Really bad quality video ...took my air out for its first flight

Rizzle · Feb 8, 2018

Hi guys,

I'm sure im doing something wrong because the footage I have seen of others is amazing but my footage is shocking.

The recording is set to 4k. I used the internal storage and then saved the recording to my laptop from the dji app (on Mac you can save to your desktop from phone).

when I watched the footage it was grainy and when the drone is moving it looks like its recorded on a phone.

Even up close it looked a bit grainy.

Any settings that I could change or anyone know the issue

Rizzle · Feb 8, 2018

in certain parts of the video it even glitches on the left top corner, like an old cinema if you get what I mean

synaesthesia · Feb 9, 2018

Link to the video?

What camera settings were you using? If the image was noisy then chances are the ISO was set too high or the lighting conditions were too poor. Did you leave the settings on auto? Auto usually does not produce the best results.

In the DJI Go 4 app you have access to camera settings: ISO, shutter speed, white balance, etc. These should be adjusted so that ideally ISO is as low as possible, your shutter speed is double your FPS (so if you're recording at 30fps that would be 1/60th) - any additional brightness should then be filtered out using neutral density filters. If you're finding that it's too dark at this point then you're shooting in a low light condition and you'll have to compromise on image quality to get the shot. You'll do this by increasing the ISO and lowering the shutter speed.

Without seeing the video, chances are the "glitches" int he top left corner was the propeller being visible due to high attitude or propeller shadow from poor camera settings (too high shutter speed).

Rizzle · Feb 9, 2018

I resolved it! Firstly...THE QUALITY IS INSANEEEEE

I was transferring over the air due to no SD card but what I should have been doing was connecting via usb-c.

If you just transfer the file over from the app you only get 720p

synaesthesia · Feb 9, 2018

Oh you didn't even mean while flying... lol

nemz305 · Feb 9, 2018

had to send mine Back had problem with video being very fuzzy and grainy my sparks videos looked way better post production and straight off the SD card

WebMaximus · May 11, 2018

Was just about to create a thread about this myself.

Recently got a Mavic Air and in most ways it's really a nice piece of equipment looking at all the available features etc. However when it comes to the quality of the video I'm not very impressed when I compare it to many of the videos I've watched on YouTube. Hopefully it's just because I still need to start playing around with the camera settings. Up until now I've just kept everything at Auto.

I did however do some searching on this topic and found people reporting similar issues with grainy video etc and how they eventually ended up having to send their MA back to DJI due to a bad/faulty camera.

For this reason I've included a short 15 sec clip here where you experts can hopefully let me know if what I've seen so far is normal or rather an indication of a faulty camera. Pay special attention to the grass and the way it looks getting closer...horrible IMO.

WebMaximus · May 13, 2018

Would really appreciate some input on my post above with the short 15 seconds clip showing my issue with blurry/pixelated footage and if this is likely caused by settings, low light or possibly a faulty camera.

Will do some more testing today in broad sunlight trying various settings.

I really hope I'll find a way to get good quality footage out of this thing because otherwise it will pretty much be like I flushed thousand bucks down the drain.

I'm not aiming for producing pro footage by any means, just something that I'll be able to enjoy myself on a 55" 4K Samsung TV.

Thanks in advance for any tips guys!

Kilrah · May 13, 2018

Since you say nothing about your process you might be doing teh same mistake as this thread describes. Or it's jsut due to the low light, we can't guess with no info.

WebMaximus · May 13, 2018

Sorry for the lack of required info. Just let me know what you need other than what I've already mentioned like having all camera settings on auto.

I've tried both 4K as well as lower resolution and I've also tried different FPS.

In relation to the OP I'm transferring the footage off my SD card using a SD card reader and I've confirmed the resolution is what it's supposed to be. So that's not the culprit in my case.

I've been watching more clips on YouTube that I can count and from what I've seen most of them looks awesome even on auto which is why I'm puzzled why I get this low quality footage.

The lighting condition in the example linked above was in no way dark but at the same time it wasn't broad daylight, more like dawn. Maybe that was the reason.

