Obvious question

[Prospero]

I agree entirely. Long, continuous videos also tend to lose the viewers attention.

Agreed about long shots, and if have a chance it's safer usually to shoot small clips, then use them in Premier. Although I sometimes shoot long shots and carve them up in Premier (did it earlier with some chase shots on a car)

As for FAT32 exFAT..... Yeah, the manual/site says FAT32, and if you put a 4gb card in and format it, that's exactly what the Air does, formats it FAT32, anything more though it formats as exFAT

I also agree about long continuous video losing the audience. I edit multi-cam concert videos, switching from one view to another, and rarely stay on one clip for more than a minute or so.

The 3.76Gb clip cap is weird, but not a game-changer or even inconvenient.

Mainly I'm curious. It would be interesting to know the actual, detailed specifications of this astonishing little piece of tech. I can't help but wonder if there are other hidden 'features'...

BTW, do people still buy 4Gb cards?

Edit: Forgot to mention -- it's raining here now, so I probably won't have an opportunity to test the .mp4 vs .mov possible difference today.

charias if you have a chance, would you mind doing a test using .mov, and possibly do a 4k test? Thanks.

 

[charlas]

I'll do a test tomorow for you, and as for cards smaller than 64Gb.... yeah I have no idea! the 4Gb card was just laying about so thought I would test is all

 

[charlas]

Oh just thought, the 128Gb SD I've got in at the moment I formatted on the PC in exFAT, so might be worth pulling the card out of the device and using disk manager (or mac equiv) to see what format the card actually has? perhaps for some reason it's not exFAT?

 

[Prospero]

Oh just thought, the 128Gb SD I've got in at the moment I formatted on the PC in exFAT, so might be worth pulling the card out of the device and using disk manager (or mac equiv) to see what format the card actually has? perhaps for some reason it's not exFAT?

According to my mac, it is exFAT. Come to think of it, I could test the formatted capacity using the computer. I'll post results...

 

[Prospero]

5.44Gb .mov loads on the card with no issues.

 

[charlas]

Well Deffo allows bigger files to be stored on it

Just another thought, what version of the firmware you on?

 

[Prospero]

Well Deffo allows bigger files to be stored on it

Just another thought, what version of the firmware you on?

The latest one: .400. I've not experienced any of the issues mentioned here by others.

 

[charlas]

Yeah, same, not had any issues with it, just wondered if it was something introduced at a recent firmware is all.

 

[Thwyllo]

I also agree about long continuous video losing the audience. I edit multi-cam concert videos, switching from one view to another, and rarely stay on one clip for more than a minute or so.

The 3.76Gb clip cap is weird, but not a game-changer or even inconvenient.

Mainly I'm curious. It would be interesting to know the actual, detailed specifications of this astonishing little piece of tech. I can't help but wonder if there are other hidden 'features'...

BTW, do people still buy 4Gb cards?

Edit: Forgot to mention -- it's raining here now, so I probably won't have an opportunity to test the .mp4 vs .mov possible difference today.

charias if you have a chance, would you mind doing a test using .mov, and possibly do a 4k test? Thanks.

FAT 32 would be long dead but it's a simple matter of compatibility. There are far more people using older cards and sticks (usually even now when new, formatted to FAT32 by default), or that aren't bothered about individual files of more than 4gb, than there are dweebs like us.

 

[charlas]

FAT 32 would be long dead but it's a simple matter of compatibility. There are far more people using older cards and sticks (usually even now when new, formatted to FAT32 by default), or that aren't bothered about individual files of more than 4gb, than there are dweebs like us.

Yup very true, it's also done because 99.9% of 'devices' new and old support fat32, whereas exFAT was introduced by MS in 2006/2007 and even though it was allowed for adoption with a flat payment license (however technical patents held by MS), because it was deemed a 'Microsoft Technology' and at the time MS was still in it's being hated on by everyone phase it was not widely adopted, and a majority of things was unlikely to use files larger than 4Gb anyhow.

That's obviously changed now in the days of extremely high bitrate files, so companies licenced the technology, but even now that 99% of new stuff has support for it, not a lot of things support 'all' of it's specs.

Heck it took Apple till OSX 10.6.* (somewhere around there) to even support write/recovery on the file system!
One of the coolest features of it isn't even supported by MS on desktop class hardware (Transactional exFAT or TexFAT), so I think it suffer's from being launched before it's time, by a company that was shunned by the non MS tech world (hey after all that's why MS even invented it, as no one would support NTFS on devices)

But hey.. Tech history is 'a thing' I suppose, lots of stories of incredible tech that never get's used correctly around....

 

[Prospero]

Too busy this AM to fly, so I can't test if mp4 files will go past the cap. I know .mov files can cause VLC to balk, so there's a possibility the .mov container code is triggering something in the drone cam software. If the rain holds off, and I have time this evening I'll give it a shot, and post results.

 

[charlas]

Let us know

I haven't used the MOV container for many, many, many years now... MP4 or MKV (or M4V for some things) so havent kept up on the MOV format/container

 

[Prospero]

Let us know

I haven't used the MOV container for many, many, many years now... MP4 or MKV (or M4V for some things) so havent kept up on the MOV format/container

Same result for 4K mp4. I'll attempt some lower res tomorrow. Meanwhile, if you have an opportunity would you please experiment with 4K mp4 and any res mov? Also what exact SD card are you using? Mine is a Sandisk Extreme Plus 64Gb.

We must solve this mystery!!! lol.

 

[charlas]

Just tried, 4K/25 12minutes 1 file
2.7k/50 14 min 1 file

So no idea??

Sandisk Extreme 128Gb

 

[Prospero]

Thunderstorms here. Meanwhile, I've refreshed the firmware, just because. And then formatted the internal 8Gb storage to exFAT. It was FAT32. Interestingly, the drone formats the internal storage as FAT32, but formats the SD card to exFAT.
I also re-installed the Assistant, and declined installation of horNDIS, as there isn't any explanation why it is required.

I've dusted off my old PC laptop, and currently installing the PC version of the Assistant. No particular reason.

On a side note; Have you noticed some people claiming the drone was designed to run better from iOS devices? Or words to that effect, or that the go app was designed to run better on iOS than on Android devices? Strikes me as rather odd, since the internal memory device reports it as being Linux based...

I might get a chance to fly tomorrow.

 

[charlas]

Personally I think if anything DJI probably favour Android, as their screens are Android based anyhow, maybe new features come to Android first and get debugged so when they reach iOS they 'feel' better. But I'm unsure. But can't see why they would favour iOS over android.

It might be the android 'issue' though, there's so many different specced Android devices that more people use device that are under powered, where that's not really an option on iOS, you get what apple give you.

 

[Jack Daw]

I guess it wasn't such an obvious question with an obvious answer after all.....

 

[Dave Maine]

My experience with my P3 4K is that it always breaks at slightly less than 4gb.
, a result of the file definition. Even formatting as exfat gives the same result, so something in the DJI software is involved.

For those who look carefully at joined footage, you will see that a couple of frames are missing, and the joint has a bump.

There is a workflow where the limit is a real problem. If you run the camera continuously for the entire flight, and select the good bits in post, the break and restart can happen in the middle of a good bit, and spoil the shot. I have to remember to start and stop the camera periodically to avoid spoiling a good bit.