The DJI Mavic Pro is portable and powerful yet. But before taking off this compact drone,let’s set it firstly.
4K or 1080?
Actually, neither. After doing a lot of research on this subject, it appears that the best footage on the DJI Mavic Pro comes from recording in 2.7k at 30p.
It’s complicated, but basically true 4k video footage needs a bitrate of 100mps. The Mavic can only handle a 65mps bitrate, meaning the footage gets compressed, and doesn’t look as good.
The sweet-spot seems to be recording at 2.7k, which you can then downsample to 1080 for web, and it will still look better than shooting at 1080 directly from the drone.
Also, while the Mavic Pro can technically shoot video at 60 frames per second, it doesn’t look very good in practice. So make sure to keep it at 24p or 30p for the best looking footage.
Camera Profiles
If you aren’t planning to color-grade your video footage the default color profile settings work fine. However if you use color grading techniques or LUTs with software like Color Finale, you’ll want to adjust the color profile.
These are the settings I’ve found work best for me.
- Profile: CINELIKE
- Sharpness: -1
- Contrast: -1
- Saturation: 0
If you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say color grading or LUTS, here’s more information explaining the process.
Gimbal Tilt Speed
The default gimbal tilt/pitch speed (aiming the camera up or down) was moving too fast for me, so I slowed it down to 20 in the remote control settings. This helps you get smoother, more cinematic camera movements for your videos.
YAW Speed
The drone’s YAW is what controls its rotation left or right. I prefer to slow this down a bit, again for smoother footage. You can do this in advanced settings under “rudder control”. I changed mine from 0.25 to 0.20.
Intelligent Flight Modes
The Mavic Pro has 11 cool intelligent flight modes, software that helps fly the drone for you, to get different kinds of unique shots that are difficult when flying with full manual control.
To activate them, you need to go into the flight mode settings. You can then pause or stop the program when necessary and go back to manual control. Here are some of my favorites.
Active Track
Active Track visually locks onto a person or object, and tracks their movement while keeping them in frame. It automatically follows the subject, or you can even fly circles around a moving subject. It’s great for following bikers, kayakers, people walking, and even cars (as long as they aren’t driving faster than 20 mph).
Gesture
This is the Mavic Pro’s “selfie” setting. Send the drone up into the air, put down your remote control (or hide it out of frame), wave your hands to get the Mavic’s attention, then gesture with your hands in a frame around your head, and the drone will lock on and snap a photo after 3 seconds. You need to switch from video into photo mode to make this work.
Cinematic
Cinematic Mode is available with the new DJI Go V4.0 App. Basically it slows down certain drone movements, smoothing out the flying for more cinematic looking shots. But it’s important to note that this function slows down braking speed too, so the drone no longer stops on a dime if you let go of the control sticks. It “drifts” to a stop — so you need to be careful near objects like walls & trees.
Tripod
Tripod Mode is very cool. It drastically slows down the speed of the Mavic Pro, to about 3-4mph maximum. It too is wonderful for slow, smooth, cinematic shots. It holds as steady as possible, but still stops quickly unlike cinematic mode. It’s great for maneuvering in tight spaces like narrow pathways or around trees. I use it when I’m afraid of running into something.
Course Lock
Another favorite mode of mine is Course Lock, where the drone will fly in one direction no matter which way the camera is facing. So if you wanted to fly parallel with a moving car, but change the direction of the camera angle as you fly alongside, you can do that without altering the course of the drone’s path.
Point Of Interest
Say you wanted to fly around a particular building or monument. With Point Of Interest, you hover over a stationary object, lock on, then adjust the diameter and speed you want to fly at, and the Mavic Pro will then circle your chosen subject keeping it in frame. Manually flying perfect circles around something is very difficult, this mode does the hard work for you, so you can focus on filming.
Terrain
Terrain Mode is great for flying low over a rough landscape, or up the side of a hill. The Mavic’s bottom sensors track the changing ground features, and keep the drone at a certain height over it. So you don’t have to worry about adjusting it’s altitude to avoid running into the side of a hill, it takes care of that for you.
Shooting Photos
The Mavic Pro’s 12mp camera can capture great still photos too, in DNG RAW format for those who like to post-process their images, or normal JPG. You can also shoot in manual mode for adjusting ISO, exposure compensation, and shutter speed.
There are options for bracketing images, a self-timer, and rapid fire shots.
The image sensor is the same size as the original Phantom 4, however DJI’s newer Phantom 4 Pro has a much larger sensor, about 4 times the size as the Mavic’s. This means images from the Phantom 4 Pro will come out better in low-light situations, with less sensor noise.
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