Light Flicker... illuminated buildings.

[Hiwayman]

I need to experiment with different settings on my drone cameras.
Recent footage recorded at 4k 30fps on both Mavic 2 Pro and Mini 3 Pro are showing alot of flicker. Anti flicker is set to auto on both drones.
Is this likely to reduce if I drop to 24 FPS?
Any thoughts appreciated

 

[Skybuyer]

Can you describe "flicker" in specific terms? When I read the title I presumed that is was strobes or the drones' LED reflecting off of buildings. That appears not to be the case.

 

[Hiwayman]

Can you describe "flicker" in specific terms? When I read the title I presumed that is was strobes or the drones' LED reflecting off of buildings. That appears not to be the case.

Similar to the strobing that the props can generate....
I'm thinking a slower shutter speed may help, just wondering if anyone else has had the issue and found a way to overcome it.
It may be that using either the 50 or 60 MHz anti flicker settings will be better than auto???

 

[Skybuyer]

Similar to the strobing that the props can generate....
I'm thinking a slower shutter speed may help, just wondering if anyone else has had the issue and found a way to overcome it.

It's hard to say. Perhaps it's a mismatch in your recording and your playback FPS? I've never experience that with my M2P or Minis 1, 2 or 3.

 

[Hiwayman]

Well it may be that one of the recent updates has put the drone into h.265 format and my hardware has struggled with that, but after experimenting with the anti flicker rates, it appears that 50hz is solving the problem, rather than leaving it on auto.
These anti flicker settings only appear to be available to select in auto mode, once switching to pro mode the anti flicker options are removed.(on Mini 3 Pro).

 

[Blairsville]

Maybe this!
LED bulbs are turning on and off, the flickering on video becomes more pronounced and obvious because the camera’s recording frames per second is unaligned with the frequency of electricity. This is called the ‘strobe effect.

 

[Yaros]

It may be that using either the 50 or 60 MHz anti flicker settings will be better than auto???

Yes, select 50/60Hz anti-flicker option in your Camera Settings.
To know which one to select you can simply try both and see which one makes the light stop flickering, or better just search in google "power grid frequency in {your country}".

 

[Hiwayman]

Yes, select 50/60Hz anti-flicker option in your Camera Settings.
To know which one to select you can simply try both and see which one makes the light stop flickering, or better just search in google "power grid frequency in {your country}".

50hz here in UK. That'll be why 50hz anti flicker setting is better than auto.
Strange that not had the problem before when on auto

 

[Desert Sands]

I need to experiment with different settings on my drone cameras.
Recent footage recorded at 4k 30fps on both Mavic 2 Pro and Mini 3 Pro are showing alot of flicker. Anti flicker is set to auto on both drones.
Is this likely to reduce if I drop to 24 FPS?
Any thoughts appreciated

This is one of those unintended consequences for high efficiency lighting... LED lights (for example) flicker because unlike incandescent lamps which slowly (relatively anyway) decrease in intensity as power is removed or on an AC power polarity change.. Some LEDs which have actual power supplies with filtering exhibit this effect to a lesser degree. Some lights use only rectifiers to get the DC needed for the LEDs... in these the flicker rate is 120 flashes per second rather than the expected 60 flashes per second (US) or 100 flashes per second (much of the rest of the world).

I would try various different frame rates to see if you can reduce the flicker. Follow up with us here to let us know how you made out.

Joe

 

[Hiwayman]

This is one of those unintended consequences for high efficiency lighting... LED lights (for example) flicker because unlike incandescent lamps which slowly (relatively anyway) decrease in intensity as power is removed or on an AC power polarity change.. Some LEDs which have actual power supplies with filtering exhibit this effect to a lesser degree. Some lights use only rectifiers to get the DC needed for the LEDs... in these the flicker rate is 120 flashes per second rather than the expected 60 flashes per second (US) or 100 flashes per second (much of the rest of the world).

I would try various different frame rates to see if you can reduce the flicker. Follow up with us here to let us know how you made out.

Joe

Thank you Joe... very helpful.
At the moment, using 50hz anti flicker appears to be solving the problem. I accept that it may come back to haunt me in which case I'll experiment further and update.
Hopefully this helps future readers of the thread