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John Dickow: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to another episode of Your Drone Questions Answered. I'm John Decker. We're here to find the answers to your drone questions. These are questions that our audience submits.

And today's question is, which drones take the highest quality video. And so today I have with me, Dave Downey. He's the president and senior event specialist of BCC live. Dave, thanks for joining me today. Thank you. Glad

Dave Downey: to be here.

John Dickow: And so Dave, before we get into the meat of this question of which drones take the best quality video, tell me a little bit about the work you do, how you work with drones and your background a little bit.

Dave Downey: Yeah. So I work for a company. I'm the president of Boulder County communications or BCC live in Boulder, Colorado, and we're a digital media company.

And we specialize in outdoor sporting events. so we broadcast triathlons, we broadcast marathons, we broadcast trail running events, and then in through all this broadcasting and recording a video. Yeah. Many a times a drone is a great solution to get Not only that top down shot that always looks [00:01:00] good, but to be able to like show a whole venue or something like that.

And before drones, you're always like, I wonder if I got on top of that building and I wonder if I went up on that bridge. And now a lot of that, you know, we still do a little bit of that, but it's much easier to fly a drone over there to get that shot than trying to get access to the top of a building that's close to the finish line of a marathon.

Oh

John Dickow: man, I can only imagine. And so you're using drones for live broadcast. That's pretty cool.

Dave Downey: Yeah, we do use drones for live broadcast. And one of the real benefits of a drone and a live broadcast is it's really easy to see the distance between first and second and a race, but also it's a great fallback shot.

We're very dependent on internet to. transmit camera signals to different locations. And so somebody goes behind a building and we lose the signal. We typically still have it from up above in a drone. And so we'll throw to that drone shot. And then we also record drone reels like the day before an [00:02:00] event.

So if we have a major signal failure and you'll notice this, if you watch other sporting events that we can go to a scenic of a nearby. Mountain range or golf course or something like that. And typically, we'll train our hosts how to deal with that. And they'll say, yeah, we're in this beautiful community.

And this is the 18 hole golf course. That's right adjacent to the marathon or the triathlon. And nobody at home knows that. You know, we might've been having a signal problem on the ground. So we use drones as an emergency fallback, almost every broadcast we do.

John Dickow: Very cool. maybe we'll consider this one a teaser for a future episode, but, even going back to our, question for today, which drones take the highest quality video I can see, you know, working in broadcast, working with live video.

And events like sporty events, why you would need a good quality picture. And so let's get into it. in your experience, tell me a little bit about the drones you use and in your opinion, which ones take the highest quality video.

Dave Downey: Yeah, just a little history, we started with drones almost 10 years ago with a phantom two, and that is where you [00:03:00] had to buy the gimbal separately.

And you had to put a GoPro on it. And, you know, good quality, but bad stabilization. And just, it was a little bit ahead of prime time. It wasn't really that great of a drone compared to today. And then as technology has increased, as frame rates have increased and as, resolution has increased, drones are changing for us every year.

The drone that I'll tell you in a minute that I thought was the best drone last year is. Now replaced by a new drone. And so knowing what drone takes the best video is a little bit of a loaded question because what kind of video are you trying to take? I mean, they make drones now that have infrared cameras.

And so, you go buy a regular old video drone. It's not going to take infrared. And so it's not the same kind of thing, but for what we do, and that's either live or post production and by post production, I mean, we're going to record the video and make a highlight reel and show it the next day.

We have pretty mild standards and we would like to [00:04:00] have everything in 4k. And we'd like to have everything in 60 frames a second. what I use personally is a Mavic Mini Pro 3. So I might've gotten the order of the title wrong, but the Mavic Mini Pro 3.

And I think they just call it the Mini Pro 3 now. They, move that name Mavic back off it. And that's about a thousand dollar drone with the controller. And that's more than enough resolution for everything I do for post production. If we talk about live production, then we need an HDMI out and then we'd need a Mavic three or a Mavic three pro, with the controller.

