Mavic Pro-2 vs Zoom and P4P - Line Skipping + Sensor Heat?

[yysc]

Not my writing, but a response to a thread. This comment makes more sense than this whole thread. I will just leave it here.

From someone who works in TV for the past 40 years... What this guy is claiming is totally bogus. 1080 and 4K are exactly the same resolution. 4K is just 4x 1080 pictures joined together to give you more real estate. The only real benefit of 4K is in editing you have a lot more latitude to digitally crop a piece of the picture and still have 1080 resolution. That's it.

Where this guy is incorrect is that the resolution changes depending on what mode you're in. In fact is, in either mode you still have either 4K (3840x2160) or HD (1920x1080) resolution being recorded. Because they're all fixed focal length lenses, what changes is the processing that zooms them in to change the field of view. It does not change the recorded resolution but like any digital zooming it will slightly degrade the actual picture quality.

What? 4K is 8 million pixel HD is 2 million pixel. Where you have one pixel in HD you have 4 in 4K so you can represent 4 different tones as opposed to one. This paragraph is nonsense.

So in short, I think you can distill the changes in the images down to two things... video compression and processing and likely quality of the glass in front of the sensor. Let's face it, folks, you're not getting the same quality glass in a $1200 drone as you would in a $150k UHD television camera lens.

A lot of blah blah blah just to end with this stupid comment. What people want is similar definition in 4K FOV as found in the DJI P4P which is a drone from the same manufacturer released two years ago, has older hardware, and retails for similar price as the drone being discussed here (M2P).

 

[Sockeye]

You are correct. This is not a scientific controlled, notray confirmed test or setup to calculate the "real" resolution of each setting. It is just a privately feasible way of confirming the "gutt feeling" there is something wrong with the FOV mode. It is a little reproducible test to compare two or more settings and you can easily see which is better and which is worse. Of course you cannot judge the real resolution... It is more like a beam balance. You cannot measure the exact weight but you can clearly see what weights more.

And I do not expect it to perform like a 150K$ cam, but at least it should be better than the GoPro Hero 5 or the Mavic 1.

Edit: Added my personal pixel-peeping-beam balance test results:

 

[yysc]

I am not quite sure if that is correct. Resolution can be defined as how close lines can be to each other, yet still be discerned as two separate lines. By nature, 4k will have a lot more pixels recorded vs 1080p, and hence will allow for more resolution (if you stay in the same spot relative to the screen), especially at larger screen sizes and the closer you stay at the screen.

Yes, that is correct. He is wrong. By his weird reasoning 8K is the same as HD as it is simply 16 x 1080 frames stitched together...

 

[chunky]

Not my writing, but a response to a thread. This comment makes more sense than this whole thread. I will just leave it here.

From someone who works in TV for the past 40 years... What this guy is claiming is totally bogus. 1080 and 4K are exactly the same resolution. 4K is just 4x 1080 pictures joined together to give you more real estate. The only real benefit of 4K is in editing you have a lot more latitude to digitally crop a piece of the picture and still have 1080 resolution. That's it.

Where this guy is incorrect is that the resolution changes depending on what mode you're in. In fact is, in either mode you still have either 4K (3840x2160) or HD (1920x1080) resolution being recorded. Because they're all fixed focal length lenses, what changes is the processing that zooms them in to change the field of view. It does not change the recorded resolution but like any digital zooming it will slightly degrade the actual picture quality.

Resolution in television was originally measured in scan lines back in the days of SD but now it's measured in pixel lines in digital. So no matter what mode you're in, you're still getting 2160 (4k) or 1080 (HD) lines of resolution.

When he talks about "pixel skipping," what he's really referring to is compression, not changes in resolution. Video is compressed to save data in the recording. More compression = poorer picture.

As for his claim of "line skipping," I'd like to see some proof of his claim that they're skipping scan lines on the sensor. If this were true, it would mean that you're not getting a true HD image out of the sensor and that makes absolutely no sense. If you eliminate half the lines of resolution you're reducing the image down to slightly higher than SD resolution. That would be extremely noticeable and most people would find it unacceptable in any conditions.

As for his tests, If this guy was doing a legitimate test of the images he would have had a serious set of SMPTE camera charts to show both resolution and coloremetry. The fact that he printed out a chart and it's not correctly scaled tells me he has no clue what he's talking about. Firstly what he used was not a legitimate SMPTE resolution chart. The link below shows what legitimate SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) resolution charts look like. They start at about $2 grand each. Clearly not something you print off of the internet. Besides which, there is no home printer capable of printing the kind of resolution required for a real resolution chart to actually work. http://dsclabs.com/test-charts/resolution-focus-test-charts/

The last thing that blew all credibility for me of his claims is that he was using some kind of pot with a piece of the field turf from the super bowl in it as a reference for focus. What a joke. This is no legitimate test. Again there are proper, calibrated focusing charts available to do this properly.

