I flew two flights today, each about 12 minutes long, with a fresh battery for each. The first flight went fine, and the video recorded properly.
On the second flight however, everything seemed to go fine until I landed, and when I pressed the record button on the app to stop recording, it was frozen. No matter how many times I pressed it it would not respond. I tried restarting the Pilot app, but that didn't work either. I finally had to turn off the Inspire and restart it before the button became responsive again. I recorded a new 1 minute video while the aircraft sat on the ground in hopes that if the original recording was corrupted, it would repair the file. That one minute video recorded fine.

Unfortunately when I got home the video file from my second flight was indeed corrupted, and only 135MB in size. It should have been many gigabytes since I was shooting 4K/30 for about 12 minutes. So even if I could repair it it's clear the recording didn't really happen. And until I landed and tried to stop recording, there was no way to know that it wasn't working.  

Everything seems to work now, but I'm bummed that I lost a battery's worth of video.

I've never seen or read about this problem before. Have any of you?

I've had the same problem and put it down to a dodgy sd card. Happen couple times so I bought a new set of cards (95mb/s) probably 100+ flights since and no problem. Make sure they are fast, good quality cards.

markaguille Posted at 2015-7-13 17:21
I've had the same problem and put it down to a dodgy sd card. Happen couple times so I bought a new  ...

The card I use is a Sandisk SDXC Extreme Pro 64Gb with 95/90MB write/read speed. Pretty high quality card, I think. It's also brand new, so I suppose it's possible that I should run chkdsk on it to check for errors.

Abe Posted at 2015-7-13 21:29
The card I use is a Sandisk SDXC Extreme Pro 64Gb with 95/90MB write/read speed. Pretty high qualit ...

It may be a coincidence in my case but worth checking.

Abe Posted at 2015-7-13 21:29
The card I use is a Sandisk SDXC Extreme Pro 64Gb with 95/90MB write/read speed. Pretty high qualit ...

did you format it in the I1?

Did you make sure no apps were running in the background that could have interfered?

mtnmaddman Posted at 2015-7-14 07:23
did you format it in the I1?

Yes, it was formatted in the Inspire.

DJI-Dave Posted at 2015-7-14 07:50
Did you make sure no apps were running in the background that could have interfered?

Yes, I generally shut down all apps when flying, though not so much because I've ever thought it might interfere, but more because I'm so anal about not having a bunch of open apps cluttering my devices :-)

What's interesting is that the rest of the Pilot app was working just fine. The only part that was frozen was the record button.

Abe Posted at 2015-7-13 21:29
The card I use is a Sandisk SDXC Extreme Pro 64Gb with 95/90MB write/read speed. Pretty high qualit ...

I use this same SD chip without any issues. Did you try using the remote controller button instead of the app? Sounds like the Pilot App was crashing on you during the shoot.

Rich

RichJ53 Posted at 2015-7-14 10:01
I use this same SD chip without any issues. Did you try using the remote controller button instead ...

That was the one thing I didn't try. I am so used to controlling everything through the app that I didn't remember to try the button on the remote. But considering that the file size was only 135MB after 12 minutes of flight, I doubt it would have made a difference. It must have frozen right after I started recording. There was really no way to know that it had frozen up while I was flying since everything else worked fine.

It sounds like you have done everything correctly. Trying the button on the remote is a good idea. You could try uninstall and reinstalling the Pilot app. Then try a few test videos and if it keeps happening, you may need to send in your I1 to have our tech look at it.

Try another card.

Abe Posted at 2015-7-14 10:12
That was the one thing I didn't try. I am so used to controlling everything through the app that I  ...

Yup, you didn't do anything wrong and you are correct that it may not have changed anything. I forget about the manual buttons on the controller too because there are a lot of things to keep us busy....  I have had the screen pause but never freeze to date. (thankfully)

Rich

Hey Abe,
I had a similar experience. I was filming a team of cyclists in a triathlon as they crossed a final marker before transitioning to their run. I took off and filmed for around five minutes, after about two minutes I started getting delays and pauses in the video feed, by four minutes the video feed was nonexistent and the screen only seemed to be updating to a new still image each 15 seconds or so. I landed it at the five minute mark, unfortunately neither the screen nor the remote record buttons were responding. Like you, I followed with another flight simply to start and stop a new video in hopes of saving the original file. (An important note is that I never lost any control over the movements of the bird, the issues all revolved around the camera and feed.)

