Zoom Test

[Chaosrider]

This Sunday's video tries out a number of new things for me. I tried seriously using the zoom on my Mini-2 in this one, and it's definitely a different perspective.

Also, I can get 1000 ft away and 800 feet up, legally, by terrain following within the 400 ft AGL layer. I can still see it's flashy little butt at that distance, so it's VLOS legal as well. I wanted to try a flight path that would bring it back, but facing away from me.

At first I tried just hitting RTH and then turning back around, but that failed for a number of predictable but not predicted reasons.

So in this one, I climbed up the mountain, and with the camera pointed at the mountain and the flashy butt pointed at me, I descended and flew backwards at the same time. That's the first part of the video. It's still pretty rough, as you'll see, but the concept clearly has merit, and I'll get better at it.

At 3:00 into the video, I use the 4X zoom to get an interesting view of the Carson Valley. I'm convinced that from my house, I can legally get a peak at Minden airport over the ridge, I'll be 1000 ft away, and 1000 ft up over a 600 ft ridge (relative to launch altitude), but I think it can work.

And finally, I've decided to give up resisting Visual Observers, so I hired one. He comes on duty at 4:18 in the clip. His name is Hobbes.

21-11-14 Zoom Test.mp4

drive.google.com

TCS

 

[tlswift58]

This Sunday's video tries out a number of new things for me. I tried seriously using the zoom on my Mini-2 in this one, and it's definitely a different perspective.

Also, I can get 1000 ft away and 800 feet up, legally, by terrain following within the 400 ft AGL layer. I can still see it's flashy little butt at that distance, so it's VLOS legal as well. I wanted to try a flight path that would bring it back, but facing away from me.

At first I tried just hitting RTH and then turning back around, but that failed for a number of predictable but not predicted reasons.

So in this one, I climbed up the mountain, and with the camera pointed at the mountain and the flashy butt pointed at me, I descended and flew backwards at the same time. That's the first part of the video. It's still pretty rough, as you'll see, but the concept clearly has merit, and I'll get better at it.

At 3:00 into the video, I use the 4X zoom to get an interesting view of the Carson Valley. I'm convinced that from my house, I can legally get a peak at Minden airport over the ridge, I'll be 1000 ft away, and 1000 ft up over a 600 ft ridge (relative to launch altitude), but I think it can work.

And finally, I've decided to give up resisting Visual Observers, so I hired one. He comes on duty at 4:18 in the clip. His name is Hobbes.

21-11-14 Zoom Test.mp4

drive.google.com

TCS

Not bad. A couple of small negatives - video too long (5 min) with a lot of hovering and not new views. Also some of your panning is too fast / jerky.

Keep practicing and flying - it only gets better.

As for zoom - 4x is really pushing it for decent quality video and little to no grain. Daylight and sun behind you works best in my tests. Low light - not so much.

 

[Chaosrider]

Not bad. A couple of small negatives - video too long (5 min) with a lot of hovering and not new views. Also some of your panning is too fast / jerky.

Thanks for the feedback!

The long periods of inaction are actually the result of my neo-lithic computer. There's an enormous lag time between when I move the slider to a new break point in the video, and the video catching up. Sometimes, I end up keeping the slow hovering parts, while deleting the parts I actually want to save! My new computer will arrive next week, and I bought it specifically to facilitate video editing of my drone videos.

Completely agree about the panning jerkiness. That's partially just a learning curve issue on my part, but the source video is only 1080 p. I shot my first video at 4K on Sunday, but I expect that will make my current slow computer problem worse, not better.

I fly a Mini-2. It appears that I can't select the 4X zoom when I have it set to 4K video. Can anyone here confirm or correct that?

Keep practicing and flying - it only gets better.

Oh, you can count on that!



TCS

As for zoom - 4x is really pushing it for decent quality video and little to no grain. Daylight and sun behind you works best in my tests. Low light - not so much.

It's a trade-off. I know the 4X degrades the video quality a bit, but I'm flying on the other side of a canyon, and if some demonic pine tree reaches out and grabs it, it's gone. The only way I could get it back would be with a rescue drone...

So, at the moment I'm going for the effect of looking like I'm close, without actually being close. As I get more practice, I'll gradually be willing to get closer.

I got my first Mini-2 in June, when the sun was basically overhead. Now, not so much. My rear flight deck faces almost due south, and my favorite flight targets are all SSE. Bad sun angle in the afternoon, too cold in the morning. But since I'm still developing both my flying skills and my video shooting skills, I'm not going to worry about that one just yet! Either that, or I'll find some interesting stuff down-canyon, rather than up-canyon.

Again, thanks for the comments!



TCS

 

[tlswift58]

Thanks for the feedback!

The long periods of inaction are actually the result of my neo-lithic computer. There's an enormous lag time between when I move the slider to a new break point in the video, and the video catching up. Sometimes, I end up keeping the slow hovering parts, while deleting the parts I actually want to save! My new computer will arrive next week, and I bought it specifically to facilitate video editing of my drone videos.

Completely agree about the panning jerkiness. That's partially just a learning curve issue on my part, but the source video is only 1080 p. I shot my first video at 4K on Sunday, but I expect that will make my current slow computer problem worse, not better.

I fly a Mini-2. It appears that I can't select the 4X zoom when I have it set to 4K video. Can anyone here confirm or correct that?


Oh, you can count on that!



TCS

It's a trade-off. I know the 4X degrades the video quality a bit, but I'm flying on the other side of a canyon, and if some demonic pine tree reaches out and grabs it, it's gone. The only way I could get it back would be with a rescue drone...

So, at the moment I'm going for the effect of looking like I'm close, without actually being close. As I get more practice, I'll gradually be willing to get closer.