So in short, I think you can distill the changes in the images down to two things... video compression and processing and likely quality of the glass in front of the sensor. Let's face it, folks, you're not getting the same quality glass in a $1200 drone as you would in a $150k UHD television camera lens.

FYI, this is what a $150k television camera lens looks like... and there's a reason why they cost $150k: https://www.usa.canon.com/.../4k-uhd.../uhd-digisuper-122

The only one thing he said about the drones that made any sense is that they all look pretty good.

This is full of nonsense!!
UHD is four times the resolution(!!) of what FHD is „capable“ of, double horizontal multiplied by double the vertical resolution - simply by definition and by the matrix of the image dimensions!
What you get depends on the source. With a 4K 3 chip camera it‘s possible to get very close to real 4K, but not if you play footage from a 2K bayercamera.

This guys of the video needs not to take any specified or standardized „expensive“ „SMTPE“ testcharts as long as he always does all his tests in the same scale/picturewidth, that‘s not to difficult to understand.
He also says we should ignore the number of lines of the tests since these are not correct scaled!

40 years of TV work means nothing without or with wrong technical- and physical understanding.
I‘m electrical engineer, I hope you pay respect for that ;-) ;-) ;-)!!

 

[eukaryote]

Yes, that is correct. He is wrong. By his weird reasoning 8K is the same as HD as it is simply 16 x 1080 frames stitched together...

I thought so. In the photography world, what they said made no sense whatsoever, but I was thinking maybe in video processing it could be different. The more I tried to reason with what they were saying, the more crazy I thought
their reasoning way. The only way what they said would make sense re: resolution is by increasing the image size, and correspondingly moving their position from the screen back

 

[SmItLeR]

Why not actually try and use the product than deciding on unknown, subjective, unverified random people on youtube?

You aren't submitting footage to NatGeo here.

Because people are starting to feel cheated by DJI.. I am in dispute with them at the moment over the marketing of the Ronin S and it not living up to the information it has been marketed for. Yes the M2P is an awesome machine, but people are getting sick and tired of being taken for granted.

 

[chunky]

Because people are starting to feel cheated by DJI.. I am in dispute with them at the moment over the marketing of the Ronin S and it not living up to the information it has been marketed for. Yes the M2P is an awesome machine, but people are getting sick and tired of being taken for granted.

He he - me to, also have a Ronin-S and Sony isn‘t supported that way as expected.
There are many other flaws these days with this thing...
...but that’s complete OT.
Both, the Mavic 2 Pro as the Ronin-S are new products that may need some time to improve...

 

[SmItLeR]

He he - me to, also have a Ronin-S and Sony isn‘t supported that way as expected.
There are many other flaws these days with this thing...
...but that’s complete OT.
Both, the Mavic 2 Pro as the Ronin-S are new products that may need some time to improve...

Oh for sure.. but if that's the case then don't market a product one way and release it another way - that just pi#$es me off and get a ill-feeling from the company.

Don't sell me a marketed 1000hp Porsche if I can only use 700hp of it :\

 

[kilomikebravo]

Folks, let’s not confuse resolution with image pixel dimensions. "Resolution" is completely dependent on the output device, i.e., display or hard copy. As I see it, UHD will be the same resolution as HD when output to the same device, the only difference will be the dimensions of the printed images.

To illustrate, here are two images with exactly the same resolution...72dpi.

As you can see, the second image is larger than the first and your display, regardless of its pixel pitch/density, will always have the same display "resolution" because it is fixed by the pixel density of the monitor. So I think we simply have confusion over the term "resolution." It's no different in the print world. A magazine photo looks much better than the same photo printed on your inkjet or laser printer but the print media uses unGodly high output resolutions and the printout from your own printer will never look as good BECAUSE the OUTPUT resolution is different between the two scenarios. At least that's how I understand things.

And just so the younger crowd can get their heads around what's transpired in the technology sector over the past thirty years with regard to imagery, the first digital camera I ever saw was a Casio and the maximum image dimensions for that camera were also 640x480. So, now that we're talking about images that are 3840x2160, we have gorgeous images that we never even DREAMED about back in the day.

KB

Edit: I just noticed that the images are the same size on an iPhone display and me thinks that is due to the mobile version of the forum software. But, if you view this thread on a regular display, you will see the difference.

