MA2 4K Playback (stutters)

rjwadd · Jul 29, 2020

Hi all,
I’m hoping someone can guide me through an fissure I’m having when I record in 4K on my Mav Air 2. Doesn’t matter what frame rate I set it at, when I play the video back on my computer it, it’s extremely jerky. It does not happen if I record in slow motion, but viewing standard 4K Is not pleasant. And a long way from the cinematic type of shooting I’m aiming for.

My computer is an Inspiron 7577 with a Core i7 processor running 2.81 GHz, with 16GB of ram. I’m running Win 10 Home. My video player is VLC.

It seems to me the computer should easily have the cojones to play 4K (I actually bought it to do so.). That leaves me thinking I’m doing something wrong when I’m shootings in 4K with the MA2.

Anyone else have similar issues? Any ideas on how to fix?

Thanks a ton for any help!

Tentoes · Jul 29, 2020

rjwadd said:
Hi all,
I’m hoping someone can guide me through an fissure I’m having when I record in 4K on my Mav Air 2. Doesn’t matter what frame rate I set it at, when I play the video back on my computer it, it’s extremely jerky. It does not happen if I record in slow motion, but viewing standard 4K Is not pleasant. And a long way from the cinematic type of shooting I’m aiming for.

My computer is an Inspiron 7577 with a Core i7 processor running 2.81 GHz, with 16GB of ram. I’m running Win 10 Home. My video player is VLC.

It seems to me the computer should easily have the cojones to play 4K (I actually bought it to do so.). That leaves me thinking I’m doing something wrong when I’m shootings in 4K with the MA2.

Anyone else have similar issues? Any ideas on how to fix?

Thanks a ton for any help!

Have you tried copying the video to the computer's hard drive and playing it from there?

iaincaradoc · Jul 29, 2020

What type and speed of memory card?

Airmaxx23 · Jul 29, 2020

iaincaradoc said:
What type and speed of memory card?

My guess would be the memory card as well.

iaincaradoc · Jul 29, 2020

Airmaxx23 said:
My guess would be the memory card as well.

That's where I'm heading on that line of thought as well.

jlatas · Jul 29, 2020

If you are encoding the video with the H.265 codec then you need at least VLC 3.0 or higher without any extra support packs. So I would make sure you have the latest VLC. And as the others have said , one should always play the files off your local HD as they have much higher transfer bandwidth than the SD card

rjwadd · Jul 29, 2020

iaincaradoc said:
What type and speed of memory card?

64 Gig, Sandisk Extreme Plus

rjwadd · Jul 29, 2020

Tentoes said:
Have you tried copying the video to the computer's hard drive and playing it from there?

Hi...yes, I download the video to the computer hard drive and play it from there.

rjwadd · Jul 29, 2020

jlatas said:
If you are encoding the video with the H.265 codec then you need at least VLC 3.0 or higher without any extra support packs. So I would make sure you have the latest VLC. And as the others have said , one should always play the files off your local HD as they have much higher transfer bandwidth than the SD card

I’ll check the version and make sure I have all the updates.
Is there a different video program that you would recommend?
thanks!

jlatas · Jul 29, 2020

rjwadd said:
I’ll check the version and make sure I have all the updates.
Is there a different video program that you would recommend?
thanks!

VLC player plays pretty much anything...but plenty of people have issues when playing H.265 videos.

I personally use MPB-HC

MPC-HC

rjwadd · Jul 29, 2020

jlatas said:
VLC player plays pretty much anything...but plenty of people have issues when playing H.265 videos.

I personally use MPB-HC

MPC-HC

Thanks much. I’ll make sure my VLC player is updated and see how that works. My try the player you are using as well..

jlatas · Jul 29, 2020

rjwadd said:
Thanks much. I’ll make sure my VLC player is updated and see how that works. My try the player you are using as well..

There's a portable version on that page as well if you just wanna try it without installing the program

GadgetGuy · Jul 29, 2020

If it continues to be an issue, set your recording format to H.264 and stay away from 4K at 60fps that requires H.265.

rjwadd · Jul 29, 2020

jlatas said:
There's a portable version on that page as well if you just wanna try it without installing the program

Thanks again!

rjwadd · Jul 29, 2020

GadgetGuy said:
If it continues to be an issue, set your recording format to H.264 and stay away from 4K at 60fps that requires H.265.

Thanks much! I appreciate the tip!

Hummingbird.UAV · Jul 29, 2020

rjwadd said:
Hi all,
I’m hoping someone can guide me through an fissure I’m having when I record in 4K on my Mav Air 2. Doesn’t matter what frame rate I set it at, when I play the video back on my computer it, it’s extremely jerky. It does not happen if I record in slow motion, but viewing standard 4K Is not pleasant. And a long way from the cinematic type of shooting I’m aiming for.

My computer is an Inspiron 7577 with a Core i7 processor running 2.81 GHz, with 16GB of ram. I’m running Win 10 Home. My video player is VLC.

It seems to me the computer should easily have the cojones to play 4K (I actually bought it to do so.). That leaves me thinking I’m doing something wrong when I’m shootings in 4K with the MA2.

Anyone else have similar issues? Any ideas on how to fix?

Thanks a ton for any help!

To play back the H.265 encoded video you need a new higher end video card. I had the same problem and I have a little older but powerful computer, dual Xeon processors (28 cores), SSD drives, 90GB of ram and a Quadro K5000 video card. Instead of getting a new video card I switched the encoding to H.264 in the Mavic Air 2. 4K playback now is smooth as silk even directly from the micro SD card but a USB3 card reader is required for this.

jlatas · Jul 30, 2020

You definitely need more graphics horsepower to encode H.265 videos. Decoding (or playback) much less so, with the load on your computer being roughly double that of an H.264 file. Unless you have a good graphics card and have hardware acceleration turned on the your players setting, most players use software decoding which is inefficient and requires using up more CPU. But it gets the jobs done with playback.

If you are interested in doing video editing I suggest you get a relatively modern nVidia or Radeon card, or life will become painful for you.

H.266 is on its way as well, so keep that in mind for the future

One last thing...for home, personal use imo, there's not a whole lot of reason to tax your computer or drone with 4K60fps, or 4K (any framerate) if you do not have or are not planning to purchase a 4K monitor.

Dave Maine · Jul 30, 2020

DJI’s implementation of h.265 is difficult for many computers to play back without stuttering. H.264 is a much better choice unless you are very desperate to reduce file size.

Either will play just fine when uploaded to either VIMEO or YouTube, as the re encode the file to a more friendly format.

jlatas · Jul 30, 2020

Dave Maine said:
DJI’s implementation of h.265 is difficult for many computers to play back without stuttering. H.264 is a much better choice unless you are very desperate to reduce file size.

Either will play just fine when uploaded to either VIMEO or YouTube, as the re encode the file to a more friendly format.

True, but if you NEED 4K60fps then the MA2 only does that in H.265

mschaffer66 · Jul 30, 2020

I noticed this as well with some 4k footage that I have recorded. I've got a brand new laptop, 10th Gen i9 32gb ram with a 2070 super video card and its still not terribly happy until I force it to use the nvidia instead of the integrated graphics card. And at that it starts to sound like a jet taking off. I'll have to start playing around more with the H.264/H.265 stuff