How to become a great aerial videographer... and out shine other people...

Warning you should take the title with a pinch of salt... On paper everyone has the potential to become a great pilot but it really comes down to becoming arsed with the work of learning the features and practicing your flying skills...And being able to quickly move or set up the drone and camera for a particular look or angle...

To begin you are gonna have to practice your drone flying skills indoors... This means using a toy drone to learn what's up and down, whats left and right in the opposite direction to you and the other way the drone is facing... Or at the very least, fly indoors without crashing the drone inside...
Fine motor skills comes at a price of practicing for a long time in close quarters...
Much like the skills and reactions of playing asteroids in a arcade game... The aerial videographer needs to negotiate the complex environment of his surroundings...

One example is to fly through a series of complex obstacles that baffle and confuse the viewer...
Its fairly easy if you fly slowly through objects and things... but this requires a combination of flying FVP style with line of sight for extra judgement...
But this is only one style of filming, And if not careful you'll end up clipping the wall and the edges with your propellers, just for a 10 second shot... "Threading the needle shot" still looks impressive and does stand out... But in my opinion , it can only be done  sparingly as I dont think the whole video could be carried  on this one trick pony...

The basic tools  for the drone videographer is his movements in relation to the landscape or the subject he is following...
A basic "orbit shot" is a great way to transition the front facing shot to the side profile... Or to turn the light around as you fly in a circle for a landscape... In fact the moving light trick is what I often do to lengthen the clip and to reveal the landscape in general...
In certain circumstances the orbit can evolve the follow tacking shot... Usually tracking a person is difficult enough to follow... But if I overshoot someone I can often turn this mistake by orbiting around the subject... I call this a "Lasso Shot"... as the subject is traveling and I'm trying get ahead to capture the front profile before he is too far away...

The next is the "rising shot" which again is a basic one dimensional move... But along with camera gimble tilt the landscape seems to warp when both lift and camera tilt are moved in the right way...
When performed correctly, you can move the gimble tilt and drone lift  and descend with great visual appeal... Another appealing factor is the ground when traveling at a steady pace...
Capturing the moving ground at high speed is quite mesmerizing... As you use higher frame rates you can get a great moving canvas effect with flying over the floor...

To execute a descending shot and skim off the floor with gimble movements is quite a beautiful shot in itself... I am often on the beach and this move on a wide boring landscape can look great... ( be careful of sudden bumps and sharp rising objects)
Practicing this means you'll have to set a distance before you'll crash land on the floor... I usually set a 5 -10 meter limit before the drone automatically trys to land... Practicing often means getting comfortable with rising and lowering with gimble movements so that the video looks smooth as possible, when skimming the floor then rising the drone...
Once you've perfected this, the next stage is to put both orbit and lift and decent together... whether its a "lasso maneuver" with a lift or a descending point of interest orbital shot... You'll soon find you are hand stretching your fingers and distorting them to get the right movement.. A bit like twister for your fingers, you'll find with practice you can make the camera move to how you want it...
If not it takes a while for you to get the camera movement right... Another thing to practice is the speed of which you can do a orbit or lift or decent... You can try to limit your maneuvers to a set time, by recording one minuet while trying to orbit or rising point of interest...
This will hopefully tidy up your shot while quicken up your pacing for a viewer friendly result...
The 1 minuet rule, helps to match your footage to music as most instagram movies are usually 1 minuet... While reducing very long landscape shots for those never ending drone footage...
Being able to quicken your movements will often help you to position and spontaneously fly round the subject...

Micro movements can often be seen as the drone or pilot trys to correct the drone... Setting the brakes or attitude to a lower value will help iron out the movement corrections when following or adjusting orbit speeds... Although the rudder still continues to be very sensitive especially when attempting a orbit maneuver...

I like to lower the exponential values to get smoother turns, I found that lowering the EXPOS and the braking gives me slower smoother turns with the drone sliding in the corners to reduce gimble wobble during the process of the drone performing a fast turn...
If you are going fairly fast with quick precise movements around objects or subjects at close quarters you will find that the settings on your camera for cinematic 24fps or 30fps., can often make the

camera view look like there is a drop in frames or a strobing flicker book quality to your footage...
I tend to film now in 60FPS, so what I lose in display resolution, I gain in video clarity for action and movement shots, as motion blur takes away the appeal of high speed action... see my last blog on the reason why I use higher frame rates and instead of trying to film with cinematic techniques...

