IT guy? Drone video issue.

[Deerguy]

Checking to see if there is an IT guy/gal here that can help me out? I've got a drone (Phantom 4 Pro). When I shoot video, it saves the files to both my phone (tethered to controller) and to the micro sd card within the drone (MP4 format).

When I play the video saved to my phone, it works perfectly. When I play the exact same video on on the computer (after copying from the sd card), it is so distorted that it is unwatchable (happens with 2 different video players). Choppy, long lags , pixelation, etc. But, here's what's weird. If I copy the video file from my phone (not the sd card) and play on the computer (same video player as before), now it works. Codec problem? I can also load the distorted video file into a video editor and it play it just fine, but that takes 20 minutes for each file.

I have Windows 10 and my default video players on the computer are Windows Media Player and Windows Movies and TV. Happens with both, but can't find a way to look at/change settings in either. Not even sure what to change.

I realize the easy solution is to just copy the files from the phone to the computer. But, the memory on the phone fills up (only saves to internal versus external storage and I don't think I can change it) and doesn't save all the files that the sd card holds.

Little help?

[systemnt]

known issue with Windows 10... it SUCKS for video codecs. (even when using 3rd party video players like VLC etc...
btw..copying to the computer wont solve it.

I had the same issue with windows 10 (media player 12) and videos i pull from my phone to it.
I had to download and install media.player.codec.pack.v4.4.7.setup.exe
From https://www.mediaplayercodecpack.com/

this installs windows media player classic which apparently handles it better.

works better...but still has issue with video/audio sync...

[ren087]

Or just download mpc-hc. https://mpc-hc.org/

[coachwhip]

Video saved to phone is lower quality optimized for phones, chances are your video on card is 4k huge files and if your computer is not designed to play 4k it's going to struggle to play it. Perhaps try a lower quality video format in your DJI Go 4 app.

[Deerguy]

Video saved to phone is lower quality optimized for phones, chances are your video on card is 4k huge files and if your computer is not designed to play 4k it's going to struggle to play it. Perhaps try a lower quality video format in your DJI Go 4 app.

After doing some checking yesterday, I'm pretty sure you are exactly correct. I did find where the cached video on the phone is lower quality (although it is still pretty darn good) and file size.

So, when viewing on the computer, I'm limited by my computer hardware as opposed to the software (downloading a different viewer shouldn't help)?

Not sure if you can help on this one, but since you seem to know something about it, any idea how to make the videos go straight to the phone's sd card rather than use the internal memory that fills up too fast? I can't find a setting anywhere.

Thanks for the help.

[yaqui]

Video saved to phone is lower quality optimized for phones, chances are your video on card is 4k huge files and if your computer is not designed to play 4k it's going to struggle to play it. Perhaps try a lower quality video format in your DJI Go 4 app.

Yup, You can downsample to 1080 and see if that works for you. And if not, go down to 720.

My laptop is not 4k, bit when it is played on on 4k TV WOW!

[systemnt]

Video saved to phone is lower quality optimized for phones, chances are your video on card is 4k huge files and if your computer is not designed to play 4k it's going to struggle to play it. Perhaps try a lower quality video format in your DJI Go 4 app.

Absolutely correct.. resaved my phones 4K vids as HD 720.. and they play on my desktop machine now.
Great info. Thanks