Storage Confusion and CACHE MODE - Mavic 2 Pro and DJI Smart Controller

[SMD]

Hello!

I'm so confused. I have the Mavic 2 Pro and just got the DJI Smart Controller and both the drone and the controller have SD cards installed.

***My ideal would be record full rez footage to drone's SD card but cache/backup to Smart Controller.***

3 Questions

1) Cache Mode??? My drone's internal storage was full. But yesterday it kept saying "SD card full" even though I have 50gb left on my drone's SD card and about 50gb left on my Smart Controller's SD card and both were inserted properly and had worked the day prior with no issues. Hitting record would then open a pop up that said: "CACHE MODE: The photos and videos you shot will be saved in the cache space of your mobile device. Go to the Editor to check after shooting. Video resolutions will matched (sic) with the selected image transimssion resolution. No support for setting some parameters." --- Why would it say SD card full and go into cache mode if I had 50gb of space on my drone's SD card? I definitely want the master (full resolution) videos to be stored on the drone's SD card. I've set it up in the DJI Go 4 app under "..." and then "..." to cache to SD card, cache capacity set to AUTO, and "download footage to external sd card" is selected. After messing around with the drone and trying numerous things, I had to swap batteries on the drone and then the cache mode went away. But why did this happen in the first place??? I've never had my drone suddenly stop recognizing an sd card (and again, I had used the drone the day prior with no issues and hadn't removed the SD card). Unfortunately, we were in a rush yesterday and had to record in cache mode which is only 1080p and looks mediocre at best.

2) Does selecting "download footage to external sd card" mean that all cached footage will be stored on the SD card of the remote control instead of the remote's internal memory? Or does it refer to the fact that if I select footage AFTER filming in my video library and choose to download it, it will be saved to the remote controller's SD card (instead of the internal storage of the remote)? Or does it mean both those things?

3) What confuses me is when the app refers to SD card, I never know if it's talking about the SD card of the REMOTE or the MAVIC 2 PRO. I get confused over the 4 storage options and what is everything set to (remote's internal, sd of remote, drone's internal, and sd of drone). So when the DJI Go 4 app refers to sd card, is it referring to the drone's SD card?


Would love some help! Sorry if my questions sort of overlap and are similar. You can tell I'm confused as I had never seen Cache Mode before.

Thanks!

 

[SMD]

I found out from DJI that each battery needs to be updated. I told them when my drone had issues and went into cache mode and wouldn't recognize the SD card suddenly, but pulling the battery out and swapping it for another fixed the issue...they said "did you update each battery?" I was like "Huh?" So they had me "refresh" the firmware (using the DJI Assistant 2 for Mavic app) 3 times (once for each of my 3 batteries). The 3rd and final battery had a popup that said "Firmware incompatibility detected between some modules and current device. Update your Firmware?" so I did and then all seems to be well. My battery (about 8 months old) might have issues because when I went to charge it the DJI charger blinked yellow/orange and wouldn't charge, before finally turning green after a few minutes. DJI wanted me to take a video of that, but of course it stopped and I can't get it to do it again. Of course.

Anyway, figured I'd update this just in case someone else has issues like this. Kinda scary thinking my battery might be the issue and my drone might fall out of the sky, but until I know for sure I'll be using my other 2 batteries mostly.

 

[globetrotterdrone]

Hmm, the "Inconsisent firmware detected" has been posted here a couple of times.
Normally, before flight, you should wait upon DJI Go 4 to initialise properly and not instantly hitting the button "Fly".

Not saying you did, but some did ... always let it check and after everything is fine, the countdown goes down from 3 and you are safe to fly.
Updating batteries after firmware is quite normal.

 

[SMD]

Hmm, the "Inconsisent firmware detected" has been posted here a couple of times.
Normally, before flight, you should wait upon DJI Go 4 to initialise properly and not instantly hitting the button "Fly".

Not saying you did, but some did ... always let it check and after everything is fine, the countdown goes down from 3 and you are safe to fly.
Updating batteries after firmware is quite normal.

Good to know about the battery updates being normal. Didn't know. Thx!

As for initializing properly, I can't recall exactly, but with the smart controller I feel like it checks quicker and gets to that countdown from 3 right away and THEN the GO FLY pops up. But I could be wrong. Either way, that "inconsistent firmware detected" message was shown in the DJI Assistant 2 for Mavic app. The first two batteries did not have that message. I would just turn on the drone, it would be detected by the app and I'd REFRESH the firmware per DJI's instructions. Then after it was done, I'd go to the next battery. Same thing. But on the 3rd battery I got that message so I updated. Once I updated I felt good, until I went to charge that battery and the charger light wouldn't go green at first (it did on the other two). Now I'm feeling uneasy again. I'll just keep an eye on that battery and how it performs and charges going forward.

