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Interested in opinions from other drone operators in picking a Mavic 3. I already have a Mavic 1, two Mavic 2s and a Mini 2. I photograph and film mostly touris

by prawn 5y ago

Interested in opinions from other drone operators in picking a Mavic 3. I already have a Mavic 1, two Mavic 2s and a Mini 2. I photograph and film mostly tourism content. I'm interested in getting 50fps+ at 4K but with good stability in the wind (which I'm not sure the Air2S has). There's a solid jump from the base to flymore - $800. I need the batteries, need filters, need the charger but don't care about the bag. Batteries are $420 for two. Charging hub is $90. Filters $180. Cine is $5k. For the $2k jump, it gives more filters (never used higher than ND16), pro controller, SSD and ProRes. SSD would be handy, but I fly over the ocean a bit and frequently change microSDs to "bank" good footage I don't want to lose if the drone drops or hits a bird. I'd be keen to get the smart controller. Does ProRes give enough to justify the cost (editing and grading performance, etc)? Currently leaning towards the base, filters, charging options, smart controller and then a few batteries. Alternatively, I already have two iPad minis I use now, so I could stick with the default controller and keep using those. The new RC Pro is US$1,200! Thoughts?

RNCTX 5y ago
Plus the cost of a pretty high end desktop to grade the footage. And the cost of a pretty high end NAS to store the footage, sending it around to cloud services isn't feasible due to the file sizes. Hint: ZFS is your friend here. If you can't back up data you have to make the medium bulletproof (as much as possible). (I have no film production background personally but I did spec out a NAS setup for someone who does, just for them to cost analyze what it would look like to take RAW filming on the road with them to out of the way places, so I've seen the numbers once)
- prawn 5y ago
  My M1 MBP is coping far better than my previous MBP. Worst case, I switch off the grade when I'm checking pacing/flow/timeline stuff, and I'm less concerned with those things if I'm doing the grade itself. Will get worse if 5K is the norm. I was mostly filming 2.7K@50, now 4K@25. Would ideally pick at least 4K@50. I bought 25TB in portable drives this week for a multi-month project. I have 3x 4-bay NAS boxes that I archive to, and then day-to-day I am connected directly to 7 external drives (3x 2-4TB standard drives, and 4x 0.5-1TB SSDs to work from). Sick of the cables and ejecting drives each time I move between home and office!
  - RNCTX 5y ago
    Mine is a Fractal Design case, it's designed for 6 mechanical drives but you can double up if you're using 2.5" SSDs, of course. There's room in the back for one PCI-e card, so you get one extra controller in the box that way to double up the number of drive connectors. It seems there were a lot more case options years ago before there was a cloud service datacenter on every other street corner. Not nearly as many being made today as there were 10 years ago.

by prawn 5y ago

RNCTX 5y ago

Plus the cost of a pretty high end desktop to grade the footage. And the cost of a pretty high end NAS to store the footage, sending it around to cloud services isn't feasible due to the file sizes. Hint: ZFS is your friend here. If you can't back up data you have to make the medium bulletproof (as much as possible). (I have no film production background personally but I did spec out a NAS setup for someone who does, just for them to cost analyze what it would look like to take RAW filming on the road with them to out of the way places, so I've seen the numbers once)

prawn 5y ago
My M1 MBP is coping far better than my previous MBP. Worst case, I switch off the grade when I'm checking pacing/flow/timeline stuff, and I'm less concerned with those things if I'm doing the grade itself. Will get worse if 5K is the norm. I was mostly filming 2.7K@50, now 4K@25. Would ideally pick at least 4K@50. I bought 25TB in portable drives this week for a multi-month project. I have 3x 4-bay NAS boxes that I archive to, and then day-to-day I am connected directly to 7 external drives (3x 2-4TB standard drives, and 4x 0.5-1TB SSDs to work from). Sick of the cables and ejecting drives each time I move between home and office!
- RNCTX 5y ago
  Mine is a Fractal Design case, it's designed for 6 mechanical drives but you can double up if you're using 2.5" SSDs, of course. There's room in the back for one PCI-e card, so you get one extra controller in the box that way to double up the number of drive connectors. It seems there were a lot more case options years ago before there was a cloud service datacenter on every other street corner. Not nearly as many being made today as there were 10 years ago.