After 9-10 flights on my Mavic Air, I found that there is this 42MB file on the drone's SD card named DJI.GIS in a folder called \MISC\GIS. After spending about an hour on google, I'm surprised at how little information there is on it. One or two folks on various forums have asked the question, but no one has provide an answer that I can find. "GIS" is an acronym for Geographical Information Systems and seems to be a reference to software/format that maps or encodes video imagery for use in such a system. However google has almost no information on the specifics of DJI.GIS or what application uses it. The size of the file suggests that it combines gps geographical information with recorded video, but that just an educated guess.

Does anyone know what this file is for, and what feature or application use it?

Thanks

Hello and good day Manitol. Thank you for the inquiry. This folder saves / stores system files for camera and cannot be deleted. The volume of this folder is stable and occupy only a little space. Thank you for your support.

DJI Stephen Posted at 1-26 15:42
Hello and good day Manitol. Thank you for the inquiry. This folder saves / stores system files for camera and cannot be deleted. The volume of this folder is stable and occupy only a little space. Thank you for your support.

Thank you for your reply. I guess I was hoping for a little more technical depth about that file's purpose. I did delete if off the SD card before I read your reply. It deleted without any issue and did not appear to affect video recording when I did a brief test flight afterward. I suspect that the drone's firmware will just create a new file to log data to if it cannot find an existing one. Pardon me for saying so, but I would not think that file is a system file for two reasons 1) it was stored on the external SD card, which would be a poor design choice for a critical system file, since there is no guarantee that an SD card will even be installed in the drone, or that a user won't replace an existing SD card with a new one with more capacity. 2) The file extension of ".gis" is a very specific choice with a specific meaning (Geographical Information Systems) recognized by a wider community outside DJI. A hex dump reveals that the header is "GIS". This file has all of the hallmarks of a data file, not a system file. If I had to guess, it would be that it is indeed a GIS file, but of some proprietary DJI format.I would surmise that it is storing flight tracks or some other form of location data; but I was hoping someone would know - cheers.

Manitol Posted at 1-26 17:42
Thank you for your reply. I guess I was hoping for a little more technical depth about that file's purpose. I did delete if off the SD card before I read your reply. It deleted without any issue and did not appear to affect video recording when I did a brief test flight afterward. I suspect that the drone's firmware will just create a new file to log data to if it cannot find an existing one. Pardon me for saying so, but I would not think that file is a system file for two reasons 1) it was stored on the external SD card, which would be a poor design choice for a critical system file, since there is no guarantee that an SD card will even be installed in the drone, or that a user won't replace an existing SD card with a new one with more capacity. 2) The file extension of ".gis" is a very specific choice with a specific meaning (Geographical Information Systems) recognized by a wider community outside DJI. A hex dump reveals that the header is "GIS". This file has all of the hallmarks of a data file, not a system file. If I had to guess, it would be that it is indeed a GIS file, but of some proprietary DJI format.I would surmise that it is storing flight tracks or some other form of location data; but I was hoping someone would know - cheers.

i believe it is part of the SDK and not specifically for the DJI go app and you probably correct about what it stands for.   probably for use with 3D telemetry based mapping solutions and applications that use the DJI SDK.  certain folders and files may get shared

Manitol Posted at 1-26 17:42
Thank you for your reply. I guess I was hoping for a little more technical depth about that file's purpose. I did delete if off the SD card before I read your reply. It deleted without any issue and did not appear to affect video recording when I did a brief test flight afterward. I suspect that the drone's firmware will just create a new file to log data to if it cannot find an existing one. Pardon me for saying so, but I would not think that file is a system file for two reasons 1) it was stored on the external SD card, which would be a poor design choice for a critical system file, since there is no guarantee that an SD card will even be installed in the drone, or that a user won't replace an existing SD card with a new one with more capacity. 2) The file extension of ".gis" is a very specific choice with a specific meaning (Geographical Information Systems) recognized by a wider community outside DJI. A hex dump reveals that the header is "GIS". This file has all of the hallmarks of a data file, not a system file. If I had to guess, it would be that it is indeed a GIS file, but of some proprietary DJI format.I would surmise that it is storing flight tracks or some other form of location data; but I was hoping someone would know - cheers.

