Videos and time lapses questions

[wco81]

Been watching some videos, some of which cut in some time-lapse sequences, with nicely synchronized music.

They look great but they've obviously done a lot of post-processing and spent some time editing.

That makes me wonder how good the videos and time lapses are out of the camera.

I haven't shot a lot of video and the few that I've shot with my iPhone or some with DSLR, I've never bothered to edit. I just shoot video when it seems like a good way to complement stills of the travel photos which is what I mostly shoot.

The stuff posted on Youtube are obviously polished and those people want to get subscribers for their Youtube channels, probably shoot video for a living.


I'm intrigued by the Mavic 2 Pro because it's a stable platform, like shooting on a tripod -- I mostly shoot handheld -- and like hyper lapses.

So my questions are:

1. How good are the 4K videos and hyper lapses out of the drone, without editing?

2. What formats or codecs are they in?

3. What are the best ways to view them, maybe upload them to Youtube and then play them on your 4K TV? Or are people here mostly saving them on their computer and viewing them once in awhile?


In particular I wonder if the hyper lapses out of the drone are smooth or the ones you see on Youtube have been post-processed with nice transitions and effects. I'm not completely against the idea of post processing but they're time consuming. I spend a lot of time post-processing my photos and then use them as screensavers on my computers so I'm "consuming" the thousands of photos every day.

I guess the challenge for videos and time lapses would be enjoying them later for all the time which may be required to post-process or refine them. I can see devoting a lot of time if you're doing this professionally or if you're trying to make a name for yourself, to build a business.


These questions are important to me to determine if it's worth spending $1500-2000 as well as the time. I would also use for stills or actually more to make panos with the M2P, but obviously the value proposition increases if video and hyper lapse content is relatively "easy" to produce.

 

[wsteele]

I have both 4K and hyper lapses right out of my Mavic 2 Pro. I experimented a little with H.264 and H.265 codecs and spend a lot of time finding viewers that worked well with H.265. I plan to stay with H.264 for now.

I did shoot one hyper lapse over Lake Champlain at Cumberland Head in September. The video was processed entirely within the Mavic 2 and DJI Go 4 environment. No external post processing. I saved it as a MOV file as I use the Apple environment for most of my work; although, I believe I could just as easily specified MP4. The video is 65.5MB, 1920x1080, H.264 codec.

Box

Everyone is different. I save all my Drone work to a separate external hard drive and I either attach short videos to iMessages or I upload them to box.com and provide an access key as I've done above.

When I play videos directly from my SD memory card to my television I get technical data displayed as CC on top of the video so I usually copy them off the SD card to my hard drive and then on to a USB drive to play on my 4K TV or my computers.

 

[dirkclod]

I didn't think Hypers came off the card in 4K .

 

[wco81]

I didn't think Hypers came off the card in 4K .

Yes I guess if you want 4K time lapses, you would have to post-process individual shots in something like Premiere, After Effects, LRTimeLapse.

I think even 1080p would be fine but I wonder if they flicker or the motion isn't smooth. I don't need fancy transitions but would be curious how smooth it looks.

 

[wco81]

I have both 4K and hyper lapses right out of my Mavic 2 Pro. I experimented a little with H.264 and H.265 codecs and spend a lot of time finding viewers that worked well with H.265. I plan to stay with H.264 for now.

I did shoot one hyper lapse over Lake Champlain at Cumberland Head in September. The video was processed entirely within the Mavic 2 and DJI Go 4 environment. No external post processing. I saved it as a MOV file as I use the Apple environment for most of my work; although, I believe I could just as easily specified MP4. The video is 65.5MB, 1920x1080, H.264 codec.

Box

Everyone is different. I save all my Drone work to a separate external hard drive and I either attach short videos to iMessages or I upload them to box.com and provide an access key as I've done above.

When I play videos directly from my SD memory card to my television I get technical data displayed as CC on top of the video so I usually copy them off the SD card to my hard drive and then on to a USB drive to play on my 4K TV or my computers.

Thanks that video isn't bad. Obviously the stuff you see on Youtube has been color-corrected to have more saturation.

I recently updated my iMac to High Sierra, to get H.265 decoding for the 4K videos I shot with my iPhone 8 Plus.

I would assume most 4K TVs would support H.265 decoding somehow and they'd have Youtube apps. which would decode VP9, the codec Youtube uses for 4K videos.

 

[SteveCA]

The hyperlapses straight out of the drone are pretty good with zero processing. Of course, they are 1080p, not 4k. Here is any example straight from my phone (downloaded from the MP 2 Pro)

<iframe src="SF Sunset over the Bay from Stephen Fong on Vimeo" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p><a href="

">SF Sunset over the Bay</a> from <a href="Stephen Fong">Stephen Fong</a> on <a href="Vimeo: Watch, upload, and share HD and 4K videos with no ads">Vimeo</a>.</p>

 

[SteveCA]

Yes I guess if you want 4K time lapses, you would have to post-process individual shots in something like Premiere, After Effects, LRTimeLapse.

I think even 1080p would be fine but I wonder if they flicker or the motion isn't smooth. I don't need fancy transitions but would be curious how smooth it looks.

Hyperlapses look smoother when you shoot longer exposures for that smooth motion blur effect. I've settled on 1/2 second exposures as the minimum for my tastes and will shoot 1 second exposures for that real buttery look. YMMV though.

