Mavic 2 Pro 4K60 what are the odds?

[bkushner]

Any chance we will see this in a firmware upgrade?

 

[mcsenerd]

Who knows, but I'd venture it being a whole lot closer to 0% than 100%...

 

[FiShBuRn]

Zero im afraid

 

[TLRX4]

It was stated by DJI that it is a hardware issue. So no software will fix it

 

[CanadaDrone]

Firmware no, but possibly in a "Platinum" edition or something similar. Also maintaining a competitive advantage for the Phantom line (4K60p, mechanical shutter) might have something to do with it.

 

[m0j0]

Seems like a bad decision to exclude it. The other foldable has it. Why would you leave it out solely to protect the P4?

 

[CanadaDrone]

Seems like a bad decision to exclude it. The other foldable has it. Why would you leave it out solely to protect the P4?

What older foldable would that be? The Mavic Air and the Mavic 2 Zoom do not have 4K60P. The only DJI "consumer level" drone that has it is the Phantom 4 Pro / 4 Pro 2.0 without making the leap into the Inspire line.

If you believe DJI it is primarily a hardware limitation, but if the Mavic 2 Pro had an identical camera to the Phantom 4 Pro with 4K60P and a mechanical shutter, I would struggle to think of one reason to buy the Phantom. At least in the current state of things, then Phantom 4 Pro remains the best image quality you can get in the general category so there is some value there.

The Autel Evo can shoot 4K60P but not with a 1" sensor (it is much, much, easier to get faster readout from a sensor ~4X smaller), so it can't be compared to the M2P, and to my knowledge it is riddled with problems.

 

[m0j0]

What older foldable would that be? The Mavic Air and the Mavic 2 Zoom do not have 4K60P. The only DJI "consumer level" drone that has it is the Phantom 4 Pro / 4 Pro 2.0 without making the leap into the Inspire line.

If you believe DJI it is primarily a hardware limitation, but if the Mavic 2 Pro had an identical camera to the Phantom 4 Pro with 4K60P and a mechanical shutter, I would struggle to think of one reason to buy the Phantom. At least in the current state of things, then Phantom 4 Pro remains the best image quality you can get in the general category so there is some value there.

The Autel Evo can shoot 4K60P but not with a 1" sensor (it is much, much, easier to get faster readout from a sensor ~4X smaller), so it can't be compared to the M2P, and to my knowledge it is riddled with problems.

I did not write older … I wrote other.
other = Autel Evo.

And yes it can be compared to the Mp2 even without the 1" sensor. At the end of the day what matters is the quality of the video because that is the topic of this thread. I have seen tons of exemplars and I am not convinced that the Mp2 produces demonstrably better video than the EVO.

and to my knowledge it is riddled with problems.

Where did you read that? People that own them are not reporting problems in the Autel forum. I favor no company over the other. I just want facts. I considered buying the EVO because here in DC flying DJI is almost impossible with the arbitrary NFZ's. If you know of a series of problems I would like to know that before I buy one. For my circumstance here the EVO may be a better fit but if the video is bad or their are problems I would like to know them.

 

[Roamer105]

I still fail to see much of the value of 4K/60 if you have 2.7K/60 or 1080p/60. With the limitation of 100Mb/s the quality loss is just too significant going 60fps. If you really care about 4K at a higher frame rate you have to push the recording speed to 200Mb/s or better. SD cards can't handle that (yet). That is the real issue (that is if you actually want quality).

What I do is actually speed up much of the footage I take running it at twice the frame rate. I simply don't use a drone to shoot action scenes - of course, movie makers do, but they will use professional drones such as the high end inspires etc. Doubling up original frame rate during post creates the desired effect at much higher quality!

 

[m0j0]

I still fail to see much of the value of 4K/60

So then I'm curious. Since the EVO does have it. Are the videos produced at that framerate terrible. Interesting point you make. One that I'm very aware of but.... what do the videos look like?

 

[Roamer105]

So then I'm curious. Since the EVO does have it. Are the videos produced at that framerate terrible. Interesting point you make. One that I'm very aware of but.... what do the videos look like?

