I am experiencing a very annoying horizontal wobling of recorded video footage on my Phantom 4 Pro. What causes this? Do I have a defective camera?

I uploaded a test footage, where you can see this wobbling, from the start, even before taking off, but it is very apparent at all stages of flight as soon as the camera and drone stops. Idea is clearly it is not a drone vibration as it is present even before take-off while still on the ground.

This is out of camera MP4 file, not edited in any way or form.

Video Footage Sample - Dropbox file - 2Gb file
Edit: there was no visible vibration in drone or gimbal while I could see it.

No one? Any opinion why is my footage like that?

PliciPleosc Posted at 2017-1-3 03:38
No one? Any opinion why is my footage like that?

Try doing another gimbal calibration.

PliciPleosc Posted at 2017-1-3 03:38
No one? Any opinion why is my footage like that?

I just downloaded the file and played back on my 4k monitor and see same as you describe. What shutter speed was it set at ?

Aardvark Posted at 2017-1-3 06:20
I just downloaded the file and played back on my 4k monitor and see same as you describe. What shutter speed was it set at ?

Presumably you've had a look at http://forum.dji.com/forum.php?m ... D386%26typeid%3D386

No idea, I am a photographer. I was just learning to fly while video recording it on Auto mode, so I can review the flights afterward. I am pretty sure video files should contain some metadata, but being a photographer, not sure how to check those. And seeing that the video files all have wrong metadata and file system date and time, I guess those might be wrong too.

And I was horrified by the video recorded. All firmware is up-to-date, all things that can be calibrated are calibrated. I am 14 days after receiving the drone and still within 30 days of legally returning to original dealer. Contacted DJI support Europe and the dealer, both of which confirmed the problem and requested from me more information (serial numbers).

BTW: how do I get the gimbal serial number??

Aardvark Posted at 2017-1-3 06:26
Presumably you've had a look at http://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=78246&extra=page%3D1%26filter%3Dtypeid%26typeid%3D386%26typeid%3D386

No, I did not. Looking at it now.

PliciPleosc Posted at 2017-1-3 06:28
No idea, I am a photographer. I was just learning to fly while video recording it on Auto mode, so I can review the flights afterward. I am pretty sure video files should contain some metadata, but being a photographer, not sure how to check those. And seeing that the video files all have wrong metadata and file system date and time, I guess those might be wrong too.

And I was horrified by the video recorded. All firmware is up-to-date, all things that can be calibrated are calibrated. I am 14 days after receiving the drone and still within 30 days of legally returning to original dealer. Contacted DJI support Europe and the dealer, both of which confirmed the problem and requested from me more information (serial numbers).

"BTW: how do I get the gimbal serial number??"

I've no idea, I'm an amateur photographer.

I assume that is sarcasm but maybe I am wrong. My question was requested by DJI support and no idea where to find such gimbal serial.

My statement above, was about me using drone for photography mostly and using video recording for now just as a tool for learning to fly, and as a result I did not paid too much attention to camera settings, just left it in Auto mode, 4k. Moreover, while I know how to retrieve metadata from photos, my tools seem not to work for video files, not even Lightroom can import DJI video files, so I cannot check what aperture setting was used by auto mode. It was a way to explain, I simply don't know how to get that information, and if was interpreted by anyone in any other way, I apologize.

Are you within the operating temperature of the camera?
If outside of the temp you can get tiny vibrations like this.
You can try a gimbal calibration, or factory reset form the Assistant 2.

PliciPleosc Posted at 2017-1-3 06:28
No idea, I am a photographer. I was just learning to fly while video recording it on Auto mode, so I can review the flights afterward. I am pretty sure video files should contain some metadata, but being a photographer, not sure how to check those. And seeing that the video files all have wrong metadata and file system date and time, I guess those might be wrong too.

And I was horrified by the video recorded. All firmware is up-to-date, all things that can be calibrated are calibrated. I am 14 days after receiving the drone and still within 30 days of legally returning to original dealer. Contacted DJI support Europe and the dealer, both of which confirmed the problem and requested from me more information (serial numbers).

