My review of the P4p+ Obsidian

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This isn’t knocking Autel as they do make a solid quad. These have a great track record and do offer a lower price than our DJI’s. But they too have issues. Every drone is the best until something goes wrong. End of the day buy what makes you happy and what fits your budget. Whether it’s a P3S, Inspire 2, Autel X or Autel EVO ( ok this one seems cool) whatever it is KNOW it will have something that’s not perfect.
 
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Actually, the lack of conscensus that your reported 1080p issue is a huge problem for everyone else is significant. It's not even a problem for you any more. You have a workaround, now that you are aware of the issue. Same for me with the .SRT files. You have successfully reported the issue to DJI. They are now aware of it. Whether and how they choose to deal with it is now in their court. Go flying! That's what I'm about to do! :cool:

Not sure if that's a Straw Man, or just a circular argument. :D No one (successfully?) reported it before, so it can't have been important. It can't have been important because no one reported it before. :rolleyes:

And not content with telling me to stop posting, you are now deciding whether or not it's still a problem for me. For the avoidance of doubt: Yes, yes it is. I still want to shoot 120fps 1080p rather than shooting in 2.7k or 4k at 30fps (because other speeds have artifacts too) and using other software and lots of time to downscale and reflow to get the result I want. It costs me time, which is a finite resource. How you could possibly imagine that that makes it not a problem for me and somehow supports your argument about its insignificance, so that I should now apparently shut up and go fly is...well it's very revealing about your thought processes. You apparently think that everyone else should think and do as you do. Well...no thanks. :)

It's not a "huge" problem if you know enough to work around it. It is a potentially "huge" problem if you shoot in 1080p while being unaware of the issue and have no idea why your footage looks so awful and full of moire patterns even though you keep on adjusting the (non-functioning) sharpness settings. For commercial use, it is more likely to be rejected by people whose job it is (such as TV companies) to be able to spot the quality issues that you might not be sufficiently qualified to judge. While some people are undoubtedly impressed by the aerial viewpoint itself; as you get closer to 'professional' use, the less that is important and the more quality is; as well as shooting in the correct mode and not leaving everything on Auto. So now I can already hear you winding up to say: "If you want professional results, you should be using an Inspire 2 or above anyway, blah blah etc." Wrong. Just wrong.

You apparently consider yourself somewhat of an expert in things 'gadgety'. The clue is in your chosen name. Did you spot the problem? If so, did you report it? If not, why not? Is your lack of complaining about it because you considered it unimportant in general, or just to you, so everyone else can just like it or lump it? Presumably your time is valuable to you, so maybe you made a choice...

You see, whether or not you knew about it is a problem either way.

Either you, with your own enhanced skills, were unaware, or incurious about it just like "everyone else", in which case no one else reporting it before means nothing. They like you, just didn't spot it because they stick with one setting. I'd bet 95%+ of people just use 'Auto everything' and no ND filters and never use any of the faster speeds. It's kind of why the Spark is/was a success. One speed(29.97fps), one mode(Auto): go fly it. But you get what you paid for. I paid more for the P4Pro, so I want more.

Or, you knew about it, decided not to say anything and are now trying to retcon it as unimportant to feel better about your decision. How many hundreds of thousands of people could have had better video if you'd let DJI know about it early enough for them to consider fixing it? I only recently got the Obsidian and spotted it almost immediately. What's your excuse?

You've made it very clear that you only shoot in 4k because...reasons. So what are those reasons? Did you know about the problem or not?

BTW, the ISO being stuck at 500 for D-Log is also a huge problem and people complained about that too, but again: it's only going to affect the (significant) subset of people who color-correct their footage in post. A DJI representative who seemed to be involved in the decision actually come on a forum and told everyone they were wrong to even want other ISO settings (which were previously available before an update) because it could produce poorer results. He was telling people who understand ISO settings and flat profiles and colour correction and who had previously got better results than now: that they were idiots; rather than advising people that DJI think ISO 500 is best, but they were free to try other ISO settings and deal with the consequences. In bright sunlight you need a high value ND filter to make it work even half-acceptably, but do DJI supply those for free? Nope. So is there a workaround? Yes, don't shoot in D-Log because the results are awful. Due to DJI's arrogance, the mode is largely useless.

You've been similarly shafted with .SRT files. You have to strip them out, so DJI are stealing your time too, that same valuable time that you either didn't spend in investigating all the modes in the first place, or in reporting your findings to DJI if you had found the problem before I did.

Complain, and keep on complaining until it gets fixed. If you don't continue to complain, DJI will - quite rightly - assume that if they ignore you long enough you'll go away and spend your own time on a workaround instead of them having to spend any of theirs fixing it.

