Is 4k60 video different from 1/2.3" CMOS vs 1"CMOS?

[Rubik]

PatR, I haven't found very much H.265 H Plus source footage so my observations are based on H.264. There are a few useful C23 comparison clips here but I don't see much difference in quality or playability between the H.264 and H.265 files except that the latter benefit from a slightly warmer colour palette.

For the avoidance of doubt, I have seen some very high quality H Plus 4k footage - just not at 60fps. And in a flat light with ultra-slow camera movements I have also seen a very clean 4k/50fps video (German village) - albeit with stuttering pans.

For whatever reason, the H Plus seems to struggle with higher frame rates while the EVO handles them better, imho. The EVO system also seems to cope better with camera movement which is faster than dead slow.

Incidentally, I looked at the 1080p and 720p 120fps examples at the link above and found them unwatchable. Does anyone else on a different computer think they are of acceptable quality?

I just downloaded the "comparison clips". Who is the videographer?

I certainly agree that the 120fps clips are awful. However, the the fast pans in the 60fps clips all played buttery smooth on my rig regardless of coding. The 30fps clips had the understandable jerkiness of too much travel between frames. I ran the videos with Windows Media Player, "Movies and TV", and VLC players in Windows 10. Same.

FWIW, my computer has an Intel i7 processor and an nVidia GTX 1070 video card.

 

[YuKay]

There are times I think we want more from these small systems than they can possibly deliver for the price paid. A friend of mine makes rigs that provide some of the best imagery money and user talent can deliver but that comes with a high price tag, before adding for the camera and gimbal of choice. Unless I have a ready customer base that will pay a heck of a lot more for the effort and product it’s impossible to justify going off the deep end for this stuff. I have to remember most customers satisfy a lot more easily than with what it takes to satisfy me.

Agreed. I'm just looking for the drone which delivers the best video for my amateur needs, relative to the other drones in the price range. I have had to accept a degree of antialiasing, moiré, posterisation, over-sharpening, etc because it looks like these artifacts can't be eradicated from consumer drone video systems…albeit some handle it better than others.

 

[YuKay]

I just downloaded the "comparison clips". Who is the videographer?

I certainly agree that the 120fps clips are awful. However, the the fast pans in the 60fps clips all played buttery smooth on my rig regardless of coding. The 30fps clips had the understandable jerkiness of too much travel between frames. I ran the videos with Windows Media Player, "Movies and TV", and VLC players in Windows 10. Same.

FWIW, my computer has an Intel i7 processor and an nVidia GTX 1070 video card.

I think the link was first posted by a French contributor in the now-closed C23 video thread but I haven't found his OP yet.

Shawn Ide also posted a 1080/120fps clip which, although much superior, was also seriously flawed so I guess it's a bug.

The aforementioned "German village" H Plus 4k/50 video which I think is generally excellent quality also suffers from stuttering pans, even at slow gimbal speed (viewed on my 5k iMac in both Quicktime Player and VLC). If you (and maybe others) really can't see it on your system, then I will accept that the panning problem is local.

But that wouldn't explain why the EVO 4k60 source video plays so much better than H Plus 4k60 on my rig.

 

[Rubik]

The aforementioned "German village" H Plus 4k/50 video which I think is generally excellent quality also suffers from stuttering pans, even at slow gimbal speed (viewed on my 5k iMac in both Quicktime Player and VLC). If you (and maybe others) really can't see it on your system, then I will accept that the panning problem is local.

But that wouldn't explain why the EVO 4k60 source video plays so much better than H Plus 4k60 on my rig.

OK. I went back and looked again at the German Village video that I had saved. There is definite stuttering in the pans. Frequency of the stutter is on the order of 8-10 jerks per second. But, again reviewing the French (?) videos (4kcine-4096x2160pixels-60fps-h.264.MP4 and 2p7k-2720x1536pixels-60fps-h265.MP4), the fast pans look smooth as silk on my rig.
I don't know what to say about the difference that you are seeing on your system. I hope you get to the bottom of it as I can tell that it's causing you a lot of concern. My take-away is that the TH+ with C23 can provide stutter-free pans at 60fps.

 

[YuKay]

OK. I went back and looked again at the German Village video that I had saved. There is definite stuttering in the pans. Frequency of the stutter is on the order of 8-10 jerks per second. But, again reviewing the French (?) videos (4kcine-4096x2160pixels-60fps-h.264.MP4 and 2p7k-2720x1536pixels-60fps-h265.MP4), the fast pans look smooth as silk on my rig.
I don't know what to say about the difference that you are seeing on your system. I hope you get to the bottom of it as I can tell that it's causing you a lot of concern. My take-away is that the TH+ with C23 can provide stutter-free pans at 60fps.