If you've already contacted support and they verified the issue (within operating temp) then they will take care of it.
The flight controller serial number should be good enough, it's in the About page of General Settings.

I am not sure what is the operating temperature of the camera... I know from drone specs operating temperature is 0- Celsius, and I was above, but not sure I might have missed such fact that camera has different operating temperature specifications...

Outside temperature, air was 2 Celsius at 2m from the ground outside.

DJI-Ken Posted at 2017-1-3 07:58
Are you within the operating temperature of the camera?
If outside of the temp you can get tiny vibrations like this.
You can try a gimbal calibration, or factory reset form the Assistant 2.

As for the calibrations I did, IMU, compass and gimbal. I will try factory reset too.

PliciPleosc Posted at 2017-1-3 08:15
As for the calibrations I did, IMU, compass and gimbal. I will try factory reset too.

OK, let us know how it goes.
And what about the temperature, what is it when you fly and encounter this ?

DJI-Ken Posted at 2017-1-3 08:47
OK, let us know how it goes.
And what about the temperature, what is it when you fly and encounter this ?

Not sure what are you asking. I mentioned above, 2 Celsius, outside my own weather station, 2m from the ground, not around any building.

Cannot measure the drone temperature, and only reading I have from the ground is battery temperature, which was way higher.

DJI-Ken Posted at 2017-1-3 07:58
Are you within the operating temperature of the camera?
If outside of the temp you can get tiny vibrations like this.
You can try a gimbal calibration, or factory reset form the Assistant 2.

Cool that is where I was going with the questions/comment above.  Nice to know I was not all wet!

Asa I said numerous times, 2 Celsius is inside the highlights above from User Guide.

And BTW, even outside temperature was 2 Celsius, the Dropbox video recording starts aprox. 1 minute of bringing outside the aircraft and controller after it was inside at 24-26 Celsius for about 2 hours. It sat on the ground with everything ON, while waiting for GPS signal before take off. I do not think that any part of the aicraft, remote controller or iPad, reached outside air temperature in 1 minute (2 Celsius) as thermal inertia should not allow for such quick cooling. Video recording starts as soon as GPS fix is reached. And I can also prove this as when I started everything inside, I put the card inside and did a 6 second test footage, which also has timestamp.
As a conclusion, even if my measurement of outside temperature would be off (2 degrees Celsius, measured on a 2m high weather station), as an engineer with almost 30 years of experience in computer systems, I doubt temperature in video could be a factor, just because nothing can cool down so fast because of thermal inertia. You can see the jello efect as soon as recording starts while aircraft still on the ground with no propeller spinning yet. So we can also factor out propeller vibrations.

OK, because current local weather does not allow flying, made some tests under following conditions:

- inside temperature measured at 24 Celsius.
- no propellers installed
- aircraft positioned inside
- aircraft positioned above window heater in a fixed position
- window open
- outside temperature -3 Celsius, inside normal room temperature 24 Celsius (did not measured above window heater where drone was positioned)
- window was opened 30 seconds before footage starts
- drone was inside for 12 hours at normal room temperature 23-25 Celsius

And the footage, clearly shows jello effect.

From this test, we can clearly factor out:
- propeller vibrations
- aircraft or camera or gimbal temperature

Yet footage looks like this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4fw8vwlkmgzvorq/DJI_0189.MP4?dl=0

Clearly gimbal or camera itself have a problem. To be honest I would eliminate even gimbal, as there is no clear vibration and image seems stable enough with the jello effect exception but not expert in this field so I cannot factor the gimbal out by myself.

PliciPleosc Posted at 2017-1-3 22:58
OK, because current local weather does not allow flying, made some tests under following conditions:

- inside temperature measured at 24 Celsius.

