I am a new drone pilot and just bought a P4 last week. This weekend I took it out for a spin to get some footage of the coastline. My video settings were 4k 30 FPS AWB AE. I am using the stock 16GB SD card.
I noticed quite a bit of stuttering, flickering, and compression artifacts in the resulting video. The flickering seems to be related to situations where there is a large range of luminosity. Perhaps the auto exposure is not stepping smoothly? The compression artifacts are in situations with fast motion and/or lots of detail. I can't tell if the stuttering is a real issue or a percieved effect of the flickering. Perhaps it could be my computer as well, but I'm watching this on a iMac 5k so I'd think it would be up to the challenge. Lastly, I've noticed that with rapid yawing, the horizon becomes unlevel. Straight and level flight seems to slowly restore the horizon to being level. Any help on diagnosing and correcting these problems would be appreciated!

Firstly, I just want to make sure that my unit is not defective. Secondly, I'd love to know what steps I could take to produce cleaner footage. I know an ND filter with a set shutter speed might help, but that's at least partially due to the motion blur that would result. Any suggestions on video settings would be appreciated.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B35p6JRIH_PGMHU5U2xTTDJ1emM

Scott

P.S. Video can be streamed from this link at a lower quality or downloaded as the raw file off of the P4. Size is ~ 2.3 GB

Hi Scott

I downloaded your video and generally it looks pretty clean and sharp. Some 'flickering' perhaps due to light bouncing off props. I noticed compression artifacts mainly on fast vertical gimbal movement, there's another thread giving settings that help smooth out the camera movements and reduce these artifacts.

Horizon tilt, what versions of  firmware and applications are you running ?

You could also try playback using a different player/hardware and see if there's any change. To my eyes it looks pretty good and I don't think there's anything wrong with your P4.

Like Aardvark says, it isn't all that bad.  The flickering may be from too fast a shutter speed.  

They recommend a shutter speed 2X the frame rate.  At 30 FPS, your max shutter speed should be in the order of 1/60 second.   The f/2.8 lens has a fixed aperture and even at ISO 100, on a sunny day your shutter speed will be quite a bit over 1/60 because of the extra light.   Most people place a neutral density filter on the lens in order to reduce the shutter speed and 'smooth' everything out.

On your pixellation during gimbal transitions.  I get that too when shooting 4K/UHD.  It's actually a bit worse than yours. I've posted about it, but nobody seems to have an answer.  I guess we're the only ones suffering from it

Have a look at post 46 Here

Thanks a lot guys! Great info all around.

My firmware version was 1.1.410 when this was shot. Not super sure on the app version, but it was the most recent version before the 1.1.411 FW release.

I think I'll be ordering some ND filters soon, and that post definitely will help me dial in my pans and tilts.

Are there any standard resources on Premier/After Effects work flows for squeezing the most out of P4/P3P 4K footage? Thanks!

scottrhoyt Posted at 2016-6-8 08:37
Thanks a lot guys! Great info all around.

My firmware version was 1.1.410 when this was shot. Not s ...

Hello Scott, if you want to buy some ND filters, hope these threads can help you:
http://forum.dji.com/thread-45238-1-1.html
http://forum.dji.com/thread-44552-1-1.html
http://forum.dji.com/thread-47141-1-1.html