Organizing Drone Pictures From the Drone

[Josiah S]

Good morning all. First off, maybe this is a really dumb question but... I am wondering if you can somehow "tell" the DJI Mavic Air 2 to organize pictures and videos that it puts strait onto the sd card into different folders for video, pictures, dates, etc. I know that it puts everything in a folder called 100 media or 101 media when you fill that up. When you come back from shooting tons of footage and photos and it is time to edit and sort them it takes forever to sort through the horribly organized mess... My drone will also put raw panorama images into a separate folder, but that is all. Is there any way to have the drone organize all of the shots into different folders? Again I realize this could be a completely ridiculous question and it might not even make sense... Thank you for your replies!

 

[dirkclod]

Well I dump my card into my iMac then make folders and name them .Delete the picture/videos I don’t want then replace my card and reformat. I might have 1 folder with 10 sub folders from differant days or locations then deal with editing them when I have a chance. I do this everytime I go out and come back in.
What I have always done.
The drone won’t do it though.

 

[Meta4]

Is there any way to have the drone organize all of the shots into different folders?

No

 

[Josiah S]

Ok. Thank you for the straight out answer. Now I know.??

 

[berwickgeek]

On my Mac I use a tool called Hazel to do this. I just dump everything captured on the card into a single folder and Hazel creates subfolders by date, then in each subfolder creates folders for the type of file (raw, jpeg, mov, etc). It’s a huge time saver.

 

[Dale D]

Good morning all. First off, maybe this is a really dumb question but... I am wondering if you can somehow "tell" the DJI Mavic Air 2 to organize pictures and videos that it puts strait onto the sd card into different folders for video, pictures, dates, etc. I know that it puts everything in a folder called 100 media or 101 media when you fill that up. When you come back from shooting tons of footage and photos and it is time to edit and sort them it takes forever to sort through the horribly organized mess... My drone will also put raw panorama images into a separate folder, but that is all. Is there any way to have the drone organize all of the shots into different folders? Again I realize this could be a completely ridiculous question and it might not even make sense... Thank you for your replies!

Part of the photography process of sorting your assets in the SD card requires a few minutes time at the computer after uploading your shooting results to the desk top.

After the SD card is uploaded to the desk top, I make folders for video, still images, and panoramas. The I look at each file, decide whether or not to keep it, and if it is a video, I drag it into the video folder. Then I look at all of the still images, make a decision whether or not to see, then name the image, and drag it into the still image folder. At the end, I have all of my video in one folder and each file named, and the same for the still image folder. The panoramas are saved as RAW files in their own folder.

 

[DougMcC]

There is a remarkable app that I use on my Mac called Hazel. There may be a PC version.
I have Hazel loaded and running in background. It is a file manager system. On my intake hard drive iud finder to take ALL image files and copy everything into a master intake file that has Hazel watching it. Hazel has a series of rules and actions and copies or moves files quickly into separate folders for video, still pictures etc. other files it will move to trash or a junk folder for you to review. This all happens in a blink of an eye. I then make the photo only album a “watched” folder from LightRoom and LR will have auto imported the stills ready for culling and review. All auto! Hazel makes unloading, separating and LR importing all automatic. Take a look. I have no connection to Hazel just a happy customer

 

[evtide]

There is a remarkable app that I use on my Mac called Hazel. There may be a PC version.
I have Hazel loaded and running in background. It is a file manager system. On my intake hard drive iud finder to take ALL image files and copy everything into a master intake file that has Hazel watching it. Hazel has a series of rules and actions and copies or moves files quickly into separate folders for video, still pictures etc. other files it will move to trash or a junk folder for you to review. This all happens in a blink of an eye. I then make the photo only album a “watched” folder from LightRoom and LR will have auto imported the stills ready for culling and review. All auto! Hazel makes unloading, separating and LR importing all automatic. Take a look. I have no connection to Hazel just a happy customer

Does Hazel create date specific folders for archiving, for example, “05 30 Photos” or similar? I’m definitely going to look in to this as manually sorting and filing is getting cumbersome.

I‘m using Adobe Bridge to sort the keepers and throwaways before sending them to Lightroom or Rush for editing.

 

[DougMcC]

Does Hazel create date specific folders for archiving, for example, “05 30 Photos” or similar? I’m definitely going to look in to this as manually sorting and filing is getting cumbersome.

