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dennyc39

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I've done three flights on my first new drone. Everything works as advertised so far, but I don't feel I have good control through the DJI GO app. Reason is an unacceptable delay between the time the drone moves, and the time I see the action on the screen. Also, the video frequently freezes for a couple of seconds before refreshing. This occurs even though the drone is close and both HD and the RC icons are showing strong signals. I could easily have gotten into trouble if I hadn't been super-careful. If this is normal, some kind of a warning in the manual would be appropriate, because the new drone was defaulted to a high-res setting.

I did some experimenting with the props off, and it seems the video is much smoother and more responsive when I reduce the size to 1980 instead of the default 3760. So, apparently there is a bottleneck in moving all those pixels around. The smartphone is a new BLU unit bought for this purpose.

So, what do you do when you want to shoot 4K video? The screen would seem to be pretty much useless when you want to use it to help make small corrections in heading or position.
 
I shoot 4k exclusively, originally with a 3-year-old iPad Air, sometimes with a nearly 4-year-old Galaxy S5 and now mostly with a new iPad Pro. I haven’t experienced that kind of lag with any of them.

Can you explain what a “BLU unit” is for those of us who don’t know?
 
The size being recorded to SD won't affect the transmitted image.
It's more likely the lagging is due to mobile device barely coping or possibly a better USB cable would help.
The short flat cable they supply has poor shielding. Try your phone data cable in the bottom USB.
If the phone is struggling try turning off the onboard recording/cache.
It usually helps mightily if you restart immediately before setting up.
 
Last edited:
The BLU is a smartphone I picked up at Best Buy, minus the SIM card. BLU I think is the name of the company, "Bold Like Us", or something.

What version of the Go4 software are you using? Some devices, especially ones not on the recommended list, dont work well with recent versions. Im using the Wunderphone (Huawei something something) with version.15 of the app. There are some tablets that dont work with versions of the software past .9.
 
The BLU is a smartphone I picked up at Best Buy, minus the SIM card. BLU I think is the name of the company, "Bold Like Us", or something.
I'm going to guess the problem is the phone, not the Mavic, but if you can borrow someone else's tablet or something to test that would give you an answer. I think maybe the phone isn't up to the task.
 
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I'm going to guess the problem is the phone, not the Mavic, but if you can borrow someone else's tablet or something to test that would give you an answer. I think maybe the phone isn't up to the task.

Bingo
 
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I'm going to guess the problem is the phone, not the Mavic, but if you can borrow someone else's tablet or something to test that would give you an answer. I think maybe the phone isn't up to the task.

You may be right. At first I thought the recording was bad, as the files played very poorly on my old Mac, even after being copied to the hard drive. However, I downloaded a new video viewer from VideoLan:

VLC: Official site - Free multimedia solutions for all OS! - VideoLAN

and it made a huge difference. Pretty good high-res playback even with my 512 Meg. video card. Also I put it on a flash drive, plugged it into my "smart" 4K TV, and playback was perfect. So, there appears to be nothing wrong with the data.

Unfortunately, I find nothing in the phone's specs or settings that would reveal the problem or limitation. I notice that when when DJI GO on the phone plays the video direct from the microSD, it is a little bit better, but not acceptable. Playing from the phone cache is all but unusable.

One thing I don't understand is that the phone plays 4K video from Youtube just fine. Makes me wonder if the principal bottleneck is somewhere in DJI GO or in its interface to the phone.


("Smart" TV is an oxymoron if I've ever heard one.)
 
The real problem is that recent DJI apps are using most of the power before the phone tries to play the video feed too.
So make sure nothing else is running (e.g. reboot immediately before) and consider turning off the phone recording as you fly as that uses quite a lot of the processor power and isn't essential.
 
What version of the Go4 software are you using? Some devices, especially ones not on the recommended list, dont work well with recent versions. Im using the Wunderphone (Huawei something something) with version.15 of the app. There are some tablets that dont work with versions of the software past .9.
Using latest DJI GO, downloaded a few days ago.
 