Most drone pilots are equipped to the regular up, down, forwards and backwards movements... But to stand out, I try not to edit short ten second clips and what seems like clip after clip of high altitude landscapes...
You can film the most perfect beaches or beautiful landscapes ever... But that footage is likely to be glossed over by viewers because its just a long boring clip...

I personally like to showcase my pilot skills by maneuvering high and low altitudes in one go or long following shots with a orbit on moving subjects... Taking account of where the light source is and make it fit to a piece of music...

I like to think I stand out in my own right when I make Drone videos as I employ tips and visual tricks to draw-in the punters... Using parallax and mesmerizing flying angles with high speed chases as I fly in-between the landscape and the subject to get the maximum appeal with-in a certain time limit...

In the end it comes down to what looks good to you... and don’t be afraid to edit out the mistakes to get the best Compilation of the drone footage of that session... I started out with lots of edit cuts with lots of reject maneuver footage but eventually, with practice you end up with options rather then reject footage when you practice flying regularly...

The nightmare of a disconnection in mid flight

The nightmare of disconnection of a drone in mid flight can be harrowing experience... Lately I've seen many people complaining that the side lead of the mavic pro, which connects to the phone and charger,  has left the phone with a disconnect message and a blank screen... ( it can be fixed by alternatively using the USB connector underneath) (sorry but I've no spark or mavic air drone to relate to a disconnection story or fix)

I had a awkward disconnect Story, in the middle of a flight in high winds with the potential of a kite surfer to get tangled in the propellers...
To lose a drone in the trees is one thing but to lose it out in the sea seems more dangerous...

Even with "refresh" or the DJI scheme to replace a broken drone with their one year warranty... The drone needs to be recovered to begin the process of even getting repairs...


I haven't had the experience to report on this as I know the aircraft will be flown in open areas and more or less I took a chance of not going for a "Refresh" scheme...
Already from the stand point of flying above water I knew I had to put some protocols in place to avoid a "wet landing"...

For the start I guess my drone has more of a chance of surviving with a reserve battery power... Thats why I only fly to 50% to allow for high winds and emergencies... Also from my experience of flying my Inspire drone... a shallow discharge cycle has proven to keep the battery Cells at a reasonable level... Meaning the low possibility of a broken cell error even with temperatures as low as a few degrees C in the winter time...

Another thing is the air its self can be corrosive...  As many people in the past including myself assembled a inspire 1 drone on the beach... The air somehow tarnishes the contacts and prevent electrical contacts with the camera view...
The black screen of death was a symptom of film building  on the contacts on my X5 camera... A quick rub of isopropanol on the gimbles contacts seem to clear the problem... I now tend to assemble the aircraft at the car park or before even getting to the beach to avoid past errors... This includes adding the USB lead to the controller to avoid he same thing to the USB connections...

But no amount of preparing could avoided the disconnection  I had with the crystal-sky tablet and the mavic pro setup on the last session...

To begin the crystal-sky for some reason seems ok with the DJI go4 app with all of the systems working ok...

Originally I brought the Tablet to enhance my inspire pro setup, using the DJI go app... I can only account for my own user experience but the system has a slight lag on the camera view and the overall picture seems to drop frames during pan shots... The camera view seems to struggle using the older drone system in DJI go...

The Crystal-sky has a better connection with the DJI go4 app... with a near perfect low lag camera view... Dji seems to advertise that the connection lag is lower then any other smart phone or tablet connection... My own experience an confirm this when I brought my DJI tablet in Hong kong with only a mavic pro to test this... I could do action follow shots of wake boarding with ease...

Taking the tablet to the UK to fit on my inspire rig was a different story... To this day I think there is a processor bottle-neck that causes a slight lag on the older DJI go system... In the end I had to admit defeat and reside the crystal-sky to only used on my secondary controller for the inspire platform... ( a non critical camera view for video  or photo capture not for piloting )
( NOTE: I did briefly try to attach third party apps to the crystal-sky to allow litchi to control the drone)

Still determined to keep the crystal-sky I reverted the tablet to the mavic system and took it out for the kite surfing action this week... only the display disconnected and never returned... Usually disconnecting the USB lead and reattaching it would fix things (after telling it to join dji go4 app for the one time only prompt)
Even rebooting the tablet would allow the camera view to return... Sadly it didn't reconnect... I would of used my iphone to see if it was a fundamental android system or a lead problem...

