I want to first thank all of you who have weighed in on the issue I have been having. To recap, I acquired a Phantom 3 Professional quadcopter (“drone”) and found that the video material I created was “jerky” when viewed on my computer. This discovery has led to what can only be described as a lengthy, frustrating, humiliating, expensive, and—of course—educational process.
Given that I seem to have found a solution (with much help…), I thought it might be helpful for others to provide a fairly detailed description of the process, including my attempt to respond to many suggestions by contributors to this forum and elsewhere. So let me begin by providing information on the hardware and software that was in place at the beginning of this episode.
I own a Mac Pro, model 5.1, purchased in mid-2011. At the time I began, it had, as its CPU, this configuration: 2 x 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon. The RAM consisted of 8GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC. And the video card was: ATI Radeon HD 5570 1024GM.
The software involved throughout was:
QuickTime Player 10.4
Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1
The Phantom 3 Professional app used for guidance and photography was the latest version as of July of 2015 and the firmware for the controller and drone had been updated to the latest version at this same time.
Mac users I am sure have become used to seeing a “preview” of digital images by clicking on the icon of the file and pressing the space bar. When I did this, I saw the “jerky” motion associated with the video clip. I next tried to open the file with QuickTime Player and got the same result. Next I imported the file to Final Cut Pro X (FCP-X) and also got the same result. At this point I began to reach out to others to see if they could offer suggestions on what to do to address this.
At the same time, I also was attempting to change the settings available to me for how the video material was created by the drone camera. For those unfamiliar with this, it is possible to shoot video in 4K or 1080 and, in each case, you also can vary the frames per second. In addition, it is possible to create the material in the .MOV or .mp4 format.
Despite various efforts to test out these options, I saw very little difference in the video output on my computer. By this time I was beginning to receive suggestions within this forum on what might be causing the problem. Before I get to that, however, let me also mention that I attempted to view this same material on other Apple devices. I discovered that it could be viewed on an iPhone 6 Plus, an iPad mini, and a MacBook with no problem whatsoever.
Given the computer specs described for my Mac Pro above, this was more than a little disconcerting. So I was beginning to think that the problem had to do with the computer itself. At the same time, others within the forum were less convinced and thought that this was a software-related issue.
For purposes of self-flagellation, let me first cover the path taken with the mistaken assumption that this was hardware-related. As it turns out, this was a costly lesson…
The reason I started to consider this as the culprit was the difference in video cards between my Mac Pro and the Macbook laptop I used for comparison viewing. The video card in my Mac Pro appeared to be less powerful. Yet the CPU and RAM comparisons were not all that different. Therefore I began to investigate video card options.
After reading several reviews, I discovered multiple recommendations for the Other World Computing web site. I reviewed the video cards available for my computer and then began a “chat” with one of their technicians. I raised the possibility that 8GB of RAM may be the issue but he thought it was more likely that it was the video card. So, nearly $500 later, I found myself installing a new video card. (AMD Radeon HD 7950 3072 MB). And this made no difference whatsoever in terms of the “jerky” video issue.
At this point I returned to my first thought about increasing the RAM. So, nearly $100 later, I found myself increasing my RAM to 16 GB. And, as you have probably guessed, this did not solve the problem. I should add that Russ H and Ian R. Brown predicted that the hardware changes would not work and that I was throwing money away. While I could try to return these items, I decided that keeping them would serve as appropriate punishment for the “learning” that I experienced along this route… [Sound of forehead slapping at this point]
The alternate path was one looking more closely at a software solution. Along the way, multiple suggestions were made and I will attempt to list each and the outcome that resulted:
Tony Gay suggested I try to use the “Stabilization” settings in FCP X and I did this but didn’t see much, if any improvement.
Karsten Schluter offered a “stubborn” position on shutter speed. TomBrown was in agreement, it appears. If I understand the issue, the point is that using a neutral density filter would result in smoother video during daylight conditions. I must confess that this was going to be my next step but I haven’t taken it because I think I have a found a solution without doing this.
I don’t recall who said this but some people prefer .mp4 to .MOV and I did shoot in both but found no difference in the video quality. I should say, however, that I have wound up shooting in .mp4 but cannot be certain whether this was a contributing factor to the ultimate solution. For now let’s just chalk this up to “superstitious behavior.”
There were calls for my providing details on my “workflow” and also to upload a small video file so others could see the problem themselves. I suspect the details of my workflow may have been judged as too sparse but they were basically these:
- Use drone to capture video and do this with numerous changes to the settings
- Take video material from the drone and move it to my computer
- Import the video material into FCP-X
As you might expect, the details not listed have to do with which settings were used to produce the video material in the first place. It was only later that I attempted to change the functionality of FCP-X.
As for the upload of the video material, I had intended to do this but decided against it once I discovered that I could view the material on other Apple devices without an issue. So this made it clear the problem was on my computer. Unfortunately, I pursued a hardware fix that results in a costly “lesson” before I came to a software fix that worked.
The subject of codec change was raised by TomWheel and Ian R. Brown. This proved to be the key to the issue for me. Most seem to have known that the video material coming from the drone was coming from the H.264 codec. It was recommended that I convert to the ProRes 422 codec. And I was told that this could be done within the FCP-X application.
I should mention that I have been doing video editing for several years and never had to deal with a codec issue before now. Perhaps everything was being produced with a codec that either iMovie and, later, FCP-X could handle without making such a change.
But once I imported material into FCP-X and I used the “Create optimized media” option that Ian R. Brown explained, everything appeared naturally smooth!
So, to sum up, here is what I am now using to produce usable video material that can be edited:
- All video material is being shot in .mp4 format at 4K (24fps)-the highest setting possible.
- The resulting material is imported into FCP-X and then…
- I used the conversion option to make sure I have the ProRes 422 codec in play.
As most, if not all of you may appreciate, I suspect there is more I will need to do in order to create video material in other lighting conditions other than the outdoor situation I have had for all this. And I haven’t given up on some other suggestions about trying to install a SSD to speed up the computer and also using a neutral density filter.
But let me just offer my sincere thanks for everyone who has been trying to guide me through this morass. If there is any further interest in seeing a short clip of what I have been working with, please let me know.