Thanks Rubik. You only had to lie and I would never have mentioned the subject again .

I too have seen smooth H Plus pans (even occasionally in Youtube 4k60 footage) and I assumed that to be smooth, they required a manual operator with the dexterity of a drone racer together with either very slow gimbal speed - or a rapid gimbal rotation which allows the camera to legitimately blur/smear the subject. Otherwise, it seems like there is too much detail for the system to process smoothly at 60fps but instead of dropping details, the gimbal slows down to let the camera catch up. Is that a possible scenario?

As it happens, new H Plus owner, Quadronet, has today posted some dramatic 4k60 "speed test" footage from an excessively green and antialiased vineyard in Germany - and it features a rapid 180 degree pan which plays very smoothly, even on Youtube. So maybe it's a question of trial and error to find the sweet spot gimbal speeds - plus a lot of practice (or can you code in the panning speed and then just push a button when you want it to start?). I would also probably give up on recording vineyards at speed.

 

[YuKay]

After much research, head-scratching and devil's advocacy, I have concluded that, as at today's date, the EVO can deliver more of what I want (as a complete novice) so I have ordered one - which is currently struggling to cross the Atlantic on two batteries.

But I hope and believe that the H Plus will be my pick of the two in a few months' time after one or two more firmware updates to fix the 4k video quality (and JPEG) issues which have been bugging me. So I still plan to buy an H Plus (by when I will be a little less of a novice) and then pass the EVO on to my son.

The recent EVO beta firmware update was the clincher but I was also influenced by Barton's first-flight video and by recently posted Youtube videos such as this and this.

Of course, the EVO has issues and drawbacks too, some of which are permanent, so it's a compromise. But I wanted to jump in before any new UK/EU drone regs come into force.

 

[Barton]

After much research, head-scratching and devil's advocacy, I have concluded that, as at today's date, the EVO can deliver more of what I want (as a complete novice) so I have ordered one - which is currently struggling to cross the Atlantic on two batteries.

But I hope and believe that the H Plus will be my pick of the two in a few months' time after one or two more firmware updates to fix the 4k video quality (and JPEG) issues which have been bugging me. So I still plan to buy an H Plus (by when I will be a little less of a novice) and then pass the EVO on to my son.

The recent EVO beta firmware update was the clincher but I was also influenced by Barton's first-flight video and by recently posted Youtube videos such as this and this.

Of course, the EVO has issues and drawbacks too, some of which are permanent, so it's a compromise. But I wanted to jump in before any new UK/EU drone regs come into force.

@YuKay , welcome to EVO/H+ party . I think you will like both systems and, as you say, both have their pros and cons. I'm not the best person to be commenting on these systems as I too have limited experience (about 10 hours of flight time on the H Plus and a little over 3 hours on the EVO).

Here are a couple of my observations:

• I get roughly the same flight time from each one (18 - 20 minutes).
• Even with the ability to modify the Expo curves of the EVO, the H Plus is easier for me to make smooth starts from 'hovering'. I'm sure it is a matter of practice for the EVO as I just need to learn a lighter touch on the sticks (the same applies for my fixed wing RC airplane technique ).
• Flying while panning is easier for me on the H+ with the 360 gimbal. Again, this is a skill issue for me not a system issue.
• I am becoming very fond of the Google maps view of the UAV location, track, and relationship to home location (it provides a path on the map to follow for shortest distance back to home). I much prefer it to the radar display of the H+. The H+ is fine as long as one only flies VLOS. Unfortunately, VLOS is more difficult for me with the EVO as it is smaller and harder to see while in the air. The Google maps display unfortunately makes it much easier for me to stray past VLOS as it makes me feel more secure about the EVO's location .
• Both UAVs seem to be very stable in the wind. While I have not done an A-B comparison, I feel the H Plus would get the nod on this...
• On my to-do list is a quiet flight comparison between the two. The H Plus is quieter, but the EVO is certainly acceptable. Once in the air, at 60 plus feet or so, the EVO needs to be almost directly over my head before it is noticeable to me.
• Obviously, if one needed to carry either drone into a shooting location, the EVO wins from a size standpoint although weight is not that different (when using multiple batteries).

