flickering?

[alex_markov]

I was just binge watching your videos, and the flicckering was really making me nuts, made me want to put my EII for sale, truly I'm not joking, that makes an otherwise pretty good video useless. Love our scenery man, don't get me wrong, nothing to do with your work personally

I'll ease Your pain with deflicker version of it

 

[PTBperegrine]

You have to use google translate for this - sorry www.dobrichmuseum.bg

I clicked on the English flag at the top right...
and nothing changed! ??

 

[PTBperegrine]

Interesting theory, Wonder if a menshood is called for in this instance, and if it can be actually installed, should be very light almost paper light

Hmmmm, a lenshood might be more useful than a menshood/foreskin in most photographic circumstances. ?

 

[Rubik3x]

Hmmmm, a lenshood might be more useful than a menshood/foreskin in most photographic circumstances. ?

I'm trying several things to shield the front glass of the camera from direct sunlight. First I glued a thin aluminum eyebrow (made from pop can) to the outer rim of an ND16 filter. Unfortunately, in order to clear the drone body during gimbal calibration, the eyebrow had to be so short as to be ineffective. I removed that. Next, I attached a thin fiberglass visor (like the bill of a baseball cap) to the drone body sticking out over the camera. That works somewhat but gets into the camera view if I tilt the camera up more than about 12-degrees. It's still installed. Now, I have also attached a smaller diameter, but longer eyebrow to the face of the ND16 filter (cut from plastic bottle) and trimmed it to not be in the camera image. It is very light but a counter balance weight on the back of the camera may be a good idea. I have to remove this eyebrow during gimbal calibration to prevent interference with the body. I'll be flying that configuration next.

 

[alex_markov]

I'm trying several things to shield the front glass of the camera from direct sunlight. First I glued a thin aluminum eyebrow (made from pop can) to the outer rim of an ND16 filter. Unfortunately, in order to clear the drone body during gimbal calibration, the eyebrow had to be so short as to be ineffective. I removed that. Next, I attached a thin fiberglass visor (like the bill of a baseball cap) to the drone body sticking out over the camera. That works somewhat but gets into the camera view if I tilt the camera up more than about 12-degrees. It's still installed. Now, I have also attached a smaller diameter, but longer eyebrow to the face of the ND16 filter (cut from plastic bottle) and trimmed it to not be in the camera image. It is very light but a counter balance weight on the back of the camera may be a good idea. I have to remove this eyebrow during gimbal calibration to prevent interference with the body. I'll be flying that configuration next.

I like how E2P flies but the camera have a lot of quirks (props shadows, lost of AF, flares, some compression artifacts especially in clouds, uneven exposure, flickering ...) I quit fighting and complaining as they need to redesign camera-gimble module in order to fix some of them for the others there some hope as they can be solved through software, but I am not a big believer
So now I film Manual focus and try as hard as possible to avoid or cut out against the sun scenes , remove flickering in DavinciResolv (Very slow ) ... in short try to live with it and made the best out of it ... but looking forward to a different bird

 

[Cmassof]

I had this exposure flickering and artifacts in clouds in both Auto and Manual exposure mode. Sun was to my back so it wasn't prop shadow. In my case, I was shooting in h.264 with the .mov wrapper. It seems to have disappeared when I switched to .mp4. The video even looked cleaner. my guess is that it may be the way Autel writes the wrapper for .mov when in h.264. I'll be doing more testing to recreate the issue.
H.265 seems to work fine with .mov.

 

[Rubik3x]

I like how E2P flies but the camera have a lot of quirks (props shadows, lost of AF, flares, some compression artifacts especially in clouds, uneven exposure, flickering ...)

Alex, the only issue that I have seen from your list of complaints is the sun flares and glare on the front lens which I have tried to address with the sun shields and eyebrows as described above. No prop shadows, no lost AF, no compression artifacts, no flickering and no uneven exposure. [Of course, props can appear in the video when accelerating forward and the camera is pointed horizontal.] I am shooting 4K/30, H.265, LOG, manual exposure, ISO=100, f-stop in mid-range, 60fps, auto focus and .mp4 with an ND filter in bright sun. With manual exposure, I have to change the f-stop or shutter speed a bit when the scene brightness changes dramatically. This creates files with 10-bit colors and high bit-rates. DaVinci Resolve allows export ("Deliver") with 10-bit color and high bit-rates. Does any of this help with your issues?

