Need STABLE Multicopter Recommendations, 99% look unsuitable 4 filming

[Triple]

Hi Guys, I just joined up, great forum. Full disclosure: total newb here.

I know most of you guys are congenital tinkerers and apparently most are electronics and programming rocket scientists too. I have extensive RC plane building experience, but soldering notwithstanding, electronics, and programming/setting tweaking, especially in a Windows environment are all against my religion

I am looking for a one of two types of multicopters preferably ARTF:

The first one would be capable of taking up a small HD cam in the form of a digital point and shoot providing I can find one that shoots 1080p at 60fps, so I can do slo-mo.

The next would be something capable of carrying something like a Sony FS100.

Now here's the kicker. I have looked at hundreds of videos of aerial footage shot from multicopters, and everyone was completely unacceptable in quality with the exception of the guys using the Cinestar 6 multicopter. Everything else I have seen is shaky, blurry, stuttery, shows boom arms/blades/motors/skids, or has vibration phase artifacts. I know one can use Final Cut Pro's smoothcam feature, but I already use that extensively elsewhere, and it cannot do the magic needed to fix 99% of what I see.

I have seen numerous videos showing stabilized camera mounts where some guy is tilting the multicopter all over the place and the mount is slewing rapidly, but the camera itself is not remotely staying stable, the mount is just removing half of the movement. These videos ostensibly are to market the stable platform product, but to me they prove the product is useless.

Now I have seen the Dragafly platform. Really clean and uncluttered, and those quickfold arms make it PERFECT for airline travel. BUT, even their own online footage is unacceptably unstable, and that thing uses a proprietary TX with might not have the telemetry that the top shelf HOTT and FAST systems have. PLUS, it apparently starts at $15k.

Then there is the Cinestar 6 and 8. Large, and starts at about 12K including stable mount. Ouch. It might be the only solution though for something the size of a Sony FS100 where one needs smooth footage.

I would like nothing better than to find a a really stable small system for a smaller pocket videocam/GoPro 2 where they can prove via footage it can shoot stable sequence footage OUTDOORS not interested in aerobatics)

Not really interested at this point of one with GPS waypoint configuring, but auto return when signal is lost seems like a good idea.

So there you have it, opinions?

Thanks guys!

 

[Macsgrafs]

You need a real helicopter with gyro stabilised cam, like the old bill use

Ross

 

[Triple]

It would have to be electric, as the noise of a 2 stroke glow engine would not work, nor would the cost of a turbine and the logistics of traveling with all that including fuel.

 

[Droider]

Eh Up Triple

Welcome to MRF. Your wish list is NOT impossible and a Cinestar or sky jib can be bought much cheaper than 12K RTF..

Where on the planet are you?

 

[Triple]

Hello Droider, and thanks for the welcome.

I am across the pond in the States.

I think the Cinestar 6 RTF with a gyro camera mount is about 10-11K. Doesn't look particularly portable without spending an hour disassembling all the arms. I do see they have a kit, looks like about 5K excluding radio, but I don't know if it requires all sorts of programming, fiddling, adjustment of oh, dozens of parameters and several hundred possible combinations, lol.

 

[thepelell]

Hi Guys, I just joined up, great forum. Full disclosure: total newb here.

I know most of you guys are congenital tinkerers and apparently most are electronics and programming rocket scientists too. I have extensive RC plane building experience, but soldering notwithstanding, electronics, and programming/setting tweaking, especially in a Windows environment are all against my religion

If this is your case, then just forget about it. Aerial filming is not like buying a better tripod head to get smoother pans... It takes time, determination, lots of tinkering and a certain amount of money; the videos you say are unsuitable are probably the result of at least one year of building/crashing/rebuilding/tweeking by the owners.
I suggest you just hire a pro for the shots you need so you don't have to deal with the learning curve.

 

[quadcopters]

I second what thepelell states , Multi Rotor option at this time will probably not give you what you require.
This hobby requires patience and a varied amount of tweaking to achieve good results and like most things , you get out of it what you put into it .

Geoff

 

[DennyR]

Before considering anything you should wait and see what DJI bring to the table. Nothing mentioned so far will even come close.

 

[Cabe]

Good, Fast, Cheap, you may choose up to any two.

It might sound trite but I have found it to be true for a number of situations. These have been words to live by in my broadcasting and IT background.

