Phantom 4 footage - did I just buy a 2nd hand dud

[Craig Carter]

Team,

Ive had my ebay P4 pro for 3 days - and it flies great - no issues there

The footage off my phone is also great.

Today - when I downloaded the camera footage off the SD card it is very choppy. Now , I don't know whether this is an issue caused because I was filming at different frame rates . I like to film at 60 and 120 FPS but I was playing back in windows so I don't know whether it is my bad! So , is it me ...given the video from my phone looks good? I'm about to do some tests at 30 fps to see what happens.

also ...there was a message "gimbal overload" during my POI shots after about 2 mins. The gimbal looks and moves quite freely.

Id be interested in the experiences of others ...particularly since I may need to begin contacting the seller for a "discussion" regarding in great condition

 

[John Locke]

It's really important IMO to check out P4Ps really well during the return period from your seller. It's not uncommon to exchange a craft because you got a lemon. The quality consistency isn't stellar I'm afraid, but if you get a good one, you're golden. Couple of things, what resolution are you shooting? Many times the problem is in the PC video player. Window media player doesn't work well for me. I had to download VLC video player, which works much better. KM player is also a good one.

Another way to test the problem is to edit your video, render it, upload a 1080 file to YouTube and see how it plays on your phone or TV, or PC. If it plays well then your media player is the culprit. You should have no problem recording 1080 at 60FPS or 4K at 30FPS. If it coughs doing that, something's wrong. It could be an old computer too, what are you using? What are you editing with, what app?

 

[Craig Carter]

OK...after some basics the issue appears to be with playback at higher resolutions - 4K , and 2.7K with higher frame rates... They are .MOV files I'm trying to play in media player. So , Issue 1 is with me. How do I view these magnificent videos anyone?What feree players are out there for this?

Any thoughts on issue 2 - gimbal overload during POI?. It did not feel hot at all.

 

[Numone]

OK...after some basics the issue appears to be with playback at higher resolutions - 4K , and 2.7K with higher frame rates... They are .MOV files I'm trying to play in media player. So , Issue 1 is with me. How do I view these magnificent videos anyone?What feree players are out there for this?

Any thoughts on issue 2 - gimbal overload during POI?. It did not feel hot at all.

It'll be your PC and video card simply not being upto the processing demands of UHD and high frame rates and in fact, some of the most modern machines can stutter with these too. And of course, you'll need a UHD monitor too... and a UHD TV for decent viewing, and Premier/First cut Pro to edit them properly, which brings us straight back to the capabilities of your PC again!

 

[Craig Carter]

Well...my pc gear certainly is not up to that standard. ...but its a comfort to know it may not be the camera. It was fun doing the trials . At least i still have 20 meg photos!. More testing required on the 2.7 k abilities but i guess if there was a problem it would be with all videos....and it doesnt occur with lower res...so i can live with that

 

[KevMo Photog]

Well...my pc gear certainly is not up to that standard. ...but its a comfort to know it may not be the camera. It was fun doing the trials . At least i still have 20 meg photos!. More testing required on the 2.7 k abilities but i guess if there was a problem it would be with all videos....and it doesnt occur with lower res...so i can live with that

I would start saving your money to buy a new computer with smoking video card and processor first! Then I would start learning some good software. Premier Pro rocks and I'm sure Final Cut Pro is good too! But they are expensive though. Davinci has a free version which is pretty good I think. There are others that are cheaper for sure. 4K Footage straight out of camera stutters in Premier Pro. So most of use Proxy files to edit with. These are smaller res files that will play super fast to edit with. Works perfect. Decent learning curve for sure. LOL

 

[PhantomWetSuits]

Team,

Ive had my ebay P4 pro for 3 days - and it flies great - no issues there

The footage off my phone is also great.

Today - when I downloaded the camera footage off the SD card it is very choppy. Now , I don't know whether this is an issue caused because I was filming at different frame rates . I like to film at 60 and 120 FPS but I was playing back in windows so I don't know whether it is my bad! So , is it me ...given the video from my phone looks good? I'm about to do some tests at 30 fps to see what happens.

also ...there was a message "gimbal overload" during my POI shots after about 2 mins. The gimbal looks and moves quite freely.

Id be interested in the experiences of others ...particularly since I may need to begin contacting the seller for a "discussion" regarding in great condition

So you have two separate issues the first being that the Gimbal was damaged at some point. The second issue that is a possible fix is if your using a mac than quicktime is going to work best most of the time in till you render it out , I am also using a new mac program called IINA which has been really great to stop any chop.

You can check my name coal akida on youtube and see the footage I have posted its pretty clean.