It is a simple matter of arithmetic. 4K/60 produces twice as much data (at the same resolution) than 4K/30 let alone 4K/24. If all that data is compressed into a 100Mb/s stream which mode do you think produces the best results? For example there is a significant difference in video quality comparing a 4K recording of the M1 at 60Mb/s to a comparable recording taken at 100Mb/s - both have the same resolution input yet the results are vastly different. That is due to the effect of compression - especially bitrate constraint compression which forces the encoder to arbitrarily throw away information.

 

[m0j0]

It is a simple matter of arithmetic. 4K/60 produces twice as much data (at the same resolution) than 4K/30 let alone 4K/24. If all that data is compressed into a 100Mb/s stream which mode do you think produces the best results?

The answer is … depends. There are more variables in the equation than compression. Some systems don't shoot a flat profile making the videos difficult to manipulate in post. Some systems like the new Mavic shoot log flat files easy to edit. Using the wrong card can limit the bitrate etc. etc etc. Changing the lens on a setup can completely change the final product. I don't care how high your bit rate is if the image is not in focus or if the image is not sharp. Recall the first iteration of the Mavic videos. When the system was first released critics were completely discounting the Mavic because they said the image was soft...they believed it was the lens. Then they realized that the twit that was taking the video did not focus the camera. Ruh Roh…. after pressing the button to focus the video it was a totally different ballgame. I'm curious about the difference between the EVO and Mavic 2 Pro. The difference should be large. Considering the specs I'm looking for evidence of that before I spend money buying one versus the other.

 

[Roamer105]

The answer is … depends. There are more variables in the equation than compression. Some systems don't shoot a flat profile making the videos difficult to manipulate in post. Some systems like the new Mavic shoot log flat files easy to edit. Using the wrong card can limit the bitrate etc. etc etc. Changing the lens on a setup can completely change the final product. I don't care how high your bit rate is if the image is not in focus or if the image is not sharp. Recall the first iteration of the Mavic videos. When the system was first released critics were completely discounting the Mavic because they said the image was soft...they believed it was the lens. Then they realized that the twit that was taking the video did not focus the camera. Ruh Roh…. after pressing the button to focus the video it was a totally different ballgame. I'm curious about the difference between the EVO and Mavic 2 Pro. The difference should be large. Considering the specs I'm looking for evidence of that before I spend money buying one versus the other.

Frankly you are trying to compare apples and oranges. The M2P does shoot a different class of stills than the EVO. When it comes to video it shoots 10bit log with a very good dynamic range using H265 at 100Mb/s.
You should be comparing the EVO camera to the Mavic Air camera. They are extremely similar.

 

[m0j0]

Well no... I am not. I am asking for some exemplars / comparisons between the two platforms that are in the same class. Specifically, how much better is the Mavic 2 video in comparison to the EVO. Is it discernable and worth the extra money? I'm not concerned about anything other than the comparison of the VIDEO.

 

[m0j0]

Let me put it this way. The Phantom 4 Pro and the Mavic Pro 2 both shoot at the same bitrate don't they? 100 mbps… So you are saying there is no value shooting 60fps on the Phantom versus shooting 1080 60fps or 2.7 60fps on the Mavic 2? I would disagree, just like I will argue that you are incorrectly assuming that there is no value in the 4k 60fps footage of the Autel. I'm going to research it and watch some videos.. If I find you are correct I will be sure to come back here and report it.

 

[Roamer105]

Let me put it this way. The Phantom 4 Pro and the Mavic Pro 2 both shoot at the same bitrate don't they? 100 mbps… So you are saying there is no value shooting 60fps on the Phantom versus shooting 1080 60fps or 2.7 60fps on the Mavic 2? I would disagree, just like I will argue that you are incorrectly assuming that there is no value in the 4k 60fps footage of the Autel. I'm going to research it and watch some videos.. If I find you are correct I will be sure to come back here and report it.

