Mavic air pixellated videos and again issues with firmware update

johnbirt · Oct 12, 2019

I posted previously about issues with updating Air and controller with DJI Assistant 2 latest. Eventually sorted it by being careful with order of switching on. Drone or controller on Assistant running plug USB in PC. Worked fine 10 days or so back.

Managed to get my Air in the air today after 2 weeks of pouring rain and high winds. Very pleasant sunny afternoon winds circa 18 mph. Flew beautifully and absolutely rock solid hover in wind.

The videos were never going to be great just a lot of beach sand, a few dogs and owners far away on the beach and cyclists up and down a nearby path and of course a fairly calm North Sea as I am drone novice and not very camera savvy. Some of the videos had what I would describe as momentary pixellation and some ghosting. Some very clear sections of the videos say of cyclists and people walking also seemed to be in slow motion but good quality apart from that. I had not done anything to default camera settings as I am just learning. Last time I used the Air video clarity was a bit jerky well certainly not smooth which I put down to my cack-handedeness and inexperience but good quality.

I said above that I had sorted the updating. Incorrect! Charged batteries up but no way could I get either of my Win 10 laptops to see my controller or craft. I eventually hooked everything up via CrystalSky and updated via GO4 or rather found that there were no updates anyway. Looks like I had sorted everything 10 days back using Assistant but can no longer connect with it now. When I do insert USB cable it recognises 2 SD drives and I am able to copy the video and photo files OK but it will inform me that one of the drives needs fixing which it doesn't. On other occasions removing and re-inserting USB cable both drives are OK?! I have formatted both the SD card and the internal AC memory with GO 4 which Win 10 identifies as an SD I am guessing. So obviously nothing wrong with SD card or internal memory

I am fairly convinced this is a Win 10 issue. I use Win 10 Insider Ring version so get regular updates possibly every few days. Anyone else with such issues.

Any comment, acknowledgements of similar issues or advice on video quality correction gratefully received. Thanks.
John B

silverdragon · Oct 13, 2019

johnbirt said:
I posted previously about issues with updating Air and controller with DJI Assistant 2 latest. Eventually sorted it by being careful with order of switching on. Drone or controller on Assistant running plug USB in PC. Worked fine 10 days or so back.

Managed to get my Air in the air today after 2 weeks of pouring rain and high winds. Very pleasant sunny afternoon winds circa 18 mph. Flew beautifully and absolutely rock solid hover in wind.

The videos were never going to be great just a lot of beach sand, a few dogs and owners far away on the beach and cyclists up and down a nearby path and of course a fairly calm North Sea as I am drone novice and not very camera savvy. Some of the videos had what I would describe as momentary pixellation and some ghosting. Some very clear sections of the videos say of cyclists and people walking also seemed to be in slow motion but good quality apart from that. I had not done anything to default camera settings as I am just learning. Last time I used the Air video clarity was a bit jerky well certainly not smooth which I put down to my cack-handedeness and inexperience but good quality.

I said above that I had sorted the updating. Incorrect! Charged batteries up but no way could I get either of my Win 10 laptops to see my controller or craft. I eventually hooked everything up via CrystalSky and updated via GO4 or rather found that there were no updates anyway. Looks like I had sorted everything 10 days back using Assistant but can no longer connect with it now. When I do insert USB cable it recognises 2 SD drives and I am able to copy the video and photo files OK but it will inform me that one of the drives needs fixing which it doesn't. On other occasions removing and re-inserting USB cable both drives are OK?! I have formatted both the SD card and the internal AC memory with GO 4 which Win 10 identifies as an SD I am guessing. So obviously nothing wrong with SD card or internal memory

I am fairly convinced this is a Win 10 issue. I use Win 10 Insider Ring version so get regular updates possibly every few days. Anyone else with such issues.

Any comment, acknowledgements of similar issues or advice on video quality correction gratefully received. Thanks.
John B

Is it possible posting that video, just wondering if it's a issue I had in the past.

johnbirt · Oct 14, 2019

silverdragon said:
Is it possible posting that video, just wondering if it's a issue I had in the past.

I think I have solved the dodgy video issue. I loaded onto my 27" Imac and opened it in iMovie. Played it through and it was visually stunning. The clarity was to my eyes near perfect although the content wouldn't win too many prizes as I was just practising. So it looks as simple as Win 10 media player on an elderly 2004 Dell i5 laptop doesn't cut it with 4K video.

I think I have seen this remarked elsewhere on the forum along with suggestions that bright sun and too high fps and a few other parameters set inappropriately can cause the same ghosting and pixellation as I saw in Win 10. Filters were suggested but I don't have any and they didn't seem a great loss with this particular video which was shot partially into quite bright sun. May get some next summer but I think we are done with sun here for many months in NW UK.

Unfortunately I didn't find a solution to inability to connect to the Air via Assistant as yet as I haven't had another go. Didn't get airborne today so not needed to get the Air out of its case.