Phantom 4 pro: has anyone tried it?

No, moire'/aliasing is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about flicker. The Inspire 1/X3 had it, the Z3 camera has it, the file someone sent me from a P4 has it, and the Mavic has it. Some people see it, others have to have their noses rubbed in it and they still can't see it. It's a known "thing". Hard to show on YT, even, as compression softens the effect ... but we are not uploading YT compressed files, are we? It's easiest to see if, say, for instance, you are flying low laterally over a sloping gravel beach ... slowly. Not easy to see when hovering, and not when moving fast, inducing blur.

For what it's worth I see it in the Mavic footage, but it's not as bad as the X3/Z3/X5 footage. It's definitely something to do with sharpening, and the cadence of the codec sampling - and while I just looked for (and didn't find) the telltale 8 frame sequence that was in the older cam's footage, I still see flicker in real time.

This is one of the reasons I gravitate toward "hazy, magical" light and more suggestive than distinct types of footage if possible with these ... and why I like flares.

Looks like my P4P comes in on Friday, so by the end of the weekend I'll have a report if these cold gusting nasties go away. Kind of a lot of this lately: 30018G28KT

@vicfilm Nothing's up yet on P5 but I have some files lined up for upload. With these review times should be visible around mid April...

@imagevideo
Thanks, I can't wait to see some footage of the snowy mountains of the Netherlands :-)

Late delivery, very windy, bad light.

Results: I'm impressed so far. Probably 3x as capable as anything I've ever had, with the exception of the smooth heavy lift Matrix, but I'm not carrying cargo ...

Dig the small size.

Wind handling is very good.

Latest firmware increased DLOG dynamic range. (supposedly) interior shots indicate good things .. I can see sensor noise .... and detail.

Sharpening at -1 in D-LOG and D-Cinelike is still too much. Just kinda "hard" looking. Trying -2 tomorrow.

Quality very good. Ease of updating +10

Hate the stupid Apple wasteful plastic packaging, but it's less than some earlier stuff.

Distortion imperceptible. Lens quality seems high.

Latest firmware also enables continuous autofocus. Have not tested, but initial reports from forums=good.

At this point would not hesitate to recommend.

Fell over. I guess Phantoms do that? Granted: On slick ice, and in wind .. but .. I fired up motors, and it fell on its face. That's just ... dumb. No other drone falls over when you arm and start the motors! 1 inch extension (yeah, they make them, aftermarket, duh!) on the landing gear would prevent this.

No damage, but ... jeez.

Also, After Effects does not open h.265. Who woulda thunk.

D-Log locked at ISO 500. This is apparently a goof move by DJI in the last FW update. Some have said that Log gammas in cameras always lock the ISO....or that some do. I have never seen this. Prevented me from getting exposure last night in Dlog mode so changed to D-Cine ... not that there was anything to expose for, but I was experimenting with low light .. as in moonlight.

I read a bunch about it and am still confused as to why they would lock the ISO.

Also, not likely going to record in h.265 if I have to transcode everything to ProRes first. Looks like Footage Studio can do it, but it's a pain.

re h265:


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Official Adobe answer from Adobe Dave (yes, I work for Adobe) ...- just saw this post - as some of you might know, I work very closely with DJI with our tools and we try and test as early as we can. With new cameras/codecs/ firmware changes it takes time.. just being honest here... (feel free to forward threads/topics on my youtube channel as that will forward to my inbox automatically - just search dhelmly on Youtube.

Here's what actually happening with the H265/HEVC issue where some people can import and some can't. We first started support in CC2015 so any earlier versions don't have the codec. When you first try and import a H265 file a message should appear telling you that you need to license the codec . The license is part of Premiere Pro CC but not automatically turned on for every user unless they use it. WHY? there is actually a license fee that we manage for you and it gets activated with your first Import or Export. You need to be connected to the internet for the first time you use it and once you do that you don't need to be connected to license again unless you re-install or there is a major update. We are always "tweaking" playback with CPU/GPU support.. BTW - H265 playback is decent in Premiere Pro CC 2017. Lots of people use it as a H265 player - BUT, Encoding takes a longtime - just give us more time on that I hope this helps .. Dave..
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also:

fans50c32a8d Posted at 2017-2-3 22:06
Hi Dave, the issue is that on the Phantom for h265, there is a choice of .mov or .mp4. If you use .mov, you cannot import the files into Premiere. You MUST use .mp4 OR simply rename your files to .mp4. After that, Premiere prompts for the HEVC codec and all goes well.

Thanks,
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Many thanks for pointing that out , THAT IS THE CRITICAL missing link.

Background - Currently (as of Feb 2017) Apple does not support HEVC/H265 in Quicktime (remember there is a license fee and Apple would need to somehow charge for that - no way to purchase Quicktime Pro with MPEG add-on like the old days) .

When Premiere sees a .mov we use our Quicktime Importer to read and decode the file. If we see a .mp4 then we use the Adobe Importer and the importer then figures out what type of MPEG file it is. H265 is partof the MP4 spec which is why it needs to be .mp4.

What if I already shot my H265 footage in .mov - SIMPLE FIX - rename all your .movs to .mp4 and the Adobe Importer will decode the H265.

NOTE for DJI - Feature Request: When H265 is chosen as the codec please default the file type to .mp4 and don't give the option to use .mov unless Apple updates Quicktime to support H265.


WORKFLOW TIP - DO NOT use H265 if you intend to do a lot of editing. While it's awesome that the files are high quality and smaller than H264 it;s also

Neato. I'll try that!

truncated?

Thanks for the hot tip. Change recording format suffix to .mp4 in App makes it AE friendly.

Currently have two shots, identical, one h.264, one HEVC, lined up with an adjustment layer to goose various levels and zoomed in to 400% and trying to really understand what I am seeing. Of course there's no motion, so it's not a real life scenario.

"Compression crystals" more with the h.264, shading is blotchier.

File size is h.264 = 258,054KB, h.265 = 247,296KB, both 20 seconds.

RAM preview with basic FX runs out to about the same, 15 seconds of the 20, in about the same time. Not sure I see any big drag with processing it, at least for making single clips.

Any real world thoughts Mark?

I've been staying with h264 for the moment because I want the 60p. Otherwise I'd be wih 265.