Go for it. But remember watching stuff on YouTube is not going to much good. You need original comparable footage from each of the drones. Gets complicated and expensive.

Have you compared comparable footage of the P4P between 24, 30 and 60 FPS? I suggest to start there.

 

[m0j0]

There is no need to compare video between 24, 30 and 60 FPS on a Phantom 4. I already know what the result will be.. I am comparing video from the EVO and the MP2 series. I will get the raw footage and work from there. In the meantime I will see what they look like on boobtube.

Interesting video.

 

[Roamer105]

At least they have the common sense of comparing two cameras that have much in common and I am not impressed by the EVO's video quality looking at it here and the EVO zoom is a joke.

But to quickly come back to my original response to the 4K/60fps issue:

A 4K video frame as an 8-bit (YUV) RAW image produces 199,065,600 image information bits (roughly 200Mb/FRAME or just shy of 25 Megabytes of data. That is just ONE FRAME. If you record at 30 frames per second at 100Mb/s bitrate, you allot about 3.3 Megabits per frame on average. That is a whopping 1:60 million reduction. Sure mpg (especially HEVC - H265) compression is smart about motion vectors and understands how to recognize parts of an image that changes versus others and how the changes occur hence is able to perform motion prediction. This allows the compression algorithms to throw away parts of an image recording just deltas. Every some number of frames (GOP), it records the whole frame (I-Frame) and then starts over with the prediction producing only partial frames with progressively degrading quality and detail. (often seen on low quality compression as "GOP PULSING" - a very ugly artifact nearly impossible to correct). Even the I-frame is heavily compressed where the algorithm has to arbitrate fine details and small contrast changes resulting in what sometimes is referred to as "mush" or "water color" (very visible in distant trees and mountains). On the M1 I tried to compensate by pushing both sharpness and contrast during the recording phase (Style 2,1,0) which only works to a degree.

Not to go any further into obscure details about compression suffice it to know that there are numerous different encoder implementations and all of them have numerous parameters to guide internal algorithms favoring one thing over another, one compromise after another etc. What makes matters worse is the COMPUTATIONAL limitations of the silicon in the camera system (not the sensor but the image processor). Higher quality compression requires an exponential increase in processing power and there is simply a limit to that in this tiny system no matter what.

Assuming for a moment that the image processor CAN do an equally good job at twice the speed doubling the amount of data that ultimately HAS to be discarded will inevitably degrade the resulting image quality. So, if it is already very hard to encode a high quality 30fps 4K stream making many compromises already (clearly visible when looking at the exact same size RAW (stil) image) - why would you want to force a 60fps equivalent through this funnel - would you not likely get a much better result recording 2.7K at 60fps or even 2K/60fps under these constraints?

So regardless on how good the camera hardware (lenses, support/gimbal etc) and the underlying sensor (which only needs to have 8.3 Megapixels for 4K (UHD) video), the most deterministic component (for video) is the image processor and the encoder it is running. If you want to compare cameras, it is best to compare RAW stills from each of the same subject since you pretty much exclude the image processor and look at image capture parts only. Once you have that base line, then look at footage to compare the image processing part in context of the established baseline.

 

[Brad de Leon]

Have we established it is not also a matter of heat dissipation? Doubling scan rate of the sensor would also produce increased heat issues. This is a major problem for shooting on GoPro Hero 7 Black with a similar sized sensor in a larger format with improved heat syncs. It craps out within 15 - 40 minutes from heat. Bit rate is 120 mb/s in 4K pro tune mode.

 

[Roamer105]

Have we established it is not also a matter of heat dissipation? Doubling scan rate of the sensor would also produce increased heat issues. This is a major problem for shooting on GoPro Hero 7 Black with a similar sized sensor in a larger format with improved heat syncs. It craps out within 15 - 40 minutes from heat. Bit rate is 120 mb/s in 4K pro tune mode.

Sure no doubt. Heat generation is directly proportional to current draw and I suspect the real oven in the mix is the image processor. In the Mavic the sensor and image processor are well separated - not so in the GoPro.