Questions on MM Video Settings

Carlos56 · Jul 27, 2020

I'm fairly new to filming with the Mavic Mini, so I experimented with different settings. Am a little confused by what I found...

1) To me, 1080p actually looked smoother and sharper than 2.7K. maybe it was just my laptop playback settings, but don't see any benefit to 2.7K. Am I missing something?

2) I saw stutter in my videos shot at 30 fps, especially when panning the drone. I thought I would try 60 fps. I expected a big jump in the size of both the raw file on the micro SD card, and also my post processed file. Strangely the raw file only went from 250 MB/min to 280 MB/min when I switched to 60 fps. The compressed file using H.264 high quality compression resulted in a file size of 30MB/min for both the 30 and 60 fps. No file size difference, but waaaaay better playback smoothness and sharpness of motion detail on the 60 fps video. Again, am I missing something. Why do people shoot at 24 or 30 fps if the file sizes are the same at 60 fps?

Here's a sample of 30 fps followed by 60 fps. I'm even panning quicker on the 60 fps but still much smoother and sharper details as it pans. Hope the dropbox link works...

Dropbox - Error - Simplify your life

www.dropbox.com

JooB · Aug 12, 2020

Hi, I'm flying a M2Z but it's a general problem...
Panning is a worst case szenario for any camera cause everything in the picture moves at the same time.
You see stutter if there are too many changes between two following pictures.

You have 2 ways having no stutter when panning:
First pan VERY slow! Minimum 7 seconds for panning the whole size of a picture (from left to right border).

Second raise the fps because if you have more pictures per panned sector the changes between the pictures minimize.
60 fps are right in my opinion if you can't pan very slow.

So the resolution is not important for stuttering, it's the fps and/or the speed of panning.
Obviously you have hardware limitations in any kind of camera or drone. So choose a resolution which allows you 60 fps. More isn't neccessary, only for slow motion 120 fps would be right.

I dropped the 4k 30 fps and switched to 2.7k 60 fps to delete the stutter on my M2Z.
You don't need to film in a higher resolution than you need in the results you want to publish (if you don't want to crop in).
So if you want to publish in 1080 you can film in 1080 without any problems. More important is the correct fps.

Good luck!

Carlos56 · Aug 12, 2020

Thanks for the reply, JooB. That all makes sense.

I have been experimenting with different camera settings etc., and practicing my smooth flying. I have settled (for now) on 1080p 60 fps. It seems some prefer the cinematic look of 30 or 24 fps, and find the 60 fps too "real" or intense. Personally I Iike the realism and detail, and the added advantage of 60fps it is also more forgiving if I pan a bit too quickly. It doesn't stutter as much, and I can even slow that portion of the video down in the editing/encoding process without losing as much quality.

I found too that I was not using enough bit rate in the encoding. I raised it from 4000 to 15000 kbps and though the files are of course much larger, the quality I was hoping for is there.

Lots to learn, but it's been fun so far.