But Thought better to bring up the drone above kite height to try pushing the "Return to home" button...
I could see display of the controller the distance was shortening... Despite people in the forums telling me that I could of use line of sight to navigate home... I thought it was a good opportunity to investigate what cause the disconnect...

This meant taking my eyes off the drone for a long while... By then the direction for the drone was lost at 1000ft...



It seems wise to basically set the return home height to 30m just about kite height and to trust the system to directly fly back rather then reestablish line of sight and returning home by eye... Considering the time factor would be longer doing it old school of locating it on the horizon and trying to judge by eye or by controller telemetry on where its going...
I landed the aircraft and re-examined the link and sure enough the camera view for the crystal-sky tablet returned...

Its hard to say what disconnected and continued to blank out the screen... But I can assume that the initial fault may lay in the custom mount I have for the Tablet... The USB C connector is at the bottom making it easy for my chest to rub against it... I can only guess that a software glitch makes it hard for the Android sysem to reattach the video link from a distance...

Many people have complained that the Android system isn't a perfect one... But even if DJI was to do a IOS version of a drone tablet... The licenses or collaboration of different companies involved would be very expensive, plus overheating would still be a issue...

Its a shame and there in lays the problem Apple dont do bright screens and the first bright screen DJI uses a inferior  operating system.... The Android system, to me seems like a adhoc system where phone manufactures and software programmers have a blank slate...
This blank slate maybe a good thing but when you pile on top, background processes and many different variable apps that keeps tabs with the internet and data logging... The fast processor soon gets bogged down...
And with DJI Go4 being a processor intensive App, its likely somethings gonna give... (in the form of a crash or camera lag or a number of undocumented glitches...)

Ive experienced this myself when I loaded my Crystal-sky with extra crap to allow third party apps to work...
I soon got rid of this, as DJI go was a mess with the extra things I added... And finally disable every and all unknown apps to get the broadcast system to work for DJI go4... The system still glitches in Broadcast mode via face book through a wifi 4G router but its much better... (however its still lags on the DJI inspire drone)
Not doubt I'll brush off this disconnection and continue to use the crystal-sky on less dangerous uses like landscapes and probably non sport related drone flying...After all its hard to brush off a expensive drone tablet when your not sure the cause of the disconnection other then a dodgy lead...

Frame rates and how to fool your self that your the greatest cameraman in the world...

This subject has been on the back burner as I think it interconnects the holistic way I see things to the way I game, and to the reason why I think my action videos are improving...

Let me explain, The movies and TV have been gradually been increasing frame rates resulting in a better understanding how an action scene is more crisp and clear during a fight scene or a chase scenario...
Its only when The lord of the rings film "The Hobbit" claim to put higher frame rates to allow the audience to see every detail of every movement... Somehow it had both positive and negative reactions to the overall presentation... As most people remember the good old days when 24 frames per second was the only technology that captures cinematic movement...

Eventually There were technical difficulties that presented itself through the median of television... 24 frames limited the clarity of the new screens...Bandwidth allowed higher frame rates and data for luminescence and Color detail...
Take gaming for example, the use of 24 frames refresh rate would be just terrible, to any self respecting first person shooter... Why?, Because when the senses are at their sharpest in a combat situation... A slow refresh rate would be the equivalent of a slow flick-book Movie that's hard to follow as it looks unnatural... Your combat instincts wont trust your eyes or hardware as the enemy jump cuts through the combat arena...

But a crisp clear fast frame rate isn't always needed, In a car race you wont need to have the landscape to be clear all the time.. As your brain would only need to see whats important... Game makers tend to put motion blur on car races to get the sense of movement and to mimic the tunnel effect which helps in some circumstances judge virtual distances... As the parallax effect is often needed to perceive speeds... ( the motion of foreground and background in relation to your overall movement)         The brain tends to filter out the information as motion blur to allow whats really important for the task that's involved... Its probably what most people complained about in the "Hobbit" movie as some motion blur would of been needed for the audience to focus on what important in the action movie... But instead the crisp clear action looked like a speeded up action scene... Which didn't sit well for people who are used to the cinema format...