 

[Triple]

It is not economically feasible to hire someone to fly International to the location for filming, so I will have to do it if I go that route. The Cinestar 6 demo films show good smooth camera work. Is it just that smaller to medium systems and gyro camera mounts are incapable of getting such smooth results?

 

[Triple]

By the way, here is a perfect example of a nice, compact, clean looking unit, and the building firm wants to show off their gyro stabilized camera mount. Look at the top of the camera in relation to the horizontal lines of the house architecture. That is one majorly useless gyro mount! If I put that together and wanted to sell gyro mounts, I'd bury that video.

Now is that a function of programming, or just a poor gyro mount that can't keep up with fast movements?

The other issue I frequently see is the vibration from the unit is transferring down through the mount to the camera, and if the copter frequency is a harmonic of the frame rate of the videocam, it does some major numbers on the footage.

 

[RTRyder]

By the way, here is a perfect example of a nice, compact, clean looking unit, and the building firm wants to show off their gyro stabilized camera mount. Look at the top of the camera in relation to the horizontal lines of the house architecture. That is one majorly useless gyro mount! If I put that together and wanted to sell gyro mounts, I'd bury that video.

Now is that a function of programming, or just a poor gyro mount that can't keep up with fast movements?

The other issue I frequently see is the vibration from the unit is transferring down through the mount to the camera, and if the copter frequency is a harmonic of the frame rate of the videocam, it does some major numbers on the footage.

First, you're not going to find a nice compact unit that will be able to carry an FS100, for that you will need at least a CineStar if you expect the video that comes out of it to meet your expectations. There are a few smaller units that could carry a 1080P 60 FPS camera that will give you decent quality video. Mainly you'd be looking to carry something like a Sony Nex 5N, not all that big or heavy so the choices for a platform that can fly it are better than for an FS 100.

The X Aircraft is a low end hobby platform designed to be cheap and easy to manufacture in large quantity and what you see in the video is the result of limitations in the programming, design of the camera mount, and the electronics that control it . For what you describe you will need at a minimum something along the lines of a Photohigher AV130 to carry the point and shoot, and there's really only two possible flight controller systems that will get the results you're looking for MikroKopter and DJI Wookong-M. Either one will run in excess of $1200 just for the electronics and depending on the conditions where you will be flying that choice may be limited to just the MikroKopter.

Regardless of the choice you may make for the equipment, there's also the factor of being able to fly it well enough to get decent video and no offense, but if you haven't flown a multirotor before you will not be able to do it to level that you say you require. It takes a lot of stick time and familiarity with the equipment to be able to get good video from a multirotor platform. It's taken me a few years and way more $ than I care to think about wasted on junk hardware that never met expectations and I'm still not entirely satisfied with the results although I'm much closer now.

In the long run your best bet is to hire someone that is fully equipped and can deliver the desired results, it will be cheaper, less stressful, and you'll get the results you're looking for much, much quicker.

Ken

 

[DennyR]

I wouldn't be too quick to blame the camera mount as it has not been set-up correctly. Clearly this guy does not have a clue what he is doing.

 

[thepelell]

TRiple, it all depends how much time and money you have. You will not get any decent results before 12 months, because you are starting from scratch. I know this because I started from scratch exactly 1 year ago, and only now am i starting to get results i am quite happy with, but i keep working every day to get better... You have got to be prepared to spend at least 1 hour every single day for the next year either buildin or tweaking or flying. In that video you posted, you can clearly see the gimbal can't keep up with copter movement, but if you want to do filming you will never get the copter to do that kind of movement. In filming mode flying, the copter never exceeds 5-10 degrees banking, and any transition has to be as smooth as possible starting by your thumbs.
So if you need images NOW, you hire, if you can wait:
1) get yourself a basic quad and lots of spares for repairs. Learn how to solder , it isn't that difficult.
2) fly -> crash -> rebuild
3) repeat step 2 until you spend more time in the air than on the work bench
4) strap a gopro or similar on your quad and start flying smoother, so when you look at footage you don't get seasick.
5) at this point you are 6 months in the hobby, start investigating in bigger setups. Other flight controllers and gimbals will be on the market with better performance.