When I returned home and checked the footage the video was only 48 seconds long, I didn't capture a single rider crossing the marker, despite seeing a couple of them cross on my display while filming the event... Apparently the Inspire thought it was successfully recording data for several minutes without actually capturing anything.

My theory was that the high temperatures during the race caused the issues. It was around 93 degrees that day, although the Inspire was in the shade until a few minutes before takeoff. I've successfully flown it eight times since the race, albeit on cooler days, with no latency issues in the feed or controls whatsoever. However, just to test my temperature theory I took my Inspire for two consecutive 10 minute flights on an 88 degree day. I kept the bird within 30 feet of me and maintained about six feet in altitude over a grassy field. I recorded each full flight and had very similar results to my race experience. The first flight video recorded flawlessly with no feed or input issues. The second flight video started off perfectly but halfway through I began observing delays and pauses in the feed. By the seventh minute I had completely lost any video feed from the Inspire; my screen was completely frozen. The movement controls were never compromised so I completed the full 10 minute flight time.  I used the extra few minutes to make sure I tried all the remote buttons and touch-screen options in case there was a solution, before finally landing. Upon reviewal of the files at home, the first video was solid, while the second retained only 2:38 minutes of footage from a 10 minute flight. It was pretty disheartening to find out the issues were repeatable but the lesson was pretty simple, don't fly and film for more than a few minutes on hot and sunny days.

Mistician Posted at 2015-7-14 15:37
Hey Abe,
I had a similar experience. I was filming a team of cyclists in a triathlon as they crossed ...

Hello Mistician,Thanks for a very interesting first hand report and valid conclusion!

Arun

Mistician Posted at 2015-7-14 15:37
Hey Abe,
I had a similar experience. I was filming a team of cyclists in a triathlon as they crossed ...

Did you have your video caching on or off , The heat delay, prior to video stop seems to be more a fault of the tablet overheating, if you are caching video and recording, possibly it gets balled up, and for some reason the program shuts down, shutting off video recording, the fact that the on off on the pad freezes, points to more of a software crash problem due to processor overheating in the pad, possibly shutting the camera recording program down, not a heat problem in the bird, maybe.

In order to troubleshoot the situation, you need to create it again, but add different controls to the scenario, set the bird in the sun, and heat it up, maybe fly without the pad and warm up the bird,  and cool the pad,  run a flight.  reverse the heat controls and run another flight,  you get what I mean,  Use the process of elimination, that does include trying a different card.(I dont think that is it) I think the problem is in the pilot app.

What pad are you running? Do you have google play services running?  

  

Mistician Posted at 2015-7-14 15:37
Hey Abe,
I had a similar experience. I was filming a team of cyclists in a triathlon as they crossed ...

Interesting, though your experience was somewhat different than mine. I was flying over the Candlestick Park demolition where it rarely gets very warm. It was at most in the low 70's. Also, my video feed worked flawlessly the entire time. There was no indication anything was wrong until I landed and couldn't turn off the recording. And the resulting video file was corrupted and not recoverable.

DJI-Dave Posted at 2015-7-14 10:40
It sounds like you have done everything correctly. Trying the button on the remote is a good idea. Y ...

Thanks, Dave. Reinstalling the app is worth a try.

As for sending the Inspire in for repair - hahaha -- not a chance. I just got this one brand new from DJI who replaced the last one I had which after only three weeks developed a landing gear issue. I had to wait 7 weeks. And that one was also a replacement that took 6 weeks to get from the LA repair facility. My saga is well documented in this forum so I won't rehash it here :-)

mtnmaddman Posted at 2015-7-14 20:16
Did you have your video caching on or off , The heat delay, prior to video stop seems to be more a  ...

I do have video caching turned on. I believe it's on by default and I never turned it off since frankly I'm not entirely sure what it does.

I use my 128GB iPhone 6, which is what I nearly always use with both my Inspire and P3P.

I don't believe it was a heat problem with the aircraft as it wasn't a very hot day. Somewhere in the low 70's.

Another random and unlikely theory: I use the same iPhone 6  with Pilot app to fly both the P3P and the Inspire. I wonder if that may cause some internal confusion in the app?

Abe Posted at 2015-7-14 22:01
Thanks, Dave. Reinstalling the app is worth a try.

As for sending the Inspire in for repair - ha ...

I understand your concern. I would not want to be without my Inspire for 7 weeks. I am hopeful that our repair turnaround time will improve.