I am close to getting a Y6 with GoPro and T-2D gimbal in the air, and I'm hoping to eventually get some great footage of friends on mountain bikes. To that end, I have some questions for videographers.
- What flight mode do you use? From watching videos online, I infer that it's common to use some equivalent of Loiter with Simple Mode. This would allow panning of the shot without affecting the drone's trajectory.
- What time of day is best? I would think sunrise and sunset would have less wind, but is the light a problem? Daytime would have better light, but how much wind does it take to make shooting pointless?
- Is there any use to scripting a shot using a mission, or is manual the only way to get decent footage of a moving target?
- Is Follow Me mode useful for getting good action shots?
- What software, if any, do you use to remove vibration artefacts from the video?
Thanks in advance. Looking forward to getting this camera up in the air and having some great footage to share.
Nick
Replies
This thread now contains a number of very helpful responses on this subject. Thanks to everyone who commented. I'll try to remember to update this once I have some experience in the area.
Coaxial setups and GoPro footage don't get along too well.
Because of the bottom propeller arcs, you are forced to mount your gimbal close to the aircraft center, and it will be hard to keep both the aforementioned props and the landing gear out of your camera fov. Plus, using 6 motors to lift 100 grams of GoPro is a waste of energy. Unless you use extremely small motors, a Hexa/Y6 is for carrying a handycam or a mirrorless.
For the Hero, build yourself a "deadcat" quad.
Vibration-wise, it's best to eliminate them on the aircraft. Use better bearings (ABEC5 or ABEC7) instead of the crap chinese defaults, play with vibration-analisys tools (I use my Iphone and an app called Vibration) and small pieces of tape on the rotor bells to smooth them out, and stay away from paddle-blade props - use thin electric ones for jerk-free videos.
Also, try to get a generic gimbal instead of one that will lock the naked Hero at its exact CoG, so you can play around with adding filters. I never shoot daylight footage without an ND4 or ND8 filter, and even morning/evening shots are through a CP filter.
I don't know your flight skills, but after almost three years of flying multirotors I rarely get out of stabilize, and only use loiter if I have to take a break to eyeball the scene looking for upcoming action elsewhere. Loiter or pos-hold will always have a negative effect on image quality when there's even a small amount of wind. Better to correct your trajectory from the sticks instead of letting the GPS jerk the craft around.
And last, if you don't have very smooth fingers on the RC, yaw-ing for pans will ruin alot of footage. Better get a 3-axis gimbal and set pan in follow-frame mode to smooth it out.
Thanks for that last paragraph. Tiny yaw twitches (some wind, mostly my piloting) have turned some of my perfectly good videos with otherwise smooth piloting into amateur-looking junk. I'm hoping the expo settings on the transmitter will help. Here's a related article:
http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/adjust-yaw-sensitivity?commentId=...
Yeah, a Y6 might be overkill for carrying a GoPro, but it's n
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Yeah, a Y6 might be overkill for carrying a GoPro, but it's nice to have spare capacity so I can try other things. From other posts here I'm hopeful that with a 3DR Y6, T-2D, and GoPro I can keep landing gear and props out of the FOV.
Interesting to hear about yaw being a problem. I'll try what FlyingBuddha suggested here and use expo to smooth things out.
I definitely don't have the flying skills to get good footage in Stabilize yet, so I'll be relying on things like Pos Hold, or Loiter if the Pos Hold transitions are jerky.
I've heard lots of ways to fight vibration now, both at the camera and at the motor. I'll see if I can find an Android equivalent of your iPhone app.
Nick, I'm on the exact same learning curve at the moment, and I've just started on a long list of video/still training missions now that my basic flight and mode skills are up to it. I'm working on both sport video, landscapes, and terrain generation. I'd love to keep this thread going and pick up some tips and tricks.
I've had some good luck with scripted missions, especially using ROI. You can get some interesting shots drifting almost directly away from an ROI, it gives a nice smooth, slow yaw. Transitions have been junk for me, so I'll have to get smarter about that. I almost always fly in the morning if it will work with the subject, since wind and light are both better, but it's possible to get some segments of usable video in 5-10mph wind with my little IRIS (there's a lot of bang in just a few seconds of great aerial footage). I've also learned to fly lower and slower without too much horizon in the frame to make for more interesting shots, and frame shots just as I would with a regular camera. I'm psyched for PosHold as well, it's mapped to one of my switches right now but I haven't had a chance to test it. The slow pan up/down from a stable position, with yaw OR cam tilt but not both, seems like a really effective shot from the examples I've seen online.
Good luck, I'd like to hear about your progress.
Justin,
I've thought about mapping, but not terrain generation. I would like to try that someday, but I imagine it takes some serious (i.e. expensive) software, and possibly something better than a GoPro...?
I can picture a shot of ROI moving almost directly away from the subject, but slightly to the side... I will try that one. I'd also like to try setting the ROI slightly on the opposite side of the subject from the closest point in the flight line, so that as the copter drifts by the subject slides slowly from one side of the frame to the other. Could give an interesting parallax effect. Pan with yaw from a stable position sounds good too.
Thanks for the tips about flying low to keep the horizon from taking up too much of the frame. I hadn't thought about that.
Now if 3DR would just ship my T-2D gimbal adapter, I'd be able to get at it! :)
RE: terrain generation, I'm through with my 2nd attempt at a GoPro/ReCap360/Blender stack, both abject failures. I'm a GIS and mapping guy and well used to working with huge LiDAR datasets and manual orthorectification, so the idea of getting little chunks of high-res terrain from just a bunch of aerials is juicy. It looks like ReCap is going to be very stringent with photo prep. GoPro is fine, although using Wide over Ultrawide angle is probably a good idea. At least 50% overlap might work for me next time, with more planimetric and fewer oblique images. There's a whole terrain group here already though, so I'll keep subsequent comments on that to the aerial videography topic.
If you initially have trouble with intermittent jello with the Tarot, just make sure the firmware for both the board and the motors is current. That solved all my initial camera stability issues.
Yeah, without FPV I have to rely on pre-planned missions more to get the footage I want, so I'm hoping to get the most from every mode I can.
I want to preface that I'm mostly interested in the aerial mapping side of things, but I have learned a couple of things in the last year with video.
-I mostly use Loiter or AltHold, but have used Auto before to record myself and daughter running along a path. The videos came out good on straight aways, but looked bad when ever the Y6 had to execute a turn (This could be fixed with different PIDs).
- I agree, its best to remove all vibrations from the platform first. BALANCE Props/motors and the use of a gimbal will take out almost, if not all unwanted vibrations.
-I have my expos set ~35%. This gives me a nice "fluid" motion when yawing and rolling (side stepping). You may have to play around with this to get a nice feel.
- FPV helps to frame your subject.
Hm, I can see how Auto might not result in good footage when it has to make a turn - the code's goal isn't to make transitions that look good on video, is it? Were you using Follow Me, or did you set up a mission to fly the path at a particular speed?
Okay, so I will have to learn to balance props after all. So be it. ;)
Just looked up "expo". I like the idea of tweaking that to make turns smoother. I guess it's a tradeoff in responsiveness, but for shooting you'd definitely want it less sensitive to small movements.
I can't imagine trying to shoot footage without FPV. I have the GoPro hooked up to my video Tx, so I should be able to see exactly what I'm recording.
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