 

[With The Birds]

I would start saving your money to buy a new computer with smoking video card and processor first! Then I would start learning some good software. Premier Pro rocks and I'm sure Final Cut Pro is good too! But they are expensive though. Davinci has a free version which is pretty good I think. There are others that are cheaper for sure. 4K Footage straight out of camera stutters in Premier Pro. So most of use Proxy files to edit with. These are smaller res files that will play super fast to edit with. Works perfect. Decent learning curve for sure. LOL

Add SSD drives and generous RAM to this equation for the best outcome.

 

[Shammyh]

To smoothly play video is one question... To smoothly edit video is another.

Any computer with an Intel chip manufacturered in the past 4-5 years should be able to play H264 @ 100 mbit smoothly. It's just a question of using the right player. For Windows 10, the built in preview tool should work fine. For Windows 7, I'd recommend either MPC-HC, but VLC should also work.

Editing is a whole different kettle of fish though, and requires at a minimum a quick CPU (i5/i7 from '15-'17) and preferably, at least 16 GB of RAM. A good GPU won't hurt either, but isn't necessarily essential. Same goes for SSD vs HDD, SSD will make things significantly faster, but is not required.

Also, note that H265 support is somewhat broken within Windows 7, so if you're shooting in that codec, expect issues, regardless of the hardware you throw at it.

 

[With The Birds]

To smoothly play video is one question... To smoothly edit video is another.

Any computer with an Intel chip manufacturered in the past 4-5 years should be able to play H264 @ 100 mbit smoothly. It's just a question of using the right player. For Windows 10, the built in preview tool should work fine. For Windows 7, I'd recommend either MPC-HC, but VLC should also work.

Editing is a whole different kettle of fish though, and requires at a minimum a quick CPU (i5/i7 from '15-'17) and preferably, at least 16 GB of RAM. A good GPU won't hurt either, but isn't necessarily essential.

The GPU makes a more significant impact than many appreciate. It's a must have for davinci resolve with a min of 4GB VRAM for 4k work. Much more important than processor or RAM.

 

[Shammyh]

The GPU makes a more significant impact than many appreciate. It's a must have for davinci resolve with a min of 4GB VRAM for 4k work. Much more important than processor or RAM.

No and no? ;-)

First off, my GTX 970 on my desktop with only 3.5 GB of RAM simply crushes Resolve (also running a 4790k + 32gb of ram)... And on my laptop, with a super limited Nvidia K1000M (384 core and 2 gb of RAM), it's still quite usable. And finally, even with the integrated graphics on my 3.5 year old laptop... Resolve is a bit slow, but still is serviceable.

Resolve only occasionally leverages the GPU. Rendering/exporting is almost entirely CPU bound, and that tends to be the most time consuming part of the process, hence where CPU/RAM will save the most time. Don't believe me? Run GPU-Z next time as you go through your workflow and see where things are more GPU-bound or CPU-bound.

The key with Resolve or Premier for that matter is either intelligently leveraging proxies, or in my case, I simply render the raw P4P video into ProRes for anything I want to edit. Yes, massive files, yes, it takes a few minutes to do, but in ensures great editing in Resolve or your chosen NLE. At a minimum, running a MP4 to MP4 transcode is a good idea, as the P4P generates slightly non-conformant video files, and not all editors play nicely with that.

 

[With The Birds]

No and no? ;-)

First off, my GTX 970 on my desktop with only 3.5 GB of RAM simply crushes Resolve (also running a 4790k + 32gb of ram)... And on my laptop, with a super limited Nvidia K1000M (384 core and 2 gb of RAM), it's still quite usable. And finally, even with the integrated graphics on my 3.5 year old laptop... Resolve is a bit slow, but still is serviceable.

Resolve only occasionally leverages the GPU. Rendering/exporting is almost entirely CPU bound, and that tends to be the most time consuming part of the process, hence where CPU/RAM will save the most time. Don't believe me? Run GPU-Z next time as you go through your workflow and see where things are more GPU-bound or CPU-bound.

The key with Resolve or Premier for that matter is either intelligently leveraging proxies, or in my case, I simply render the raw P4P video into ProRes for anything I want to edit. Yes, massive files, yes, it takes a few minutes to do, but in ensures great editing in Resolve or your chosen NLE. At a minimum, running a MP4 to MP4 transcode is a good idea, as the P4P generates slightly non-conformant video files, and not all editors play nicely with that.

I don't beleive you- I'm getting smooth performance with Xenon 12 core and dual AMD D700 GPU. I had time for a coffee and a walk around the block waiting for a render on a lower spec system.