 

[chunky]

Having 4K pixels means by far not that we have 4K resolution!
We can upscale a 320x180 image to 3840x2160 pixels - but it doesn‘t contain 3840x2160 pixels with „individual“ image information!

The M2P doesn‘t manage to deliver 3840x2160 individual pixel information, neighboured pixels are influenced by each other to some degree - to the limited resolution.
Also a P4pro doesn‘t manage that „individualization“ completely, but it‘s far closer to that. Surrounding pixels are less influenced as also to be seen with other oversampling cameras or native resolving multisensor cameras.

In one way it‘s not „nice“ to have this degraded resolution on the M2P, ok, our problem - but DJI clearly states in the FAQ and the manual that the camera creates 4K „resolution“ even in FullFOV and even the mentioned method of downscaling leads to better resolution in comparison to „only“ native readout as with HQ (debayering disadvantages become less promiment) - so we should demand DJI to achieve a better result soon, at least „as good as possible“, as shown with the P4pro before!

 

[mozso]

Shocking to see how underutilized is that 1” sensor in MP2 currently. I’m glad I did not join the public beta tester’s group who rushed to get it first.

Let’s hope it will be rectified with a firmware update and not by a new “platinum” edition.

 

[spence]

Wow, if DJI advertises these modes as '4k', and if it can be proven that they're upscaled from 2.7k to get to 4k, they've seemingly created a huge mess for themselves, legally.

You can't just capture some arbritary resolution under 4k, upscale, and sell it as 4k. Where would you draw the line? Imagine 512x288 capture res, upscaled to 4k...yuck.

"4k" has to be at least 4k capture res, or it becomes an utterly meaningless distinction.

Edit: Thanks for your excellent work on this, Cliff.

 

[Cliff_622]

I am not quite sure if that is correct. Resolution can be defined as how close lines can be to each other, yet still be discerned as two separate lines. By nature, 4k will have a lot more pixels recorded vs 1080p, and hence will allow for more resolution (if you stay in the same spot relative to the screen), especially at larger screen sizes and the closer you stay at the screen.

Sure, this is an accurate description of "resolution". If you think about it from a "waveform" point of view, 4k supports higher sampling frequencies than 1080 does. Every resolution value has a "Nyquist frequency" which is the highest digital sampling frequency that particular resolution can support. Onece you cross that threshold, severe aliasing occurs and the waveform begins to "fold" on itself and gets destroyed.

Anyhoo,...that's digital sampling and how it affects resolution. ;-)

 

[Jixxer]

Just to see how DJI support handles this major issue. I sent the video to them. First response from dji was scripted
This is final response

 

[Roamer105]

It continues to amaze me how the P4P is short of “walking on water” and if I go back to the early commentary on the P4P the M2P looks pretty good! Give it a little bit of time. DJI always goes through a number of updates...

 

[GadgetGuy]

View attachment 46813 Just to see how DJI support handles this major issue. I sent the video to them. First response from dji was scripted
This is final response

Yeah, I wouldn't be holding my breath waiting for the Engineering Team to better assist you! They are way too busy with other matters!

 

[chunky]

I also contacted them long ago when I did my first colored ISO test where the P4pro „destroyed“ the M2p.
The answear was that the M2p would be in a different league and that it‘s not a P4pro.
From my view DJI promotes the M2p as some kind of „pro“ on their website and even 10bit states of that. DJI also has no different „class“, both P4 as Mavic are „hobbydrones“ there.
The guy also said that there „may be“ an update to improve the results.

More people should contact DJI‘s support so they see people are unsatisfied with the actual performance.

 

[Synephrine]

I also contacted them long ago when I did my first colored ISO test where the P4pro „destroyed“ the M2p.
The answear was that the M2p would be in a different league and that it‘s not a P4pro.
From my view DJI promotes the M2p as some kind of „pro“ on their website and even 10bit states of that. DJI also has no different „class“, both P4 as Mavic are „hobbydrones“ there.
The guy also said that there „may be“ an update to improve the results.

More people should contact DJI‘s support so they see people are unsatisfied with the actual performance.

Have to agree with this. I own the M2P and so far, I see nothing 'professional' about it. Both broken 4k FOV video and still images are not at professional levels...at all. Sure it's not comparable to FF sensors and has limitations in post, but comparing to phantom quality, the M2P is embarrassing.

 

[Fireblade]

You aren't submitting footage to NatGeo here.

So if i bought a v8 and but for some reason it was only running on 6 cylinders and it seems to do ok, i should just be ok with it right? I mean i'm not going to be racing in nascar or anything. lol

 

[chunky]

Because there was the question, here again the ISO test I did before that compares P4pro UHD 25p to M2p UHD 25p in HQ and FullFOV mode: