Phantom 4 Pro v2.0 Range is awful

In order to get 1080P on DJI Go 4, I get the warning that recording resolution will be dropped to 2.7K. Are you recording at 2.7K when using the goggles at 1080P?
 
Make sure you are on the latest FW, released last week. It is supposed to have fixed some the issues with the DJI acknowledged buggy shipping FW, including poor goggle performance and hover instability. If you still have issues after that, return it!
 
I'm waiting to learn if DJI added more restrictions in the latest firmware, or if there are any unexpected bugs that affect the safety of the AC. I don't want to be the guinea pig beta tester. :)
 
I'm waiting to learn if DJI added more restrictions in the latest firmware, or if there are any unexpected bugs that affect the safety of the AC. I don't want to be the guinea pig beta tester. :)
Further restrictions are highly unlikely, as they were already implemented long ago. Unexpected bugs are always present, and a byproduct of any FW update. As they say with medication, your "doctor" has prescribed this "medication" for you because the expected benefits outweigh the possible side effects. YMMV. ;)
 
My understanding is that both Occusync and Lightbridge are about equal in terms of RC range, but that Occusync is supposed to provide a more stable video feed, as well as the added benefit of being able to go cordless with FPV. The main thing I care about is getting a stable video feed, because for me, Lightbridge is lacking on my P4P compared to my Mavic Pro Platinum.
 
If there was major interference wouldn't it be present throughout the flight though? It seems rather coincidental that the signal strength is good for the first half of each flight then drops dramatically. It also remains poor even once the Phantom is just a few feet away. I just flew another flight with the outside air temp at 96 and all was good until 4 minutes in and the same issue occurred. I checked another flight log from a few days ago that was flown at 102f and the signal strength drops drastically at around 2 1/2 minutes and never gets better.

I guess I'll be getting up extra early tomorrow morning to see if I run into any issues flying around my neighborhood with the same cooler temps that I had yesterday.
You could have a beam in the area from a tower or antenna, or even someone with aggressive WiFi.
 
I noticed there's an issue with the video transmission when flying over water. The lower 2/3 of the screen is breaking up and lots of macroblocks visible where the water occupies the frame. Especially specular reflections off the waves. Lightbridge just can't handle that at 720P. If I could lower the frame rate to 24 to match the recording frame rate, the quality would probably be a lot better.
 
I noticed there's an issue with the video transmission when flying over water. The lower 2/3 of the screen is breaking up and lots of macroblocks visible where the water occupies the frame. Especially specular reflections off the waves. Lightbridge just can't handle that at 720P. If I could lower the frame rate to 24 to match the recording frame rate, the quality would probably be a lot better.
I can assure you from vast personal experience (over 200 hours, over 26 million feet, and over 700 flights) that Lightbridge on the original P4P, P4 and P3P, can certainly handle video transmission when flying over water at great distance (4+ miles away) while simultaneously recording in 4K at even 60fps without any degradation of the video stream. :cool:
 
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Observe:

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As soon as the water fills the lower 2/3 of frame, it has difficulty compressing the data without gross distortion. This is the cache recording from Lightbridge.
 
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As soon as the water fills the lower 2/3 of frame, it has difficulty compressing the data without gross distortion. This is the cache recording from Lightbridge.
Thanks for showing what you are seeing. I've never seen this myself in 3 years of using Lightbridge. It's not normal or expected. I also don't fly directly into the sun with gross overexposure like that, which is the underlying problem, not a deficiency in Lightbridge. :cool:
 
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It's an extreme situation, and uncommon, unless you do a lot of whale watch videos. Compressing to h.264 for Youtube, the whale watch videos, suffered a lot like this too, though not as bad. I compress now with HEVC and no further degradation occurs.
Incidentally, the recorded 4K video, edited and recompressed in HEVC, came out just wonderful.
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I noticed there's an issue with the video transmission when flying over water. The lower 2/3 of the screen is breaking up and lots of macroblocks visible where the water occupies the frame. Especially specular reflections off the waves. Lightbridge just can't handle that at 720P. If I could lower the frame rate to 24 to match the recording frame rate, the quality would probably be a lot better.
Why didn't you mention using the CS tablet? I just read your other posts, and found out you are using the CS tablet instead of an iPad on a P4P V2. CS tablet is running a buggy customized Android version of GO 4, so ignore everything I said. It doesn't apply to you. Your problem is the CS tablet and a buggy new P4P V2, neither of which have any history yet of working well, let alone together. Lightbridge works just fine. You aren't using Lightbridge. V2 uses Occusync instead. No reason you can't record 4K at 60fps and upload to YT at a CBR of 100mbs to minimize compression, after editing in PP CC 2018.
 
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It's an extreme situation, and uncommon, unless you do a lot of whale watch videos. Compressing to h.264 for Youtube, the whale watch videos, suffered a lot like this too, though not as bad. I compress now with HEVC and no further degradation occurs.
Incidentally, the recorded 4K video, edited and recompressed in HEVC, came out just wonderful.
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Must have missed the whales. None to be seen. Were they in the blown out highlights? :confused:
 
My personal gripe with Lightbridge isn't even necessarily with the range at which the video feed starts to drop out due to interference, but rather the manner in which it just cuts in and out abruptly, where Ocusync begins to drop out gradually, and gives you more time to respond and correct. With Lightbridge I can be flying along with 5 bars of HD signal, which will then abruptly drop to zero, and then back up to 5. I don't expect to get better range with the P4P V 2.0, but I absolutely expect to get better performance out of the video feed.
 
Why didn't you mention using the CS tablet? I just read your other posts, and found out you are using the CS tablet instead of an iPad on a P4P V2. CS tablet is running a buggy customized Android version of GO 4, so ignore everything I said. It doesn't apply to you. Your problem is the CS tablet and a buggy new P4P V2, neither of which have any history yet of working well, let alone together. Lightbridge works just fine. You aren't using Lightbridge. V2 uses Occusync instead. No reason you can't record 4K at 60fps and upload to YT at a CBR of 100mbs to minimize compression, after editing in PP CC 2018.

One of the reasons I chose the CS (besides not being able to see the iPad screen in anything but twilight conditions) is that it's DJI hardware, and so all problems cannot be blamed on a 3rd party device. Plus the fact that it's DJI hardware, it should work best with their drones. Plus the fact that DJI makes considerable ado about claiming to have custom hardware acceleration for superior video downlink quality.

This video is in a lake. There are no whales. However, I went on a whale watch a while back (using XDCam system with Atomos Samurai, recording Prores HQ) and had a b*tch of a time compressing that to decent quality when the sun was specular off the water like this. But since I had no control over which side of the boat the whales were going to breach, I had to accept the sun in the shot. That was in the days before I had HEVC encoding.

That video that I uploaded to Youtube peaks at 121Mbps when the specular is in full view. Drops to the low 30s on the return flight with the sun behind it.

I use CS6 because it's the last version of Adobe that I can control and own without having to pay increasingly jacked up monthly subscriptions. I will not rent software and I think not having an option to buy a perpetual license is the dumbest idea Adobe ever had.
 
One of the reasons I chose the CS (besides not being able to see the iPad screen in anything but twilight conditions) is that it's DJI hardware, and so all problems cannot be blamed on a 3rd party device. Plus the fact that it's DJI hardware, it should work best with their drones. Plus the fact that DJI makes considerable ado about claiming to have custom hardware acceleration for superior video downlink quality.

This video is in a lake. There are no whales. However, I went on a whale watch a while back (using XDCam system with Atomos Samurai, recording Prores HQ) and had a b*tch of a time compressing that to decent quality when the sun was specular off the water like this. But since I had no control over which side of the boat the whales were going to breach, I had to accept the sun in the shot. That was in the days before I had HEVC encoding.

That video that I uploaded to Youtube peaks at 121Mbps when the specular is in full view. Drops to the low 30s on the return flight with the sun behind it.

I use CS6 because it's the last version of Adobe that I can control and own without having to pay increasingly jacked up monthly subscriptions. I will not rent software and I think not having an option to buy a perpetual license is the dumbest idea Adobe ever had.
I wasn't asking you to justify your decision to buy a CS (there are inexpensive shade hoods that solve the iOS screen reflections, used long before CS existed), nor blaming you for your assumptions about said device, which were the same as mine, about the original P4P+ unit with a built in CS screen, integrated into the RC. I quickly gave up on it and returned it. It was buggy as heck, and 8 months later, it finally got its first FW/GO 4 update, while iOS GO 4 had 6 updates during the same time period. I feel your pain. CS and the screen integrated P4P+/P4PV2+ controllers all run on a buggy Android GO 4 custom written for DJI's own devices, and said GO 4 is the worst version of GO 4 ever. DJI's best programmers work on the iOS platform, and always have.

The beauty of using drones for whale watching is you do get to choose the side from which you are filming, and are not limited by the location of the boat you are on. Shoot with the sun at the rear of the aircraft and put the rest of your boatbound videographers to shame!

No software is "owned." It is licensed, with ownership still retained by the developer, and strict licensing terms. The subscription model merely licenses it monthly, with all updates included. For those qualifying as students (register for any online class at a community college), the entire suite of 10 Adobe Media software products is only $20/mo. That's less than the cost of a perpetual license to any one of the older legacy dead products, which had to be updated annually to be kept current. It certainly works well for Adobe, and it is a lot cheaper for me! :cool:
 
DJI shouldn't be selling the CS if they can't program it properly. This is a safety issue for some pilots (I know, you're forbidden to fly BLOS, but many do anyway) and having the CS lose contact with the AC is unacceptable.

While the user doesn't technically "own" the software, in the old days, the license was perpetual (except in cases like Sonic Scenarist, in which case we had to fork over a kind's ransom every five years to renew) and the user doesn't have to worry that his tools will stop working if he doesn't keep paying some monthly bill, or the company goes out of business. My copy of Truevision Image Processing Software, purchased in 1986, still works today, although the hardware is long in the tooth. I don't have to pay a penny to keep using it.
 
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DJI shouldn't be selling the CS if they can't program it properly. This is a safety issue for some pilots (I know, you're forbidden to fly BLOS, but many do anyway) and having the CS lose contact with the AC is unacceptable.

While the user doesn't technically "own" the software, in the old days, the license was perpetual (except in cases like Sonic Scenarist, in which case we had to fork over a kind's ransom every five years to renew) and the user doesn't have to worry that his tools will stop working if he doesn't keep paying some monthly bill, or the company goes out of business. My copy of Truevision Image Processing Software, purchased in 1986, still works today, although the hardware is long in the tooth. I don't have to pay a penny to keep using it.
No argument there, but tilting at windmills won't fix the problem. Just avoid it altogether, by sticking with iOS, DJI's preferred platform since the Inspire 1. CS and the Plus versions of the P4P/P4PV2 have been riddled with buggy programming since day one. They continue to sell both to the unsuspecting, but a brief search of the forums will reveal those problems are not new, and began with the P4P+ almost 2 years ago. I warned people then about the Android issue, but there is only so much I can do. ;) Best to research before purchasing said devices, instead of just assuming everything will be hunky dory. Caveat emptor.

I still own the last perpetual license versions of the Adobe Media Suite as well. They are my backup, but under the current subscription model, I'm still better off, even if I agree with you in principle. :cool:
 

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