Mavic 2 Pro video quality review

vicvideopic · Jan 29, 2020

An in-depth review of the video quality of the Mavic 2 Pro

brett8883 · Jan 29, 2020

vicvideopic said:
An in-depth review of the video quality of the Mavic 2 Pro

@vicvideopic Bravo excellent review as always. You are one of two people I trust when it comes to video quality and editing techniques.

I have to ask you about something. So I have been using Premier Pro and After Effects for a long time and just recently upgraded my computer to a brand new Mac. Expecting better performance and highly disappointed with the results. It took 45 minutes for Media Encoder to render a 5 minute clip in h.265 from AfterEffects. I was also bewildered because watching my system resources my computer never even flinched. The fan didn’t even come on:

Bewildered I used Final Cut Pro and Motion to do approximately the same effects and I too spilled my coffee all over myself (thankfully not all over my new 16” MacBook Pro) when it rendered out in 1 minute flat. “How can this be?” I asked myself. Even crazier Motion, Apple’s animation and VFX program, renders 3D graphics in real time! Like holy cow!

I then thought that maybe cause Apple makes Final Cut Pro they have some Voodoo magic built into it and the fact that I don’t really like FCPs color grading UI I decided to try Blackmagic Resolve and low and behold it may have even rendered out quicker.

Upon doing some research I found out that my beloved AfterEffects is poorly threaded, meaning many of the effects have to be processed using a single core of the processor and can’t utilize the other cores nor processors of the CPU which remain idle during rendering. It also utilizes the GPU poorly.

My question to you is have you tried using any of the other pro editing software available besides AfterEffects? I’m curious your take since I know you to be an AfterEffects man yourself.

I love AfterEffects but it’s getting to a point where it’s usefulness as a program and my familiarity with it is overshadowed by that it cannot handle these new codecs especially when these other programs are offering near the same functionality now and are light years faster. Do you think you’d get to a point where you’d accept a 5-10% reduction in final production quality for a 1000% increase in rendering performance?

Dale D · Jan 30, 2020

brett8883 said:
@vicvideopic Bravo excellent review as always. You are one of two people I trust when it comes to video quality and editing techniques.

I have to ask you about something. So I have been using Premier Pro and After Effects for a long time and just recently upgraded my computer to a brand new Mac. Expecting better performance and highly disappointed with the results. It took 45 minutes for Media Encoder to render a 5 minute clip in h.265 from AfterEffects. I was also bewildered because watching my system resources my computer never even flinched. The fan didn’t even come on:

Bewildered I used Final Cut Pro and Motion to do approximately the same effects and I too spilled my coffee all over myself (thankfully not all over my new 16” MacBook Pro) when it rendered out in 1 minute flat. “How can this be?” I asked myself. Even crazier Motion, Apple’s animation and VFX program, renders 3D graphics in real time! Like holy cow!

I then thought that maybe cause Apple makes Final Cut Pro they have some Voodoo magic built into it and the fact that I don’t really like FCPs color grading UI I decided to try Blackmagic Resolve and low and behold it may have even rendered out quicker.

Upon doing some research I found out that my beloved AfterEffects is poorly threaded, meaning many of the effects have to be processed using a single core of the processor and can’t utilize the other cores nor processors of the CPU which remain idle during rendering. It also utilizes the GPU poorly.

My question to you is have you tried using any of the other pro editing software available besides AfterEffects? I’m curious your take since I know you to be an AfterEffects man yourself.

I love AfterEffects but it’s getting to a point where it’s usefulness as a program and my familiarity with it is overshadowed by that it cannot handle these new codecs especially when these other programs are offering near the same functionality now and are light years faster. Do you think you’d get to a point where you’d accept a 5-10% reduction in final production quality for a 1000% increase in rendering performance?

Great post. I am logging in since I'd be interested in the answers to this too. Vic VideoPIC is just about the most knowledgeable man in the world on these subjects. I highly respect him.