But to answer the question, you got to know what you're trying to accomplish and. Some of my best drone shots that I've taken to this day are in 1080 and I shot him with a spark drone and that's a DJI drone and you'll hear us mention a lot of those and We just were able to fly it anywhere. we weren't concerned about losing it or crashing it or anything like that because it was a [00:05:00] 300 drone and that allowed us to fly it in trees and fly it in places.

I wouldn't want to fly an expensive drone. So knowing what you want to get out of it, video on the web, 1080 is sufficient. It really is. Like most of the video that we look at on the web, 1080 is sufficient. And then the next step up there would be 2. 7 K and that's, about double 1080 and then 4k, which is three and a half times 1080.

And so knowing what you want, and then you can get all the way up to 8k and drones these days. Sony is making a drone and you can put your. Sony, handheld camera on it, but now we're talking about 20 grand with the camera there. And for a filmmaker or somebody making a ski movie, that's going to play in theaters or something.

I could see that being necessary, but for what I do, I want to keep the cost down and I want to keep the risk down, you know, that's something that I know we're talking about resolution. Flying a [00:06:00] hundred pound drone around people as opposed to flying like a 15 ounce drone around people is a big difference.

So I like any drone that shoots in 4k and I like to have 60 frames a second. And the two things that allows us to do is crop in on a certain section of the video and still have good resolute resolution. And then with the 60 frames a second, if we want to slow it down. into slow mo, we can do that and you won't notice any of the jitter or anything like that.

I've mentioned a lot of DJI drones. I don't think it's a secret. They've somewhat cornered the market, but there are other quality drones out there, but their innovation has been, just untouchable. Like I said, I like the mini three. There's a mini four out right now that just does a few more things.

Doesn't cost a lot more money. And again, you're around a thousand bucks for the drone and the controller. And then now the controllers these days. You don't have to hook your phone up to them. [00:07:00] They have their own screen built in. They run Android and you can do that all for about a thousand bucks.

But if you want to spend less, which I think is a great idea to get started. I think 300, 400 is a good price point to get started. And you'll need to use your phone as a display screen. and I don't get anything from DJI and I apologize if I'm leaving any other companies out, but they have, what's just called the DJI Mini.

And it's a 1080 drone. It's about 300 bucks turnkey. You got to have an Android or an iPhone and nobody's going to come back and question the quality of your footage with a drone that shoots 10 80.

John Dickow: Excellent. You know, I really appreciate that as you're naming these drones off, you're talking about price and you're weighing that kind of with what, what do you really need?

and it's funny cause in my experience too, when you're shooting 4k, that takes up a lot of space too. So if you're doing a lot of shooting for a day, that footage has to go somewhere.

Dave Downey: Right. Yeah, it has to go somewhere. And the drone is the one exception where I'll put a bigger card in it because [00:08:00] it is a little more work to get the footage off of it.

You've got to land it and take the card out, but we typically recommend smaller cards to people. And a question I've always asked is how much footage can you afford to lose? And so if you have a one terabyte card in your camera, well, that's how much footage you can afford to lose. Where if you have 64 gigs or 128 gigs, it forces you to take that card out, dump the footage.

And so that almost all our cards are 128 gigs. And a couple of them when we shoot 8K are a little bit bigger, but we don't shoot any 8K with drones at this point.

John Dickow: you had mentioned before a lot of your use cases for 4k, that's when you're broadcasting live. And so you're actually transmitting that video, right?

Dave Downey: Well, yes and no, we do. But before we send that back out on the web, which most of our broadcasting will go to YouTube and a couple. like closed caption or closed circuit TV stations. they've asked for 1080 upfront. So even if we're bringing it in and 4k, it usually gets, transcoded into 1080 [00:09:00] and 30 frames a second.

John Dickow: Understood. Thank you for that. And you had mentioned other kind of, benefits to shooting in 4k. You mentioned that there's that kind of that safety element where you can play around with the video a little bit more. You can crop zoom in a little bit more and you're still maintaining some of that video quality, which is actually a really great tip.

