Recent Job - Mini 3 Pro POOR pic and video quality

[Dan AISCF]

I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this in the past or even recently. For those wondering, I use the Mini 3 Pro regularly since its release last May.

On a day-long job this week, I decided to pull out the Mini 3 Pro to get some close-up footage of some workers for a Lake Management client of ours. As a rule of thumb I normally don't use any drone with less than a 1" sensor. But, I had flown the 8 batts of our Air2S and Evo Lite+ earlier in the day, so I gave the Mini 3 Pro its airtime. Every time I have used the Mini 3 Pro in the past, for anything, including our TY channels videos, the photos and footage from the Mini 3 Pro have been really good.

Here are the files on GDrive for anyone interested in taking a look...

[Video Footage]
This time, some of the footage at DLog 4k30 (1/60) was just extremely blurry, while the other footage was just fine, on the same battery, only a shot apart. The "Slow-Mo" footage was also awful. I have shot slow-mo for a segment on our channel recently with no issues. I always shoot video in Pro mode. I also had on a variable ND, as it is Central Florida and the sun is always only 10 feet from you, lol.

For file reference: Shot I.mp4 -> quality is fine. Shot II 2 min later.mp4 -> horribly blurry, same battery, just flew to the spot 2 minutes after the previous video. SloMo.mp4 -> unusable. For SloMo, all settings chosen by the Mini 3 Pro, since you can't control more than like the WB and ISO, I believe.

[Photos]
Next, ALL of the images from that day were absolutely horrid. When I shoot photos, I normally just shoot in standard 12mb mode (in Pro), but this time I shot them in 48mb mode, J+R in Pro, using the shutter for exposure control. I removed the ND filter for all photos. In this case, the JPGs saved at 25mb, while the DNGs saved at like 90mb. I've never experienced these numbers in these 2 formats. They are normally a LOT less. As a side note, I have used the Mini 3 Pro and shot 48mb in the past as an emergency for a real estate shoot or two and the photos were fine.

The pictures all look like they were painted with an art brush and plain bad. I did edit the 2 examples here in Lightroom. They look slightly better but not the quality we are known to produce for clients.

Generally, I would just do the shoot again and not think about it, however, this area is super exclusive and hard to get in for any type of footage, requiring the client to jump through hoops monthly, so this garbled mess hurts a bit more than normal on-site issues would.

If anyone has any ideas, similar results, or solutions I'd love to hear! THANK YOU

 

[Phantomrain.org]

Are you sure your pulling the right files off the SD card? These are very low quality and many of them over exposed.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water.

 

[Wild Drone Pilot]

I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this in the past or even recently. For those wondering, I use the Mini 3 Pro regularly since its release last May.

On a day-long job this week, I decided to pull out the Mini 3 Pro to get some close-up footage of some workers for a Lake Management client of ours. As a rule of thumb I normally don't use any drone with less than a 1" sensor. But, I had flown the 8 batts of our Air2S and Evo Lite+ earlier in the day, so I gave the Mini 3 Pro its airtime. Every time I have used the Mini 3 Pro in the past, for anything, including our TY channels videos, the photos and footage from the Mini 3 Pro have been really good.

Here are the files on GDrive for anyone interested in taking a look...

[Video Footage]
This time, some of the footage at DLog 4k30 (1/60) was just extremely blurry, while the other footage was just fine, on the same battery, only a shot apart. The "Slow-Mo" footage was also awful. I have shot slow-mo for a segment on our channel recently with no issues. I always shoot video in Pro mode. I also had on a variable ND, as it is Central Florida and the sun is always only 10 feet from you, lol.

For file reference: Shot I.mp4 -> quality is fine. Shot II 2 min later.mp4 -> horribly blurry, same battery, just flew to the spot 2 minutes after the previous video. SloMo.mp4 -> unusable. For SloMo, all settings chosen by the Mini 3 Pro, since you can't control more than like the WB and ISO, I believe.

[Photos]
Next, ALL of the images from that day were absolutely horrid. When I shoot photos, I normally just shoot in standard 12mb mode (in Pro), but this time I shot them in 48mb mode, J+R in Pro, using the shutter for exposure control. I removed the ND filter for all photos. In this case, the JPGs saved at 25mb, while the DNGs saved at like 90mb. I've never experienced these numbers in these 2 formats. They are normally a LOT less. As a side note, I have used the Mini 3 Pro and shot 48mb in the past as an emergency for a real estate shoot or two and the photos were fine.

The pictures all look like they were painted with an art brush and plain bad. I did edit the 2 examples here in Lightroom. They look slightly better but not the quality we are known to produce for clients.

Generally, I would just do the shoot again and not think about it, however, this area is super exclusive and hard to get in for any type of footage, requiring the client to jump through hoops monthly, so this garbled mess hurts a bit more than normal on-site issues would.

