Bobster85
lvl.2
Flight distance : 237339 ft
United States
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I had the opportunity to beta test the OSMO Pro/Raw Wired Video Adapter as I am running a x5 camera.
Before I get into the review I must say if you are in the market for the Inspire 1 Pro/Raw, I highly suggest you purchase the OSMO as well. The OSMO will allow you to gain more use out of your investment rather than being only restricted to the air. With having said that, the Wired video adapter did exactly what it was designed to do.
Let's start with installation. It's easy. You plug the proprietary male plug into the front of the OSMO and a USB cable from the usb port of the adapter to the port on your phone. My first recommendation is to find 6in micro USB cable to attach your phone to the adapter. It's not a big issue but the excess cable could be a nuisance. I was able to use a short USB cable that came with my Inspire 1.
Immediately I noticed once it's plugged in and powered up, your phone starts drawing power from the OSMO itself which could be an issue if you have a limited amount of batteries and on an extended shoot. For me this was not an issue as I typically use a TB48 Inspire 1 battery to power my OSMO with the External Battery Extender (http://store.dji.com/product/osmo-external-battery-extender?site=brandsite).
Now what I love about the use of the adapter is the boot time. Hands down quicker than connecting via wifi. When you connect via wifi, you have to turn on the OSMO, wait for the wifi network to establish, wait for your phone to detect it, then wait for your phone to connect. Once that completes, you have to launch the app then wait for it connect and start transmitting the feed. This entire process usually takes :45-1:15. What's even worse is if you are already connected to a wifi network you will need to disconnect and manually connect if you do not have the OSMO network set as priority on your phone. With the wired connection, as soon as you plug in the adapter and power up the OSMO, the feed automatically starts within a few seconds of powering up. If anyone specializes in event coverage this is a game changer as you can't typically wait a minute every time you need to turn it on. Not sure if this is a common issue but I would occasionally run into an issue where the screen would be black once connected via wifi. I would then have to power the osmo down and reconnect, thus taking more time. So far the wired connection/firmware has eliminated that. HUGE PLUS!
Once powered on and transmitting I initially saw a drop in quality on my screen. It only seems to this shortly after powered up then smooth out. Maybe the USB 2.0 connection can't keep up at first? Seems like a possible bug but nothing that would affect the user experience. UPDATE: After several attempts, I have not been able to reproduce this.
Besides the decrease in load time, connection stability is so awesome. When connected via wifi, from time to time I would drop signal especially around metal structures. Very frustrating when trying to frame your shot and execute. Now that it is wired, you'll probably never drop signal again.
Now that the signal is transmitting via a wired connection, the recorded version on your phone is much more clear and even useable if something were to fail on your SD card or you want to share what you filmed to social media. I would like to see an option within the app that allows your to record to your phone at 1080p rather than 720p. Not sure if this is possible via DJI Go or if this is a limitation with the phone. Quality redundancy gives me peace of mind as I've had SD cards fail on me before.
UPDATE: I ran into the following issue with and without the adapter
Speaking of SD cards I did run into an issue that needs to be addressed. I tested the adapter using 2 different micro SD cards. A SanDisk Extreme Plus 64GB and a Samsung EVO 64GB. Both recorded just fine. I was surprised to see when trying to access your recorded library, the Samsung card wouldn't load your footage. It just sat there saying loading. The SanDisk on the other hand loaded your footage for preview almost immediately.
Again, I'm not sure if the USB 2.0 is the bottleneck here but when playing back recorded footage, you would see a quality degradation when playing. Would like to see it play back cleaner.
Overall, this is a MUST HAVE for anyone with an OSMO x5/Raw. I'm not sure what the price point will be but if it's in the same range as the battery extender, it'll be a no brainer to add to your rig.
I've had fun testing this as most of my current headaches have been eliminated by the use of this adapter.
To summarize:
Pros:
Fast boot/connection time
Clean 720p recording to your phone (would like to see 1080p if possible)
Stable streaming connection
Cons:
Phone now draws power from your OSMO battery
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