I got my first Mini-2 in June, when the sun was basically overhead. Now, not so much. My rear flight deck faces almost due south, and my favorite flight targets are all SSE. Bad sun angle in the afternoon, too cold in the morning. But since I'm still developing both my flying skills and my video shooting skills, I'm not going to worry about that one just yet! Either that, or I'll find some interesting stuff down-canyon, rather than up-canyon.

Again, thanks for the comments!



TCS

4x Zoom is not available on any DJI drone that I'm aware of. Even the Air2 does not have 4x at 4k. 2.4 - 4k only go to 2 x. 1080p does go to 4x.

I'm with you on keeping as far as possible from obstacles for some good video. I fly in under camera mode to near where I want to be and that gets me pretty close. I then switch over to video and scroll up on the Xx zoom to get what looks good - which is typically less than 3x but can be just above 2x will get me in close enough. Sometimes it's in the 1-2x range, which is great - just enough zoom to get close, but not enough to distort the video too much either.

When you get your new PC, you may want to look at Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI. They did offer a 30 day trial version to test it out to bring in more detail into video that may get lost in processing. I don't think it allows video editing, so you'd need DaVinci or another program to cut out / splice video and to add music. I'm still using an old I5 processor (2012'ish), but back in the day when I built it, I did get a really good video card with RAM onboard and 16GB's RAM modules. 32GB's is the way to go and I've seen chips for it at about $100 which is not bad and a mid to higher end video card, which many seem to be really expensive these days. I'm looking at upgrading my MB and going with an AMD Ryzen processor; but holding off a bit till the "chip" shortage kind of comes back to reality and hopefully prices will drop.

 

[Chaosrider]

4x Zoom is not available on any DJI drone that I'm aware of. Even the Air2 does not have 4x at 4k. 2.4 - 4k only go to 2 x. 1080p does go to 4x.

I'm with you on keeping as far as possible from obstacles for some good video. I fly in under camera mode to near where I want to be and that gets me pretty close. I then switch over to video and scroll up on the Xx zoom to get what looks good - which is typically less than 3x but can be just above 2x will get me in close enough. Sometimes it's in the 1-2x range, which is great - just enough zoom to get close, but not enough to distort the video too much either.

When you get your new PC, you may want to look at Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI. They did offer a 30 day trial version to test it out to bring in more detail into video that may get lost in processing. I don't think it allows video editing, so you'd need DaVinci or another program to cut out / splice video and to add music. I'm still using an old I5 processor (2012'ish), but back in the day when I built it, I did get a really good video card with RAM onboard and 16GB's RAM modules. 32GB's is the way to go and I've seen chips for it at about $100 which is not bad and a mid to higher end video card, which many seem to be really expensive these days. I'm looking at upgrading my MB and going with an AMD Ryzen processor; but holding off a bit till the "chip" shortage kind of comes back to reality and hopefully prices will drop.

A buddy of mine is building my new computer for me. I'm paying for all the parts and shipping, and he's doing the assembly. I'll post the parts list when it's done.

My chubby stubby clutzy little fingers preclude me from building it myself.

Thx,

TCS

 

[tlswift58]

A buddy of mine is building my new computer for me. I'm paying for all the parts and shipping, and he's doing the assembly. I'll post the parts list when it's done.

My chubby stubby clutzy little fingers preclude me from building it myself.

Thx,

TCS

I've got big hands and no problems since most parts are kind of plug and play these days. The CPU is the hardest part since you need to use some thermal paste and sometimes aligning all those tiny little pins can be hard, but they've grown lightyears in developing parts that just plug together with ease.

I prefer building my own, as it guarantees me what I WANT exactly and need, not what may be close enough for government work. I've got a great case I'd keep along with water cooling that is never a wrong idea, but few "boxed" pc's have them unless for higher end gaming.

Then in 2-4 years when things are probably slowing down - simply replace a couple of parts and you're back to good times.

Probably spend like $750 for a new motherboard with a good AMD Ryzen 7 Processor, 32 GB's of RAM, a better video card (maybe), and a newer / better SSD Drive. Keep my other drives as extras to store stuff on.

 

[Chaosrider]

I've got big hands and no problems since most parts are kind of plug and play these days. The CPU is the hardest part since you need to use some thermal paste and sometimes aligning all those tiny little pins can be hard, but they've grown lightyears in developing parts that just plug together with ease.

I prefer building my own, as it guarantees me what I WANT exactly and need, not what may be close enough for government work. I've got a great case I'd keep along with water cooling that is never a wrong idea, but few "boxed" pc's have them unless for higher end gaming.

Then in 2-4 years when things are probably slowing down - simply replace a couple of parts and you're back to good times.

Probably spend like $750 for a new motherboard with a good AMD Ryzen 7 Processor, 32 GB's of RAM, a better video card (maybe), and a newer / better SSD Drive. Keep my other drives as extras to store stuff on.

I just got the word from my buddy that my new computer is done! I should get it early next week.

The mailing list that I run has a lot of very sharp techies on it, and I described my use cases to them, and we collectively designed mine based on the parts list that (You? Someone here on the forum.) provided. I went with the Ryzen 5 for cost reasons, and it should be fully sufficient for my modest needs.

Thx!

TCS

 

[tlswift58]

I just got the word from my buddy that my new computer is done! I should get it early next week.

The mailing list that I run has a lot of very sharp techies on it, and I described my use cases to them, and we collectively designed mine based on the parts list that (You? Someone here on the forum.) provided. I went with the Ryzen 5 for cost reasons, and it should be fully sufficient for my modest needs.

Thx!

TCS

R5 is a great economical choice. What I'm looking at using is the R5 5600 6 core. On a good motherboard, should last a long time.