Enjoy your new equipment!!

 

[Ty Pilot]

Congrats on the new bird @YuKay , Just got back from the field where one of the Flyers had a MP2 and one thing for certain is; there is a lot to be said for the portability of these new, compact fold-able drones. Look forward to hearing your thoughts and seeing some pics or video from the Evo.

 

[Tuna]

Just to chime in.

The playback problems you're experiencing are nothing to do with the different sensors, and everything to do with how the videos are encoded. There are two things going on here - one is the choice of codec (the math-heavy software that compresses the video so it doesn't take up too much space) and the other is the codec settings.

There are two codecs commonly in use (though many others exist), H264 and H265. Unsurprisingly H265 is a newer and improved codec - it achieves better compression with fewer artefacts. However, all codecs require quite a bit of processing power - both to encode (compress) the video and decode it (co-dec - hence the name). H265 takes more processing power, which is why the HPlus drops to H264 when you ask for the most demanding settings (4K60).

The codec settings decide things like how heavily compressed the video should be, and how easy it is to play it back The 'playback' settings define the ratio of key frames (which have the entire video frame stored) and delta frames (which only store mathematical difference from one frame to the next). This is important because it decides how easily the playback software can get to a specific point in a video, whether it can easily play backwards, loss of quality, and how well it recovers from corruption.

In other words: The same video can be encoded in thousands of different ways. (You can use software such as MediaInfo to view the precise settings used to encode a video).

Usually the codec on the camera is chosen to not max out the camera processor at the cost of making the playback software work harder. Remarkably, you can have a really high end PC, loads of memory, plenty of disk space, and it can struggle playing back videos. The bottle neck is the video card, and video cards are better or worse at playing particular codecs/settings.

The trick that video professionals use is to transcode the video into a 'known good' format - with appropriate settings for best playback. Youtube also does some lightweight transcoding, but it doesn't go out of its way to alter key frames or some of the deeper settings. This is why comparing videos on YouTube is not a good option - it applies unpredictable changes to your video to suit Google's requirements, which can mean that the quality is affected. Use a high end video editor and you can have fine control over the transcoding process - and anyone who has sat through a long rendering session will know that even a top notch PC can take a long time to re-encode a video with optimal settings.

That's why the camera chooses an 'easy option' for encoding, and why straight out of the camera video can playback badly on some hardware.

 

[YuKay]

Thanks Tuna. I do appreciate the differences between H264 and H265 but I haven't seen much H265 from either the EVO or the C23 and I certainly haven't compared H264 from one with H265 from the other.

Nor am I aware of having seen any H265 videos on Youtube. I thought that YT transcoded any uploaded H265 to H264 and then to AVC.

Youtube may not convert H265 efficiently but I suspect that not many people upload H265 anyway.

Of course, Youtube now transcodes all 4k video to VP9 so my online comparisons have all been VP9 encoded AFAIK.

My offline comparisons of downloaded source videos have all been H264 vs H264. But perhaps there are differences between the way the EVO and H Plus deliver H264…?

 

[Windluv]

I shot one flight with H265. The panning was horrific : stuttering stupendously. Next flight over same area and panning in H264 was within the normal expectations of the C23 and the video we have all seen.

 

[Barton]

@YuKay , welcome to EVO/H+ party . I think you will like both systems and, as you say, both have their pros and cons. I'm not the best person to be commenting on these systems as I too have limited experience (about 10 hours of flight time on the H Plus and a little over 3 hours on the EVO).

Here are a couple of my observations:

• I get roughly the same flight time from each one (18 - 20 minutes).
• Even with the ability to modify the Expo curves of the EVO, the H Plus is easier for me to make smooth starts from 'hovering'. I'm sure it is a matter of practice for the EVO as I just need to learn a lighter touch on the sticks (the same applies for my fixed wing RC airplane technique ).
• Flying while panning is easier for me on the H+ with the 360 gimbal. Again, this is a skill issue for me not a system issue.
• I am becoming very fond of the Google maps view of the UAV location, track, and relationship to home location (it provides a path on the map to follow for shortest distance back to home). I much prefer it to the radar display of the H+. The H+ is fine as long as one only flies VLOS. Unfortunately, VLOS is more difficult for me with the EVO as it is smaller and harder to see while in the air. The Google maps display unfortunately makes it much easier for me to stray past VLOS as it makes me feel more secure about the EVO's location .
• Both UAVs seem to be very stable in the wind. While I have not done an A-B comparison, I feel the H Plus would get the nod on this...
• On my to-do list is a quiet flight comparison between the two. The H Plus is quieter, but the EVO is certainly acceptable. Once in the air, at 60 plus feet or so, the EVO needs to be almost directly over my head before it is noticeable to me.
• Obviously, if one needed to carry either drone into a shooting location, the EVO wins from a size standpoint although weight is not that different (when using multiple batteries).