Dave Maine · Jan 30, 2020

As a Mac user I left After Effects years ago. It has slightly better functionality, but in all other ways Motion, Compressor, and Final Cut Pro X is much faster and easier to use. Almost everything I do drone wise can be done in FCPX.

I find that Apple’s curves and color wheels work fine for color correction, and support key frames, which are really handy for drone footage where the lighting changes often. If I were to use something else, I would switch to DaVinci Resolve, which has the gold standard color correction capabilities, as well as a supplemental motion graphics capability. It alsohas a free version.

Ralph thompson · Jan 30, 2020

Very helpful to have the different modes explained, especially H264 & H265. I like to shoot into the sun but always use a polarizer as well as ND filter (Polarpro), polarizing will gain u about 2 stops on sun reflections off water (as in his example) & capture a deeper blue sky

vicvideopic · Jan 30, 2020

brett8883 said:
@vicvideopic Bravo excellent review as always. You are one of two people I trust when it comes to video quality and editing techniques.

I have to ask you about something. So I have been using Premier Pro and After Effects for a long time and just recently upgraded my computer to a brand new Mac. Expecting better performance and highly disappointed with the results. It took 45 minutes for Media Encoder to render a 5 minute clip in h.265 from AfterEffects. I was also bewildered because watching my system resources my computer never even flinched. The fan didn’t even come on:

Bewildered I used Final Cut Pro and Motion to do approximately the same effects and I too spilled my coffee all over myself (thankfully not all over my new 16” MacBook Pro) when it rendered out in 1 minute flat. “How can this be?” I asked myself. Even crazier Motion, Apple’s animation and VFX program, renders 3D graphics in real time! Like holy cow!

I then thought that maybe cause Apple makes Final Cut Pro they have some Voodoo magic built into it and the fact that I don’t really like FCPs color grading UI I decided to try Blackmagic Resolve and low and behold it may have even rendered out quicker.

Upon doing some research I found out that my beloved AfterEffects is poorly threaded, meaning many of the effects have to be processed using a single core of the processor and can’t utilize the other cores nor processors of the CPU which remain idle during rendering. It also utilizes the GPU poorly.

My question to you is have you tried using any of the other pro editing software available besides AfterEffects? I’m curious your take since I know you to be an AfterEffects man yourself.

I love AfterEffects but it’s getting to a point where it’s usefulness as a program and my familiarity with it is overshadowed by that it cannot handle these new codecs especially when these other programs are offering near the same functionality now and are light years faster. Do you think you’d get to a point where you’d accept a 5-10% reduction in final production quality for a 1000% increase in rendering performance?

Many thanks Brett,
you make many good points.
It is true that AE, Premiere and Lightroom make poor use of multi cores processors and GPU, as they have been around for a very long time and the basic architecture is very old (although it has been improving in the last year).
I don't know Final Cut, but it is true that Davinci is a newer software and it is better adapted to multi core processors.
The thing is that AE and PP used together are extremely powerful and allow me to do several things that I could not do with Davinci (not only in drone footage).
I do intend to dig deeper in Davinci very soon.
With AE the time taken in encoding in Media Encoder is not an issue for me: I can work on several files, queue them and I am perfectly happy if they are ready the next morning.
The real issue for me is the time needed for real time rendering. I will certainly update my processor and graphic card and I believe that the problem will be solved, at least partially

Checki · Jan 30, 2020

i use lightroom for RAW and Davinci for videos. Davinci uses the hardware MUCH better than adobe, and the biggest benefit is, your pay it ONCE and got update forever!
I also try Luminar 4 for RAWs soon, heard good things about it.

vicvideopic · Mar 23, 2020

Dale D said:
Great post. I am logging in since I'd be interested in the answers to this too. Vic VideoPIC is just about the most knowledgeable man in the world on these subjects. I highly respect him.

Many thanks Dale for your kind words!

vicvideopic · Mar 25, 2020

Dave Maine said:
As a Mac user I left After Effects years ago. It has slightly better functionality, but in all other ways Motion, Compressor, and Final Cut Pro X is much faster and easier to use. Almost everything I do drone wise can be done in FCPX.