The reason Why I mention this is that Droners have the same problem of, dare I say it... But to mismatch the Frame rate to the purpose of the shot... Including my self...
I feel I need to mention that Cinematic shots had their day back when old reels of celluloid flickered on the screens...
But over the years we've been spoon fed faster frame rates on our televisions for decades... So why would we want to dial the frame rate down to a refresh rate that no self respecting gamer would want to have...?

The Key word for mismatching is" Cinematic"... While its nice to blanket all types of drone footage with cinematic... Cheese... I feel the overuse of this word has put everyone to blindly set heir controls to Only have motion blur for every God dam thing...
To me, I started questioning my quality of film making as I viewed the playback...
Now dont get me wrong, Motion blur is a good thing for focusing your attention to something...

Take photography, we can stir the observer to a subject if we put a halo of blurriness around a subject... It's called Bokeh!!! It enhances the subject and make it artistic, as the sharp image is what our eyes are drawn to...
I guess in the same vain as artistic Motion blur can be the same... But When a bunch of Photographers trying to tell you to motion blur your video... For one reason to ignore them is because they are just photographers, whose traditions with the old ways of shooting film since the 1940's...  Its not always the wise choice... And rules are meant to be broken so that we can at least grow...

In this case I think a higher frame rate, especially in follow action can be done...
On the premise that crisp detail in a action sequence is more important then the artistic ways of old cinema... 
Think of the viewer  experiencing the drone footage... a process of which can make the viewer wonder his eye all around because he is a passive observer... There is no concentration involved to blur out the scene, unlike what the pilot is experiencing at the time of his flight...

Unlike the car game the presentation isn't engaging enough,  motion blur filters out the information especially when the landscape is presented as a moving picture... Photographers sometimes like to pixel-peep and see all the pictures to help determine the quality of the camera... A slow moving landscape picture that's high above the land needs to be nice and clear with little motion blur...

But Action shots for me, needs to be at a higher frame rate... Because I believe the drone action follow footage can have the best of both worlds...

Consider crystal clear image of the subject along with the landscape that surrounds him... The camera varys in distance to the subject, as the drone follows and chases the action...
 Its only the ground that needs to present motion blur... and from experience flying closer to the ground at 60FPS looks a lot better then at 30FPS or lower...

I personally find that 60FPS represents the same kind of perception of time as our eyes and hardware to our brains, then the mechanical systems of yesterdays Cinema...

You can film cinematically in 24 fps for a 4K resolution as some drones have limits to 4K at higher frame rates... But since I post to you tube and many online video websites... The quality usually down scales to HD... Only the higher costing drones such as the inspire 2 or the P4P have 4k at 60 FPS...

Its likely the next mavic pro may be able to adjust to the higher frame rates, but for now just know the limitations of a slower frame rate and how to work around it...
For example a slower frame rate of 24 FPS, I would use to film distances of 150ft or more... The motion blur seems ok when traveling at your top drone speed at long range...
Any distance below 150ft, then you lose some detail... Motion blur seems to be exaggerated more... So 60FPS just brings back clarity... Also if you shoot at 60FPS and break the 180 degree shutter rule ( shutter value at twice the frame rate) By increasing the shutter value then twice the frame rate you eventually increase your motion blur...
If you dont believe me then, I suggest you film your drone at high speed with both frame rate speeds, and see which you like the best... A little experimentation can help decide your preferences and perhaps obtain a type of film look that’s equal or better then the old ways...

To me 24 FPS is the old system that trys to fool people with its artistic limitations of Bokeh and motion blur... There’s little margin for error as a lower frame can not be slowed down but a higher frame rate can lengthen a short video, only at cost of increasing video memory... The new frame rates represents a better way of seeing things, sure you can still have motion blur and Bokeh but its at higher resolution and higher frame rates, we can see a reality that's closer to our own hardware, our eyes and brains then how we used to get by via the old ways of mechanical cinema...
If people mind so much of the "uncanny valley" of motion capture, then a new set of rules should be written about higher frame rates to maybe artificially capture motion blur in fight sequences and sport related scenes in film... Its still a relatively new science which was shot down harshly by the critics...