What ever files you delete from sd or phone will just re appear next time you open app and turn on craft and remote I believe

Manitol Posted at 1-26 17:42
Thank you for your reply. I guess I was hoping for a little more technical depth about that file's purpose. I did delete if off the SD card before I read your reply. It deleted without any issue and did not appear to affect video recording when I did a brief test flight afterward. I suspect that the drone's firmware will just create a new file to log data to if it cannot find an existing one. Pardon me for saying so, but I would not think that file is a system file for two reasons 1) it was stored on the external SD card, which would be a poor design choice for a critical system file, since there is no guarantee that an SD card will even be installed in the drone, or that a user won't replace an existing SD card with a new one with more capacity. 2) The file extension of ".gis" is a very specific choice with a specific meaning (Geographical Information Systems) recognized by a wider community outside DJI. A hex dump reveals that the header is "GIS". This file has all of the hallmarks of a data file, not a system file. If I had to guess, it would be that it is indeed a GIS file, but of some proprietary DJI format.I would surmise that it is storing flight tracks or some other form of location data; but I was hoping someone would know - cheers.

What ever files you delete from sd or phone will just re appear next time you open app and turn on craft and remote I believe

HI, I think you can try Stellar Photo Recovery software , Because I had try this software and see the advance feature here you can add any other file for recovery or repair if your file corrupt, lost or damaged. thanks

Hi Manitol,

I guess you blew "DJI STEPHEN" completly away with you answer.  LOL!!!

Manitol Posted at 1-26 17:42
Thank you for your reply. I guess I was hoping for a little more technical depth about that file's purpose. I did delete if off the SD card before I read your reply. It deleted without any issue and did not appear to affect video recording when I did a brief test flight afterward. I suspect that the drone's firmware will just create a new file to log data to if it cannot find an existing one. Pardon me for saying so, but I would not think that file is a system file for two reasons 1) it was stored on the external SD card, which would be a poor design choice for a critical system file, since there is no guarantee that an SD card will even be installed in the drone, or that a user won't replace an existing SD card with a new one with more capacity. 2) The file extension of ".gis" is a very specific choice with a specific meaning (Geographical Information Systems) recognized by a wider community outside DJI. A hex dump reveals that the header is "GIS". This file has all of the hallmarks of a data file, not a system file. If I had to guess, it would be that it is indeed a GIS file, but of some proprietary DJI format.I would surmise that it is storing flight tracks or some other form of location data; but I was hoping someone would know - cheers.

I own a Mavic 2 and the drone creates the dji.gis file on the internal AND external sdcard. I can also delete it witnout any problems. Its part of the NFZ software from DJI

Hobbiebop Posted at 2019-6-6 02:19
I own a Mavic 2 and the drone creates the dji.gis file on the internal AND external sdcard. I can also delete it witnout any problems. Its part of the NFZ software from DJI

Does this mean there is something that you can add to this file to unlock everything?  I live by an airport and cant even takeoff indoors at my house.

DJI Stephen Posted at 2019-1-26 15:42
Hello and good day Manitol. Thank you for the inquiry. This folder saves / stores system files for camera and cannot be deleted. The volume of this folder is stable and occupy only a little space. Thank you for your support.

I've always wondered about that.

Manitol Posted at 2019-1-26 17:42
Thank you for your reply. I guess I was hoping for a little more technical depth about that file's purpose. I did delete if off the SD card before I read your reply. It deleted without any issue and did not appear to affect video recording when I did a brief test flight afterward. I suspect that the drone's firmware will just create a new file to log data to if it cannot find an existing one. Pardon me for saying so, but I would not think that file is a system file for two reasons 1) it was stored on the external SD card, which would be a poor design choice for a critical system file, since there is no guarantee that an SD card will even be installed in the drone, or that a user won't replace an existing SD card with a new one with more capacity. 2) The file extension of ".gis" is a very specific choice with a specific meaning (Geographical Information Systems) recognized by a wider community outside DJI. A hex dump reveals that the header is "GIS". This file has all of the hallmarks of a data file, not a system file. If I had to guess, it would be that it is indeed a GIS file, but of some proprietary DJI format.I would surmise that it is storing flight tracks or some other form of location data; but I was hoping someone would know - cheers.

I wonder why Stephen is so quiet now....

ro_flyer Posted at 2-27 19:40
I wonder why Stephen is so quiet now....

Should we send out a drone to look for Stephen?

I was just thinking about saving these dji.gis files before I reformat my cards....

