Planning a Video Flight

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Video flight overview

Video flights fly the drone along the path described by the planning screen while recording video focused on a single point of interest. DroneDeploy has applied smoothing to both the flight and video, which ensures a great capture every time with minimal effort.

The Start and End locations represent where the video recording will begin and end. Estimates for video length are provided during the planning process.

Creating a video flight template

First, create a new Video flight template within your project. You can find this option under New Flight Template in your flight template dropdown.

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Video flight settings

Video flight templates have several available options to help you get the professional shot you need:

  • Altitude: This is the height above the takeoff location at which the entire video will be shot.

  • Focal Point Altitude: Use this setting to focus above ground level. This is useful for capturing taller structures or terrain.

  • Video Flight Speed: This affects how quickly the drone flies during video capture. Faster speeds may result in regressions to video smoothness.

  • Capture Quality: Choose to capture video in HD (1080p) or 4K. Higher 4K quality requires more storage space. Video is captured at 30 frames per second (fps).

Flying a video flight template

As with all of our flight templates, you can re-fly the video template over and over, ultimately capturing consistent and comparative data over time.

A Video flight template supports DroneDeploy’s standard pre-flight checklist before the flight. Once in flight, the drone flies the planned course while focusing on the point of interest. The drone begins video recording when it reaches the beginning of the route and ends once the loop is complete. The red recording dot identifies that the drone is recording video.

Supported drones

  • Most drones are supported for video capture at both HD and 4K capture quality.

  • The Mavic 2 Pro video format must be set in DJI GO.

  • The Inspire 1 and P3 lines are not supported.

  • A full list of supported drones can be found here for ease of reference: Recommended and Supported Drones

Uploading videos

Once the flight is complete, we suggest uploading to DroneDeploy to see your video in the context of your map. Uploading, processing, and hosting are available for Individual, Advanced, Teams, and Enterprise subscriptions only.

  1. Navigate to the Upload tab on your Project view on DroneDeploy.com.

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  2. If you recently flew the video template, you should see an upload card there.

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  3. Otherwise, select New Upload and find the Video option.

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  4. When uploading a video, select the date that you would like to associate the video with. This will affect which date needs to be selected to view the video.

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  5. Only one video can be uploaded at a time.
     

You will receive an email when your video has finished processing and is ready to view!

Limitations/considerations

  • Sharp corners may benefit from adding new waypoints to round the edge.

  • The point of interest can be set outside of the video loop.

  • We recommend using a 100 megabits per second (Mbps) or higher SD card for reliable video saving.

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