When I took my Mavic out for the first post-winter flight at the end of May, I suddenly noticed a peculiar problem.

Whenever I start recording video, the live feed in the app began stuttering - the feed would either freeze for about a second or show pixellation. As long as I do not record, the feed is perfect. The video recorded to the SD card is always perfect. The aricraft responds to the commands perfectly even when the video feed freezes.

I have iPhone 6S Plus running iOS 11.2.6 (updated from 9.3.5 dring winter)
Mavic, controller, batteries and the app were updated to the laterst firmware.

Since then I tried the following to eliminate/narrow down the problem, and think it is a bug in GJI Go 4 app.

• My first suspicion was radio interference, but the problem occurs even if Mavic is hanging 1/2 meter away from me. Still, I tried several different locations and distances.
• My second suspicion was that the phone with iOS11 stopped being powerful enough to record to cache, so I disabled caching of the recorded video. The problem persisted.
• I then tried different resolutions, thinking that that may be the problem. I usually record at 2.7K, but went down 1080p 25 fps (also tried 4K). Still stutetring.
• I turned off live histogram view. Still stutetring during video recording.
• I went then to the Image transmission settings in the app and set it to "smooth" - that did not help either.
• The final test was to launch Litchi (I only used it occasionally for WP, preferring Go for the familiarity I have with it, and the cloud flight sync and stats). Litchi DID NOT dispay this problem - I recieved fluent, perfect video feed, regardless if I was recording a video or not!
  

This leads me to conclude that the problem is a bug in DJI Go 4 app. It effectively makes the app useless as controlling of the aircarft for a smooth video footage composition becomes impossible. I will have to use Litchi and forego the flight stats until the problem is solved, as video recodring being the primary function I use my Mavic for.

I have a iPhone 6 plus and really can never record my screen.  The problem is every new release of DJI GO 4 requires more and more processing/RAM.  If you look at the phone usage while doing this you will see your cpu spiking to 100% and therefore the choppy video screen.  I agree the DJI GO 4 code is sloppy and therefore takes up more processing/memory than Litchi.  Basically our devices are on the bottom end of the working pool at this point.  Their software needs a complete overhaul to be honest but probably will not happen.  I feel your pain.

One thing though upgrade to the newest 11.4 I have noticed somewhat performance increase although I have not tried screen record since then.  Worth a shot though as others have reported that they would get choppy video when recording POI and after the upgrade to 11.4 from 11.3 no more choppy video when recording POI.  

Re-reading your post I thought you were talking about screen record your device while flying.  Mine never does goes slow like you say when just recording video.  Here is what I would do if I were you.  Upgrade to the latest 11.4 that just came out the other day.  Completely uninstall and reinstall the DJI GO 4 app.  When running DJI GO 4 ensure you kill ALL other apps running.  Also I put mine in Airplane mode so see if that helps.  My video is always smooth when flying my MP and recording.  It is just screen recording my screen that sometimes makes my phone get choppy but other than that it works great.  So try what I suggested.

If by chance you are now running  firmware .0300 (latest) on Mavic Pro.  Try reverting back to previous version you were running.

SparksBird Posted at 2018-6-12 07:08
I have a iPhone 6 plus and really can never record my screen.  The problem is every new release of DJI GO 4 requires more and more processing/RAM.  If you look at the phone usage while doing this you will see your cpu spiking to 100% and therefore the choppy video screen.  I agree the DJI GO 4 code is sloppy and therefore takes up more processing/memory than Litchi.  Basically our devices are on the bottom end of the working pool at this point.  Their software needs a complete overhaul to be honest but probably will not happen.  I feel your pain.

If only we had access to source code...
We could find 'Hot Spots', and have a real chance at optimizing code for those spots.

SparksBird, the problem is not with the screen recording (which I've never tried), but with the regular video recording within DJI GO (the red button under the right thumb). As soon as I instruct Mavic to record video, the live feed in the app begins stuttering. Interestingly, there is not pattern - it can go smoothly for 20 seconds than do a couple successive freezes of 1 second each, then go fine for 10 seconds more.
Reinstalling the app did cross my mind - shall try it. I may, as well, also update iOS to 11.4 - can't do more harm to iPhone, than what iOS 11.2 did.

