I've got a brand new Mavic 2 Pro that I got for a vacation trip where there are plenty of opportunities for spectacular drone footage, and unfortunately I've discovered that it has a defective camera, straight from the factory.  There's a "smut" on the sensor, which shows up as a darkened blurry circle (roughly 7% of image height) a bit off-center in the image.

Here's a downsampled frame capture from video, illustrating the problem.  Red arrow points to the dark circle visible on the water.  That's the defect: the water is in fact uniform color, the circle is an artifact:


(As bad as it looks in the still image, it seriously sticks out like a sore thumb in video, since it stays in a constant location as the rest of the image moves.)


What I'm wondering is:  Do typical post-processing tools provide some sort of correction filter that can repair such a defect in a video in post?  (I use Davinci Resolve 14.)

Unfortunately I'm traveling right now, and so I don't have access to any of my usual tools and can't explore them until I get back home.  It's the kind of problem that, if it were a still image, I could clear it up in a jiffy with Photoshop (apply circular selection, feather the edges, fiddle with level curves), but I have no idea what sort of tools Davinci Resolve 14 has in this regard (never needed it before now).

Has anyone else encountered this kind of problem?  What sort of tools are available for fixing?  This is a lengthy trip, it's a major one for me, it's just begun, and I'm heartbroken to discover that my new Mavic has such a video-ruining problem.  Wondering whether there's any hope.  Am willing to try other tools besides Davinci Resolve if needed, if there's a chance to "recover" the video from my trip.

(I do have DJI Care, but that's useless to me on this trip-- won't be able to get the drone repaired until I'm home.  I'm stuck with the defective drone for the duration of the trip.  Yes, I tested the drone at home before leaving on the trip... but the image defect doesn't show up against "busy" background and my home is surrounded by forest, so it didn't show up noticeably until I'd already left on the trip.)  :-(

Anyway, thank you for any advice or suggestions!

Lovely shot!

You can get tools to remove the smudge, it comes down to what video editor you are using. The easiest way would probably setting up tracking and/or object removal in Resolve there's a few tutorials on YouTube. If it's stills Photoshop can help with Content Aware Fill (and this might be an option to bring into Photoshop as a video not tried this myself though).

The mark looks like sensor dust, similar to what I've seen with interchangeable lens cameras.