Footage not stored on the SD card

mexican · Jul 21, 2017

Recently I was shooting a panorama with my MP. When I downloaded the footage from the SD card into my PC I realized that quite many shots were missing. However the numbering sequence of the pictures was without any gap but I was pretty sure that I realy took the pictures which I was missing.

After some investigations I realized that this has to be a bug either in the firmware or in the app.

Due to the ligthing conditions outside I was using AEB with 5 brackets / shot which I intended to merge later during the postprocessing. Saving of the 5 pictures needs couple of seconds time to be accomplished. During the period of saving there’s this rotating thing around the shutter button in the DJI Go app displayed. Pressing the shutter button on the RC has no effect either. When I press the shutter button right after that circle stops rotating and the bird is supposed to be ready for taking another shot, the shutter sound is played but NO picture is taken. In my case when I do AEB, the whole sequence of the brackets is not stored not just one of them.

If I however wait for another 2-3 seconds after the circle stops rotating, the pictures are stored on the card.

Does anybody known if this is an issue specific to some version of the app/fw? Or is there any reliable way how to be sure that the pictures are really stored on the card other that waiting for a fixed number of seconds after taking a shot?

I’m using latest FW .900 and the latest version of DJI Go as well.

Aerial-Pixel · Jul 21, 2017

What speed is your SD Card, sounds like you have a write speed issue. When was the last time you've formated the card, this sometimes helps too.

mexican · Jul 21, 2017

My SD card was formatted that same day before going out. It's sandisk extreme Class 10 U3 officially rated to 60MB/s write speed. Just tried to copy one large file onto it (3GB) and Windows displayed transfer speed of 65MB/s.
The DNG files are about 23MB each which means that in less than 2 seconds all 5 brackets should have been written.
The spinning circle was however shown for a time period which was certainly longer than 2 seconds. More like 4-5 seconds.

If the write speed of the SD card was an issue I'm still wondering why the software allows taking a picture when the previous one is still not written onto the card.
I own several digital cameras and no one of them pretends taking pictures when it's not taking them actually.

Aerial-Pixel · Jul 21, 2017

Do you have any issues doing just 3 brackets? Are you doing just RAW or JPG+RAW? Do you have this problem doing 5 bracket in just JPG format?

mexican · Jul 21, 2017

Just made the test again. Tried various settings (JPEG only, JPEG + RAW, 3 brackets, 5 brackets) and in most of them had no problem.
There was only single attempt when entire sequence was not saved. The duration of the spinning ring varied depending on the settings thus taking the write time into account.

That poor bird is unpredictable.

flightmike · Jul 21, 2017

I have little glitches show up when I forget to put my pad on airplane mode or forget to turn off wi-if. Maybe something running in the background?

Aerial-Pixel · Jul 21, 2017

The only time I've had issues was when using Litchi to do Panos, sometimes if the previous photos were still writing and the next photos were triggered by the app to take, the photos would be skipped. I added a couple second delay at each stop to the sequence to make sure they were done.

mexican · Jul 21, 2017

During my today's tests I discovered one thing I've never paid attention before. In the top right area of the app there's an indicator of the remaining space on the SD card showing number of shots left. While the files are being saved this number is decrementing. This may be a hint showing whether the files are being written on the card or not.
Anyway I will have to learn to live with the issue.

MROJAS · Nov 10, 2020

It's 2020 now, and today had the same issue with my Mavic Air, never had a problem before until now, not a single shot was recorded onto the SD card without me knowing, till I got home.

Aerial-Pixel · Nov 11, 2020

Did you check the Internal Memory? May have been recorded to there instead.

MROJAS said:
It's 2020 now, and today had the same issue with my Mavic Air, never had a problem before until now, not a single shot was recorded onto the SD card without me knowing, till I got home.