I find that Apple’s curves and color wheels work fine for color correction, and support key frames, which are really handy for drone footage where the lighting changes often. If I were to use something else, I would switch to DaVinci Resolve, which has the gold standard color correction capabilities, as well as a supplemental motion graphics capability. It alsohas a free version.

I agree on DaVinci Resolve, very interesting software

Ralph thompson · Mar 25, 2020

DaVinci Resolve is very sophisticated but hard work to figure out. The nice thing is you dont have to buy lots of plugins, it does it all and Fusion is very powerful, I’ve only touched the surface so far.

Checki · Mar 25, 2020

I dont think you need Fusion for drone videos...
import, cutting, export is all straight forward. Color grading is of course hard work, but thats same with other programs. I never used video software, took me 1 week and i feel like a pro! (but i´m not

)

brett8883 · Mar 26, 2020

Checki said:
I dont think you need Fusion for drone videos...
import, cutting, export is all straight forward. Color grading is of course hard work, but thats same with other programs. I never used video software, took me 1 week and i feel like a pro! (but i´m not )

Well then you are just using Resolve as a simple timeline and color grading tool. That’s not comparable to what we mean by professional VFX programs like After Effects, Motion, and the full version of Fusion.

Below is a clip I made for a Commercial Real Estate video. These two identical buildings needed to be identified which is which.

I decided to use 3D tracking to fix the names of the buildings to the actual building in the video. Notice how the size of the name corresponds to the relative distance the drone is from the building, it gets bigger as I get closer, and how the text moves with the building as if it was actually part of the scene.

To do this manually with key frames would have taken forever and probably would have never looked as good. With a powerful VFX tool this took just a minute or two and I just sat back and checked an email while it was going to town.

So maybe YOU don’t have a need for a VFX engine like Fusion but that doesn’t mean there aren’t uses for it with drone footage and if you don’t learn how to use those tools you have limited your creative possibilities.

Checki · Mar 26, 2020

I said, I don't think. Not that it's a fact.
Usually people here just shoot landscape or take pictures, that's why I said you don't need fusion.
I know there are some people using it ?
So you say, fusion in resolve is good for this kind of usage, or not? Didn't understand

brett8883 · Mar 26, 2020

Checki said:
I said, I don't think. Not that it's a fact.
Usually people here just shoot landscape or take pictures, that's why I said you don't need fusion.
I know there are some people using it ?
So you say, fusion in resolve is good for this kind of usage, or not? Didn't understand

Well that’s the open question.

It does MOST things really well but it lacks (or I have yet to discover) a way to do things After Effects can. Some examples would be content aware fill, sub pixel motion blur, and a replacement for AE auto color adjustment that individually color corrects and levels every frame.

However, if you are starting out it’s probably better to learn one of the new programs like Fusion since its built on more modern architecture and at this point After Effects is just too slow for someone who will need to do a lot of testing to figure out how everything works. I love AE but the $50 per month it costs for the >1% of the time it’s actually needed is poor value proposition.

Checki · Mar 28, 2020

True, costs are high.

"AE auto color adjustment that individually color corrects and levels every frame"
That sounds useful for sunset hyperlapse footage. Have to check ?

vicvideopic · Apr 16, 2020

Ralph thompson said:
Very helpful to have the different modes explained, especially H264 & H265. I like to shoot into the sun but always use a polarizer as well as ND filter (Polarpro), polarizing will gain u about 2 stops on sun reflections off water (as in his example) & capture a deeper blue sky

Thanks,I am a big fan of polarizer and ND filters

vicvideopic · May 24, 2020

Checki said:
i use lightroom for RAW and Davinci for videos. Davinci uses the hardware MUCH better than adobe, and the biggest benefit is, your pay it ONCE and got update forever!
I also try Luminar 4 for RAWs soon, heard good things about it.

I have just started DaVinci Resolve 16 and I must admit that so far I am really impressed