Why should others have better video quality than you?

The Mavic 2 Pro is the best consumer drone that DJI has built to this date. It has some awesome features when compared to DJI Mavic Pro and even DJI Phantom 4 Pro.

Since Mavic 2 Pro has a Hasselblad camera, best settings will be different than the P4P.

We will try to go in-depth with each of the settings and after reading this article, you will know what the Best settings for DJI Mavic 2 Pro are.

So let’s start.

There are Photo and Video settings in the DJI GO 4 app, but we are going to cover only best camera video settings for the Mavic 2 Pro.

We have 6 categories:

1. Video Size

2. Video Format

3. White Balance

4. Style

5. Color

6. Camera Video Coding

7. Shutter Speed

1. Video Size

4K HQ – It will give you UHD footage with FOV (field of view) of 55 degrees

4K FULL FOV -It will give you UHD footage with FOV of 75 degrees. You get a wider view than 4k HQ but less FOV than Mavic Air, for example (which sits at 85 degrees).

Both HQ and FULL FOV support 10bit mode.

According to DJI the Full FOV down samples from the 5.5K sensor to 4K resolution while HQ is simply cropped in the center for finer image quality but less FOV.

For a bit of a slow-motion, you can opt for 2.7k at 60fps, or 1080p at 120fps for much slower footage.

2. Video Format

You have two options in Video Format settings available.

MOV and MP4 are containers for the H.264(AVC)/H.265(HEVC) image compression with the same quality.

MOV – developed by Apple as a file format for QuickTime, and thus it lives mostly in the Apple ecosystem.

MP4 was later developed from the MOV, and it is the industry standard nowadays with more widespread support than MOV.

So basically if you really want to choose: if you are an Apple device user, choose the MOV, otherwise choose the MP4.

3. White Balance

White balance should be set by current weather conditions. So pick one of the presets (they work really good), or make a custom WB profile with your preferences.

I personally always leave White Balance to Sunny, as that’s when I usually fly, but even if you miss it completely (if you put sunny when it’s very cloudy outside) it is easily fixed in Premiere Pro with just 2 clicks.

Let’s quickly go through each of the presets and see when we should choose each of them:

Sunny – sunny, clear and free of clouds, bright…

Cloudy – lots of clouds, no direct sunlight, dull weather…

Incandescent – candlelight or yellow light bulb light (indoor flight)…

Fluorescent – neon lights, white LEDs…

NOTE: Never leave white balance to Auto. If it changes in the middle of the video it will be hard to fix in post-production. But if you manually set it to whatever, your video will have a constant white balance which can be easily changed, and your whole video will be even.

4. Style

Presets aren’t something you want to use. They are usually too generalized, so what you want to use is these settings:

1. For an easy workflow, and a nice straight-from-the-camera raw footage you do use Standard (with color set to Normal):

Sharpness: 0 | Contrast: 0 | Saturation: 0

2. For a more professional look that will require post-processing, we suggest setting the Style manually to:

Sharpness: +1 | Contrast: +1 | Saturation: 0

NOTE: With sharpness and contrast at +1 you have a bit more flexibility in post.

5. Color

Go with the DLog-M.

The footage will have nice dynamic range and you will end up with stunning videos.

In post, the first step should be to do the color correction as desired. To equalize the White balance and fix exposure.

Then you can use any professional video or image editing software for cutting, transmissions, basic editing.

The most popular software is Adobe Premiere Pro. Next, we have Final Cut Pro X. If you can’t afford these professional editing programs, then you can opt for cheaper ones, or even free ones. Read more about them in our article about Best video editing software for drone videos.

So if you want those cinematic shots, DLog-M is the way to go.

UPDATE:

Many people reported having issues with lens distortion on certain color modes and they prompted DJI to fix this in a software update. There are a few things you should know about it, so let me explain.

The whole point of LOG mode is to have the final footage look exactly the same as the sensor “sees” it. The image isn’t altered at all by in-camera processing, so you get a “normal” distortion that lenses inside the camera caused.

DJI Representative addressed this issue saying:

“Videos shot in DLOG-M and HLG modes on the Mavic 2 Pro cannot be corrected for distortion in the camera but can be edited in post-processing…”

This is easily fixed in almost any editing software. A tutorial will be uploaded soon, be sure to join our newsletter so you don’t miss it.

If you, in fact, want to avoid fixing it, use Normal mode. You will find yourself with nice and straight edges (even though you will lose some dynamic range).



Check out our Top 10 favorite accessories for the DJI Mavic 2 Pro and zoom.

DJI Smart Controller, ND Filter, Micro SD Card, Car Charger, Katana and more!

6. Camera Video Coding

Only 2 options here. We have the “old” H.264 Codec and the new H.265 Codec. H.265 saves 50% more information than H.264 thus preserving more details.

On top of that, H.265 is also called HEVC, which stands for High-Efficiency Video Coding.

Efficiency video coding? -Yes.

File size is a lot smaller since compression is far better with HEVC. You are looking at 20% – 50% smaller file size when shooting with H.265 rather than H.264.

HEVC can encode videos of up to 8K UHD or 8192 pixels × 4320 pixels resolution, and since image quality standard is on a continuous uprise, we can expect H.265 to become the leading codec in the filming industry in near future.

7. Shutter Speed

Set the Shutter speed so the shutter is the inverse double compared to your frame rate. For example, is your framerate set to 25fps at 4k, set your shutter to be 1/50s.

Aperture goes from F2.8 to F11, F2.8 will allow more light in so the footage will be brighter, and F11 will drastically lower the amount of light that hits the sensor.

Also, F2.8 will give you a shallower depth of field, which would add a nice blur to the background if you are focused on a closer subject. For landscapes, if the lighting conditions allow it, you should go for the highest F-stop possible. That way everything will be in focus.

If F11 is still overexposed, add the ND Filter.

UPDATE:

Many readers left feedback regarding our suggestion to set the aperture to F11 in order to reduce light, and there really is a problem with this. The lower the aperture actually gives worse image quality.



In reality, the sweet spot for best looking image quality is using F4.

If you wish to further reduce the amount of light, the best step here would be getting a set of nice, good-quality ND filters for your drone. Our suggestion is this nice set of PolarPro filters. They are ND4/ND8/ND16 with added Polarizer layer which will make colors more vivid and reduce glare. Check them out!

These filters limit the amount of light that enters the camera thus allowing you to set a lower shutter speed while maintaining good exposure. Think of them as sunglasses for the camera.

A must-have accessory for drone videography.

NOTE: If you would like to know When and How to use ND Filters, check out our ND Filter tutorial.

Compares ND Filter on Drone Footage ISO

BONUS:

Choose the right time for shooting with appropriate light.

We do not recommend cloudy or very bright days. Too high-contrast shadows and too dim scenery often doesn’t look good on the video. (Even though dark clouds induce the mystique and trigger some intense feelings)

A really nice tip is get up at 5am to shoot in the morning during sunrise, so you can have unique footage of even the most popular flying areas.

The widely known “Golden Hour” isn’t just the sunset.

So even though applying the correct helps a lot on super bright days, it is better to choose the right time.

Professional settings and approaches should be taken if you want your footage to look amazing.

NOTE: Lightly lit mornings and evenings produce a certain magical effect!

We hope our take on Best settings for your DJI Mavic 2 Pro helped you.

Leave a comment below with your opinion, suggestions or if you have anything to add.

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Fly Safe.

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