 

[noidsr]

Hey guys, I own EVO II PRO and after roughly six months after I purchased it I started noticing same flickering while in Auto exposure mode. Before that everything was perfect. So I thought something happened with either sensors and it needs to be replaced or so because it is still under the warranty. In manual mode everything works great as it should. Sent an email to support about this and bellow are the answers. After several basic exchange of emails they said that I should use manual mode instead of auto and this "bug" will be fixed with the next firmware update. The answer did not make any sense to me as I used my drone for some 6 months and did not notice any "bugs". However, as I see in this thread it might be a bug because other experience a similar thing. So now basically I have to film only in manual mode which is not always convenient and nobody knows when this new firmware comes out and if it really going to fix the problem.

"
Sorry for the late reply.
Our camera engineers are fixing the issue now, but it may need about one month because they are busy in the new-released products.
Firstly, please download the newest Autel Explorer APP:
https://www.autelrobotics.com/download/113.html "

"
Good day! Apologies for the late response.

We've already received an update from our repair team and they would like to confirm if you we're using the automatic exposure when shooting the video. If so, we recommend to set all of the options to manual. The engineers will later release a new firmware version to improve this issue.

Let me know if you have any more questions, comments, or concerns. Feel free to contact us at [email protected] or you can check our website at https://www.autelrobotics.com/ for more information."

 

[MetalheadMedia]

I found this thread and I believe I am having the same problem, although it appears to be more severe. I did notice the flicker while filming and initially passed it off as poor signal transmission before I decided to start changing things. I believe this clip shows almost all in Manual mode but I left the White Balance in AUTO mode to account for the sun peeking in and out of the clouds. Is that what I'm looking at here? Auto mode gone wrong?

 

[Rubik3x]

Yes, don't trust Auto White Balance. It's constantly trying to balance colors as the scene changes. Lock WB to ~5600K for daylight. May be slightly different for snow.

 

[alex_markov]

Alex, the only issue that I have seen from your list of complaints is the sun flares and glare on the front lens which I have tried to address with the sun shields and eyebrows as described above. No prop shadows, no lost AF, no compression artifacts, no flickering and no uneven exposure. [Of course, props can appear in the video when accelerating forward and the camera is pointed horizontal.] I am shooting 4K/30, H.265, LOG, manual exposure, ISO=100, f-stop in mid-range, 60fps, auto focus and .mp4 with an ND filter in bright sun. With manual exposure, I have to change the f-stop or shutter speed a bit when the scene brightness changes dramatically. This creates files with 10-bit colors and high bit-rates. DaVinci Resolve allows export ("Deliver") with 10-bit color and high bit-rates. Does any of this help with your issues?

I solved all my problems by selling EVO 2 and replaced it with Mini 2 at first, then DJI FPV - Great drone and now M3 - they all have some quirks but nothing like EVO 2

 

[Rubik3x]

I solved all my problems by selling EVO 2 and replaced it with Mini 2 at first, then DJI FPV - Great drone and now M3 - they all have some quirks but nothing like EVO 2

I'm glad you're happy with the DJI drones. Sorry to hear that you gave up on the Autel EVO II. I'm still enjoying mine.

 

[GeoDrone SRL]

Did you had Defog active? I have seen flickers like this in one of my footage with Defog enabled and Antiflicker set at 50Hz.
After both were turned off, (WB always in Manual mode) no problems.
Seems that in some scenarios the Defog and Antiflicker start to...flicker No idea why, possible that camera receives a fake flickering on 50Hz with Defog and tries to compensate it.
I have solved it by duplicating the clip another 2 times in Adobe P., base clip at 100% opacity, second duplicated clip delayed with +1 frame from base clip, put over base clip with Opacity 66%, third clip put over second clip and delayed +1 frame (so will be +2 frames over base clip) at opacity 33%.
This should help.
Also be careful...delay is on FRAMES, not seconds, as if you delay it on seconds, will be a mess.
Cheers.

 

[MetalheadMedia]

I solved all my problems by selling EVO 2 and replaced it with Mini 2 at first, then DJI FPV - Great drone and now M3 - they all have some quirks but nothing like EVO 2

I'm leaning toward that, for sure. Between EVO 2's V1/V2 stuff with the chip shortage and the lack of customer support in trying to figure out how/where to get this thing fixed, I'm thinking about making a switch.

 

[MetalheadMedia]

Did you had Defog active? I have seen flickers like this in one of my footage with Defog enabled and Antiflicker set at 50Hz.
After both were turned off, (WB always in Manual mode) no problems.
Seems that in some scenarios the Defog and Antiflicker start to...flicker No idea why, possible that camera receives a fake flickering on 50Hz with Defog and tries to compensate it.
I have solved it by duplicating the clip another 2 times in Adobe P., base clip at 100% opacity, second duplicated clip delayed with +1 frame from base clip, put over base clip with Opacity 66%, third clip put over second clip and delayed +1 frame (so will be +2 frames over base clip) at opacity 33%.
This should help.
Also be careful...delay is on FRAMES, not seconds, as if you delay it on seconds, will be a mess.
Cheers.