 

[Shammyh]

I don't beleive you- I'm getting smooth performance with Xenon 12 core and dual AMD D700 GPU. I had time for a coffee and a walk around the block waiting for a render on a lower spec system.

Precisely my point! That sounds like a "trashcan" Mac Pro no? So those 12 CPU cores are what's doing all the work. Hence, CPU-bound processes will fly! And as I assume you're also running SSDs, that helps quite a bit as well. You can always test my assessment by disabling GPU support in Resolve (or any Adobe product) and do some timing tests to see what difference it makes.

I know on my desktop, w/ 8 Haswell cores @ 4.7 GHz I can just about render 4K in real time. But again, that's CPU-bound not GPU-bound.

Oh and FWIW, in a previous life I was a systems architect... So just sayin' I've literally been paid to spec machines (servers and desktops) for high-end deployments. So I've had the dubious fortune of becoming familiar with pretty much every revision of Intel and AMD silicon, going back about a decade, both CPU and GPU side, even with the funky stuff like the GPU-accelerator cards for servers. ;-)

 

[With The Birds]

Precisely my point! That sounds like a "trashcan" Mac Pro no? So those 12 CPU cores are what's doing all the work. Hence, CPU-bound processes will fly! And as I assume you're also running SSDs, that helps quite a bit as well. You can always test my assessment by disabling GPU support in Resolve (or any Adobe product) and do some timing tests to see what difference it makes.

I know on my desktop, w/ 8 Haswell cores @ 4.7 GHz I can just about render 4K in real time. But again, that's CPU-bound not GPU-bound.

Oh and FWIW, in a previous life I was a systems architect... So just sayin' I've literally been paid to spec machines (servers and desktops) for high-end deployments. So I've had the dubious fortune of becoming familiar with pretty much every revision of Intel and AMD silicon, going back about a decade, both CPU and GPU side, even with the funky stuff like the GPU-accelerator cards for servers. ;-)

Yes it's the "trash can" as you call it. Despite what people think of them they are reliable and quick. Anyway, we are seemingly at crosses paths here, I am not talking about adobe software, rather DaVinci by Black Magic- trust me it uses whatever GPU is available and flogs it. And it runs like pox with low spec graphics cards.

 

[Techcop50]

OK...after some basics the issue appears to be with playback at higher resolutions - 4K , and 2.7K with higher frame rates... They are .MOV files I'm trying to play in media player. So , Issue 1 is with me. How do I view these magnificent videos anyone?What feree players are out there for this?

Any thoughts on issue 2 - gimbal overload during POI?. It did not feel hot at all.

Craig:
Here's some freeware that might help you out:
HandBrake: Open Source Video Transcoder

 

[Shammyh]

Yes it's the "trash can" as you call it. Despite what people think of them they are reliable and quick. Anyway, we are seemingly at crosses paths here, I am not talking about adobe software, rather DaVinci by Black Magic- trust me it uses whatever GPU is available and flogs it. And it runs like pox with low spec graphics cards.

Oh, I'm not knocking the Mac Pro at all. I dislike the lack of upgrade-ability, and the fact that a modern top-of-the-line iMac is actually faster in purely CPU-terms... but it's still a quite nice piece of kit (and beautiful industrial design), and excellent for a videography setup. The "trash can" moniker is just a light-hearted jab to differentiate it from the previous "tower" Mac Pros.

I took a closer look at some data on Resolve specifically (which is indeed what I was previously referring to)... and it does look like if you have a ton of nodes, and are previewing at full res, you can definitely thrash your GPU plenty hard. Final export though, is still largely CPU-gated, and not GPU-gated despite what the consensus seems to be on the internet. Same goes for Premiere or After Effects. Next time you do an export... use System Monitor to see your CPU usage levels. If it's maxed out, you're CPU-gated, not GPU-gated.

