Import workflow: Mavic - iOS - cloud storage

[schiferli]

Hi everyone!

I am going on a 3-month trip soon and am bringing my awesome Mavic with me (obviously ;-) ). Other than the Mavic, we'll be travelling light, and we won't bring our laptops. I did some research but couldn't find a solution to this problem, which is why I'm hoping someone smart here can help me:

Periodically, I want to move all the 4K footage from the Mavic to a cloud storage. I want to do this because (1) I will be shooting more than the two 64 GB cards I have and (2) because I can save it in the cloud in case something happens to the drone.

The only other gadget I plan on having with me is my iPhone.
It's not about looking at or editing the footage on the iPhone. I just want to import it somewhere safe so I can free up space on the micro SD card. I also do not (necessarily) want them in the iPhone's "Photos" app. I don't care which cloud storage I use for this, I can buy storage at Dropbox, Google or OneDrive or any other hoster.

The first option would be to import them without cable/adapter wirelessly while the iPhone is connected to the RC, but I can't find out how I can save the full 4K quality to another app.

The second option would be to buy the "Lightning to SD card" adapter and use it with an additional "micro SD to SD" adapter. However, I read that this only imports files named "DCIM...", and I don't know whether I can import files to other apps than Apple Photos.

Did anyone else have the same problem and come up with an intelligent solution to this?

Any tips are greatly appreciated,
Thanks in advance!

 

[NAUIDIVER]

Not sure where you’re traveling to, but I suspect connections will be your biggest challenge to getting 4K content up to the cloud. You’ll need lots of bandwidth— Wi-Fi or LTE connectivity to move the files. And all this without a computer.

I would suggest a WD My Passport Wireless. Comes with an SD card reader and will backup the DCIM folder (which is where MP stores it’s photos and videos) and you can carry the drive with you and not have to worry about connectivity.

If you happen across a hotel with a computer and connectivity, then plug in the hard drive and move the files to the cloud...

 

[DroneBore]

I second NAUIDIVER. 4K files are massive and you might spend a fortune on roaming fees, if applicable, when uploading gigs of 4k footage to the cloud via LTE/mobile/cell data.

If your hotel wifi experience is anything like the torture I've experienced, you'll be lucky to upload some RAW files without wanting to throw yourself off a balcony in frustration due to the shared, slow bandwidth usually available. Typically, whatever upload speed you have at home, divide by 100 and you'll get a hotel's speed. Use the local storage option as NAUIDIVER says. Those devices have many other decent uses too.

As I'm an untrusting person when it comes to IT, I would be worried about malware on any shared computer so I would not connect my storage devices and would, instead, wait til I returned home before uploading. Just my opinion...

 

[Cut.Aussie]

As others have already pointed out that unless your rich and money is no object it's unlikely your going to be able to upload gigs of 4K video from your mobile to the Cloud, too slow and too expensive

 

[schiferli]

Great advice and considerations! Indeed that‘s I‘m doing now. I decided to take the laptop after all and I‘m using an external HD to store all the files. I did have limited Wifi and cellular so far, but that wouldn‘t have worked at all. And with the laptop, I can do editing along the way, too. Thank you!

 

[Jcborden]

If you did want to download the footage directly to your iPhone (and I do this a lot to my iPad) then the Apple SD card reader is excellent (just use an SD to micro SD card adapter). You could then import and save to a cloud service (obviously iCloud works very well here).

I have used the USB camera adapter and various SD/Micro SD card readers but tend to find them much less reliable, some times they will import and others they will say device not supported.