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Jerky Video with Air 2S

Hydrostan

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After 2 years I moved up from a Mavic Mini to an Air 2S, hoping to do some 4k videos. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos to get the best settings, and I took this one today and uploaded it to YouTube. I'm very disappointed as it appears to be jerky. As suggested I set the Yaw smoothness at 30, and the Yaw rotation speed at 20. Now I'm a newbie at videos taking mostly still photos with the mini. I expect the video to be jerky on my old PC, but when you upload it to YouTube and watch it on a 4K TV, shouldn't it be much better than on my old PC with a poor graphics card? Where am I going wrong? BTW, we did have wind gusts up to 18MPH, was that a possible cause?

 
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I didn't notice jerkiness--just rotating too fast. Take your time when rotating; 5 degrees per second makes for easy viewing.
 
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There is no drone that can handle smooth video with panning that fast. What I do to get smooth video on that pan is to video tape in slow motion and even than you need to be smooth with your pan.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly your Air 2S in the Rain.
 
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The rapid rotation combined with 24 fps is causing 'frame-rate induced stutter.' In addition to slowing your motion rates, do yourself a favor and don't listen to anybody that suggests shooting drone footage at 24 fps unless they're paying you for the footage. There's a very good reason that sports are broadcast at 60 fps nowadays. It all has to do with motion rates. One exception might be night footage edited and played back at 24 fps, due to the additional light intake with slower frame rates.

The Hollywood 'look' at 24 fps is optimized for close-ups in low motion scenes, where higher frame rates tend to override natural motion blur. Fair enough. But cinematic drone footage involves motion and looks twice as good at 30 fps and even better at 60 fps due to the motion smoothing. However, cinematic movement is generally limited to ~7º/sec no matter the frame rate. So 30 fps is normally sufficient, while 60 fps is generally reserved for slow-motion on a 30 fps timeline in a video editor. Rotation with significant parallax will certainly benefit from 60 fps, but that implies a matching 60 fps timeline in post production as well.

Here's at least a couple of content creators that have awakened to the benefits of 30 fps with dynamic footage:
24fps vs 30fps - Which Frame Rate Is “The Best” for Drone Shots?
Should You Shoot At 24FPS or 30FPS?
 
Wow, great tips here guys, thank you! I took another today in slow motion and talk about slow, much better. I'm going to read about the 24fps vs. 30fps. As you said, 24 was suggested by lots of folks.
 
As you have already been answered above, there is no problem with the footage, in fact, you can watch it frame by frame and you will not find any that have problems. I agree with those who have said that the problem is recording such fast motion at 24fps.
If you want to try to minimise the problem, try your video editor's "Retime and scaling" options and use the "optical flow" and "smooth / er" options it has. But this won't solve the problem completely.
 
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I did another test video in slo motion, and man when they say "slow" it means slow! Much better. Thanks for the tip on not using 24 fps.
 
After 2 years I moved up from a Mavic Mini to an Air 2S, hoping to do some 4k videos. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos to get the best settings, and I took this one today and uploaded it to YouTube. I'm very disappointed as it appears to be jerky. As suggested I set the Yaw smoothness at 30, and the Yaw rotation speed at 20. Now I'm a newbie at videos taking mostly still photos with the mini. I expect the video to be jerky on my old PC, but when you upload it to YouTube and watch it on a 4K TV, shouldn't it be much better than on my old PC with a poor graphics card? Where am I going wrong? BTW, we did have wind gusts up to 18MPH, was that a possible cause?

The gimbal settings are not a one size fits all. You have to play with different settings to know what works for you. I fly an Air 2S but never had that problem. Also maybe check your export settings from you editor. Hope this helps.
 
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