Formatting cards resets file names? And what about all the other little files? Important?

[Ben_McPhee]

So I'm new to DJI drones, and I recently shot with my drone (Mavic Air 2) for 11 days straight and at the end of the day I dumped the entire card into "Day 1, Day 2 etc".

But now, inside each folder is "DCIM", "Lost.Dir" and "Misc", and inside those, even more subfolders.

Inside the day 2 folder for example:

- DCIM is 33gb of pics and video's inside yet another folder called 100Media, and a completely empty "Misc" folder.
- Lost.dir is 0kb and empty.
- MISC is 60mb, and has 3 folders and a file. - (GIS, which is 43.2mb with a .gis file in it), (IDX, which is empty), (THM, which has a subfolder called 100, and inside that are a series of .SCR and.THM files, which appear to be large and small thumbnails of all the files in the 100 Media folder), and a IDX_block file, which is apparently a Unix Executable file.

Ordinarily, I'd go straight to the DCIM folder, grab the files, and that's what I'd use. But what is all this other stuff? Is any of it important? When and how is it used?

Also, it appears that every time I formatted the card, the file names reset, so just dropping everything into a megafolder and splitting it out into Stills and video is impossible. (I'd edit the RAW stills in Capture One, and the Edit/Grade video most likely in DaVinci Resolve).

Also, I think I forgot to format at least once, so there are definitely duplicate files in some folders.

Is there a way to have file names be continuous? How would you organise this?

 

[slup]

You don't mention which drone you fly ... but if using DJI GO4 app you have the setting for continuous indexing under the camera settings here below, I'm sure that the DJI FLY app have a similar setting. But be aware that the continuous numbering will turn over when it reaches 0999 ... not 9999, so at some stage you will have duplicate file names.

 

[Ben_McPhee]

You don't mention which drone you fly ... but if using DJI GO4 app you have the setting for continuous indexing under the camera settings here below, I'm sure that the DJI FLY app have a similar setting. But be aware that the continuous numbering will turn over when it reaches 0999 ... not 9999, so at some stage you will have duplicate file names.

View attachment 114537

Thanks. It's a Mavic Air 2 (Just updated the post).

Haven't stumbled across that setting in DJI Fly yet but I'll dig deeper.

If it's not set to continuous though, what's the alternative? I already have duplicate file names, because every time I re-format it resets to 0001.

Also, any idea about all those other little files?

 

[THE CYBORG]

The only folder you want to open is DCIM – Digital Camera Images.
It doesn't matter what the meaning of anything else on the card is, lets face it you probably don’t know what the meaning of most of the folders / files in your PC or phone.
Every camera — whether it’s a dedicated digital camera or the Camera app on Android or iPhone places the photos you take in a DCIM folder.
I have the counter set to continues but I always copy the contents of the DCIM folder to my PC, format the card & replace in my Mavic.
Once the folder is on my PC I delete anything not up to standard, rename anything I want to keep then transfer the relevant files to specific folders I have created, eg Sunsets, mountains or a specific place.

 

[Meta4]

Haven't stumbled across that setting in DJI Fly yet but I'll dig deeper.
If it's not set to continuous though, what's the alternative? I already have duplicate file names, because every time I re-format it resets to 0001.

The DJI Fly app is missing some features that are found in the DJI Go4 app.
Being able to set the File Index Mode to Reset or Continuous is one thing that's missing.

Also, I think I forgot to format at least once, so there are definitely duplicate files in some folders.

Anytime you format the card, you are wiping whatever was already on it.
If there's something you want to keep, copy it across to your computer before formatting the card.