Now the weather is excellent and I am going out to fly. :)
 
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Not sure if that's a Straw Man, or just a circular argument. :D No one (successfully?) reported it before, so it can't have been important. It can't have been important because no one reported it before. :rolleyes:

And not content with telling me to stop posting, you are now deciding whether or not it's still a problem for me. For the avoidance of doubt: Yes, yes it is. I still want to shoot 120fps 1080p rather than shooting in 2.7k or 4k at 30fps (because other speeds have artifacts too) and using other software and lots of time to downscale and reflow to get the result I want. It costs me time, which is a finite resource. How you could possibly imagine that that makes it not a problem for me and somehow supports your argument about its insignificance, so that I should now apparently shut up and go fly is...well it's very revealing about your thought processes. You apparently think that everyone else should think and do as you do. Well...no thanks. :)

It's not a "huge" problem if you know enough to work around it. It is a potentially "huge" problem if you shoot in 1080p while being unaware of the issue and have no idea why your footage looks so awful and full of moire patterns even though you keep on adjusting the (non-functioning) sharpness settings. For commercial use, it is more likely to be rejected by people whose job it is (such as TV companies) to be able to spot the quality issues that you might not be sufficiently qualified to judge. While some people are undoubtedly impressed by the aerial viewpoint itself; as you get closer to 'professional' use, the less that is important and the more quality is; as well as shooting in the correct mode and not leaving everything on Auto. So now I can already hear you winding up to say: "If you want professional results, you should be using an Inspire 2 or above anyway, blah blah etc." Wrong. Just wrong.

You apparently consider yourself somewhat of an expert in things 'gadgety'. The clue is in your chosen name. Did you spot the problem? If so, did you report it? If not, why not? Is your lack of complaining about it because you considered it unimportant in general, or just to you, so everyone else can just like it or lump it? Presumably your time is valuable to you, so maybe you made a choice...

You see, whether or not you knew about it is a problem either way.

Either you, with your own enhanced skills, were unaware, or incurious about it just like "everyone else", in which case no one else reporting it before means nothing. They like you, just didn't spot it because they stick with one setting. I'd bet 95%+ of people just use 'Auto everything' and no ND filters and never use any of the faster speeds. It's kind of why the Spark is/was a success. One speed(29.97fps), one mode(Auto): go fly it. But you get what you paid for. I paid more for the P4Pro, so I want more.

Or, you knew about it, decided not to say anything and are now trying to retcon it as unimportant to feel better about your decision. How many hundreds of thousands of people could have had better video if you'd let DJI know about it early enough for them to consider fixing it? I only recently got the Obsidian and spotted it almost immediately. What's your excuse?

You've made it very clear that you only shoot in 4k because...reasons. So what are those reasons? Did you know about the problem or not?

BTW, the ISO being stuck at 500 for D-Log is also a huge problem and people complained about that too, but again: it's only going to affect the (significant) subset of people who color-correct their footage in post. A DJI representative who seemed to be involved in the decision actually come on a forum and told everyone they were wrong to even want other ISO settings (which were previously available before an update) because it could produce poorer results. He was telling people who understand ISO settings and flat profiles and colour correction and who had previously got better results than now: that they were idiots; rather than advising people that DJI think ISO 500 is best, but they were free to try other ISO settings and deal with the consequences. In bright sunlight you need a high value ND filter to make it work even half-acceptably, but do DJI supply those for free? Nope. So is there a workaround? Yes, don't shoot in D-Log because the results are awful. Due to DJI's arrogance, the mode is largely useless.

You've been similarly shafted with .SRT files. You have to strip them out, so DJI are stealing your time too, that same valuable time that you either didn't spend in investigating all the modes in the first place, or in reporting your findings to DJI if you had found the problem before I did.

Complain, and keep on complaining until it gets fixed. If you don't continue to complain, DJI will - quite rightly - assume that if they ignore you long enough you'll go away and spend your own time on a workaround instead of them having to spend any of theirs fixing it.