I should also say, the whole thing touches ever-so-slightly a personal nerve of mine... since I've heard some of the recommendations local "gurus" and "professionals" have given for sound or video mastering setups, and often times, while well intentioned, they have no clue what they're talking about. Not their fault... but the overlap between the "techy" folks who really understand hardware, and the "creative" folks who really understand how to edit well, is much smaller than I think most people would assume. Point being, that unless you're really doing complex stuff, people tend to way over spec their machines, or assume that older hardware can't handle a workflow in a serviceable manner.

~~~

But anyway... the point was really to address the OP, not compare dicks/CPUs/GPUs... and the point was that even a very very slow system should be able to handle PLAYBACK of 4K videos without much of an issue. EDITING and/or GRADING video definitely requires more compute resources, but again, even my quad-core i7 in my laptop, paired with an older K1000M (equivalent to 3-4 year high-end desktop specs) still handles Resolve grading just fine. Perhaps it would start to choke if I was doing lots of effects or complex stuff, but for basic editing and grading, it works just fine. They key for me though, was to transcode to ProRes before loading my content into Resolve or Premiere, again, especially as the default DJI MP4/HEVC encoder is a bit borked.

Anyway... that was my point! I'm sure your Mac Pro does an excellent job of handling Resolve!

 

[With The Birds]

Oh, I'm not knocking the Mac Pro at all. I dislike the lack of upgrade-ability, and the fact that a modern top-of-the-line iMac is actually faster in purely CPU-terms... but it's still a quite nice piece of kit (and beautiful industrial design), and excellent for a videography setup. The "trash can" moniker is just a light-hearted jab to differentiate it from the previous "tower" Mac Pros.

I took a closer look at some data on Resolve specifically (which is indeed what I was previously referring to)... and it does look like if you have a ton of nodes, and are previewing at full res, you can definitely thrash your GPU plenty hard. Final export though, is still largely CPU-gated, and not GPU-gated despite what the consensus seems to be on the internet. Same goes for Premiere or After Effects. Next time you do an export... use System Monitor to see your CPU usage levels. If it's maxed out, you're CPU-gated, not GPU-gated.

I should also say, the whole thing touches ever-so-slightly a personal nerve of mine... since I've heard some of the recommendations local "gurus" and "professionals" have given for sound or video mastering setups, and often times, while well intentioned, they have no clue what they're talking about. Not their fault... but the overlap between the "techy" folks who really understand hardware, and the "creative" folks who really understand how to edit well, is much smaller than I think most people would assume. Point being, that unless you're really doing complex stuff, people tend to way over spec their machines, or assume that older hardware can't handle a workflow in a serviceable manner.

~~~

But anyway... the point was really to address the OP, not compare dicks/CPUs/GPUs... and the point was that even a very very slow system should be able to handle PLAYBACK of 4K videos without much of an issue. EDITING and/or GRADING video definitely requires more compute resources, but again, even my quad-core i7 in my laptop, paired with an older K1000M (equivalent to 3-4 year high-end desktop specs) still handles Resolve grading just fine. Perhaps it would start to choke if I was doing lots of effects or complex stuff, but for basic editing and grading, it works just fine. They key for me though, was to transcode to ProRes before loading my content into Resolve or Premiere, again, especially as the default DJI MP4/HEVC encoder is a bit borked.

Anyway... that was my point! I'm sure your Mac Pro does an excellent job of handling Resolve!

I probably wouldn't have gone for the Pro other than it was a good deal at the time, that is I couldn't have acquired the components for the same price to build a system with similar spec. The fact the enclosures are manufactured in the USA with the assembly performed there also is attractive to me. Luckily it won't need an upgrade any time soon and when it does I will likely go the hackintosh route. I suspect you are on the money the final render is CPU intensive, I have seen in practice however the GPU's and SSD drives as being the biggest contributors to speeding up the workflow in applying effects and grading.

 

[dhaymil]

Easiest video editor to learn on Windows is one of the Sony Vegas products (multiple versions), in my opinion.

Well...my pc gear certainly is not up to that standard. ...but its a comfort to know it may not be the camera. It was fun doing the trials . At least i still have 20 meg photos!. More testing required on the 2.7 k abilities but i guess if there was a problem it would be with all videos....and it doesnt occur with lower res...so i can live with that

 

[Craig Carter]

Craig:
Here's some freeware that might help you out:
HandBrake: Open Source Video Transcoder

thanks

 

[Craig Carter]

UPDATE


Some test flights done today at different resolutions in MP4 (may make a difference with the video ?) but ive isolated the Gimbal Overload to a specific event. This occurs during POI after about 90 seconds...seems to occur faster at a smaller radius - so it could be the motor attached to the top of the gimbal struggling to keep the camera orientated during the constant radii turn. I suspect this would be quite intricate to change out , given its position at the top of the gimbal assembly (above the camera basically) . It would almost be better to the rear motor or camera motor!. I really gave it a hiding today during a 3 battery flying session and this was the only time it occurred. Once it stops doing the POI - no issue.
2 things learned today....my PC is no 4K machine and tops out with 2.7 30FPS... (my monitor is 1920 x xxx)
the dog is faster than active track...which to be really useful might need to get more active.
I need to get hold of someones PC and check the UHD stuff. Like I said , everything up to 2.7K 30FPS plays fine

Thoughts on the gimbal POI issues??

Thanks for the input so far.