Now that the Mavic Air has thrown serious shade on the Mavic Pro will DJI afford Pro owners an upgrade path for their cameras?  So far as I know, the camera in the Mavic Air is effectively identical to that in the mavic Pro yet offers a substantially higher bitrate and therefore superior video recording quality.

That said, I'd like to know if DJI will eventually provide Pro owners with either a firmware patch to increase our video recording bitrates to match the Air, or at the very least give us the means to replace the Pro camera with the the one found in the Air

Highly doubt there will be any "upgrade" to the Mavic Pro camera or bitrate.
People seem to be getting hung up about the 100mbps Air, its not going to be that much better, if at all, than the 60mbps of the Mavic.
My Canon EOS 6D with its 1" sensor, shoots at 40mbps and the quality of the video is far higher than anything i have seen from any drone.

If you must have the Air camera, then sell your Mavic and buy one, but don't wait for a "patch" as its not coming.

They might share the same sensor but it's the chipset that determines bitrates etc. The pro chipset maxes out at 60, the air is capable of 100@4k.
Im interested to find out the bitrates at other resolutions.

I started a thread like this last week. I would think the 100mbps is software based. A few years ago some guy managed to hack the Panasonic GH2 to get higher bitrates. I think they got to 200mbps. I don't think the processing power of the MA will be more than the MP so I'm hoping that they will do an update for the MP with the new obstacle avoidance and higher bitrate. Only limiting factor I can think off is ROM but they could take out follow me mode to get some more room.

I could be wrong.

Thank you for your suggestion, I will forward it to our engineers. Hope it will be available in the future.

DJI Thor Posted at 2018-1-31 00:31
Thank you for your suggestion, I will forward it to our engineers. Hope it will be available in the future.

Thanks Thor.

Makes me chuckle, when we were kids if we wanted to go somewhere or do something and our folks didn't want to, instead of saying "no" we always got the generic, "we will see".  We both knew it actually meant "no" but shut up anyway.
I see a lot of suggestions being forwarded to the DJI engineers.

My prediction is you will sooner see a MP2 than a higher bitrate on the MP.
These changes are more costly than some app modification, if it is even possible.
My guess is that DJI will put their effort in something new instead of the MP.
But I hope I am wrong of course.

I'm so frustrated with the low bit rate of the Mavic Pro. I keep thinking about buying a P4 Pro, but look at the massive difference in transportation size and realise I'd not be able to take the P4 anywhere near as often.

I've spent countless hours experimenting with combinations of camera settings and post processing in DaVinci Resolve to try and increase the number of usable video shots.

I'd happily pay more to buy a Mavic type craft with the P4 Pro camera. (100Mb/s and adjustable iris). Even better if it came with a 6 or 7 inch screen built into the controller while keeping the bulk low, similar to the size of the current Mavic controller with a phone attached.

Mike Warren Posted at 2018-1-31 14:15
I'm so frustrated with the low bit rate of the Mavic Pro. I keep thinking about buying a P4 Pro, but look at the massive difference in transportation size and realise I'd not be able to take the P4 anywhere near as often.

I've spent countless hours experimenting with combinations of camera settings and post processing in DaVinci Resolve to try and increase the number of usable video shots.

The low bitrate is very frustrating.  Especially when DJI's releases what amounts to a "Mavic Pro killer" with superior image quality, more features and at a better price point so soon after the Pro's introduction and, with no camera upgrade path for existing Pro owners

Harbourside Posted at 2018-1-30 10:11
Highly doubt there will be any "upgrade" to the Mavic Pro camera or bitrate.
People seem to be getting hung up about the 100mbps Air, its not going to be that much better, if at all, than the 60mbps of the Mavic.
My Canon EOS 6D with its 1" sensor, shoots at 40mbps and the quality of the video is far higher than anything i have seen from any drone.

I have a P4P, MPP, MP and today I just got my MA. I can tell you that MA's 100Mbps is far better than MPP/MP 60Mbps.

I'm sorry to inform that bitrate of Mavic Pro can't reach higher than 60mbps, it's the hardware limitation.