I‘m using Adobe Bridge to sort the keepers and throwaways before sending them to Lightroom or Rush for editing.

It has internal logic where you can perhaps set up some Sorting by creation date etc but I haven’t explored it that deeply - yet. Your question will spark me to go take a look. I believe I have only begun to develop its usefulness.

 

[GFields]

I always shoot jpg and dng so I sort them from sd card to PC

 

[Grippy]

I always sort into separate folder for the location as I shoot with many cameras, ie: Mavic - reservoir etc. Same with separate folders in a 'Edit' folder.

 

[danny_2020]

I always shoot jpg and dng so I sort them from sd card to PC

Me too. Delete what pics or vids I don't want from the SD card, and move them into my photography file that I save all of my photography on to then be edited in Adobe Lightroom, or Adobe Premiere Pro

 

[tlswift58]

Good morning all. First off, maybe this is a really dumb question but... I am wondering if you can somehow "tell" the DJI Mavic Air 2 to organize pictures and videos that it puts strait onto the sd card into different folders for video, pictures, dates, etc. I know that it puts everything in a folder called 100 media or 101 media when you fill that up. When you come back from shooting tons of footage and photos and it is time to edit and sort them it takes forever to sort through the horribly organized mess... My drone will also put raw panorama images into a separate folder, but that is all. Is there any way to have the drone organize all of the shots into different folders? Again I realize this could be a completely ridiculous question and it might not even make sense... Thank you for your replies!

When flying, even with 3 batteries - I've never had a "ton" of photos and videos. I may have 40-50 of them, but I don't leave them on the SD card for days or weeks at a time.

All the videos and pics WILL have a date / time stamp on them, which does allow for easier separating when you finally move them off the SD card. Yet, that seems to be as far as DJI goes in that realm.

 

[Josiah S]

Ok thank you. I will try these suggestions, one of the main reasons I was wondering is we haven't had a computer in 3 weeks and we still don't have one so all of my pictures and videos just keep piling up on the sd card. I am going to have a lot of sorting to do.

 

[tlswift58]

Ok thank you. I will try these suggestions, one of the main reasons I was wondering is we haven't had a computer in 3 weeks and we still don't have one so all of my pictures and videos just keep piling up on the sd card. I am going to have a lot of sorting to do.

Since you can't download the SD Card, just write down (paper / phone notes) / remember if you can where you flew on what day(s). Then when you download, set folders up on PC for Date / Location you flew and then just cut / move pics from that day (by date stamp in Explorer) into that folder. I set mine up for date (month-day-year) and name of location on my PC so I can remember and it also puts them in ascending order due to date is first part of file name. I also create folders for year and then the months - thus keeping them all in proper order. It's easy and allows me to find my photos / videos faster than having to sort thru 1,000 files in one folder.

 

[Thetopp1]

On my Mac I use a tool called Hazel to do this. I just dump everything captured on the card into a single folder and Hazel creates subfolders by date, then in each subfolder creates folders for the type of file (raw, jpeg, mov, etc). It’s a huge time saver.

I'm actually just now trying to create some Hazel rules. Do you mind sharing your structure(s)? Right now I have it broken down into type (dng, jpg, mp4, and date), but I'm trying for location. The M3 only gives the gps exif data, wish we could get city, but that might be too much to ask.

 

[Thetopp1]

Does Hazel create date specific folders for archiving, for example, “05 30 Photos” or similar? I’m definitely going to look in to this as manually sorting and filing is getting cumbersome.

I‘m using Adobe Bridge to sort the keepers and throwaways before sending them to Lightroom or Rush for editing.

It actually does...just figured it out on my way to see if it can do a folder for location (doubtful). Here's how: create your rule and under the action create one that "Sorts into folder" with pattern. click on the pattern and select it the way you want it. for me I have day-mo-date

 

[berwickgeek]

I'm actually just now trying to create some Hazel rules. Do you mind sharing your structure(s)? Right now I have it broken down into type (dng, jpg, mp4, and date), but I'm trying for location. The M3 only gives the gps exif data, wish we could get city, but that might be too much to ask.

Hi - sorry for the late reply, only just saw this now. This is my rule in Hazel...



And the resulting files/folders...


I've played with exif data previously but quickly found it was just beyond me. There's no doubt a way to call a script that converts the gps coordinates into something meaningful, but not clue how to do that.