Still not sure though since I also did a flight in the middle of the day with the sun shining and flying over grass still looked really bad with some shimmering I guess you could call it going on whenever I was moving with the camera. Maybe I need to get some ND filters allowing me to get some motion blur.

Also stills looked quite bad with pixelated quality. Was using 16:9 rather than the default 4:3 if of relevance since that will reduce the pixel count.

Haven't had the chance to do any flying yet but the sun is still shining here in Stockholm today so I keep my hopes up

WebMaximus · May 13, 2018

More than happy to let you know things turned out perfect today when flying in good lighting conditions.

I also found 2.7K @ 60 FPS gave the best (most smooth) result over 4K @ 30 FPS which I guess makes sense with the higher FPS.

Here's what it looked like and please excuse the lack of artistic finesse. Just wanted to check out the image quality.

Angermanagement · Jun 19, 2018

WebMaximus said:
Sorry for the lack of required info. Just let me know what you need other than what I've already mentioned like having all camera settings on auto.

I've tried both 4K as well as lower resolution and I've also tried different FPS.

In relation to the OP I'm transferring the footage off my SD card using a SD card reader and I've confirmed the resolution is what it's supposed to be. So that's not the culprit in my case.

I've been watching more clips on YouTube that I can count and from what I've seen most of them looks awesome even on auto which is why I'm puzzled why I get this low quality footage.

The lighting condition in the example linked above was in no way dark but at the same time it wasn't broad daylight, more like dawn. Maybe that was the reason.

Still not sure though since I also did a flight in the middle of the day with the sun shining and flying over grass still looked really bad with some shimmering I guess you could call it going on whenever I was moving with the camera. Maybe I need to get some ND filters allowing me to get some motion blur.

Also stills looked quite bad with pixelated quality. Was using 16:9 rather than the default 4:3 if of relevance since that will reduce the pixel count.

Haven't had the chance to do any flying yet but the sun is still shining here in Stockholm today so I keep my hopes up

Hello,

The images on your phone are cached. The quality is worse than the video exported from the drone or SD cards directly. Same goes with live video feed. The end result is always much better (when imported to the pc straight from the drone/SD)

WebMaximus · Jun 19, 2018

Angermanagement said:
Hello,

The images on your phone are cached. The quality is worse than the video exported from the drone or SD cards directly. Same goes with live video feed. The end result is always much better (when imported to the pc straight from the drone/SD)

Of course but as mentioned in the post you replied to I wasn't looking at cached images but the true images copied off my SD card and viewed on my PC using a 4K screen.

Anyway since posting about this I've now found settings that seem to work quite nice. I ended up using 2.7K and 60 FPS with D-Cinelike. Everything else set to Auto except for white balance where I pick sunny or cloudy depending on the actual conditions.

Thanks anyway for your interest in my issue!

swoermck · Jul 3, 2018

WebMaximus said:
More than happy to let you know things turned out perfect today when flying in good lighting conditions.

I also found 2.7K @ 60 FPS gave the best (most smooth) result over 4K @ 30 FPS which I guess makes sense with the higher FPS.

Here's what it looked like and please excuse the lack of artistic finesse. Just wanted to check out the image quality.

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Hi WebMaximus,

a friend of mine bought a Mavic Air mid March this year, and the first run we did produced a quite blurry video as well! Yes conditions were not perfect as it was a cloudy day, so we went out again on a sunny day two weeks ago, but this time I took my Mavic Pro with me for a direct comparison. We both flew a straight line to eliminate issues when turning the drone:

The result was quite disappointing: we read everywhere that the Mavic Air camera is superior in comparison to the Pro, but if you take a closer look e.g. at the trees alongside the river, all the details are lost in the Mavic Air's footage, while trees in the Mavic Pro video are detailed and crisp.

I think I read somewhere that the Pro has a lens producing sharper images, but should this make such a big difference? Learning from our first flight in March, we already set sharpness to +1, but seems it didn't help much here.

Maybe my friend should send the Air back to DJI? I read in this forum that there were people returning two MAs until they got a bird producing sharp images? Maybe props not balanced? Or is this the quality to expect from a Mavic Air?

We really appreciate any help from you MA pilots!

thanks,

Stefan