Now eventually today (after delivery last Friday) I have been able to the maiden flight with my Mavic Air and to do some initial testing. The flight conditions were not particularly favourable. Around 0° Centigrade and pretty windy (high wind velocity warning throughout the flight), gosh did it feel cold ;-). Having seen the high vibration/shaking in cold environment posts of some users I had first done a short hovering indoors where the MA behaved flawlessly. Then out in the cold weather it was the first thing I have checked after take off and didn't have this vibration/shaking behaviour either, thus all systems were on "GO" :-). Already on my tablet I noticed the significantly better live video quality than I have with Spark and the results in the actual recordings are just stunning for me I have to say.
The light conditions were not very favourable either, grey sky on the north side, partly cloudy/blue on the south side. All of the following pictures and video are raw material, no post processing. The photo settings on my MA were all on default and "Auto", for the video I had D-Cinelike for "Colour" and Landscape for "Style".
After the video I am going to show you a normal 9 picture and a 180° Pano both automatically stitched with GO 4 (and it is really automatic, you don't need to do anything) and manually stitched with Cyberlink Photo Director 9. Here I have two observations. The GO 4 stitched pictures are right away lower in size while the manually stitched ones are in full resolution and significantly bigger. For posting here I had to reduce them both below 2 MB. Second observation is that the 180° Pano stitched by GO 4 gets much more cropped horizontally than the manually stitched one. Apart from that I do not see a great difference in quality.
And now about the video. It was recorded in 2.7 K 30 fps and with the settings explained above. Please bear with me that it is completely uncut, but still short enough. Here I have had two issues. When I turned the MA to the brighter side of the sky the lower half of the video turned almost into black and white for a while, is that related to my above reported settings or a malfunction? Afterwards you can see a lot of flickering in the middle field and on the roofs of the houses. How can I improve that?
Thank you very much in advance for all feedback and here we go with the footage.
P.S. Despite the heavy wind the flight behaviour of MA was great at all times and it is way more dynamic than my Spark :-)
Edit: I forgot to mention that I could not resist to test the new Asteriod Quick Shot and thereafter had to stop the maiden flight because it started snowing.

Thanks for sharing!  The video looks normal to me based on what I’ve experienced with the MA. I don’t think the auto exposure is particularly great right now, so I’d suggest manual exposure when possible.  The flickering I’ve seen too and I’m not sure I have a good explanation. I think it’s just limitations of this sensor, but I need to do more testing myself   Great first video though...  loved the falling snow at the end!

Berg I Imagery Posted at 2018-2-4 16:41
Thanks for sharing!  The video looks normal to me based on what I’ve experienced with the MA. I don’t think the auto exposure is particularly great right now, so I’d suggest manual exposure when possible.  The flickering I’ve seen too and I’m not sure I have a good explanation. I think it’s just limitations of this sensor, but I need to do more testing myself   Great first video though...  loved the falling snow at the end!

Thank you very much for your feedback! What puzzles me most is that the video footage when turning to the brighter side of the sky has turned black and white in the lower half while being in colour in the upper half. I find this a bit weird.

The MA is a tough robust little machine for sure, good to see you getting out there and trying it out. The snow would have made me land too lol Nice and keep sharing

thanks for sharing. Such a lovely place to fly, but looks like the weather wasn't too kind.  The video looks good, apart from that couple of seconds weirdness, could be the auto exposure playing up. I am interested in seeing more test flights and see if it happens again.  
  

You can try and reduce the moire on the house roofs by going in custom camera setting and reducing sharpness . contrast and saturation to -1 or -2.

You may need to play around with it a little bit

you recorded at 2.7k.. what is the exact resolution.  it is playing back for me at 2048 x 1152 which is a wierd output resolution.

anyway i think the flickering on the horizon when panning down or the roofs is probably a combination of shutter speed vs frame rate.. very noticeable with quick movements.

many of the videos i see on here are choppy, flickery, jittery ... one i saw yesterday flying through some trees, the trees were actually vibrating.  anyway , read up on fr vs sp and do some tests.  

there was one video that i can't find.. will look more, but lets say it had ocean waves, when i paused the video the waves were like double vision., the video was going forward but jumping back a frame every few frames.  prob from adjusting framerate wrong.  


edit:  the effect on the rooftops is called Moire or Aliasing

everything i have read now says to turn down the sharpening in video settings.  i have all my settings at 0 cause i do the correcting later.  have to try and see.  i also read the lowering the setting too much will turn on noise reduction and make the video mushy.. turning contrast down helps too if you can correct later.  have to try many settings and see how it goes.

Nice place to fly but you need more snow like in this post
https://forum.dji.com/forum.php? ... 5&fromuid=47441

Flickering you see on a roof tiles is called moire. That's digital camera struggling with small repetitive patterns. One was of getting rid of it is by a process known as rotoscoping. Basically you need to track affected area (DaVinci Resolve has superb tracking tool au pair with dedicated Mocha tracker) and apply a bit of Gaussian blur. Rotoscoping is time consuming process rarely done by amateurs and routinely by professionals.

