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Drones offer a unproblematic and unique style to create amazing video footage. Nearly prosumer models at present feature 4K video, and pretty good autofocus, autoexposure, and car white balance. Merely there is a large deviation in the quality of video you lot become by just pressing the Record push in your flight app, and what you can create past capturing with the right accessories and settings so spending some time postal service processing.

Nosotros'll evidence you lot how yous can upward your game when it comes to drone videography. We'll use the popular Mavic Pro to highlight specific accessories and plug-ins of value, merely there are similar options for other prosumer models including the Phantom production line and the Spark. You'll accept to supply your ain story line and shot list, only we'll assistance you brand them a reality.

Setting Upward Your Drone for Video Capture

Kickoff you need to choose a resolution and color setting. For best results on the Mavic Pro and like drones, 4K resolution with D-Log equally your colour setting is the all-time bet. 4K, with proper post-processing, will look best on loftier-resolution displays, and D-Log provides the smoothest rolloffs in highlights after it is candy. The downsides of shooting this manner is you'll take large video files need to post-procedure them. If you desire to have something closer to instant gratification, so 2.7K resolution and D-Cinelike colour is probably your all-time option. Especially if you're shooting 4K, make sure and utilise a fast enough microSD card and then that you don't lose any frames.

You'll besides become to tweak the dissimilarity, saturation, and sharpness. If you lot're using D-Log, setting your contrast and saturation to -i gives the all-time raw cloth to work with. Due to a quirk in the Mavic Pro's noise reduction, setting sharpness to +1 in this case helps keep the NR from going overboard — and we'll employ our own, improved, dissonance reduction later on (Thanks to Matt Harris of the Flick Poets for all the work he did discovering this trick).

White balance is as well important. While auto white balance is good on the Mavic Pro, manually setting the white balance is of import if you need a consequent look throughout a prune, and to permit you to process the unabridged clip similarly once yous become to the reckoner. Typically, that means a fairly standard value betwixt 5500K and 6500K for well-lit scenes, but you may want to experiment with more radical settings for sunrise or sunset shots.

PolarPro's Cinema collection is a great option for anyone serious about pro-quality videoFinally, you'll almost certainly want to employ a filter. Cinematic video typically looks all-time when your shutter speed is half of your frame rate (for 4K 30fps, that means 1/60s). Since you can't close down the camera discontinuity on your Mavic or most other drones, you'll need to place a neutral density filter over the camera to accomplish that. PolarPro makes excellent ones, in 8x, 16x, and 32x (iii, 4 and v stops for those used to however camera measurements). If your drone natively picks a shutter speed of 1/1000s, for example, y'all can add a 16x ND filter and go about ane/60s (chiliad / 16 is about 60).

For a little richer colors, you lot tin use a combination filter that is both an ND filter and a polarizer. The but play tricks is that polarizers are sensitive to the management of the sun, so they work best if you lot're planning to fly in a consistent direction and place the filter and so the scene looks all-time when facing in that management.

Capturing Video

It isn't like shooting fish in a barrel to capture smooth video flying by hand, but with do it's possible. Fiddling with the controller settings to reduce the response of the drone and the gimbal can as well be quite helpful. If you lot want to practice flying without risking your drone, I've had expert success using the Zephyr flight simulator. Information technology provides quite an accurate simulation of nigh of the pop drones and controllers on the marketplace. If yous're going to fly your drone past paw, it's besides much easier to see what it sees if you lot apply a tablet instead of a smartphone. You may even want a hood so that you tin see the brandish more easily in bright light. DJI makes a bright display, but it merely works with the company's own software.

The video below is one I captured with my Mavic Pro in the Shan State of Myanmar flying freehand (and then I could find and follow some of the minor boats on the Lake), then the camera move isn't great. But you can encounter the output video quality afterwards post-processing winds upwards beingness very impressive for such a small camera and drone:

Fortunately for most of united states of america who aren't yet Summit Gun flyers, you can also pre-plan flight missions on your figurer or on your mobile device — setting waypoints, photographic camera angles, and other specifics in advance. There are several apps which let yous exercise this, merely my favorite is Litchi. It isn't gratis, but if you're serious about video it is a pocket-sized investment. Information technology'south available for both iOS and Android (and features a web interface equally well). It also has a large user community where yous can ask questions, and at that place are some first-class tutorial videos available at the Phantom Film School.

In between flying by hand and pre-programmed flights are DJI's ain canned "cinematic" shots. Y'all can zoom up and away from a subject, orbit them, or corkscrew slowly away, for example. These are well-crafted and provide a solid "pro" feel, but you chance having your footage look eerily like to the other zillion people who apply them.

Post-Processing Steps and Tips

There are a variety of options for custom LUTs for the Mavic ProIf you lot've shot your footage in D-Log, then every bit a minimum you'll need to convert it from its native done-out-looking state to something pleasing. That'due south done using a LUT (Await Upward Table) that can be plugged in to a video editor. Fortunately, there are a lot of custom LUTs already built for the Mavic Pro (and other popular drones). I've used two sets and bounce around between them, depending on which looks best to my eye for a detail project. They are Moving-picture show Poet's Mavic Pro D-Log LUT ($nine) and the Elektra LUTs from PolarPro ($30, available for a variety of drones).

Equally far every bit video editors go, if you have a Creative Cloud subscription, Premiere Pro does everything yous need and more than. If y'all are on Mac, Final Cut Pro X is an option. Nearly pop, particularly because yous can go an entry-level version for free, is DaVinci's Resolve. All three of these editors can make utilize of LUTs.

The step of getting your video's colors to await correct is called color correction, but after that comes color grading. Color grading involves any enhancements or "looks" that you lot desire to apply to your video. All of the tools nosotros mentioned have myriad options for doing and then. Even easier, i reason packages like Elektra provide a diversity of LUTs is that they take a "look" born to them, so you can practise a quick version of color grading just past choosing amidst them.

Premiere Pro gurus can adjust color using the Lumetri scopes, or you can simply tweak the sliders in the right panel

Along with correcting the color of your video footage, you lot'll desire to reduce the noise. There are racket reduction tools built in to all the major video editors, but for meliorate results you'll want to consider a dedicated plug-in, especially because of the inter-frame compression practical by the Mavic that produces a flickering expect. I apply Neat Video, along with the $9 custom profile for the Mavic Pro. If you're planning to share your video on YouTube information technology can do some of this for y'all, but typically will only output 1080p from its processing tools, even if you upload 4K.

Now you're all gear up. All that remains is the time-consuming process of rendering out your final video. Be patient. Unfortunately video rendering is one of those tasks that still uses the CPU. The more than cores, the ameliorate. Hopefully the final results will be worth it!

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