Solo Gimbal Test..

Raybro · Aug 26, 2015

Real nice video. Thanks for sharing it. Gimbal, please be on my door step today when I come home...

dcphoto8 · Aug 26, 2015

Hi Jubair
Thank you for that, it all looked amazing. Wish we had weather like that in the uk.

erikgraham · Aug 26, 2015

Great!

The skipping is "inter-frame judder." Especially noticeable in horizontal pans at 30fps. But that's a whole different topic.

Iconic Images · Aug 26, 2015

Noticed a little vibration in the shots. Even on the starting scene. Very minor though. Orbit works great but Follow me seems really jerky. I guess it's more for fast moving subjects.

Yeah, I do think the quality of the 4.35 seems to be a little lacking. Most 3rd party sites selling it are doing so at a much lower price than the 5.4. (With the exception of Peau who may be possibly looking to cash in on the better FOV?). I just bought the exact same spec lens for $24 with shipping. Manufacturers have also told me the sharpness isn't as good as the 5.4. (I have word that a new 14-16 mpix lens with focal length somewhere between 5.4 and 3.6mm. They are sending me samples from factory to test when they get them out).

Oh yeah and good thing you seem to have found out the cause of that blue dot.... I do hope that dirty spot is the reason for it. Please update us?

Thanks so much for the effort gone in to make this test video for us! The functions seem to work perfect (with some limitations for follow me mode)

Ian [P13] · Aug 26, 2015

@Jubalr Are you up for a little modding to see if it makes any noticeable improvement to video?

I've not yet seen any US gimbal owners fly with the duro foam mod, alas being in the UK I'm still waiting for a gimbal. I do know some of the videos that have gone out already have been on unbalanced props, so it would be really interesting to see a Solo with balanced props and the duro foam mod.

rrmccabe · Aug 26, 2015

Jubalr said:
Yeah, I was dissapointed in the Vimeo stuttering. I had switched to Vimeo from YT a couple years ago because they are supposed to be better quality and less compression. Not so sure about that now.

What are your impressions of the gimbal so far now that you have seen a few videos? You had been saying for some time how you were wanting to see it with smart shots. Are you disappointed? What did you think of the horizon shot?

I did the same about 2 years ago with Vimeo and have stepped up a couple times as I ran out of bandwidth. However I am considering going back. The one feature I like is the replace video function on Vimeo.

I downloaded your 400 meg original and watched it. I noticed some shake in the first part as well that appeared to not be Vimeo but could be wrong. The orbit was absolutely awesome. Loved it.

The watch me is very nice and I think that will be a handy feature. Looks like they need to do a little work on the dampening or something so its smoother between rotates. Does the gimbal tilt not work on watch me?

All in all I would say pretty nice for first time out.

Promising for sure!

erikgraham · Aug 26, 2015

With regards to Vimeo, try not to upload videos that are already encoded as h.264. Best results come from ProRes 422 at 29.97fps. This would eliminate the inter frame judder seen during the horizontal pan.

rrmccabe · Aug 26, 2015

erikgraham said:
With regards to Vimeo, try not to upload videos that are already encoded as h.264. Best results come from ProRes 422 at 29.97fps. This would eliminate the inter frame judder seen during the horizontal pan.

Good info. I will try that as pretty much everything I upload is h.264. Thanks Erik

Jubalr · Aug 26, 2015

rrmccabe said:
I did the same about 2 years ago with Vimeo and have stepped up a couple times as I ran out of bandwidth. However I am considering going back. The one feature I like is the replace video function on Vimeo.

I downloaded your 400 meg original and watched it. I noticed some shake in the first part as well that appeared to not be Vimeo but could be wrong. The orbit was absolutely awesome. Loved it.

The watch me is very nice and I think that will be a handy feature. Looks like they need to do a little work on the dampening or something so its smoother between rotates. Does the gimbal tilt not work on watch me?

All in all I would say pretty nice for first time out.

Promising for sure!

Thanks Rich, There was no tilting from the Gimbal during watch me. Not sure if it is supposed to or not. I think the Watch Me feature was a surprise in the app as I don't remember it being discussed before. But like Follow Me, I would have to think there will be some differences between users as the GPS accuracy and update frequency of the tablet will effect performance.
How did the horizontal drift compare to your white fleet? I know it is a hot topic on some of the DJI models, but not sure which ones. I also had that issue with my first Tarot a couple of years ago, but thought the Solo gimbal was spot on in this first test.

Jubalr · Aug 26, 2015

Ian [P13] said:
@Jubalr Are you up for a little modding to see if it makes any noticeable improvement to video?

I've not yet seen any US gimbal owners fly with the duro foam mod, alas being in the UK I'm still waiting for a gimbal. I do know some of the videos that have gone out already have been on unbalanced props, so it would be really interesting to see a Solo with balanced props and the duro foam mod.

