Mavic 3 / Mavic 3 Cine

Philip Bloom found that the Cine only just has enough power in a single battery to offload a full SSD - who knows if it will still have enough a year down the line after a couple of hundred charge cycles. It's also a mystery to me why DJI think people working at the level where they *need* ProRes out of their drone are going to be happy having their footage stuck inside the aircraft for subsequent shots. seems to me you'd have to offload after every flight, which means a load of extra time and a load of extra batteries.
 
obviously the solution is to have multiple m3 cine drones so you can ground one to offload while you fly the other. jk
 
Tim Sewell said:
Philip Bloom found that the Cine only just has enough power in a single battery to offload a full SSD - who knows if it will still have enough a year down the line after a couple of hundred charge cycles. It's also a mystery to me why DJI think people working at the level where they *need* ProRes out of their drone are going to be happy having their footage stuck inside the aircraft for subsequent shots. seems to me you'd have to offload after every flight, which means a load of extra time and a load of extra batteries.
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Seems it has been designed by people who have no idea about the end use. They just thought from an engineering point of view. Technology needs to be usable. It seems DJI didn't think it necessary to take feedback from any filmmaker while designing the drone. When you are the market leader by a large margin, at times complacency sets in.
 
indiawilds said:
Seems it has been designed by people who have no idea about the end use. They just thought from an engineering point of view. Technology needs to be usable. It seems DJI didn't think it necessary to take feedback from any filmmaker while designing the drone. When you are the market leader by a large margin, at times complacency sets in.
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Reminiscent of some Apple decisions…
 
indiawilds said:
Seems it has been designed by people who have no idea about the end use. They just thought from an engineering point of view. Technology needs to be usable. It seems DJI didn't think it necessary to take feedback from any filmmaker while designing the drone. When you are the market leader by a large margin, at times complacency sets in.
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I don't know why (insert ways to profit here) but I think it was a deliberate decision - most of the other elements in the system seem well thought out. I'd be surprised if they simply overlooked the transferring footage aspect.

I'm sure someone will come out with a dummy battery to wall power cable that will ease the pain but being tethered to the capture device is such a massive backwards step!
 
rob norton said:
I don't know why (insert ways to profit here) but I think it was a deliberate decision - most of the other elements in the system seem well thought out. I'd be surprised if they simply overlooked the transferring footage aspect.

I'm sure someone will come out with a dummy battery to wall power cable that will ease the pain but being tethered to the capture device is such a massive backwards step!
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Yeah. It's massively stupid and the primary reason I wasn't really interested in ponying up the extra for the Cine. The on-board 8GB or whatever storage in my previous drones that had it was handy in a pinch, but the offload experience was so massively crappy I never really used it. I can't imagine how crappy it is to offload 1TB that way.
 
jbregar said:
So, I've had my Mavic 3 (non-Cine) for about a week. I also have a colleague who bought the Cine version, so we did a little comparison. I need to get his permission to post his footage, but I have to say... the ProRes footage doesn't have much more detail over the H.265 footage. To my eye, on my monitors, it looks roughly the same (hard to tell 100% because we're not dealing with 1:1 comparisons of the same footage recorded differently). We couldn't figure out how to record both H.265 and ProRes at the same time.

ProRes footage is obviously much much larger and faster to edit (though my M1 Max MacBook Pro has zero problems cutting H.265 smoothly in Final Cut Pro)... but the workflow is comically bad. Even with the DJI cable downloading to the internal SSD on my MacBook Pro (which writes at like 6GB/s) it took a long time to download even the limited amount of footage we shot. I can't imagine how miserable it'd be to download a nearly full Mavic 3 in the field. The drone also has to be on and runs off of battery power... so make sure you keep at least one battery in reserve to download footage at the end of the day.

I don't think the Cine is super overpriced, but it definitely has its warts... and unless you need the editing speed (which is somewhat negated by the slow downloads) the ProRes isn't exactly a smooth experience for what appeared to me to be negligible quality increase.

