Can this be done?

Is it possible to take a video, instead of pictures, and analyse this to create the NDVI media?

If not, how could it be made?

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  • Thanks for the responses. Lots of great advice.

    The reason I ask is for my next thought.

    Could you have a "Live" feed from the camera processing the image in realtime into NDVI image. 

    Could you connect the camera upto the processing software on the laptop. Move the camera over the crop, and have the image instantly processed. 

    This doesn't neccesariy involve a drone, it could be vehicle mounted for now, to avoid the creation of maps stage, but is essentially;

    a camera, a cable, a laptop, and a program refreshing every time an image comes through or as the video feed records.

    As the NDVI media is created, put into software that creates map of field according to gps position.

    If a drone were to be used, surely the media could be sent to the laptop via wifi etc

    This would mean-

    • Instant created images
    • No lag between image capture and crop prescription
    • Check out the Pix4D site, they just came out w/ a beta app that will do a form of this.  

      The problem with a live feed doing this is you don't want anything messing up your telemetry while the drone is flying & it's a TON of data.  This newer app will give you a rapid rendering (after you fly) to make sure you have everything.  A full rendering takes several hours.  Try an NDVI camera too.

      I would think the quicker the result the less accurate it's going to be (for the rendering).  

  • If you stuck on using video you could use 1 out of 20 frames or something like that. First try something. Look at one frame of your video and do you have the clarity that you can get from a still? As others have stated it is more processing because you are processing several images. Example I take a picture ether every .5 seconds or 3 seconds depending on the camera. At 10 meg a shot that is 200 meg to 1.2 gig a minute. The same resolution of 20 frames per second would be 12 gig a minute. Now this is just a example and the actual number stated would be very different. But the point is a video will take more processing time. In my experience I spend too much time at the PC as it is processing and always looking to spend more time flying. Thus I have 4 patents pending that will hopefully change the game altogether.

    Burke 

    • Typically you only need 1 frame each 3 to 5 seconds to cover a field nor a composite image.  Using a video will generate alot of additional data to process without any benefit and could result in file sizes which will need special handling.  Useing time lapse can reduce the number of images.

    • For small jobs, I manually fly & film w/ a pic every 5 sec.  I can fill in with the video if I need to, taking it apart in photoshop to whatever FPS I need.  You can't geotag the film, you have to have GCP's.  

      Pix4D only supports doing this in 4K, and they just started it the other day.  I sent them a few seconds of 4K & it's not quite supported yet.  They still recommend pictures for best quality.  

  • A video is just a lot of still photos so I don't see why not. Just off the top of my head though it doesn't sound like a very good idea. There would be a lot more processing involved of all the extra frames of information for no advantage over one high resolution image that you can get by stitching together a series of stills. 

  • Latest Pix4D allows you to import video and process it into ortho and 3D. I have not had chance to do it myself though

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