In a way technology is now matching our reality and that "virtual reality" will probably push the frame rates at higher speeds as the gaming world allows higher speeds for a realism that no other median can sofar offer,,, Its only when we see the sales figures of such displays and entertainment systems, the you can possibly see which direction technology is going... With that in-mind you will definitely have to reconsider your film settings to future proof your play-back format...

Weather Stuff, Or Stuff the weather...

Ok in case you haven't Looked outside lately , The weather in England has been horrendous lately... Britain has always been on the aerial borderlines of hot and cold... At the lower layers of the Atmosphere the "troposphere" jet streams like  temperature borderlines....
As high winds shoot faster in between the weather fronts causing streams or strips of wind pathways over the lower atmosphere or 5- 7 miles up...
As the world turns and the different large air masses of varying temperatures try to move... The overall movement is fluid-like and a jet stream forms a 200 mile an hour roadway about a quarter of the way down from either polar regions and another in the tropic region... A polar vortex or the atmosphere above the polar region (about 30 miles high), can effect the Jet stream... A strong jet stream can bring in warmer weather from the west... But a weak polar vortex can weaken the jet stream and make it buckle... ( In theory north Atlantic current can weaken the polar vortex..)

In the case of this week, England is right under the jets stream that buckled in favor for High pressure... The jet stream wriggles or buckles around like a global sized snake sometimes covering most of England over the space of a week and then moving hundred miles or so away (especially during winter time)... The polar jet stream is a particular nasty global snake as it maneuvers the weather pattern to allow high pressure from Scandinavia... The high pressure spins clockwise which has a cold wind stream from Russia blowing into England...

As its still classed as winter, the Arctic blast made us all feel like we were in the film "Day after tomorrow..." Where The freak flash of cold made us prisoners of the Snow... Winter jet streams seem to get worst as world temperatures fuel the jet streams and creates more extreme temperatures at the boarders of high and low pressure fronts... Fortunately the low pressure from Portugal and the tropics seem to slowly push the Scandinavian high pressure away...

Most of you maybe reading all of this and think whats it got to do with me?... well most droners would prefer to go out in mild weather... But with spring around the corner when the weather transitions to warmer weather... The jet stream can prolong the bad weather a little longer until it swings around... Low pressure turning anti clockwise generally from the tropics will bring nice mild weather while this weeks high pressure turning clock wise scooped Russian weather... No wonder why they are miserable, the cold will make anyone sad...

As a general rule, high pressure ( cyclone) should bring nice clear skies and no rain... And low pressure (cyclone) brings the crappy wet weather Or sucks the warm moisture to build up ultimately as rain if collected enough water vapor to turn into a big cloud formation... Using a barometer will help to determine the likelihood of good or bad weather by seeing if its the left or right of the mid point of 1013.25 hPa the mean pressure at sea level... 

However weather fronts do overlap each other and in the example of this week the low pressure over the high has cause the rain to fall and to freeze and drop down as snow... Most people will see it as freak weather but to me its interesting as a huge continent sized vacuum or pressurized area can hold sway over whether or not I can fly my drone this weekend or not...



To help you can get the general weather from the met office or usual mobile apps for your phone... also I personally like to monitor the barometric pressure too... Go into your app store and search for barometer... As most phones have a electronic barometer  ( my iphone has one ) its always nice to see the changes in pressure over the week... These huge pressure areas can move slowly and with a bit of luck allow you to get ahead of the weather and possibly predict the weather over the week... Anyway lets hope for better weather next week or at the very least flyable weather...
Generally high pressure is needed for good weather but when you prolong the weather front as long as this past week during winter time, you end up with a short term nice sky before the clockwise rotation scoops in the cold from a colder country and makes a large corridor for the freezing air to blanket the country in low temperatures... Think of it as a party guest that's out stayed his welcome... Its ok in the summer when High pressure comes and stays as most global temperatures are warm and the weather pattern draws in another country's weather (hopefully from a warmer country)... But in the winter when the country adjacent leaves its cold clammy climate on your doorstep, then its a week long winter snow fest for the kids and probably a nightmare for the rest of us...