Awesome mate - so very pleased for you! Great post and vid!

nice one, can't wait to try it myself. where are you located in germany?

rantanlan Posted at 2018-2-5 01:45
nice one, can't wait to try it myself. where are you located in germany?

My very wild guess will be Wachtberg, LOL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wachtberg

Wonder how I came to that conclusion.

That could be the case, something I might have could figure out myself lol... but I thought it must be somewhat near myself, region looked familiar

Great job, you were just suffering exposure issues, you will do much better with manual , always remember to video areas where the sun shines on rather than where the sun is, all dji go editing is done in 720p so great for social media but won’t show the true capture.
Somebody mentioned DaVinci resolve , I’ve just started using this editing program and it looks very good, it’s also free.
Anyways well done and thank you for the testing.

+1 for DaVinci Resolve , it has a steep learning curve but it is defiantly worth it imho. Did some editing with it prior to my soon to be drone carrer. Lots of good tutorials on youtube thou.

M2Wair Posted at 2018-2-4 17:54
The MA is a tough robust little machine for sure, good to see you getting out there and trying it out. The snow would have made me land too lol Nice and keep sharing

Thank you! To be honest I didn't mind stopping the flight (although it was a great moment and fun), my hands were frozen ;-)

cyborg Posted at 2018-2-4 18:21
thanks for sharing. Such a lovely place to fly, but looks like the weather wasn't too kind.  The video looks good, apart from that couple of seconds weirdness, could be the auto exposure playing up. I am interested in seeing more test flights and see if it happens again.

Thank you!

lannes Posted at 2018-2-4 18:40
You can try and reduce the moire on the house roofs by going in custom camera setting and reducing sharpness . contrast and saturation to -1 or -2.

You may need to play around with it a little bit

Thank you very much. Yes indeed there is a lot for me to learn on the Mavic Air. Far more settings for everything than on the Spark.

AIister Posted at 2018-2-4 18:54
you recorded at 2.7k.. what is the exact resolution.  it is playing back for me at 2048 x 1152 which is a wierd output resolution.

anyway i think the flickering on the horizon when panning down or the roofs is probably a combination of shutter speed vs frame rate.. very noticeable with quick movements.

Thank you very much for your competent advice! I did the rendering in 2K 2048x1080/30p (40 MBit/s). Where do you see 2048x1152? Can that have happened through the Youtube processing?
And thank you about the information on Moire. I had not changed anything on shutter speed or frame rate but used the default settings. The purpose of the whole recording was to see what output the MA produces by default and then explore how I can improve the output with manual settings.

Hummingbird.UAV Posted at 2018-2-4 20:38
Nice place to fly but you need more snow like in this post
https://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=133475&fromuid=47441

Thank you! We didn't have real snow yet this winter and it is generally quite rare in this region.

in youtube you can right click the video and select "stats for nerds"

eYeSkYeYe Posted at 2018-2-4 22:50
Flickering you see on a roof tiles is called moire. That's digital camera struggling with small repetitive patterns. One was of getting rid of it is by a process known as rotoscoping. Basically you need to track affected area (DaVinci Resolve has superb tracking tool au pair with dedicated Mocha tracker) and apply a bit of Gaussian blur. Rotoscoping is time consuming process rarely done by amateurs and routinely by professionals.

Thank you very much for the information!

A CW Posted at 2018-2-5 01:43
Awesome mate - so very pleased for you! Great post and vid!

Thank you!

rantanlan Posted at 2018-2-5 01:45
nice one, can't wait to try it myself. where are you located in germany?

Thank you, as already smartly guessed by eYeSkYeYe it is Wachtberg. Actually a region, not a single village or town. My village has about 1.000 inhabitants.

hallmark007 Posted at 2018-2-5 03:52
Great job, you were just suffering exposure issues, you will do much better with manual , always remember to video areas where the sun shines on rather than where the sun is, all dji go editing is done in 720p so great for social media but won’t show the true capture.
Somebody mentioned DaVinci resolve , I’ve just started using this editing program and it looks very good, it’s also free.
Anyways well done and thank you for the testing.

Thank you very much! It was not processed with GO 4, I use Cyberlink Power Director for the the rendering in 2 K. And you are of course right with recommending manual settings. As mentioned earlier above, the purpose of this first video was to find out what the output looks like in challenging light situations and then explore what I can improve with manual settings.

AIister Posted at 2018-2-5 10:58
in youtube you can right click the video and select "stats for nerds"

Oh thank you, interesting. But that change must have been done by Youtube then or Power Director does not work properly. I have the latest version though...

Wachtberger Posted at 2018-2-5 11:09
Thank you very much! It was not processed with GO 4, I use Cyberlink Power Director for the the rendering in 2 K. And you are of course right with recommending manual settings. As mentioned earlier above, the purpose of this first video was to find out what the output looks like in challenging light situations and then explore what I can improve with manual settings.