 

[SteveCA]

here is another one straight from the phone

<iframe src="The Commute from Stephen Fong on Vimeo" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p><a href="

">The Commute</a> from <a href="Stephen Fong">Stephen Fong</a> on <a href="Vimeo: Watch, upload, and share HD and 4K videos with no ads">Vimeo</a>.</p>

 

[wco81]

Hyperlapses look smoother when you shoot longer exposures for that smooth motion blur effect. I've settled on 1/2 second exposures as the minimum for my tastes and will shoot 1 second exposures for that real buttery look. YMMV though.

Longer exposures for night shots like your examples?

When you set it in hyper lapse, will it shoot those long exposures while hovering in place and then move before the next shot?

 

[SteveCA]

Longer exposures for night shots like your examples?

When you set it in hyper lapse, will it shoot those long exposures while hovering in place and then move before the next shot?

Yes, the drone moves, stops, shoots a photo, moves to the next spot, stops and shoots. The thing is amazingly stable. I've gotten very sharp 4 second exposures (not during hyperlapse).

 

[wco81]

BTW, did you fly along the Bay Bridge while controlling it from the City? Or somewhere close to the Bridge like Treasure Island?

 

[SteveCA]

BTW, did you fly along the Bay Bridge while controlling it from the City? Or somewhere close to the Bridge like Treasure Island?

I've done both. But this one was done from a boat

 

[wco81]

I’ve been making timelapses on a trip with my Nikon Z7, which can do up to 4k30 time lapses in camera.

I’ve found 4k24 produces good results.

In day time, with 1 or 2 second intervals and without ND filters to motion blur people or cars in the distance of landscapes, I can get 30-60 second videos in about 20-30 minutes of capture time.

Obviously you can capture more dramatic movements with longer capture times, such as more movement of clounds across the horizon, for instance.

But it occurs to me that this 20-30 minute capture time corresponds to about the fliht time of the Mavic 2 Pro.

So I’m curious if people are recording hyper lapses for the maximum or almost-max flight time on the M2P.

I figure I could always trim down parts of the video which aren’t as interesting, so record as much as you can.

Or are you trying to capture time lapses for only 5 or 10 minutes, resulting in maybe 10 seconds, and use the rest of the flight time for stills or videos?

Also curious how many people are post-processing vs. just taking in camera time lapses.

With my camera, I can either have in camera time lapses or individual shots from the intervalometer but not both. I believe the M2P lets you save DNGs in addition to the movie rendered in the camera?

Wish my Nikon had option to save both.

My preference would be to have the option t9 post process if there’s an opportunity to remove flicker and do other refinements to the time lapse, but it is a lot of work, processing hundreds of RAW files, though software such as LRTimeLapse seems to make it easier.

Of course that workflow is probably for people trying to get broadcast quality outputs.

 

[dirkclod]

My self I will do 10 , 15 sec ones sometimes and others I will do 30 sec ones and do them in free and set my course and hit cruse, into it I will change directions after at least 125 shots then continue that way and and rehit cruse to be steady as far as speed. Have found even at 30 sec or even others if you have enough pictures it will render them at whatever .
Might do several short ones and then go on and take pictures but do check my camera settings to be sure they haven’t changed.
I just use the app rendered hypers but do import them to iMovie to mess with. I’m not very advanced with editing yet
but do save and have for several years worth of all my files so I can when I have time.
And yes I get the hyper rendered from the app as well as a file with all the pictures. Is like if not mistaken 750 of them for 30 sec’s. 125 for 10 and so on.

 

[wco81]

My self I will do 10 , 15 sec ones sometimes and others I will do 30 sec ones and do them in free and set my course and hit cruse, into it I will change directions after at least 125 shots then continue that way and and rehit cruse to be steady as far as speed. Have found even at 30 sec or even others if you have enough pictures it will render them at whatever .
Might do several short ones and then go on and take pictures but do check my camera settings to be sure they haven’t changed.
I just use the app rendered hypers but do import them to iMovie to mess with. I’m not very advanced with editing yet
but do save and have for several years worth of all my files so I can when I have time.
And yes I get the hyper rendered from the app as well as a file with all the pictures. Is like if not mistaken 750 of them for 30 sec’s. 125 for 10 and so on.

Hmm, those counts seem low. If I try to make a 20 second movie at 24 fps, we're talking 480 shots right there. And depending on the interval in which you shoot them, say 5 second intervals, that's 40 minutes. That will show a lot of cloud movement but obviously the M2P can't fly for 40 minutes.

For faster-moving subjects like cars or boats or even people below, you can cut that interval by half and 20 minutes become more manageable.

But a lot of people will suggest using ND filters, including even a 10-stop ND filter, to produce long shutter speeds, to produce motion-blur. So instead of 1/60 second exposures, you have 15-second exposures and you have to have like 16 or 17 second intervals.

 

[dirkclod]

Well I shoot in auto and is for 5 sec is 125, 10 sec 250,15 sec 375 and 30 sec 750 . Just looked now that is in free
and I think it was 2.mph . Thats just the way mine in set . I don't mess with all the camera settings .
me kinda point and shoot

 

[SteveCA]

The longest hyperlapse I’ve shot took 22 minutes for a 20 second video. Longer shutter times take a bit longer to shoot.

all my hyperlapse are 2 second intervals. Unfortunately we have limited air time.