Hi, on mac MacOSX machine the dji.gis file seems related to a thermal camera :

Me$ file /Volumes/Untitled/MISC/GIS/dji.gis  /Volumes/Untitled/MISC/GIS/dji.gis: DIY-Thermocam raw data (Lepton 3.x), scale 0-0, spot sensor temperature 0.000000, unit celsius, color scheme 0, calibration: offset -0.000000, slope 5.463178

Is there a thermal camera in my Mavic Air ?

djiuser_BKllMFQTJDYG Posted at 5-13 01:39
Hi, on mac MacOSX machine the dji.gis file seems related to a thermal camera :

Me$ file /Volumes/Untitled/MISC/GIS/dji.gis  /Volumes/Untitled/MISC/GIS/dji.gis: DIY-Thermocam raw data (Lepton 3.x), scale 0-0, spot sensor temperature 0.000000, unit celsius, color scheme 0, calibration: offset -0.000000, slope 5.463178

No, there is no thermal camera in that particular drone.

I think those thermal parameters you are seeing in the DJI.GIS file are there because that file is used in a lot of different DJI drones. The file is present on all of the DJI drones that I own.

HereForTheBeer Posted at 2019-1-26 17:59
i believe it is part of the SDK and not specifically for the DJI go app and you probably correct about what it stands for.   probably for use with 3D telemetry based mapping solutions and applications that use the DJI SDK.  certain folders and files may get shared

It stores the parameters. If you remove them, the parameters would be reset.

GIS, Geospatial Information Systems, data has a lot of industry uses. The challenge for a lot of us casual users is that the processing of that data is rather complex, so most of the software to process and deal with it is very expensive ($100s to $1000s). DJI itself has a product to pull data from some of it's higher end drones (https://www.dji.com/dji-terra).  This article describes a bit more about the over all picture. https://ellipsis-drive.com/blog/drones-and-their-impact-on-gis-mapping/

Hobbiebop Posted at 2019-6-6 02:16
Hi Manitol,

I guess you blew "DJI STEPHEN" completly away with you answer.  LOL!!!

I agree. If DJI STEPHEN IS A SUPER MODERATOR I would hate to see what a NOT SUPER MODERATOR would answer.

Manitol Posted at 2019-1-26 17:42
Thank you for your reply. I guess I was hoping for a little more technical depth about that file's purpose. I did delete if off the SD card before I read your reply. It deleted without any issue and did not appear to affect video recording when I did a brief test flight afterward. I suspect that the drone's firmware will just create a new file to log data to if it cannot find an existing one. Pardon me for saying so, but I would not think that file is a system file for two reasons 1) it was stored on the external SD card, which would be a poor design choice for a critical system file, since there is no guarantee that an SD card will even be installed in the drone, or that a user won't replace an existing SD card with a new one with more capacity. 2) The file extension of ".gis" is a very specific choice with a specific meaning (Geographical Information Systems) recognized by a wider community outside DJI. A hex dump reveals that the header is "GIS". This file has all of the hallmarks of a data file, not a system file. If I had to guess, it would be that it is indeed a GIS file, but of some proprietary DJI format.I would surmise that it is storing flight tracks or some other form of location data; but I was hoping someone would know - cheers.

My guess would be the .GIS file stores Almanac data downloaded directly from the satellites.   Almanac data is course orbital parameters for all GPSS satellites and aids only in achieving a faster "fix" on the receiver's position.  With this data, the receiver can predict an approximation of each satellites position giving you a faster, more accurate initial location to begin to fix your location upon.  

I wondered the same thing about the .gis file.  I’m working on a Mac OS  app that will read and parse the .SRT files though and save each point and map to a database so you can keep them without keeping the files forever. Here’s a screenshot from a memory card with a bunch of SRT.  I was hoping to pull this from the .gis but as someone stated it’s all binary and I gave up. Seems like an internal DJI format to me.  The SRT is a text file alongside your video file and there is an option to enable / disable them called “Subtitles” under your camera settings.  Keep it enabled and save your .SRT.  There’s a lot of cool information in those files.

I can't find DJI in this graph.  Could someone update?

The DJI.GIS file is indeed related to the geospatial information captured by the DJI drone during the flight. This file contains the metadata for the drone's GPS location, altitude, and orientation at each point in time during the flight.  While DJI has not publicly disclosed the specifics of how the data in the DJI.GIS file is used, it is likely that it is used in the DJI Fly app or other DJI software to create maps, track the drone's location, or generate flight logs.  Some third-party software may also be able to use the data in the DJI.GIS file to create more detailed maps or analyze the drone's flight patterns. However, the exact use cases for this file may vary depending on the software being used.