100mbps might sound nice but be prepared to upgrade your editing / playback computer to get smooth playback.  I would really like the ability to set a bit rate on the drone camera.  Something like low med and high or 25, 50 and 100.  Most of the video on the internet is very low bit rate, YouTube is ~ 4mbps for 1080P, Skypixel is about the same.  Bluray disks are 6 to 8mbps.

Hummingbird.UAV Posted at 2018-2-2 08:07
100mbps might sound nice but be prepared to upgrade your editing / playback computer to get smooth playback.  I would really like the ability to set a bit rate on the drone camera.  Something like low med and high or 25, 50 and 100.  Most of the video on the internet is very low bit rate, YouTube is ~ 4mbps for 1080P, Skypixel is about the same.  Bluray disks are 6 to 8mbps.

My editing bay can handle uncompressed HD so no worries

; )

No Man's Drone Posted at 2018-1-31 20:26
I have a P4P, MPP, MP and today I just got my MA. I can tell you that MA's 100Mbps is far better than MPP/MP 60Mbps.

I know!  I hope DJI makes a camera upgrade available to MP owners soon.  Swapping out the camera/gimbal isn't terribly difficult and if DJI offers a 100Mbps camera for the MP I'd grab one in a heartbeat

Hummingbird.UAV Posted at 2018-2-2 08:07
100mbps might sound nice but be prepared to upgrade your editing / playback computer to get smooth playback.  I would really like the ability to set a bit rate on the drone camera.  Something like low med and high or 25, 50 and 100.  Most of the video on the internet is very low bit rate, YouTube is ~ 4mbps for 1080P, Skypixel is about the same.  Bluray disks are 6 to 8mbps.

Apples and oranges: playback video compression is optimized for playback and streaming where compression processing time is not a huge consideration (VBR, multi-pass, etc.), capture compression is optimized for realtime capture. It makes no sense to compare the bitrate of one to the other.

I think a good compromise would be to allow a 60mbps bitrate at all resolutions as an option. 60mbps at 1080p and 2.7k would be a big improvement and shouldn't be limited by hardware. It looks like the mavic air can do 2.7k at 120fps and that is probably the mavic's biggest weakness, it does a really poor job at higher frame rates, image quality wise.

noelwest Posted at 2018-2-2 10:31
I think a good compromise would be to allow a 60mbps bitrate at all resolutions as an option. 60mbps at 1080p and 2.7k would be a big improvement and shouldn't be limited by hardware. It looks like the mavic air can do 2.7k at 120fps and that is probably the mavic's biggest weakness, it does a really poor job at higher frame rates, image quality wise.

2.7k @ 60 Fps - But I hear ya. The video bitrate degrades as you go higher on FPS.

DJI, why not just do 100Mbps on all resolutions? It's like you are forcing us to shoot in 4K just to get 100Mbps.

We demand video bitrate equality!

Hi there, we've got news from our engineers: I'm sorry to inform that bitrate of Mavic Pro can't reach higher than 60mbps, it's the hardware limitation. Thank you very much for your support.

Impossible to upgrade mavic air has the image processor from p4p from online reports so its a hardware change

Here ya go dji rep also says so himself also great review one of the better ones
https://youtu.be/Rh-o1mpV-JY

Harbourside Posted at 2018-1-30 10:11
Highly doubt there will be any "upgrade" to the Mavic Pro camera or bitrate.
People seem to be getting hung up about the 100mbps Air, its not going to be that much better, if at all, than the 60mbps of the Mavic.
My Canon EOS 6D with its 1" sensor, shoots at 40mbps and the quality of the video is far higher than anything i have seen from any drone.

6D sensor size is full frame so about 1.4 inches across
the phantom 4 pro has a 1 inch sensor.

the mavic drones sensor size is a whopping 0.24 inches

DJI Thor Posted at 2018-2-5 23:23
Hi there, we've got news from our engineers: I'm sorry to inform that bitrate of Mavic Pro can't reach higher than 60mbps, it's the hardware limitation. Thank you very much for your support.

That's fine just allow people to select 60mbps when shooting at 1080p or 2.7k to improve the footage at those resolutions!