Enjoy your new equipment!!

A couple more observations, specifically for @YuKay , but also for others thinking of supplementing the H+ with another UAV.

• My Samsung 10 inch HD (1920x1080) tablet arrived a couple of days ago. I combined this with a deep sun shade and a tripod tablet holder which replaces the phone holder on the EVO transmitter. While the tablet and transmitter is a little top heavy , for my eyes, I'm loving this combination. The EVO supplies 1080 video to the tablet so I have a very sharp and big video display to help with my flight control. While I still like the 7" screen of the ST16S, I have to admit that I'm partial to the higher resolution and larger 10" display. The one downside to the EVO setup is the video has about 1/2 second video lag so no high speed FPV flying for me (which I don't do anyway ). At the present time, I haven't paid attention to the video lag on the ST16S since I don't fly the H Plus in high speed FPV mode.
• Last night I found that I can set expo on the gimbal control, which had been way too fast for me. Autel fixed this issue in the last FW update. While controlling the gimbal is still not as user friendly on the EVO as it is using the J slider on the H PLUS, getting decent up/down gimbal movement on the EVO is now pretty easy. I think the difference between the two systems is that the H Plus J slider sets the gimbal position directly by the slider position. How fast the gimbal gets to that position is controlled by how fast you move the slider. The EVO, on the other hand, uses the gimbal 'roll switch' to set the RATE at which the gimbal moves up and down.

 

[YuKay]

Archived, Barton, with thanks. Tracking report is that my EVO still hasn't left New York so patience is a virgin, as my son used to say.

I too decided to supplement the controller with a tablet but, fearing the weight, decided to get an iPad Mini (8" display) which arrived yesterday via eBay. It still feels heavy but since it only cost me £100 I can switch horses if it's uncomfortable.

Good to know you have decent gimbal control. Was that with the 1.3.3 beta?

 

[YuKay]

I shot one flight with H265. The panning was horrific : stuttering stupendously. Next flight over same area and panning in H264 was within the normal expectations of the C23 and the video we have all seen.

I have seen a decent H Plus H265 pan at 4k30.

 

[Barton]

Archived, Barton, with thanks. Tracking report is that my EVO still hasn't left New York so patience is a virgin, as my son used to say.

I too decided to supplement the controller with a tablet but, fearing the weight, decided to get an iPad Mini (8" display) which arrived yesterday via eBay. It still feels heavy but since it only cost me £100 I can switch horses if it's uncomfortable.

Good to know you have decent gimbal control. Was that with the 1.3.3 beta?

@YuKay No, the FW was 1.2.3. I have decided no beta FW for me. That said, Autel has removed the download link to the 1.3.3 beta FW with the statement that the developers are now working on making the 1.3.3 code ready for release .

 

[YuKay]

Archived, Barton, with thanks. Tracking report is that my EVO still hasn't left New York so patience is a virgin, as my son used to say.

I too decided to supplement the controller with a tablet but, fearing the weight, decided to get an iPad Mini (8" display) which arrived yesterday via eBay. It still feels heavy but since it only cost me £100 I can switch horses if it's uncomfortable.

Good to know you have decent gimbal control. Was that with the 1.3.3 beta?

Hm, she was routed (by USPS) to Chicago where she has spent the last three days - presumably recharging her batteries. Not exactly the shortest route from NYC to the UK… And Winter is coming.

 

[PatR]

USPS will route international shipments to an air freight carrier hub location as they contract with freight carriers for such transport. USPS dos not have a dedicated federal air fleet.

 

[YuKay]

And to be fair, the sale was made in NYC but the stock could be warehoused in Chicago. Anyway, rapid progress overnight as the bird has now left Heathrow and could land on my doorstep at any moment.

 

[YuKay]

If this means my drone left Heathrow for delivery over 24 hours ago, I'm a tad concerned as I live only 20 miles from the airport.

 

[Barton]

If this means my drone left Heathrow for delivery over 24 hours ago, I'm a tad concerned as I live only 20 miles from the airport.

View attachment 11792

@YuKay, did your bird arrive?