I did a brief test today, non-flying because of crummy weather. I got everything connected and took several brief videos at different resolutions as I hand-carried and panned the Mavic around the parking lot. However, I did not replicate the original symptom, which was display video that was too slow to be safely used as a primary flight instrument. Actually, it was just good enough, with about a 1-second delay and about a 10- or 15 fps frame rate.

The playback of video from the phone cache is still atrocious, but the playback from the microSD card is somewhat better. I'll repeat the test sometime next week, but my tentative conclusion is that the recorded video data is probably OK, but the phone may have an important and fundamental deficiency. I wish I could have known about it before I bought the phone.
 
I've done three flights on my first new drone. Everything works as advertised so far, but I don't feel I have good control through the DJI GO app. Reason is an unacceptable delay between the time the drone moves, and the time I see the action on the screen. Also, the video frequently freezes for a couple of seconds before refreshing. This occurs even though the drone is close and both HD and the RC icons are showing strong signals. I could easily have gotten into trouble if I hadn't been super-careful. If this is normal, some kind of a warning in the manual would be appropriate, because the new drone was defaulted to a high-res setting.

I did some experimenting with the props off, and it seems the video is much smoother and more responsive when I reduce the size to 1980 instead of the default 3760. So, apparently there is a bottleneck in moving all those pixels around. The smartphone is a new BLU unit bought for this purpose.

So, what do you do when you want to shoot 4K video? The screen would seem to be pretty much useless when you want to use it to help make small corrections in heading or position.
 
I did some experimenting with the props off, and it seems the video is much smoother and more responsive when I reduce the size to 1980 instead of the default 3760. So, apparently there is a bottleneck in moving all those pixels around. The smartphone is a new BLU unit bought for this purpose.

So, what do you do when you want to shoot 4K video? The screen would seem to be pretty much useless when you want to use it to help make small corrections in heading or position.

If your HDTV is 1080p, then you can shoot in 1080p. If your HDTV is 4k, then you'll need to upgrade your cell. Can you exchange it for the Huawei that many are raving about?
 
If your HDTV is 1080p, then you can shoot in 1080p. If your HDTV is 4k, then you'll need to upgrade your cell. Can you exchange it for the Huawei that many are raving about?
I need to get some use from the BLU, but it seems to be a pig when handling video. I'll check with Best Buy, but I'm not optimistic about a return / exchange.
I found that screen video is acceptable when I run moderate resolution and keep caching Off.
It's barely slowed at all even at 4K.

4th flight today. Scary to lose sight of it, but a climb usually brings it back into LOS. I'm gradually getting accustomed to the menus and to where things are. It's frustrating to want to change something like RTH altitude and to have trouble finding it in the moment.
 
My feeling is that it’s all about the BLU graphics processing. My iPad Air 2 and iPhone X both show smooth, no-delay video during flight.
Many here also have no issues with Android stuff.
See it f you can borrow a friend’s (reasonably current model) phone or tablet to test.
 
My feeling is that it’s all about the BLU graphics processing. My iPad Air 2 and iPhone X both show smooth, no-delay video during flight.
Many here also have no issues with Android stuff.

I expect you're right. I wish there was a spec on this that would help with a purchase decision. Next phone is likely to be an Apple, because that is what I have been using, but am not ready to spend the $Apple just to get a better controller display.

I am getting to like the Android system. So if I eventually were to buy a dedicated non-phone for the controller, it would likely want to be one that runs Android. But somehow I need to avoid falling into something like the BLU, which seems pretty good in all respects except for its crappy handling of video.
 
I have had issues with signal lose with an android I was using. Changed the android and all worked well.
 
I wrote:

I am getting to like the Android system. So if I eventually were to buy a dedicated non-phone for the controller, it would likely want to be one that runs Android.

Cancel that, I changed my mind. I would not go with an Android device because of all the app-disconnect issues that other users (and me) seem to be having.
 
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