If anyone has any ideas, similar results, or solutions I'd love to hear! THANK YOU

clean lens 1st?

 

[Meta4]

The pictures all look like they were painted with an art brush and plain bad. I did edit the 2 examples here in Lightroom. They look slightly better but not the quality we are known to produce for clients.

I looked at your original jpg files and can't match them to your description.
They appear to have good detail.
Painted with a brush? .. not the examples I checked.

 

[Dan AISCF]

Are you sure your pulling the right files off the SD card? These are very low quality and many of them over exposed.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water.

Hey Phantom Rain, love your work btw.
Indeed, all of the files are pulled directly off the card, using an SD card reader attached to my Mac M1.
Also, when live, the exposure was spot on (Overexposure warning on and histo as well). And, yes indeed, the low quality is exactly what I'm referring to. Even though the files are 25-90mb, they are thumbnail quality when you zoom in 1x on them. That's exactly the problem I can't figure out. I might reformat the SD and test the mess out of it today!

 

[Dan AISCF]

clean lens 1st?

Hey Wild Drone Pilot. I indeed cleaned the lens during the shoot. Blower and lens cloth. Very odd...

 

[Dan AISCF]

I looked at your original jpg files and can't match them to your description.
They appear to have good detail.
Painted with a brush? .. not the examples I checked.

Hey Meta4, thank you for looking, I really do appreciate it. Were you by any chance able to look at the differences between the 2 mp4 files? One where the footage was clean and 2 minutes later it was just a blurry mess? Not to mention the slowmo shot, omg.
For the actual photos I edited them to the best I could and am waiting to see if the client is ok with them.
For you, the DNG and JPG (not the LR versions) didn't look like they were painted with a brush? When I zoom in 1x it looks to me like that. THANKS AGAIN FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE!

 

[Meta4]

Hey Meta4, thank you for looking, I really do appreciate it. Were you by any chance able to look at the differences between the 2 mp4 files? One where the footage was clean and 2 minutes later it was just a blurry mess? Not to mention the slowmo shot, omg.

I've now looked at the 2 minutes later video. I's got D-Log flat look, but all the detail appears sharp.
It's definitely not a blurry mess.
Screen shot

or the actual photos I edited them to the best I could and am waiting to see if the client is ok with them.
For you, the DNG and JPG (not the LR versions) didn't look like they were painted with a brush? When I zoom in 1x it looks to me like that.

Opened one of the dng files in Photoshop and zoomed to 100%
Here's a screenshot
It looks just like the jpg's straight from the camera, not at all blurry.

Maybe there's something wrong with the way you are viewing the file?

 

[Dan AISCF]

I've now looked at the 2 minutes later video. I's got D-Log flat look, but all the detail appears sharp.
It's definitely not a blurry mess.
Screen shot
View attachment 163923


Opened one of the dng files in Photoshop and zoomed to 100%
Here's a screenshot
It looks just like the jpg's straight from the camera, not at all blurry.

Maybe there's something wrong with the way you are viewing the file?
View attachment 163924

Meta4 - Thank you for really digging through this. Looking at your shots here things look decent. On my end, most of it looks pretty bad. I've viewed on a 32gb RAM windows machine and my Mac M1 and they appear, to me, to be on the very low-quality end.

I'll attach a screen or two as well. It could be it's me. I did have my wife take a look at the lightroom end results and she said they looked good, and didn't really notice anything wrong with the JPG or DNGs...until I zoomed in (yikes). Again, thank you for looking deeper, it is indeed appreciated.

 

[Dan AISCF]

@Meta4 Here are my screens:

Video 1, ok


2minutes later, blurry


SloMo - Super Blurry


Test I, pre-edit, zoomed, blurry

 

[Dan AISCF]

I ended up reformatting my SD Card that was in the Mini and took a few vids and various-sized images (12mb, 48mb, SloMo) and everything appeared to be back to normal, including the acceptable resolution and normal-sized JPGs and DNGs.

I'll continue monitoring this, testing it regularly, and updating the findings here. In the interim, I'll stick with my larger drones for client work. Lol.

Thank you all for taking a look into this and offering suggestions, it's much appreciated.

 

[Droning on and on...]

This could end up being a phantom of "confirmation bias". Now that you've got it in your head these look bad, that's what you keep seeing.

It's a very stubborn, and very real phenomena.

 

[Dan AISCF]

This could end up being a phantom of "confirmation bias". Now that you've got it in your head these look bad, that's what you keep seeing.

It's a very stubborn, and very real phenomena.

You just might be right. I had to step away for a bit, lol.
It has been nice, though, working on the Air2S footage of the same project. Those images and videos look spot-on to me, lol!

 

[Droning on and on...]