Good tips. Where is the Defog settings?

I've tried the duplicating clip trick in Premiere on other screen flicker clips and it didn't really help too much. I ended up finding a third-party plug-in that worked pretty well.

 

[GeoDrone SRL]

Good tips. Where is the Defog settings?

I've tried the duplicating clip trick in Premiere on other screen flicker clips and it didn't really help too much. I ended up finding a third-party plug-in that worked pretty well.

Defog is in hidden settings... Click on lower right and you see a box... On it you have the histogram, Defog, and rest...

 

[tvwxman]

ARGH! My video crashed!! Did I fix it?

I was out getting some nice sunset/twilight shots of my home town when I noticed on my phone's display some flickering in the video with some sort of color shifting. I could only hope it was something related to the signal being fed, or the connection between my phone and controller, etc. Not...

autelpilots.com

 

[GeoDrone SRL]

So after a lot of tests in first part of day, conclusions:
At high SS and 30 FPS, with AP like from AP 4 and up, the camera is very sensitive to prop shadows. When the sun is at around 15-45 degrees angle from drone as horizontal axes (consider that gimbal is at 0 degrees angle in horizontal axes) and 30-60 degrees vertical axes, at movements in sides the props cover with the shadow the front side of sensor...
We have managed to change the sync of props at 24 FPS, 1/60 SS, AP 2.8 and ND filter, but with Neutral mode.
Even if there are clouds and sun is fully covered, or is mist, the prop shadow appears and ALL SCREEN is flickering, but not equal, is synced as SS is moving, so you see a flicker in upper 1/3, then a flicker in middle 2/3 and last one in lower 3/3 screen.
This is tested with Low Noise props, that have larger size than standard props...probably this is why some have, some have not.
Tests were made in same spot, same movements, all identical as conditions in flight.
At 24 FPS and 1/60 SS with Neutral, we had a clear image, as previous one in same spot had ugly flicker.
The most sensitive is side movements, as drone incline and props cover more area above the camera, even if is not seen.

So....mystery solved. Have nothing to do with Defog and Deflicker as I have guessed before, is just the SS synced with the prop shadow, even if you cannot see a visible one on the ground.

 

[tvwxman]

So after a lot of tests in first part of day, conclusions:
At high SS and 30 FPS, with AP like from AP 4 and up, the camera is very sensitive to prop shadows. When the sun is at around 15-45 degrees angle from drone as horizontal axes (consider that gimbal is at 0 degrees angle in horizontal axes) and 30-60 degrees vertical axes, at movements in sides the props cover with the shadow the front side of sensor...
We have managed to change the sync of props at 24 FPS, 1/60 SS, AP 2.8 and ND filter, but with Neutral mode.
Even if there are clouds and sun is fully covered, or is mist, the prop shadow appears and ALL SCREEN is flickering, but not equal, is synced as SS is moving, so you see a flicker in upper 1/3, then a flicker in middle 2/3 and last one in lower 3/3 screen.
This is tested with Low Noise props, that have larger size than standard props...probably this is why some have, some have not.
Tests were made in same spot, same movements, all identical as conditions in flight.
At 24 FPS and 1/60 SS with Neutral, we had a clear image, as previous one in same spot had ugly flicker.
The most sensitive is side movements, as drone incline and props cover more area above the camera, even if is not seen.

So....mystery solved. Have nothing to do with Defog and Deflicker as I have guessed before, is just the SS synced with the prop shadow, even if you cannot see a visible one on the ground.

Thank you for giving this so much thought. Unfortunately unless I am missing something, this does not explain the flickering in my video that I posted directly above your response here which occurred in twilight, quite a long time after sunset.. I was also able to duplicate the issue with the drone parked in my kitchen (and not running) under under tungsten lighting which were not causing the flickering I can assure you thanks!

 

[GeoDrone SRL]

Thank you for giving this so much thought. Unfortunately unless I am missing something, this does not explain the flickering in my video that I posted directly above your response here which occurred in twilight, quite a long time after sunset.. I was also able to duplicate the issue with the drone parked in my kitchen (and not running) under under tungsten lighting which were not causing the flickering I can assure you thanks!

If you are in your kitchen and have White Balance MANUAL , AP manual 2.8, SS manual, and you still have flickers without props started, is an issue with camera.
You can try to use Deflicker at 50 and 60 HZ and see if it changes something, but most cases is sensor issue.
The flickers from propellers shows in all video and if you get frame by frame, you can see the shadow moving from upper to lower part of video.
So...if Manual test fails, you need to send it to service.