Unfortunately I cannot look at your video clip at present as my editing computer is down, but I got a poor look at it and I think I can see some jello. Jello only has one cause, and temperature is not a factor, it is vibration of the camera. If, in your test, the motors are not running, then something else must be causing the camera to vibrate.

I wonder if when it is sitting on the bench, when you lightly touch the camera, can you feel any vibration? I am thinking that perhaps the fan in the body of the aircraft might be causing vibration? Another potential cause is the gimbal itself, if the gains are too high, then it can vibrate. There is a thread where a user fixed his vibration in this manner: http://forum.dji.com/thread-39365-1-1.html

Video files do not normally have metadata, not like the EXIF data for stills, but you can find out everything about the stream. Download the free Mediainfo app and install it. It allows you to right click on a file and it reveals all the information about that media file.

Thank you so much Geebax. I can confirm I cannot feel any vibration touching the drone with motors not started. Anyway, packaged it few minutes ago and sent it back to dealer for replacement.

Geebax Posted at 2017-1-4 00:43
Unfortunately I cannot look at your video clip at present as my editing computer is down, but I got a poor look at it and I think I can see some jello. Jello only has one cause, and temperature is not a factor, it is vibration of the camera. If, in your test, the motors are not running, then something else must be causing the camera to vibrate.

I wonder if when it is sitting on the bench, when you lightly touch the camera, can you feel any vibration? I am thinking that perhaps the fan in the body of the aircraft might be causing vibration? Another potential cause is the gimbal itself, if the gains are too high, then it can vibrate. There is a thread where a user fixed his vibration in this manner: http://forum.dji.com/thread-39365-1-1.html

And if the gains are causing the vibration, to be honest, something is wrong with gimbal. Those settings are there so you can customize your drone according to your flying style and filming/photographing needs, not to eliminate gimbal vibrations. I would simply not accept this as a fix. If these settings are causing problems, eliminate those settings or fix them. It is like you would buy a phone with a menu item that would set phone on fire if clicked and the fix would be a big warning not to touch it, even tho some user would need to access that menu.
But for the record, while I did changed ghimbal pitch roll settings (as I think it was too violent and too mechanic w/o dampening) and changed all EXP settings to 0.4, never touched any GAIN settings. All were factory default at 100. I own a lot of radiocontrols, including a Futaba 14MZ, and none would force you do something like that, it would be ridiculous. I have at least 300 hours of radiocontrol flights and more than 1000 of real life piloting.

And I just watched first video tests after getting Phantom 4 Pro out of the box when I did not changed anything, and clearly that jello is there. Something is definitely defective there. I watched tens of Phantom 4 Pro videos and none show something like that. There is no point to fight a war that is not mine. Clearly DJI rushed a bit the Pro production and I think they knew and assumed this could happen. Hopefully they won't go the path Karma or Note 7 went for the sake of more products and more profits.

DJI still is an awesome company and quick technology changes make such things inerent, but I do hope they knew what they are doing and planned for all the returns. And a few of us will have some extra hassle solving them, but if they are active and resolve problems quick and to customer satisfaction, all will be ok in the long term.

PliciPleosc Posted at 2017-1-4 01:30
And if the gains are causing the vibration, to be honest, something is wrong with gimbal. Those settings are there so you can customize your drone according to your flying style and filming/photographing needs, not to eliminate gimbal vibrations. I would simply not accept this as a fix. If these settings are causing problems, eliminate those settings or fix them. It is like you would buy a phone with a menu item that would set phone on fire if clicked and the fix would be a big warning not to touch it, even tho some user would need to access that menu.
But for the record, while I did changed ghimbal pitch roll settings (as I think it was too violent and too mechanic w/o dampening) and changed all EXP settings to 0.4, never touched any GAIN settings. All were factory default at 100. I own a lot of radiocontrols, including a Futaba 14MZ, and none would force you do something like that, it would be ridiculous. I have at least 300 hours of radiocontrol flights and more than 1000 of real life piloting.

Absolutely, you did the right thing, you do not have to accept faulty products.