I am going on an overseas fishing vacation in the next few months and was wondering what the best and easiest way would be for transferring my Mavic and GoPro footage (both use Micro SD cards) onto my iPad Mini 4. I then hope to do simple edits each evening of the days events on the iPad Mini 4 using iMovie. If possible I would prefer taking only the smaller iPad Mini 4 and not my outdated and cumbersome laptop. I also would have liked to take along my 4TB portable external hard drive to dump all of the days raw footage onto, which would then allow me to format the Micro SD cards at the end of the days shooting, all clear and ready for the next day ... there will be 21 days in total so a lot of raw footage from both GoPro and Mavic. I have been told by somebody that I will not be able to connect my portable hard drive with the iPad Mini 4 ... is this true?

I have read about the Apple Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader which would allow me to place the Micro SD cards in the adapter and import into the iPad Mini 4 to edit on iMovie. I have also read somewhere about the Lightning to USB Camera Adapter as well as a USB hub which can take 3 or 4 USB devices.

It's all getting rather confusing so was hoping to perhaps get some ideas and solutions from others who have done something similar ... any advice or suggestions greatly appreciated ... thanks in advance.

Apart from the connection issues of the SD-card with the iPad I fear you should be more concerned with the processing power of your iPad. Maybe when you shoot only in 1080 or less resolution your Mini will be able to work with the files of your SD. Anything higher than that in resolution will probably not work because the processor of the iPad (ANY iPad) is just too weak.
I never tried this myself so, don't take my word for it, it's just a calculated reasoning.
Maybe other users can chime in here.

I use the lightning to SD card reader and it works fine.  You can also download directly if MP on and iPad is connected to RC.

I use iPad mini 4 and heavy editing is difficult, but the editing software in the DJI Go4 App works ok for quick stuff to share.

PhanFran Posted at 2017-5-20 01:32
Apart from the connection issues of the SD-card with the iPad I fear you should be more concerned with the processing power of your iPad. Maybe when you shoot only in 1080 or less resolution your Mini will be able to work with the files of your SD. Anything higher than that in resolution will probably not work because the processor of the iPad (ANY iPad) is just too weak.
I never tried this myself so, don't take my word for it, it's just a calculated reasoning.
Maybe other users can chime in here.

I would probably only need to edit in 1080p HD anyway as I would only need to put together basic editing of each days events and share on FB etc ... just to keep friends & family updated daily back home. Having said that however, I would also like the option of also saving all the raw unedited footage of 21 days of Mavic & GoPro video (in some way?) so that when I get back home I can  meticulously sift through all the footage at my leisure and then put together a montage of the whole trip ... any ideas?

Yogi123 Posted at 2017-5-20 01:41
I use the lightning to SD card reader and it works fine.  You can also download directly if MP on and iPad is connected to RC.

I use iPad mini 4 and heavy editing is difficult, but the editing software in the DJI Go4 App works ok for quick stuff to share.

I will be having Micro SD card footage from both the Mavic and the GoPro so not sure if editing would be better using the Go4 App as you mention, or perhaps the iMovie app on the iPad Mini 4 ... all welcome to chime in with your 2c worth

PhanFran Posted at 2017-5-20 01:32
Apart from the connection issues of the SD-card with the iPad I fear you should be more concerned with the processing power of your iPad. Maybe when you shoot only in 1080 or less resolution your Mini will be able to work with the files of your SD. Anything higher than that in resolution will probably not work because the processor of the iPad (ANY iPad) is just too weak.
I never tried this myself so, don't take my word for it, it's just a calculated reasoning.
Maybe other users can chime in here.

Wrong. iPad Pro would be more than able to handle 4K. iMovie has support for it so it's almost promoted by Apple. iPad Air 4 is also likely to be ok.

Okay, you have to try this out!

I bought a Kingston Mobilelite Wireless and it is the most useful piece of tech I have for traveling!

https://www.amazon.com/Kingston- ... LW221/dp/B00CEB5QU2

You can take your micro sd card out and plug it into the mobile lite wireless and save it onto a flash drive or stream it from the device to anything from a laptop to a phone or tablet.
you can also download any files on the micro sd card wirelessly on multiple devices at once. This makes sorting and storing in the field so much easier.