I figure if someone wants ProRes from me, they'll be paying me enough to buy a Cine... so I'll just buy it then.
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Thanks for posting this follow-up. Interesting. The h.265 I shoot with my P4Pro has never left me feeling like I really need ProRes or other codec. Maybe DJI has a new product about to be released that everyone will need to purchase to make offloading footage simpler and easier??? But, for me, no thanks.
 
jbregar said:
I had an Air 2s and have an Autel EVO II Pro 6K. For a lot of people, the Air 2s is going to be a killer package that gets great footage. The Mavic 3 and Autel are both superior though.

I'd give the M3 the edge over the EVO in raw image quality, but right now the Autel flies better and the footage is really close to the M3. I'm hoping they smooth out some of the rough spots on the M3 with the January firmware update that'll bring all the promised features.
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Interesting your comparison, so thank you for your entry : )

I guess if the Autel bird takes the lead for 6K and especially price-wise, M3 has some advantage though with a larger sensor size coupled to 4K 120fps under 900 grams too.

Don't we have here the most balanced offer today above those mythical 250 grams 'cause the regulations?

Here's where Autel shines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTgTyCHb-DE&t=109s
 
Apparently, the Mavic 3 is about to get a 1.7 GB firmware update given Philip Bloom's most recent short video on his testing of those added functions.
 
Yeah. I'm really hoping the flight dynamics get an update. Right now it flies really twitchy... even with the settings all turned down.
 
Early reports indicate that the firmware update doubles the SSD transfer speeds moving from 310 MB/sec to a 670 MB/sec average when done.
 
Apparent from adding new FocusTrack (intelligent flight mode), Spotlight, ActiveTrack 5.0, MasterShots, Hyperlapse, and RAW only for photos, it includes:
  • Reduced video recording noise for ProRes of Mavic 3 Cine
  • Reduced occasional vibration of aircraft arms in some scenarios
  • Improved RTH performance
  • Improved obstacle avoidance performance
  • Improved hover stability
  • Fixed issue: some computers could not connect to aircraft via USB
  • Fixed issue: abnormal color appeared in some scenarios
  • Fixed some bugs for remote controller
A lot of people report the twitchy controls, but haven't seen anything yet that it was addressed in the update.
 
David Saraceno said:
What are you experiencing? I've read that any turns are erratic, not smooth, and jumpy.
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Pretty much that. It flies "twitchy" and not smooth... even in "cine" mode. I have the settings all turned down.

It did get better with the firmware update, but it's still not good. It just takes a lot of skill to get things like a smooth orbit or "hero" shot that were relatively easy with the M2Pro (and even easier with the EVO II Pro).

Of course, it's not all bad. The M3 has one hell of a camera on it. The low light capability is pretty amazing for a small drone platform. I'm also relatively confident DJI will eventually solve the flight dynamics issue.
 
I agree. The Mavic 3 appears to be rushed to the market by DJI -- at least in some key areas. Firmware that was originally anticipated in January arrived much earlier, so appears some issues are being addressed.
 
I shot all morning with my Mavic 3 Cine flying in and out of tree lined rivers and I personally don't feel that there's any flight issues with the system, at least with my copy. My M3C with the new RC Pro remote is hands down the best flying bird I've ever used. I recently sold my Phantom 4 Pro+ and my Air 2S and for me this drone absolutely smokes those in terms of flight control, handling and image quality. Perhaps those who got the Cine version with the RC Pro remote are having better luck thanks to the upgraded remote?
 
ahalpert said:
Why not just fly an fx3 on an airpeak? Is this just for ****s and giggles or is there actually a potential advantage?
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- They would've already owned the drone (and maybe the 4d)/don't have to buy and sell a airpeak
- FPV goggles control - either a function or preference thing
- ND filters
- maybe greater AF control (can't tell what set up they have)
- maybe better files
- other potential monitoring reasons?
- overall set up could actually be smaller?
 
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