Thank you for your feedback though!

 

[globetrotterdrone]

No worries, I got the message with every of my 4 batteries, but with the 4th one week later as with all the others.

 

[SMD]

No worries, I got the message with every of my 4 batteries, but with the 4th one week later as with all the others.

Ah, interesting. And did your batteries ever have the "occasional" issue of not charging right away where the charger would blink orange instead of green for a minute or so before finally going green and then charging? Doesn't happen all the time but it's definitely happened more than once for me including a few times before, and once right after I did this update on that battery.

 

[globetrotterdrone]

Not noticed so far.
I have 3 chargers now, the enclosed one, the battery hub by DJI and the RCGeek 4 way charger and once hooked, they all came up with charging within a few seconds and green light.

You can read out some information on the battery when in the Mavic and online with DJI Go 4 ... have a look there. But maybe it was just a coincidence ...

 

[Paul2660]

"Store to Smart Controller:
Power on the remote controller and the aircraft, and make sure they are linked. Run DJI GO 4, and enter camera view. Tap > :
To cache images and videos to the remote controller, enable “Cache Locally When Recording”.
To store images and videos to the microSD card in the remote controller, enable “Download Footage to External SD Card”.
When “Download Footage to External SD Card” is enabled, all the selected images will be downloaded to the remote controller's microSD card when downloading the images to the remote controller in playback.
The “Cache Locally When Recording” and “Download Footage to External SD Card” are disabled by default.
To enable “Download Footage to External SD Card”, make sure a microSD card is inserted into the remote controller."

Above is from the manual.

Personally, I would never attempt to write to the SD card on the Smart controller unless you are flying pretty close to the controller. If you do this, it appears you are sending the images over the RC connection to the card on the SC. The description in the manual is vague however so I am not sure you can write to a card in the SC while in flight, as DJI only mentions playback. It was my understanding that the point of the SD card in the SC was to allow you to copy the images from the SD card in the drone to the controller, so you can leave the card in the drone. But I also assumed this was when drone and SC were close by. I only use a card in the drone, never in the SC. I would much rather just have the drone write the files directly to the card on the drone. This link is shown on the SC as the HD link, this shows the quality of the video link coming back to the smart controller. As these bars drop from 5 down, the quality of this link will degrade and you still possibly start to see breaks and or jumps in the video on the screen.

Cache, I believe refers to your Cache that can be stored on the SC, just like iPhone or Android phone. It's a low quality version of the video, but will fill up over time. You can set the cache limit to 2GB, which I do. You can also select to clear your cache, which you might want to do. The cache is what DJi uses allow the DJIg04 app to create the videos, so again it's low res 1080p.

You have 8Gb of built in storage on the drone. But this will fill up really fast. I keep mine empty and only use it in a situation where a SC card has filled up.

As previous mention, if you have a battery that is out of sync firmware wise with the drone, it will show up on the main screen of DJIGO4 as a firmware inconsistency. Just let the app update the battery, if you have a good wifi connection this process will not take long.

SD cards are cheap, and I would get a few 64GB or ever 128GB. I tend to use the 64GB and swap out a card after each flight.

Paul C

 

[ff22]

"Store to Smart Controller:
Power on the remote controller and the aircraft, and make sure they are linked. Run DJI GO 4, and enter camera view. Tap > :
To cache images and videos to the remote controller, enable “Cache Locally When Recording”.
To store images and videos to the microSD card in the remote controller, enable “Download Footage to External SD Card”.
When “Download Footage to External SD Card” is enabled, all the selected images will be downloaded to the remote controller's microSD card when downloading the images to the remote controller in playback.
The “Cache Locally When Recording” and “Download Footage to External SD Card” are disabled by default.
To enable “Download Footage to External SD Card”, make sure a microSD card is inserted into the remote controller."

Above is from the manual.

Personally, I would never attempt to write to the SD card on the Smart controller unless you are flying pretty close to the controller. If you do this, it appears you are sending the images over the RC connection to the card on the SC. The description in the manual is vague however so I am not sure you can write to a card in the SC while in flight, as DJI only mentions playback. It was my understanding that the point of the SD card in the SC was to allow you to copy the images from the SD card in the drone to the controller, so you can leave the card in the drone. But I also assumed this was when drone and SC were close by. I only use a card in the drone, never in the SC. I would much rather just have the drone write the files directly to the card on the drone. This link is shown on the SC as the HD link, this shows the quality of the video link coming back to the smart controller. As these bars drop from 5 down, the quality of this link will degrade and you still possibly start to see breaks and or jumps in the video on the screen.