Sure Ian. Props are already balanced, but send me the link for the foam mod and I will see what I can do.
Thanks

rrmccabe · Aug 26, 2015

Jubalr said:
How did the horizontal drift compare to your white fleet? I know it is a hot topic on some of the DJI models, but not sure which ones. I also had that issue with my first Tarot a couple of years ago, but thought the Solo gimbal was spot on in this first test.

I have no issues with horizon on my current one but I know there are lots of people complaining about it. Seems to be a common complaint. Since I have not had the issue I really have not dug into it much.

Yours looked great !

Ian [P13] · Aug 26, 2015

@Jubalr Here you go, there's a fair few people rocking this mod, sod's law though, not one of them yet with a gimbal. This is a super easy mod.

This mod was devised by one of the 3DR techs, in simple terms it removes the chance of high end vibration from the frame, passing from the main board to the Pixhawk. Although the Pixhawk 2 has internally dampened IMUs this mod provides that extra bit of performance.

The Duro Sheet used in this video is 0212018-30-10 (30 DURO SHEET), 3/16x 12 x 12in

UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorbothane-...TF8&qid=1439770061&sr=8-1&keywords=0212018-30
US:
http://www.amazon.com/Sorbothane-Vi...TF8&qid=1439770061&sr=8-1&keywords=0212018-30

Jubalr · Aug 26, 2015

Ian [P13] said:
@Jubalr Here you go, there's a fair few people rocking this mod, sod's law though, not one of them yet with a gimbal. This is a super easy mod.

This mod was devised by one of the 3DR techs, in simple terms it removes the chance of high end vibration from the frame, passing from the main board to the Pixhawk. Although the Pixhawk 2 has internally dampened IMUs this mod provides that extra bit of performance.

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The Duro Sheet used in this video is 0212018-30-10 (30 DURO SHEET), 3/16x 12 x 12in

UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sorbothane-...TF8&qid=1439770061&sr=8-1&keywords=0212018-30
US:
http://www.amazon.com/Sorbothane-Vi...TF8&qid=1439770061&sr=8-1&keywords=0212018-30

Thanks for the link Ian. Got it on the way..

aggravated... · Aug 26, 2015

Ian [P13] said:
@Jubalr Here you go, there's a fair few people rocking this mod, sod's law though, not one of them yet with a gimbal. This is a super easy mod.

Thanks Ian for the tip. Looks like I will not be getting my Solo gimbal until the last week of September so anything I can do to help smooth out the Tarot I have installed is much needed.

VideoArch · Aug 26, 2015

Nicely done. Excellent demo. Horizon drift was good as well.

Stuttering in motion based video is of often times a keyframe/VBR issue. Try lowering your keyframes to around 15 and jack your VBR 2 pass encoding to 30-50 range. Make the file as uncompressed as you can and let YT or Vimeo do the compression work. Then review for tweaking. You should give YouTube a go for comparison. They have really come a long way in the last few years.

ChrisM101 · Aug 26, 2015

Impressive, I do feel like they have a little left to smooth out the watch me movements.
Do you care to share your settings for speed on solo and on panning? I wonder if those effect the watch me movements at all.....

Dirby · Aug 26, 2015

here is some video i shot with the white feet the other Day.
it is Rew footage and no editing.
you can compare this with the solo gimble.
note the clouds and storms that were close by while i was filming.also note the horizon.
thx D

Jubalr · Aug 26, 2015

Dirby said:
here is some video i shot with the white feet the other Day.
it is Rew footage and no editing.
you can compare this with the solo gimble.
note the clouds and storms that were close by while i was filming.also note the horizon.
thx D

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For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Thanks Dirby, Very smooth, but could certainly see the horizon drift some are complaining about, at one point at about 6:46. But then it gradually goes back to level. Thanks for posting.

Dirby · Aug 26, 2015

Jubalr said:
Thanks Dirby, Very smooth, but could certainly see the horizon drift some are complaining about, at one point at about 6:46. But then it gradually goes back to level. Thanks for posting.

you are welcome.
i like this video because of all the different clouds and storms in it.

erikgraham · Aug 26, 2015

rrmccabe said:
Good info. I will try that as pretty much everything I upload is h.264. Thanks Erik

Well ProRes 422 are huge files, so test it out on small clips.

ChrisM101 said:
Impressive, I do feel like they have a little left to smooth out the watch me movements.
Do you care to share your settings for speed on solo and on panning? I wonder if those effect the watch me movements at all.....

I can confirm the jerkiness in follow me goes away with faster moving targets, usually, but not always. It's hard to tell sometimes if the bird is too twitchy or if there were brief signal interruptions or other factors that cause a jerk.

Anyway, there are indeed Params you can tweak to help soften the drones reaction time during a Follow Me, but then you need to reset them for other modes - those same Params effect behavior in Way Point missions AND in Loiter (aka "FLY").

As for Watch Me, I'm not sure. May some of those in AHRS_GPS? Like yaw_p???

I think the ultimate solution won't be some magic set of Param tweaks, but rather a software update that hands over control of Follow Me and Watch Me to the onboard CPU. It could do nice smooth interpolations on the location data the Solo receives. Kind of like what it does for cable cam easing in and out.