Mavic2 Pro video - calculating transect width

[sewings]

Hi
I am working on a flight plan to count feral animals on the ground using a single video transect flight at 60m, 8 kilometres in length, camera at 45 degrees off horizontal. The idea is gain an idea of population density express as animals per m2. From an earlier post by Gregdd (thanks) I note that video manufactures specs for FoV are given in the diagonal, not horizontal and appears in full FOV it is around 68 degrees not 77.
However even with this I'm struggling to work out what the theoretical transect width might be. Anyone able to assist?
Kind regards
Steve

 

[Meta4]

Hi
I am working on a flight plan to count feral animals on the ground using a single video transect flight at 60m, 8 kilometres in length, camera at 45 degrees off horizontal. The idea is gain an idea of population density express as animals per m2. From an earlier post by Gregdd (thanks) I note that video manufactures specs for FoV are given in the diagonal, not horizontal and appears in full FOV it is around 68 degrees not 77.
However even with this I'm struggling to work out what the theoretical transect width might be. Anyone able to assist?

There is more to this than you've worked out.
The FoV for the Mavic 2 pro camera is 75.4° (diagonal) and 65.5° (horizontal).
But this is for 5472×3648 stills.

In video mode, the camera uses less of the sensor (3840×2160) and will have a smaller FoV.

The best way to be sure would be to put the drone up at your proposed flying height and camera tilt angle and measure for yourself the area of coverage.
A carpark with marked spaces might be a good site to try this.

I'm curious about how you would carry out the flight.
Presumably you would follow the drone so as to maintain signal as it could be difficult if the drone was up to 8km from the controller and a round trip of 16 km would probably not be achievable. (battery limitation).

If you follow the drone, you need to be mindful of the importance of resetting the drone's home point a number of times during the flight to prevent a situation where the drone wants to go all the way back to the start when it calculates the remaining battery level is only just enough to be able to fly that distance.

 

[sewings]

Thanks and that may indeed be the best method to measure the swathe width. I use dronelink for planning as it allows creation of long transects and home point updated every few seconds. 8km at 35pkh can be completed on a full battery. I've flown about 40km so far.