As for Flight mode and closing all other apps - that's something that I tried as well (I almost always do that pre-flight anyway)

Reverting the firmware on Mavic Pro is also an option worth trying, though I thought any FW glitch would have affected the performance in Litchi as well.

I bet the issue is with the latest Pro upgrade 0300, numerous complaints about that firmware causing choopy video feed to the phones. downgrade the firmware, I found that 0100 is the most stable after trying the other 2

An update on this issue:
In the name of science, I decided to approach it in a systematic way, so I first upgraded the iOS to 11.4
Testing the result indoors with the motors turned off, I no longer saw any artefacts during recording. There were two strait weeks of stormy weather, so I could not test the effectiveness in a real flight. Finally I had a chance to fly a few kilometres today, and indeed upgrading the iOS solved the problem!
It's a bit scary to think that Apple holds the key to make or break the functionality of an app. My guess is that iOS was too heavy on some background processing to allow GO to process the video stream while it was also busy computing some data during the recording.

And the problem is back again.

Last time I flew before today was 4 days ago, on Sunday. The only thing I did in-between, was to update the firmware from 01.04.0300 to 01.04.0400. iOS and DJI Go app versions are the same.

On today's flight the stuttering problem was not as severe as I reported it in the first post, but is still caused me to overshoot a few shots, while waiting for the image to unfreeze. Again 4K or 2.7K made no difference. I tried rebooting the phone in-between two flights, thinking that maybe some background process was eating up CPU - no help. Neither flight mode helped. The app issued warnings about "Mobile device CPU fully loaded. Related performance will be affected." But that was not at the time when I was shooting and experiencing stuttering, but rather during the normal flight without recording on, when vide was fully responsive.

An interesting aside about flight mode - I discovered that "Quick Shot" mode becomes hidden if the phone is in the flight mode when you launch the Mavic!

I think I'll try downgrading the firmware. Would the assistant also downgrade the firmware of the remote controller?

PS: It may "just" be the case of Apple and DJI gradually obsoleting my  iPhone 6S Plus since I started flying with it last year. Back those long  330 days ago I could run DJI Go, have map loading and still accomodate a  couple other app in the background, and the phone whould not even break  a sweat.

I am against updating phones more frequently than once  every 4-5 years (before 6S Plus, I had the 4S), and it feels at times  that many of the "upgrades" are actually downgrades - taking away more  functionality, than what they bring in.

BumblerBee Posted at 2018-7-19 10:26
And the problem is back again.

Last time I flew before today was 4 days ago, on Sunday. The only thing I did in-between, was to update the firmware from 01.04.0300 to 01.04.0400. iOS and DJI Go app versions are the same.

I found your posts about this problem very enlightening, since I have similar issues with iPhone 6 and Mavic Air. All was OK for the first couple of months, and then the full CPU warning message started to appear, followed by green blocking of video on the iPhone display and stuttering.  Interestingly, the video recorded on the SD card was flawless. I’m convinced that the problem is in the DJI GO 4 app.

I find it hard to believe that the app can’t determine the hardware it is running on, and disable new “resource intensive” features when running on that hardware. I don’t expect DJI to give me all the latest and greatest features forever, but I DO expect that the existing features WILL continue to run on the hardware I currently have, which IS on the DJI compatibility list for this product.

I fear that you may be right about sloppy coding, by Apple and/or DJI. I remember the old days when code had to be efficient because of hardware limitations - like when 640K was plenty of RAM, and 60M was a top end hard drive.

An update on the stuttering. Since the last report, I downgraded the firmware to 01.04.0100 on both AC and RC. Last Saturday we had really fine weather, so I took Mavic out for a spin.

There was not a trace of sttuttering or direction problem with the Mavic after the downgrade! The firmware downgrade was the only change performed between the flights, so this further indicates that the bug causing stuttering of live feed during video recording lies in the firmware 01.04.0400

The problem is quite possibly present in 01.04.0200 and 01.04.0300 as well because 01.04.0300 also gave me CPU overload warnings on the phone, while there were no CPU overload warnings while flying with 01.04.0100)!

ya you're member another confirming the problem with the firmware. I'm glad i stuck it out with 01.04.0100 on both my Mavics. Thank you for coming back to tell us how it went for you!