In most cases, UAV flight
time such as the DJI Phantom 4 Pro will fly between 5 minutes to a maximum of
about 30 minutes maximum. For UAVs with the capability to take pictures and
record videos, pilots can quickly realize that in about to minutes, their UAV
camera’s SD card storage is quickly filling up. UAVs such as the DJI Phantom 4
Pro can allow a maximum of 128 GB of SD. Taking pictures and recording high-quality 4K videos can see one’s storage fill up very fast. 128GB model will allow owners to record up to about 6
hours of 4K video. many technologies are available to enable UAV
operators to continue to fly and shoot video and take pictures on their UAV
camera without completely running out of onboard camera storage.
One way to decrease the
size of data produced from sensors is the use of codecs. A codec is a software that
compresses videos to a manageable data size
than the original file. One of the most
popular type of codecs is H.264 Codec. An H.264 codec software
enables the recording of HD digital video at very
low data rates. The H.264 compresses video to about half the space required
to save a standard digital video (MPEG-2) (DivX, 2019). Phantom
4 Pro allows for record UHD 4K (4096X2160) at 60fps, at a maximum bitrate of
100Mbps using the H.264 codec (DJI, 2019).
Another method of freeing up storage space
is to directly upload images and videos on cloud storage. A good example is the Memery’s Dragonfly
app that allows the operator to edit recent
images and videos and then transfer the edited footage to cloud storage. The
drawback to the Dragonfly app is the price. There are a lot of reasonably
priced cloud storage alternatives such as Google One and Dropbox cloud
storage services
References
DIVX. (2019, ). H.264
definition. Retrieved from https://www.divx.com/en/software/technologies/h264/
DJI. (2019).
DJI Phantom 4 pro – specs, tutorials & guides – DJI. Retrieved from https://www.dji.com/phantom-4-pro/info