 

[Macsgrafs]

Triple, you do come across as very negative at times!
My advice for what its worth is to buy a decent flight simulator & radio, learn n that & then the sky really is your limit. Its far cheaper this way & you can sit in comfort learnign to fly without fear of hitting anyone or thing & without breaking the bank whilst learning. As for the RC flight sim, I can recomend Phoenix http://www.phoenix-simv3.com/default.asp learn to fly & then try asking again, I'm sure you will appreciate that its not as plain sailing as you first thought

Ross

 

[Lanzar]

@Triple

Draganfly is a perfect machine for survailance. If u want to see how the video looks unedited i can upload one and u will see that the video is useless. U need redepic on 4k so when u stabilize the picture u get left with 1080p usable footage. U have to cut off 3/4 of picture so it will be stabilized.
CInestar 6 or 8 are good , stable but for sony fs100 first off all av200 mount is for my opinion not big and rough enough to fit the cammera. So u would have to wait for CS360 mount. If u want to do movie i suggest u gor for 2 man operator for 360pan mount. Solo flying and filming is hard and timeconsuming since u will need to do more footage to get the same ressult as with 2 man operator.
Skyjib is the ultimate flying multicopter for ultimate payload capability. But less flytime with smaller payload than cs8.

http://www.kopterworx.com/RTF-ready-to-fly/Cinestar-Revolution-8
http://www.kopterworx.com/RTF-ready-to-fly/AD-8-Heavy-Lift-Ext-KW-360-pan

This is the most suitable option for u but need to change to cs360 mount wich will be avalible soon.

For the films that u have seen. Most of them are recorded by home users or amaters for their own use. The cinestar pan360 video vas made by ppl who know how things are done. So with REDONE and FS100 and a good director with postproduction even the draganfly video can be polished to perfection.

Remember that we put hours and hours in making the multikopter fly as smoothe as possible with diferent sistems. Ofc when u start using hoby elektronics for profesional use u always stumble in problems that are hard to solve.

 

[Windbreaker]

Take a look at what this guy did, using an OpenPilot ControlCopter board. I kid him about having it mounted atop a utility pole but that's how stable it is.

http://forums.openpilot.org/topic/8239-test-video-using-a-hexa/

In fact, take a look at what many OpenPilot folks are doing. The key is the control board. It determines how the "system" reacts to user input and environmental conditions (wind, turbulence, etc).

Here's a clip I shot with a quad I built and am still developing. This is just a camera I almost literally slapped atop the dome in order to get a sense of how footage from the quad might look. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTpcLzeeO54

People talk about props, motors, ESCs, etc, regarding the "key" to stability. But it's a system, and everything counts, especially the controller board. It takes all the factors and, based on your programming, will control the motors to provide the appropriate differential thrust to make the multirotor rig do what you want it to do.

 

[Lanzar]

When u examine the video, u will see that the picture streches in and out for few % and that means that post stabilization was used for shure. Correct me if i am wrong.
But u can see that the footage that the copter is flying nice and without any big vibrations, movements ...
Good video for Hexa with no profesional electonics on it.

Take a look at what this guy did, using an OpenPilot ControlCopter board. I kid him about having it mounted atop a utility pole but that's how stable it is.

http://forums.openpilot.org/topic/8239-test-video-using-a-hexa/

In fact, take a look at what many OpenPilot folks are doing. The key is the control board. It determines how the "system" reacts to user input and environmental conditions (wind, turbulence, etc).

Here's a clip I shot with a quad I built and am still developing. This is just a camera I almost literally slapped atop the dome in order to get a sense of how footage from the quad might look. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTpcLzeeO54

People talk about props, motors, ESCs, etc, regarding the "key" to stability. But it's a system, and everything counts, especially the controller board. It takes all the factors and, based on your programming, will control the motors to provide the appropriate differential thrust to make the multirotor rig do what you want it to do.

 

[jforkner]

Triple,

Suggest you check out Jeff Scholl's website: http://gravityshots.com/ Check out the entire site to see what it takes to do a first class job of AP.


Jack

 

[Triple]

I will throughly go over the new reply post additions. I have seen Jeff's website before. The snow cabin sequences shot with a multicopter are really pro. Slick intro background music too...sounds like what the GoPro people have also used.

I know there is an advantage to shooting 4k, as if one is zoomed out optically, one can digitally stabilize in post quite a bit and still end up with 1k resolution, although I know Smoothcam in Final Cut Pro can add some artifacts at times. I know the guys are raving about the vibration isolation system with the Cinestar rigs.