Litchi Waypoint Mission with Gimbal on "POI Focus" : stutters

[webvan]

This is an extract from a Litchi Waypoint Mission using POI Focus tilt and it's not very pretty...
Am I doing something wrong or is the "stuttering" (left/right shake) visible below especially in the beginning due to the Spark having only a two-axis gimbal or to the way Litchi does things ? Would there be any such stuttering on an Air or an MP ?
Thanks

 

[Northwood Mediaworks]

I am just learning the ins and outs of Litchi, but safe to say the stutter could be attributed to a few different factors. I found that when flying curves its less "analog" than i would like, there are tiny incremental course adjustments going on. Then there's the bitrate at which the Spark is capable of capturing data, much lower than its larger cousins. And also, your video editor (that may not be a factor in your example) will potentially add some jitter if not used correctly. All of this applies to flying curves and yawing in Go4 also. One thing you can do to correct this is to use some stabilization in your editor. It will crop your FOV a little, but will improve the smoothness. Another suggestion, slow your flight down to a crawl, then speed it up in the editor later. This will allow for better data capture. The 2 axis gimbal does not help. I've seen Air and MP output that in some hands does stutter too... and they are three axis with higher bitrate / framerate capture. And wind can also be a factor.

Here's my first Litchi waypoint mission, I went super slow, used stabilization .... the sped up. I did not do it this time, but I often change to 59.94FPS and use FinalCut's interpolation to smooth things out too.

And my flight yesterday (first three minutes or so are waypoint mission) (real time, no stablization)

The spark's best strengths are ascend, straight ahead/reverse flight and sideways flight. I am saving up for a MP

 

[pmshop]

with the 2 axis gimbal of the Spark, that is expected.
Or, fly faster:

Mavic air is smoother.

 

[Northwood Mediaworks]

I was hoping pmshop would chime in! He has both. I might still go for the Air, but I want Occusync...

 

[Northwood Mediaworks]

with the 2 axis gimbal of the Spark, that is expected.
Or, fly faster:

Mavic air is smoother.

Can you share something slow (realtime) with greater than 70 degree turns? I am curious about the Air's ability to be smooth at lower speeds... plus I see you used 60fps, did you capture in 60 also?

 

[webvan]

Thanks for pitching in and for your tips. It was straight out of the camera in my example (just cut with a lossless editor) and it did indeed look like it could due to tiny incremental course adjustments in Litchi but then that would likely have an impact on the MA and MP too...although maybe their 3-Axis gimbal would smoothen them out.

@pmshop - is that from the Spark or Air ? I'm guessing the Air since there's none of the stuttering present in both NM's and my videos done with a Spark. "Flying Faster" makes it worse in my experience and even using MS Hyperlapse gives poor results due to the "stuttering".

 

[pmshop]

Thanks for pitching in and for your tips. It was straight out of the camera in my example (just cut with a lossless editor) and it did indeed look like it could due to tiny incremental course adjustments in Litchi but then that would likely have an impact on the MA and MP too...although maybe their 3-Axis gimbal would smoothen them out.

@pmshop - is that from the Spark or Air ? I'm guessing the Air since there's none of the stuttering present in both NM's and my videos done with a Spark. "Flying Faster" makes it worse in my experience and even using MS Hyperlapse gives poor results due to the "stuttering".

To Northwood,
I will work on realtime long distance videos.
They tend to be long though.
it is 60fps by upscaling.

To webvan,
That is the Spark.
I'm not sure but I may have ran the video through Mercalli image stabilization.
Slept since August '18

MS Hyperlapse stinks in my opinion.

 

[webvan]

With a Spark, wow ! Which app did you use to speed up the video ?

 

[pmshop]

3 three programs from ProDad:
ReSpeedr - adjusts fast and slow mode
Mercalli - stabilization
ProDrenalin - more for sports cams - lens correction, horizon correction, basic video editing.

 

[webvan]

Thanks ReSpeedr looks interesting. I use Filmora for editing but speedramps are a pain to do.

Wow look what Mercalli did :

 

[pmshop]

Thanks ReSpeedr looks interesting. I use Filmora for editing but speedramps are a pain to do.
Wow look what Mercalli did :

You are getting the hang of it!
You can speed up with filmora as well AND upscale the video.

Here is realtime - zero stabilization or any enhancements.
Again, from the DJI Spark:

 

[webvan]

Ah that's more like it, stuttering galore ;-)
Mercalli maxes out my old i7 but I guess you can let it run on your downtime. I wonder if it would go faster with a graphics card.
Filmora is ok to speed up I guess but you can't do progressive ramping or at least I don't know how to do it. I just cut the parts I want to accelerate.

 

[pmshop]

Ah that's more like it, stuttering galore ;-)
Mercalli maxes out my old i7 but I guess you can let it run on your downtime. I wonder if it would go faster with a graphics card.
Filmora is ok to speed up I guess but you can't do progressive ramping or at least I don't know how to do it. I just cut the parts I want to accelerate.

Mercalli is CPU only...no GPU assist.
I have Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere and would LOVE to learn the progressive time ramp.
I have tried with Filmora but the help always leads me to that darn "remote control" time video tutorial.

 

[webvan]

By progressive I was thinkig about what DJI do for the Dronie or the Asteroid on the Air. There must be tutorials on YT somewhere ;-)

Ok so CPU it is !

 

[pmshop]

By progressive I was thinkig about what DJI do for the Dronie or the Asteroid on the Air. There must be tutorials on YT somewhere ;-)

Ok so CPU it is !

Yes, that is exactly what I am looking for!

 

[Northwood Mediaworks]

When there's a will there's a way, if you cant afford a drone upgrade! I use Mercalli now and then too... most NLEs have some sort of stablization, I've used Final Cut, Vegas, ShotCut, Resolve, they all work.

Thanks pmshop as always...

 

[pmshop]

Anytime.
Although I own 2x Spark and 2X Mavic Air, I still get emails of what y'all are chatting about over here

 

[webvan]

Have you run the same mission with a Spark and an Air by any chance ? Would be great to see the raw footage if you have to see if it's worth an upgrade for this type of use. I processes the Mercalli stabilized file in MS Hyperlapse and it's not good. Now trying a speed ramp on Filmora but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[pmshop]

Have you run the same mission with a Spark and an Air by any chance ? Would be great to see the raw footage if you have to see if it's worth an upgrade for this type of use. I processes the Mercalli stabilized file in MS Hyperlapse and it's not good. Now trying a speed ramp on Filmora but I'm not holding my breath.

No, haven't ran a similar mission for both for comparison.
Need to do that one day.
Once you use Mercalli, that is all you need.
To me, MS Hyperlapse is worthless.

 

[webvan]

I was looking at MS Hyperlapse to speed up the videos of the waypoint missions actually.
In the meantime I found a good tutorial on speed ramping using Vegas Pro :

And used it to produce this :

Still pretty "wobbly" :-(