Set to manual and bring your shutter speed down to 1/60th with the ISO at 100 on your next flights - this will be difficult to achieve without ND filters and over exposing the image but once done the contrast won't change dramatically as you tilt the gimbal down from the sky and you'll have the perfect amount of blur in the footage. By selecting style as landscape I believe (if memory recalls) that this increases the sharpness to +1 as part of the profile settings - this may be the cause for the distortion in small areas of the images - set to custom and set sharpness (left hand column) to 0 and see if that makes a difference. You'll find what works best for you the more you play around with all the settings and have the filters to add to the mix of options.

A CW Posted at 2018-2-5 12:23
Set to manual and bring your shutter speed down to 1/60th with the ISO at 100 on your next flights - this will be difficult to achieve without ND filters and over exposing the image but once done the contrast won't change dramatically as you tilt the gimbal down from the sky and you'll have the perfect amount of blur in the footage. By selecting style as landscape I believe (if memory recalls) that this increases the sharpness to +1 as part of the profile settings - this may be the cause for the distortion in small areas of the images - set to custom and set sharpness (left hand column) to 0 and see if that makes a difference. You'll find what works best for you the more you play around with all the settings and have the filters to add to the mix of options.

Thank you again! I'll definitely order the ND filters and further explore all the settings. And yes, the landscape profile sets two values to +1 and leaves one at zero, can't remember now which ones they are. A lot to learn, but it is exciting :-)

Wachtberger Posted at 2018-2-5 12:33
Thank you again! I'll definitely order the ND filters and further explore all the settings. And yes, the landscape profile sets two values to +1 and leaves one at zero, can't remember now which ones they are. A lot to learn, but it is exciting :-)

left is sharpness, middle is contrast and right is saturation - don't ask me how I remember that LOL

A CW Posted at 2018-2-5 12:36
left is sharpness, middle is contrast and right is saturation - don't ask me how I remember that LOL

You have a great memory and/or experience then! Thank you.

Wachtberger Posted at 2018-2-5 12:33
Thank you again! I'll definitely order the ND filters and further explore all the settings. And yes, the landscape profile sets two values to +1 and leaves one at zero, can't remember now which ones they are. A lot to learn, but it is exciting :-)

I did some ressearch in the past for the mavic pro and the results can be greatly improved using the right settings!!

Wachtberger Posted at 2018-2-5 12:39
You have a great memory and/or experience then! Thank you.

              

Wow. Great to see this happening
Congratulations!
I must say I am impressed with the stability of the craft and the output in general.
Even at auto it renders rather well.
Some moiré in the field around 2:28, but that is probably because of Youtube scaling down to 1080p
Also I found out I did not subscribe to your channel yet.. Shame on me...
So I did.

About your question on the darker parts.
I can recommend that tutorial.
Somewhere in the middle he explains the 'best' settings for these situations.

Very nice to see some footage and can't wait to see more!

Oh, I almost forgot about the pano's. They look nice also, considering the high contrast situation you were shooting in.

Kune Posted at 2018-2-5 12:40
I did some ressearch in the past for the mavic pro and the results can be greatly improved using the right settings!!

Thank you! I know a lot of learning is ahead for me but it will be fun :-).

Montfrooij Posted at 2018-2-5 12:42
Wow. Great to see this happening
Congratulations!
I must say I am impressed with the stability of the craft and the output in general.

Hey, thank you very much for your feedback! That video helps a lot already. I have never had all these settings before, have to learn their effects and hopefully remember them ;-)

Wachtberger Posted at 2018-2-5 13:03
Hey, thank you very much for your feedback! That video helps a lot already. I have never had all these settings before, have to learn their effects and hopefully remember them ;-)

I know. I never paid attention to mine when I had the Mavic.
Only focused on flying....
I think most settings are 'one time only' (so you find the sweet spot and leave it that way).
One thing I like to do is lower the auto exposure to -0.7 to avoid washed out highlights (sky usually) or shoot in Manual mode, but that does require some peace of mind and battery time as you need to adjust your settings while in the air.

Now just wish for better weather for you
Here in NL it started to improve as of today!

Montfrooij Posted at 2018-2-5 13:08
I know. I never paid attention to mine when I had the Mavic.
Only focused on flying....
I think most settings are 'one time only' (so you find the sweet spot and leave it that way).

Thank you again, here it was cold but very sunny today and the forecast says that temperature will slightly increase in the coming days. Gosh was it cold out there yesterday ;-).

Wachtberger Posted at 2018-2-5 13:16
Thank you again, here it was cold but very sunny today and the forecast says that temperature will slightly increase in the coming days. Gosh was it cold out there yesterday ;-).

Yes, it was cold with my hands in my pockets already.

I even see a MA icon in your avatar
Very nice!