You just might be right. I had to step away for a bit, lol.
It has been nice, though, working on the Air2S footage of the same project. Those images and videos look spot-on to me, lol!

You ever look at a word on the page, a word you know well, but then out of nowhere it starts to seem like it's misspelled?

And the more you stare at it, the harder it gets to see that it's spelled correctly?

Can't remember what this phenomenon is called, but it's happened to me a couple times over my life. The first time was after someone told me about it.

So look out... apologies in advance

 

[Dan AISCF]

You ever look at a word on the page, a word you know well, but then out of nowhere it starts to seem like it's misspelled?

And the more you stare at it, the harder it gets to see that it's spelled correctly?

Can't remember what this phenomenon is called, but it's happened to me a couple times over my life. The first time was after someone told me about it.

So look out... apologies in advance

*facepalm* I think my weekend is about to be ruined, hahahah!

 

[NightFlightAlright]

I'm not seeing the problems that you are describing the first video shots are obviously in the 10bit pseudo-log mode, the slomo shot isn't. I'm not seeing the problems that you're describing on the stills either.

Do you apply a LUT to the footage like the 10bit stuff before viewing? And what application do you use? Are you using daVinci? In da Vinci for example, it's possible put a LUT on twice, which can cause some of the artifacts that you were describing..

Also, I don't know what kind of computer you've got, but the stream to the monitor may have a different path than the surrounding UI, and if you have some kind of buffer corruption problem or something, rebooting the computer can correct that.

 

[Dan AISCF]

I'm not seeing the problems that you are describing the first video shots are obviously in the 10bit pseudo-log mode, the slomo shot isn't. I'm not seeing the problems that you're describing on the stills either....

Thank you for taking the time to view the files. I didn't use Luts in this case and generally use Cinema Grade with Resolve. I guess my vision must be crazy as I see a huge difference in resolution between the 2 files taken 2 minutes apart, not counting the awful slo-mo, lol.

The client was happy with the images, so I guess I'll call it a win in this instance. I have yet to put together their promotional video, which I'm dreading, due to my crazy perception of what I believe I'm seeing.

I do all of my photo and video editing on an M1 Mac, and up until this day's shoot, with the Mini 3 Pro, I never had an issue.

 

[NightFlightAlright]

Thank you for taking the time to view the files. I didn't use Luts in this case and generally use Cinema Grade with Resolve. I guess my vision must be crazy as I see a huge difference in resolution between the 2 files taken 2 minutes apart, not counting the awful slo-mo, lol.

OK well to trying them troubleshoot this from afar... Have you cleared the cache and cleared all optimize media from the project? I'm just wondering if you have proxy media or something that's interfering with this because I would be one explanation and the fact that the city is 10bit could be part of this... And if you're using Resolve you must have the paid version because the free version doesn't do 10 bit if I recall… it's such a deep program it's pretty easy for files to get a little borked, usually the proxy files or optimized media files or pre-renters etc.

 

[Dan AISCF]

OK well to trying them troubleshoot this from afar... Have you cleared the cache and cleared all optimize media from the project? I'm just wondering if you have proxy media or something that's interfering with this because I would be one explanation and the fact that the city is 10bit could be part of this... And if you're using Resolve you must have the paid version because the free version doesn't do 10 bit if I recall… it's such a deep program it's pretty easy for files to get a little borked, usually the proxy files or optimized media files or pre-renters etc.

Thank you for thinking deeper about this. I'm not running proxies or optimized media, but haven't cleared the cache either. It's just odd only a few Mini 3 files were "off" whereas most of them were just fine. More importantly, for this project, the fact that I was seeing less than acceptable image quality from the stills.

I've reformatted and replaced the SD card and am still cautiously testing footage from the Mini 3 Pro. Sadly, this tiny occurrence has slightly waivered my confidence in the Mini 3 Pro for backup commercial work.

 

[NightFlightAlright]

Thank you for thinking deeper about this. I'm not running proxies or optimized media, but haven't cleared the cache either. It's just odd only a few Mini 3 files were "off" whereas most of them were just fine. More importantly, for this project, the fact that I was seeing less than acceptable image quality from the stills.

I've reformatted and replaced the SD card and am still cautiously testing footage from the Mini 3 Pro. Sadly, this tiny occurrence has slightly waivered my confidence in the Mini 3 Pro for backup commercial work.

Here’s something: there have been reports that the mini 3 pro can have a lens-fog issue.

Considering your location and humidity, I could see that being a potential issue.

One solution I read indicates removing the standard lens hood and using a good quality filter…

I almost never shoot without a K+F filter on, especially daytime where I usually have an ND6 polarizer or a variable ND on, as I want to keep shutter at 1/50 (I shoot 24fps).

And shooting around water, a polarizer is very helpful.

Just a thought…