Anything else that you would like to add, I guess, when it comes to this specific question,

Dave Downey: yeah, you know, the one suggestion and where I get most of my information is from social channels and I follow Facebook groups and stuff like that So for the drones that I use and again, I've already mentioned the DJI Mini 3 pro there's a Facebook group for that and there's hundreds of users that say Did you know this? Did you know that? And one of the things I've learned over the years is if you're not going to buy it on the day they release it, join these groups first and you'll find out some things that are important to you.

I live in Colorado. I do fly drones in the winter, and so I need them [00:10:00] to be able to operate in cold temperatures and. You go on to these Facebook groups and people are like, Hey, I flew mine in zero degrees today and had no issues. And, you know, you can't take it as fact necessarily, but when five or six people say, yeah, I had the same experience, you can really learn a lot from these Facebook groups.

Social channels like your own is really where the information. Because keep in mind the manufacturer is going to tell you what they want you to hear. And so being able to contrast that with real life users has made us experts in the field. And we saw bad deals come in before they, you know, got too popular of manufacturers saying it can do X and Y and Z.

And then the Facebook's group saying. Oh, it's gonna do that, but that hasn't been released yet. Well, that might be a deal breaker for, so do your research. Like your drone is going to be one of the most important cameras in your bag. And so I don't think it's something that you need to spend the most money on, but you probably need to put the most thought into.

John Dickow: That's a great point. our audience is going to [00:11:00] really appreciate that too. And, talking to people with experience who are in it and doing it, and that's, that's why we have you here with us, Dave. thank you so much for, Not just answering the question of which drones really take the highest, highest quality video, but talking about what you actually need and the kind of the nuances and what you're actually looking for is almost kind of the first question you should be asking yourself.

So I really appreciate you kind of digging deeper, beyond just the question itself. I like to ask our, our guests. if you have any piece of advice, for the DLA community, for anybody who is looking to apply, drones to their line of work when it comes to capturing video or even blazing their own trail and starting their own business.

Dave Downey: this is going to be cliche, just keep driving every day, keep grinding every day. Like I never knew. I started a business until it was too late. And, and now we have 15 people. We have a building. we have over a hundred events that we work at, and it really is attributed to just keep going every day.

If drones are what you want to do, there is a lot of [00:12:00] room. In the drone industry right now, there's all kinds of surveying and all these things, figure out what you want to do, go get your one Oh seven license, because that gets you a little bit of skin in the game. You don't have to have it to get started flying drones.

So don't be confused by that. You can buy a drone and start flying tomorrow, but then get your license. And set some goals, like what do you want to do? And there's lots of groups out there like I mentioned, ask them like, Hey, where are you guys making money these days? Where are you guys doing this drones for us?

There's nothing in our business that's like driven by drones. They're like an accessory to what we already do. But there's lots of work out there that, is just drones. And if that's what you want to do, just go get it. And don't let anybody tell, you know, and never quit. And next thing you know, it comes, but it takes time.

It took us years and years and years to get successful, but don't ever give up on. I think drones are a great dream. I've [00:13:00] often wondered if that's all we should do because it's so much fun.

John Dickow: Yeah. And I can see why somebody, I mean, it's, you're, you're living that dream for a lot of people and a lot of people within our community.

So it's so great to hear, That coming from someone like you, so I really appreciate that, and I really appreciate your time that you took out today to answer this question, I would love to record a episode. Maybe we talk a little bit more about capturing live video with drones.

I'm Curious about that topic. So another day, but Dave, thank you so much for, joining us today. And, we definitely want to talk more. Hey, if you want to submit your own drone questions, we will find the answer to them. You can submit a drone question at YDQA. io. Go ahead and just type it in there.

We'll see it. Or if you're part of the drone launch connect community, type it in there. We check it all the time. We'll see it. And we'll find someone to answer your question. In the meantime, we'll see you in the sky.