ShadyDealer Posted at 2017-5-20 03:24
Wrong. iPad Pro would be more than able to handle 4K. iMovie has support for it so it's almost promoted by Apple. iPad Air 4 is also likely to be ok.

What about the iPad Mini 4's capability of handling 4k, or even 2.7k ... because that is what I have, an iPad Mini 4.

RileySmelley Posted at 2017-5-20 03:40
Okay, you have to try this out!

I bought a Kingston Mobilelite Wireless and it is the most useful piece of tech I have for traveling!

Thanks for this ... another option consideration ... I still need a solution for the daily transfer of up to 50GB per day (for 21 days) of Mavic and GoPro Micro SD card footage ... and ideally only want to take along my iPad Mini 4 and not my old brick of a laptop.

Videoman10 Posted at 2017-5-20 18:04
Thanks for this ... another option consideration ... I still need a solution for the daily transfer of up to 50GB per day (for 21 days) of Mavic and GoPro Micro SD card footage ... and ideally only want to take along my iPad Mini 4 and not my old brick of a laptop.

Planned to transfer 4K videos into the iPad too, but found that the max storage allocation setting on the Go 4 App on my 128GB iPad Mini will only go up to 16GB.  Were you able to exceed that on yours?

noob Posted at 2017-5-21 18:29
Planned to transfer 4K videos into the iPad too, but found that the max storage allocation setting on the Go 4 App on my 128GB iPad Mini will only go up to 16GB.  Were you able to exceed that on yours?

That's interesting ... what method are you using to get the Micro SD card footage from your Mavic, onto your iPad Mini 4?

Videoman10 Posted at 2017-5-21 18:48
That's interesting ... what method are you using to get the Micro SD card footage from your Mavic, onto your iPad Mini 4?

I decided not to when I couldn't increase the storage limit.  But I had planned to just click on the button in the Editor section of the App to transfer the original footage via the RC connection to the Mavic.  But it just occured to me that the 16GB limit may possibly apply only to the video cache and not necessarily include any videos you transfer manually via the app.

noob Posted at 2017-5-21 19:27
I decided not to when I couldn't increase the storage limit.  But I had planned to just click on the button in the Editor section of the App to transfer the original footage via the RC connection to the Mavic.  But it just occured to me that the 16GB limit may possibly apply only to the video cache and not necessarily include any videos you transfer manually via the app.

Yes ... could be. Just for what its worth, I'm wanting to know that besides the video footage that gets saved to the Micro SD card inside the Mavic, is there perhaps another way to enable settings somewhere on the Go4 app, that saves video to my iPad Mini 4 device in original quality, not a lower grade cached version.

Videoman10 Posted at 2017-5-21 20:45
Yes ... could be. Just for what its worth, I'm wanting to know that besides the video footage that gets saved to the Micro SD card inside the Mavic, is there perhaps another way to enable settings somewhere on the Go4 app, that saves video to my iPad Mini 4 device in original quality, not a lower grade cached version.

I think the max resolution for videos recorded on the iPad is HD, and that is only if you do not set video recording on the mavic on any resolution higher than HD.  Also I suspect that the version on your iPad also records the video with transmission glitches or stutters...

noob Posted at 2017-5-21 20:55
I think the max resolution for videos recorded on the iPad is HD, and that is only if you do not set video recording on the mavic on any resolution higher than HD.  Also I suspect that the version on your iPad also records the video with transmission glitches or stutters...

That's also interesting ... has anybody else tested the video quality of the saved cached HD video files on their iPad Mini 4, and compared them to the saved video files from the Mavic's Micro SD card. I guess what I'm wanting to know is if the quality is the same, can you import those saved cached video files into the iMovie editing app on the iPad Mini 4?

Videoman10 Posted at 2017-5-20 17:53
What about the iPad Mini 4's capability of handling 4k, or even 2.7k ... because that is what I have, an iPad Mini 4.

So I just managed to use the ipad mini 4 to edit 4k footage from Mavic Air and it works.

I used LumaFusion and imported the clips from Google Drive and edited away.

I added transitions, titles, color adjustment, and music to test it out.

Both of the Mavic Air footage are 3840x2160 @ 23.976fps
you can adjust the type of frame you wanted to edit on and being able to export any sizes, in this case, I exported as 1920x816.

Here's the result

Just wanted to share this.