What's the trick to getting smoother video during manipulation of the camera and even just during flights when panning the entire craft, other than just practice? The camera gimbal seems to be extremely jerky no matter how easy I am on the control.
Getting smoother video
- Thread starter JBDive
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When panning (or yawing) you need to go as slowly as possible. Tripod mode and a really gentle and controlled touch on the stick will help, however, I have found that combining that motion with either forward or backward travel, or ascending will increase the smoothness. Also, flying sideways gives excellent results, turn your craft toward your point of interest then use the right stick to fly paralell to it, the Spark is excellent at that. The key to panning is go a slow as a snail, speed it up in post later ... also, if your editor will support interpolation, doubling the frame rate in post will sometimes produce better results. Some folks also use stabilzation, but this tends to lower image quality, so I use it sparingly.
And welcome to the forum, I see that was your first post.
And welcome to the forum, I see that was your first post.
Driverman930
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- Sep 29, 2018
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To the best of my knowledge the Gimbal Speed setting only affects the up/down movement of the camera and has no effect on side to side panning (yaw). Slowing the gimbal will smooth panning but only in the up/down axis.
The Spark gimbal is only TWO-AXIS compared to the 3-axis Mavic line. So the Spark gimbal can only stabilize the image for pitch and roll. The panning/yaw is stabilized digitally which leads to occasionally stuttering motion artifact. The Spark's processor and memory just aren't sufficient to process all that video data and add stabilization too. They dumbed down the 1080 sensor to 720 resolution but the problem persists. We are hoping the next generation Spark (or its replacement) will have 3-axis gimbal or more processing power.
The earlier post from Northwood Mediaworks gives great advice for best dealing with these limitations.
Happy flying
The Spark gimbal is only TWO-AXIS compared to the 3-axis Mavic line. So the Spark gimbal can only stabilize the image for pitch and roll. The panning/yaw is stabilized digitally which leads to occasionally stuttering motion artifact. The Spark's processor and memory just aren't sufficient to process all that video data and add stabilization too. They dumbed down the 1080 sensor to 720 resolution but the problem persists. We are hoping the next generation Spark (or its replacement) will have 3-axis gimbal or more processing power.
The earlier post from Northwood Mediaworks gives great advice for best dealing with these limitations.
Happy flying
Thanks, been just watching and reading for the most part.
I did find you can adjust the gimbal speed and I lowered mine which was better when going from horizon to looking down. Played a around a little with the camera exposure settings as well as the camera's light sensor seems to be very center weighted.
