So, I'm a total noob at post-processing, have no video-editing software at all.  But I wanted to experiment with making a time-lapse movie, using the "interval" function on the Mavic's camera.  Here's what I came up with.  The image quality's not great, mainly because of the horrible processing workflow I used, but I like the general effect of how it turned out.

https://i.imgur.com/34O25rT.mp4

https://i.imgur.com/SOGzmHG.mp4

These were both shot in the same location, one right after the other; the former is looking south, the latter is looking north.  Each of them represents about 9-10 minutes of realtime.

How I made them:

• Park drone
• Start it taking photos at 2-second intervals
• Hands off, just let it shoot for several minutes
  

My Neanderthal, horrible workflow to turn it into a video:

• Use Adobe Lightroom to export them all down to 800x600 pixels
• Run it through https://ezgif.com/maker to turn it into an animated GIF (horrible, yes, I know)
• Upload that to imgur, which apparently then turned it into an MP4
  

Anyway, I thought this was interesting.  For one thing, it gives an interesting sense of how stable the Mavic is over time, if you let it just sit.  You can see a little bit of "bobbing".  There's also a slight pan towards the right, at the beginning of the first video; no idea why it did that.

If you notice "flickering" in the second video, it's because a flock of little birds started swarming around the drone, a few minutes into the shoot.  (Sparrows, I think.)  I don't think they were actually interested in the drone itself; I think they were just flocking, and the drone just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Here's my favorite shot of the birds, taken from one of the still frames:



One of my favorite pictures I've taken, and it's pure dumb luck.  

Album with more crops here (the one above is the best one, though):  https://imgur.com/a/nJlYI

Wow, that looks bad indeed

With a bit of decent processing you could have made a very smooth timelapse.

Montfrooij Posted at 2017-10-2 22:25
Wow, that looks bad indeed

With a bit of decent processing you could have made a very smooth timelapse.

Thanks.  It's always useful to get helpful feedback from someone more experienced.

Twirlip Posted at 2017-10-3 04:59
Thanks.  It's always useful to get helpful feedback from someone more experienced.

Never too old to learn
(count me in)

brilliant

Nice but very strange tecnique, I'm not an expert in time lapse but why you dont simply let the drone record a video and then you could speed it up with software??

J.T. Posted at 2017-10-21 13:52
Nice but very strange tecnique, I'm not an expert in time lapse but why you dont simply let the drone record a video and then you could speed it up with software??

Probably because I'm fairly adept with photo processing but have not the slightest frickin' clue with video.  Have never used any video-editing software, and am basically totally at sea with what to do with my own video clips.

Downloaded DaVinci Resolve 14, tried to figure out how to use it just by fiddling with the UI, failed utterly.  Need to go find a tutorial or something, because it looks like a powerful program that I'd love to learn to use, but I just haven't had the time to dig into it yet.