Cache, I believe refers to your Cache that can be stored on the SC, just like iPhone or Android phone. It's a low quality version of the video, but will fill up over time. You can set the cache limit to 2GB, which I do. You can also select to clear your cache, which you might want to do. The cache is what DJi uses allow the DJIg04 app to create the videos, so again it's low res 1080p.

You have 8Gb of built in storage on the drone. But this will fill up really fast. I keep mine empty and only use it in a situation where a SC card has filled up.

As previous mention, if you have a battery that is out of sync firmware wise with the drone, it will show up on the main screen of DJIGO4 as a firmware inconsistency. Just let the app update the battery, if you have a good wifi connection this process will not take long.

SD cards are cheap, and I would get a few 64GB or ever 128GB. I tend to use the 64GB and swap out a card after each flight.

Paul C

I know that you can purposely download full images to the Smart Controller (and actually a device with the regular controller). If you tap the "Preview/Review" button under the Camera Settings icon, you can look at images/videos. While doing so, there another little icon (bucket??) that when tapped will download the previewing image/video to the SC/device. Now, while pictures even the various Pans will download reasonably fast, videos can take minutes and those minutes are using battery power while the drone might still be flying. And, if I recall correctly, while this download is occurring you might not be able to multitask and actually control the drone. Obviously, you can land the drone and then to the preview/download. That means less fiddling with the small sd-card or usb doors on the drone to get images off.

But, definitely, the manual or info on caching and storing could definitely be clarified.

edited to add: this would have to be verified but I think that this download option is the only way to automatically get compiled Pans like the 360 Spherical images. Otherwise, I THINK, the drone only stores the individual images??? Again, that would have to be verified as I don't fully recall and can't test right now.

 

[MistDrone]

Hello!

I'm so confused. I have the Mavic 2 Pro and just got the DJI Smart Controller and both the drone and the controller have SD cards installed.

***My ideal would be record full rez footage to drone's SD card but cache/backup to Smart Controller.***

3 Questions

1) Cache Mode??? My drone's internal storage was full. But yesterday it kept saying "SD card full" even though I have 50gb left on my drone's SD card and about 50gb left on my Smart Controller's SD card and both were inserted properly and had worked the day prior with no issues. Hitting record would then open a pop up that said: "CACHE MODE: The photos and videos you shot will be saved in the cache space of your mobile device. Go to the Editor to check after shooting. Video resolutions will matched (sic) with the selected image transimssion resolution. No support for setting some parameters." --- Why would it say SD card full and go into cache mode if I had 50gb of space on my drone's SD card? I definitely want the master (full resolution) videos to be stored on the drone's SD card. I've set it up in the DJI Go 4 app under "..." and then "..." to cache to SD card, cache capacity set to AUTO, and "download footage to external sd card" is selected. After messing around with the drone and trying numerous things, I had to swap batteries on the drone and then the cache mode went away. But why did this happen in the first place??? I've never had my drone suddenly stop recognizing an sd card (and again, I had used the drone the day prior with no issues and hadn't removed the SD card). Unfortunately, we were in a rush yesterday and had to record in cache mode which is only 1080p and looks mediocre at best.

2) Does selecting "download footage to external sd card" mean that all cached footage will be stored on the SD card of the remote control instead of the remote's internal memory? Or does it refer to the fact that if I select footage AFTER filming in my video library and choose to download it, it will be saved to the remote controller's SD card (instead of the internal storage of the remote)? Or does it mean both those things?

3) What confuses me is when the app refers to SD card, I never know if it's talking about the SD card of the REMOTE or the MAVIC 2 PRO. I get confused over the 4 storage options and what is everything set to (remote's internal, sd of remote, drone's internal, and sd of drone). So when the DJI Go 4 app refers to sd card, is it referring to the drone's SD card?


Would love some help! Sorry if my questions sort of overlap and are similar. You can tell I'm confused as I had never seen Cache Mode before.

Thanks!

Little help pilots, I'm loving I thought my Mavic 2 Pro until right now - I was prompted to update the one battery I used today - I did that and I had an SD card in the controller and the bird but I'm only finding 4 images on my sd card from the controller, nothing on the one from the Mavic and a complete Cache Image file of all I shot... can't find other than 4 full-sized images?

 

[MistDrone]

Accessed the internal storage on the Mavic 2 and found images but the whole data flow of this new system is confusing. Thanks.

