George210477
 Second Officer
Flight distance : 2676129 ft
Romania
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Good day,
As a lot of info was put on net with "best setting" and so on, I will share with you my personal experience with MA2, in order to help the begginers.
Video settings
Profiles to use:
(Here is H264 vs H265 quality comparison, so stick on H265:
https://forum.dji.com/forum.php? ... p;page=1#pid2275014
)
1. Normal mode, H265 - use it in all conditions, is very good at noise, also with Premiere and DaVinci you have good possibilities to edit color, contrast, and so on. The profile corresponds to R709 standard.
2. D-Cinelike profile, H265 - use it only in good light for improoved dynamic range and more editing of colors capabilities, will not be used in dull or cloudy day as the profile will gain more data but also will gain a lot more noise than Normal Mode. As the profile is for a better colorization if needs to be personalized, but is flattening the image (rise black and lower white), you need to have skills in order to properly edit it to reach R709 standard from Normal Mode.
3. HDR profile, H265 - use it if you need to record very high contrast scenes, like a sunset or sunrise and the more darker areas from scene. Will produce a video that can be used but needs small adjustments, as the colors will not be so natural (the image is composed from a normal image, an underexposed image and an overexposed image). Also you will get more noise than all profiles from above, is recommended to use a denoiser like RED or Neat. Do not over use it in dark or cloudy scenes, all blacks will be boosted up as noise and you better use Normal Profile.
Settings to use for SS/FPS/ISO:
1. Stick with 180 degrees rule as long as you can, will help you get a good natural footage.
2. Set Manual mode as much as you can, starting from Color temp that is a must. DJI have a strange behavior if you leave it in Auto, if contrast is changing you will experiment boosts of exposure that will ruin your footage. Probably a bug or a not so good algorithm, as phones have better behavior.
3. I personally stick on 30 FPS, as I have the option to make a little slow-down of footage until 24FPS and get rid of small movements from drone. You need to adjust the movements according to your FPS...Imagine that you blink 25 times in a second and you fast rotate around you...the image you see is not linear, will be cropped in pieces... This is how it works the "eye" of the camera, that FPS means how many images is taking on a second...so...if you or the subject is moving faster, go to 60 FPS...if you have only small movements, you are free to use any FPS as long as you do not make fast movements. Also pay atention at tilt and rotation of camera and drone...is also a movement !
4. Shutter speed is like the opening of the eye...if you open it more, you see better and brighter when you rotate around you, but also you will see a lot of blur. The 180 degrees rule says that you need to have the shutter speed twice the FPS for natural image (30 FPS = 1/2 x 30 = 1/60 SS as example)...BUT...if you need crisp results and less blur, you need to speed up that "blinking", so you can go to as much as you need. Make sure you will compose the video at end in Premiere or DaVinci with Optical Flow option, as will help in a fluid movement, without to see much jittering.
5. ISO is best at 100, as is less noise...still, if you work in dark scenes or night, you can go up to ISO 3200. I personally prefer to break the 180 degrees rule here, and set 25 FPS with 1/25 SS and ISO 1600...but make sure you also make the moves more soft, or you will experience small disruptions in footage...in this way you will have better noise control.
ALSO IMPORTANT:
Remember that you will play the final video on a TV or monitor that have a refresh (frequency) that can vary...As long as new TV's can compensate with Jitter settings the composition and you will see it very good, some monitors from laptops or PC will use the FPS you have set and play the footage skipping some frames in order to reach the FPS from footage....For example, if you have a 100Hz monitor and the footage is exported in 30 FPS, you will wonder why you have a crap video that have small freeze in image...
You have 2 choices:
1. Adapt your computer screen at a Frequency that is a multiple of FPS from video (30 FPS video = 60HZ or 90Hz or 120 Hz...and so on)
2. Make the footage from start according to your Monitor frequency...you can reinterpret footage in most video editors at a proper FPS and than you can speed it up in order reach same initial speed...Example: you have a 30 FPS raw footage, need it for a 100 HZ monitor....reinterpret it as 25 FPS when import it in editor...the image will be slowed down at playback...and inside the footage edit the speed at x120...you get same speed as the initial 30FPS footage, but with 25 FPS base...also do not forget to use Optical Flow at speed settings.
3. Use Pot Player at playback of H256 4K videos, check in settings to have Hardware decoding checked. Is better than VLC that I tested and is clipping a lot. Also make sure that in Display Settings you have checked for 3D the Video Card GPU and not the CPU, helps sometime.
Photo Settings
Here is a lot of choices, never experimented all as some seems to be unusable (HDR for example makes a picture that for me is not good, maybe others like it), I tell you just my choices:
1. Always have enabled RAW+JPG...
2. Every time I can, I use bracketing -1 0 +1 and recompose it in Adobe, will get a "HDR" image but with a lot of details and without that strange look that HDR profile is getting at colors.
3. Always manual mode...ISO as lower as I can, but if is windy outside I prefer to get ISO higher and SS lower in order not to have a blurry image...also I process a little the image with Adobe for noise (max 15%) and sharpness (max 10%), depending on how it looks.
4. I use 1/2 max at SS, because at 1" I can see the blur and is softening a lot...
5. For night mode photography and light trails, I prefer to make 2 photos, one with proper exposure for scene, and second from same spot with low SS for light trails. I just import them in Photoshop and after alignment I use a mask to apply in order to pop out the light trails from cars for example (second photo) in the first best photo without blur that have the scene very good exposed...
6. If you want interesting and funny results, put the drone right above you at 50 meters with low ISO and long SS (4-6"), camera pointed down, take a flashlight and draw on grass with light what you want (best is to wear black and move constantly)...Is called "light painting" and the results can be very nice after some practice.
Best regards,
Geodrone4K
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lvl.1
Administrator
First Officer
