GoPro Hero 12 vs. DJI AVATA 2 - A Good Idea?

The Bad Idea Mount from Originaldobo adds a GoPro mount to the back of the DJI Avata 2
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00:00 - Intro

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[initialsjd]

As a beginner myself with the Avata 2 I really enjoy your video's regarding it and how you go more in depth about things other more experienced people don't talk about because they just find it so straightforward.So yeah great video man keep it up!!

[Bricenoma]

Waiting for the low light test. That's the real test needed to decide properly.

[andreschairez]

Thats a great ending scene! Love the 360 idea for sure.

[mariokotlar]

Since you asked, the benefit of GoPro over the Avata2 cam is million of customization option that it has via GoPro labs. For example, it can be used to significantly increase the bitrate of the recorded video, while for Avata 2 bitrate is actually it's quality bottleneck. This is especially noticeable in hard to compress scenarios like forest and grass with no motion blur, especially in the shadows, where with GoPro set to 180 Mbps bitrate you'll see individual blades of grass, where Avata will blur them together. Every 30 frames of Avata footage there is a keyframe where you'll experience higher bitrate, but then you'll have mush for the next 29 frames, and if you push the footage this can even cause a strobing noise effect. GoPro does not suffer from this issue. Note that these bitrate differences become noticeable either when zooming in or when delivering to 8k, otherwise YouTube compression will eat the difference anyways.

Another example is Gopro's ability to adjust exposure compensation time (eg. !MDAMP=5 to set from default 1 sec to 5 sec) which will result in much more stable looking footage with regards to exposure. Flying with locked exposure is not always a viable approach, for example flying in and out of a forest on a sunny day.

Another benefit is having the ability for GoPro to record with locked exposure while you yourself can fly Avata2 with auto exposure, giving you ability to see and fly safely indoors flight segments.

GoPro supports recording to its native color space, which is wider and is able to capture gamut of colors outside of SDR, which is fantastic when mastering the footage for HDR delivery. Avata2 is color blind to anything outside of sRGB/rec.709 color gamut.

GoPro supports max lens mod, which results with much wider field of view, offering much more powerful stabilization in post.

I fly Avata 2 without GoPro, and those are the things I personally miss compared to my DJI FPV + GoPro setup.

Avata has the benefit of having a larger sensor on the other hand, which is a huge deal for low light performance, and also enables it to have a wider dynamic range.

Overall, it really depends on the situation, but I'd say all these GoPro features are worth the smaller sensor, though just barely, not enough for me to bother with buying the mount and mounting it on every time and suffering worse flight performance on an already underpowered drone.

[tristanturner]

The GoPro is what most FPV pilots use. It just matches better when using multiple GoPros for a bigger shoot

[andreas_rr]

as a neither professional nor drone user in general, the two usecases i can see for the GoPro is:
1. Having a backup recording (maybe with some different settings, idk)
2. point the GoPro backwards, or upwards, just like in the final clip you showed.
asides from that, the 360 mounted on the drone actually sounds like a really fun idea. If it works well, maybe DJI might release a 360° drone, i mean, why not. Would make a lot of fun videos and it would definitely be a much more pleasant experience when the two cameras are already built into the drone

[Angelo_Guz]

The only reason I used to put my Gopro 9 on top of my Mavic Pro, was to put the Gopro Verticallly to make social media content videos.

[FirdausZulfaa]

Having a two camera setup would work in a situation where I want the recording camera to shoot in full manual, but having the goggles cam to be in auto for a shot where im gonna go inside a tunnel and back out and dont want the cam to change exposure.

Another case is to record in 30/24 fps. I like my goggles to be in 100fps so I can feel more confident when moving fast

[JASONRASH]

David, loved the video. I'm new to the game. This video really helped to put everything into perspective. Where does one get the correct REC 709 LUT

[clarkjamesdigital]

even if the image quality was identical on both cameras you might want to separate the recording and viewing camera because that allows you to say run your recording camera at 1 stop underexposed so that you don't blow out your highlights, or you could run your viewing camera brighter so you can see better in low light environments, also you can use ND filters to get a 1/50 shutter speed on the recording camera but keep the viewing camera at a faster frame rate for easier flying- but these are pretty niche, the image quality disparity isn't really much of a reason to fly with a second camera anymore, I actually prefered the image out of the avata 2 but it would be interesting to see how well you could grade them to get them looking their best, vs just putting on a 709 lut and calling it a day

[white_ravn]

I'm curious, what is the "stuttering" or "jerking" motion I see on both cameras @6:19? I've seen this stuttering/jerking on many other videos on many other channels. What is this phenomenon?

[manfredteh]

did you used any reelsteady on the gopro? it feels like it's not as smooth as the usual gopro footage with reelsteady as it should be.... sometimes when you swing left to right, it looked like there's a little bit sudden jerk.

[ANDJVisuals]

Great video David... Honestly I don't see the big difference now adding an extra camera like the Gopro on top of the Avata 2... for the Avata 1 or FPV yes, but now it's not worth the risk and weak performance of the avata 2 with the extra weight on it... with the X4 360 it's a niceeee way to create different creative content...

[jsalvemini]

What about the weight difference? Does it put it in the FAA range?

[KidsOfTheXs]

Could immediately tell which one was the GoPro. The GoPro had a much better dynamic range plus it wasn't as choppy. Do you need to do it? No, is it better? In my opinion yes lol

[DVS-DroneVisuals]

Any mount from the bottom for insta360? Thank you

[kaltask]

The DJI footage has a bit more contrast and motion is smoother due to it's gimbal. Still the gopro is not bad though at all. idk if it's a good idea. 😂 How about action 4 or ace pro? x4? More bad ideas 🙃

[MurphFPV]

I plan on testing the insta ace pro II on the avata 2 for better low light performance

[LogicOverlord]

We would do this to achieve 24fps or 30fps without having to deal with the latency you get when you set your DJI settings to a lower frame rate. And of course 24fps is not even an option. The comparison you are showing is not a fair comparison because you are showing footage on an evenly lit bright day too with the camera in what seems to be set to auto shutter. 30&24fps at 1/60th or 1/48th with an ND filter will introduce motion blur giving you a sense of speed. Log gives you more headroom from the darkest to brightest shades and you are just applying a standard lut (not pushing colors creatively to your choosing). These answer lie in something FPV racers and freestylers have come to realize before DJI released their FPV drones to the general public. I also notice some YouTubers saying “why hasn’t DJI given us 24fps natively”….. well that is because your latency will increase to the point that flying in manual mode will be extremely difficult. That is why we have 2 cameras… one feeding the live view to the goggles while the other records the footage we want to show the viewer. All of this said, DJI has certainly created an amazing camera in such a tight package. Some of these issues I mentioned can actually be mitigated through post production techniques like synthetically adding motion blur in the video editor without an nd filter.

[positano_italy]

I would use it and I bought it just because of the vertical ratio the GoPro gives you