimbal settings perfect.

When you watch your footage, scrutinize your moves and anticipate how you SHOULD have done it. In the field, eventually it becomes natural, when to tilt down/up, elevation, yaw, etc. If you want something really challenging, try a gentle yaw with increase in elevation and gimbal tilt down, sort of like a helicopter going vertical. It can make for a very dramatic swoop and spin for a tight turnaround. Doing a 180 looks awful with the gimbal on the horizon. Typically, you're just trying to turnaround so you can start filming in the other direction, but if you can master a tilt-down/elevate 180, it could cut into an edit really well.


Here's a good one for camera/color settings.

 
Last edited:
We make all the mistakes so hopefully you don't have to.

When you're just flying around trying stuff it doesn't matter so much, but when you travel to a worthy destination, you want to be ready to capture the absolute best footage. Post-production isn't nearly as important as you can always re-edit down the road. Plus, post-production is sooo much easier when you're not trying to cover mistakes. As a pro videographer, it's a lesson I learn on every shoot, anticipating all of the issues, thinking quickly on-location and not making mistakes I've made in the past.
 
We make all the mistakes so hopefully you don't have to.

When you're just flying around trying stuff it doesn't matter so much, but when you travel to a worthy destination, you want to be ready to capture the absolute best footage. Post-production isn't nearly as important as you can always re-edit down the road. Plus, post-production is sooo much easier when you're not trying to cover mistakes. As a pro videographer, it's a lesson I learn on every shoot, anticipating all of the issues, thinking quickly on-location and not making mistakes I've made in the past.
Nice resources... a bunch of us are going to find them valuable. Thanks
 
  • Like
Reactions: Metallic Hawk
Yeah copyright infringement (Merlin) . . . change the song and re-post.
 
Thanks for the feedback. I think I used the intro to a Nightmare's on Wax song for the video. Where is the best place to get public domain music for vids?
 
Lycus Tech Mavic Air 3 Case

DJI Drone Deals

New Threads

Forum statistics

Threads
130,583
Messages
1,554,084
Members
159,587
Latest member
Bigbrute