Now the weather is excellent and I am going out to fly. :)
At least we both share an enjoyment of flying and producing great aerial content in conducive weather! :cool: As to your other points, "important" is relative. It's clearly important to you, and, to my knowledge, you are the first to do report and document the issue. That doesn't make it unimportant, but Its importance is likely limited to those shooting at 120fps in 1080p, while most P4P owners are likely using 100mbs 4K, which the P4P's strong suit. Yes, I only shoot in 4K, so I never went searching for, nor personally was affected by any 1080p issues, nor did or do I personally care about them. I have never told you to stop posting about the issue. I merely suggested that it isn't helping your cause IMHO, now that DJI is aware of it. I understood you to say you had a workaround, and it was only an issue of time. Manually extracting .SRT files is a minor inconvenience for me that takes less than 2 minutes. I have no idea about how time intensive your workarounds are. However, I'd be happy with any workaround. It's the problems without workarounds that are most difficult to deal with, like not being able to fly at all because of a FW update bug or a GEO bug, but even GEO bugs have workarounds, that you don't find too time consuming to deal with. ;)

The P4P is limited to its camera and the FW. The Inspire 2 does offer far more camera and lens options, for professional results, outside of the limits of the P4P. Those have their own issues and growth pains. Nothing is perfect. Certainly not DJI products at first.

I am by no means an expert. More like a super user, who has lots of experience with the aspects that interest me: mainly range, flight time, and video quality at 4K 60fps. I really don't worry about problems that don't affect me. I have enough that do affect me already. ;) I didn't know about the problem until you documented it. It still doesn't concern me. That doesn't make it unimportant, just unimportant to me personally, and likely almost all other P4P owners, even if they didn't know about your issue before. It should be fixed, depending upon how difficult the fix is. I hope it is, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it this late in the P4P life cycle. It certainly isn't affecting sales.

Your point that each issue only affects a small subset of DJI owners is very true, and one of my points. The only owners who will now care about the 1080p issue are those using 1080p. The only owners concerned about the ISO 500 D-Log setting are those shooting in D-Log. I fortunately am not one of them. I also wouldn't now start shooting in D-Log just to complain about it. ;)

I am a bit more pragmatic than you, and have learned to try and let go, once I have invested a reasonable time trying to change something. A wise man once told me to lower my expectations, that way I’ll always be pleasantly surprised. Accepting the things you cannot change is supposed to be a sign of wisdom. :cool: Do as you like, but certainly don't let it interfere with flying! :)
 
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Bashing something because it does not fit your needs is immature at best. I love my P4P+ Obsidian. It's a great Drone!
My purpose is to warn people that the crystal sky adds unnecessary limitations to what a p4 pro can do. I am thrilled that you love yours. Excuse me for being emotional about it, it really bothers me. Calling me immature is really not appreciated.
 
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As to your other points, "important" is relative. It's clearly important to you, and, to my knowledge, you are the first to do report and document the issue. That doesn't make it unimportant, but Its importance is likely limited to those shooting at 120fps in 1080p

I'm amazed you can spend the time to reply, but not to watch the 2 minute video at x2 speed - so 1 minute - or actually read the other posts I've made before your urge to respond kicks in. As you seem to like these: :rolleyes:

"To your knowledge" clearly means...diddly squat. All modes and speeds in 1080p are broken. ALL OF THEM. (Pretend the obligatory Meme has been inserted here)

This includes 1080p @120fps, because: ALL OF THEM (meme) That means even shooting in 1080@30fps for 30fps output is...awful. Everything that anyone has ever shot in that mode has been ruined by DJI. They might not mind, they might not be aware, it doesn't matter. It's still ruined. When they develop their skills and stop using Auto for everything and start to look closer: they'll be horrified. Just like your first finger painting that was so proudly displayed on the fridge when you brought it home from school: now you'd look at it and you'll see....it could stand some improvement in composition, and use of color. ;)

And yes, those who want to use D-Log, and find the restrictions ridiculous, will complain, because if it worked; guess what: they'd use it. :eek:

In fact anyone who wants to do anything they're supposed to be able to do, but are blocked by arbitrary limits; will, and should, complain. What's the alternative? Shrug? make a Tsk noise? Since the 1080p "workarounds" involve using additional non-free software and time (also not free); for 99.999% of people: there is no workaround. At all. They're stuck with the awfulness. At the very least they need a faster PC to be able to work with 4k at acceptable speeds, even if they then export at 1080p.

So, where's your snappy answer to that? Go on, produce a workaround for non moire-wiggling, over-sharpened 1080p video using no other software and no additional cost. We'll ALL wait... :cool:

And you shoot in 4k @60fps? I guess you're not interested in the problems that mode has either, so I'll spare you. :D

This - and other more widely noticed issues - reminds me of the cycle that occurs with the problems in Apple products; especially as Frank Wang has said he models himself on Steve Jobs (see image). He clearly hasn't read the Biography, because Steve Jobs was, to most people he dealt with, an absolute ......
 

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I pre ordered my P4PO from dronenerds. I am happy with it. I use it with ipad pro 10.5. Both are with current updates.
 
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