 

[Roadtofreedom311]

It's very confusing how images and videos are stored on both the controller and the bird. Maybe an option to auto download everything from bird to the controller's SD card in one of the future firmwares.... lol

 

[DanMan32]

It's very confusing how images and videos are stored on both the controller and the bird. Maybe an option to auto download everything from bird to the controller's SD card in one of the future firmwares.... lol

Not confusing at all. Cache video is essentially doing a screen capture of your FPV and you can turn it off if it gives you that much trouble.

Downloading of GB can take quite some time OTA. I tried it with my P3A, it was ridiculous.

 

[Roadtofreedom311]

you must be one of those devs who's too lazy to do their work or maybe one of their relatives??! ?

anyway, if anyone could explain to me any of these mean:

Unedited photos taken with DJI Go4: ????

DJI Go4 Photo cache: the controller's internal storage??

DJI Go4 photo cache (SD card): ????

DJI Go4 Video Cache (SD card): ????

100 Media: the SD card itself

Where is the 16gb internal memory located? on the bird or on the controller??

Why are 2 folders with the same name: video guide one of which has 8 videos the other one has 1

The SD card category has all the videos and photos on it which is fine. The Photos has all the photos from controller's internal memory and the aircraft's internal and the SD card??

 

[Roadtofreedom311]

also, how about a way to directly transfer files between the controller and other devices, like phones and laptops

 

[vjpapa]

The explanation and logic from Paul C. is my choice.
Thanks to all,
vjpapa

 

[DanMan32]

Consider the SC as an Android tablet but with remote permanently attached.

I'm not sure where in Go you see "download to SD card" but two settings below enabling cache setting is "Cache to SD card" where you can have the cache video go to an SD card installed on the tablet, and what folder on the SD card. I recommend root as I could not get it to work specifying a folder. The actual video files won't be in root, a subfolder gets created.

This option was provided so if your tablet internal (built-in) storage is small, you won't fill it with video, and you can expand how much video you can hold.

 

[DronePhotosNZ]

Hello!

I'm so confused. I have the Mavic 2 Pro and just got the DJI Smart Controller and both the drone and the controller have SD cards installed.

***My ideal would be record full rez footage to drone's SD card but cache/backup to Smart Controller.***

3 Questions

1) Cache Mode??? My drone's internal storage was full. But yesterday it kept saying "SD card full" even though I have 50gb left on my drone's SD card and about 50gb left on my Smart Controller's SD card and both were inserted properly and had worked the day prior with no issues. Hitting record would then open a pop up that said: "CACHE MODE: The photos and videos you shot will be saved in the cache space of your mobile device. Go to the Editor to check after shooting. Video resolutions will matched (sic) with the selected image transimssion resolution. No support for setting some parameters." --- Why would it say SD card full and go into cache mode if I had 50gb of space on my drone's SD card? I definitely want the master (full resolution) videos to be stored on the drone's SD card. I've set it up in the DJI Go 4 app under "..." and then "..." to cache to SD card, cache capacity set to AUTO, and "download footage to external sd card" is selected. After messing around with the drone and trying numerous things, I had to swap batteries on the drone and then the cache mode went away. But why did this happen in the first place??? I've never had my drone suddenly stop recognizing an sd card (and again, I had used the drone the day prior with no issues and hadn't removed the SD card). Unfortunately, we were in a rush yesterday and had to record in cache mode which is only 1080p and looks mediocre at best.

2) Does selecting "download footage to external sd card" mean that all cached footage will be stored on the SD card of the remote control instead of the remote's internal memory? Or does it refer to the fact that if I select footage AFTER filming in my video library and choose to download it, it will be saved to the remote controller's SD card (instead of the internal storage of the remote)? Or does it mean both those things?

3) What confuses me is when the app refers to SD card, I never know if it's talking about the SD card of the REMOTE or the MAVIC 2 PRO. I get confused over the 4 storage options and what is everything set to (remote's internal, sd of remote, drone's internal, and sd of drone). So when the DJI Go 4 app refers to sd card, is it referring to the drone's SD card?


Would love some help! Sorry if my questions sort of overlap and are similar. You can tell I'm confused as I had never seen Cache Mode before.

Thanks!

Hi SMD,
Partial answer to question 1 only
Re the SD Card and space issues :-
I'm a professional photographer and have shot digital for 20+ yrs
However, occasionally I'll cut the images from the SD card into my computer and forget to format the card and I'll get the same message in my camera, card full when there is obviously space there
Too long to go into the actual 'what's happening' thing, suffice to say, copy your photos from the card to your computer or whatever, delete everything on the card after that then FORMAT the card before reinstalling in your drone
And you'll never have the incorrect space available issue again
Cheers, Stu

 

[vjpapa]

No need for a SD card in the Smart Controller. I have a SD128 only in my MA2. After you copy the "keepers" to your computer, delete the rest and format the card.