Inspire Video Latency and Corruption (plus channel inquiry)

DaveInspire · Apr 23, 2015

Can someone please share what they find a normal experience for latency? At first, there was no issue (prefirmware) and testing gimbal movement it appeared realtime). Now it shows 1s + with video corruption. The corruption during large movement makes it impossibe to use camera movements as the gimbal reacts in realtime but the camera lag makes framing impossible. This seems worse than phantom now. The strangest thing is this was perfect to start. Only thing I can think that changed was firmware. Here is a video showing the issue, if rotating the gimbal you can't tell where it is:

Also, what is normal to see in the channels for bars and stability? I have searched and am not sure how to decipher those readings for the various channels.

I have tested this with both iPad Mini 2 (A7) and iPhone 6 (A8) with same issues. Original tests of gimbal pre update showed smooth realtime operation even during startup when the gimal moves extremely fast side to side. It was more like this guy shows
Please let me know what your experience is and if it broke with latest FW or what else could cause this. Filming is severely affected and this is not usable vs phantom with 1s latency and corruption. And this was 1ft away from the bird!

m00se · Apr 23, 2015

I sometimes notice more lag and corruption right at startup then it seems to smooth out.

I have an ipad mini 3, there is normally about 0.25 - 0.5 second lag on a good day, on a bad day when almost all the channel bars are full and red, there is about 1.0 second lag, it makes for difficult framing indeed

DaveInspire · Apr 23, 2015

Thanks Moose, do you know if there is any documentation on what we should expect for signal bars? It is really not possible to frame video when it hangs (goes corrupt and then catches up) a gimbal move that started ends up in the completely incorrect place with no visual feedback during the dropout. I see all bars don't stay green, they cycle from green to red rapidly, do you see something similar or do you have stable channels? It is so odd to see this go from working normally to not in the same locations so I was suspecting some hardware or software issue.

m00se · Apr 23, 2015

you will be able to frame it with some practice i think,
I generally see that the bars are about 50% high and constant red when near areas of concern, I just manually choose the best channel and stick the quality to minimum,

when in a nicer place the bars should be more or less empty,

DaveInspire · Apr 23, 2015

So you want the smallest bar? What determines the color (sometimes there are small red vs small green bars and they are not stable). Does the video I included above match what you see? I am surprised to see performance like this the realtime nature does not seem as strong as the phantom line (which you could select lower resolution for much better framerate). The realtime nature is much more important to me than resolution for framing purposes especially for dual operator. Very curious to see what dual operator teams are doing and if this experience is atypical.

DaveInspire · Apr 23, 2015

Here is another video showing good results (IMHO, 200-300ms is managable; 500-1000 with video drop outs is not).

Are you seeing results like this video or my example? I am not clear yet what is "normal" or expected behavior. My test was with an Mini2 which uses the exact same resolution and CPU as the AIR shown in this video.

m00se · Apr 28, 2015

I have had flights with anywhere from almost zero problems up to 1 second latency with complete dropouts, it depends on where I am and who is transmitting what in the area i guess.

I will take her out for a flight today, so i will pay attention and see what I can report back

m00se · Apr 28, 2015

well, I was making a flight using shou to test screen recording, so i have a video of what happened, basically a 300ms lag constantly, with frequent pauses especially when the scenery changes a lot, ie panning,

i really think this is the result of compression being used, it has the same look as a pc trying to play a file that is too detailed for it to handle

Phatzo · Apr 28, 2015

m00se said:
well, I was making a flight using shou to test screen recording, so i have a video of what happened, basically a 300ms lag constantly, with frequent pauses especially when the scenery changes a lot, ie panning,

i really think this is the result of compression being used, it has the same look as a pc trying to play a file that is too detailed for it to handle

my transmission of the video is (with the old firmware) - yes I did not update yet as it works fine.
anyways the transmission I have is fairly good. BUT, when I get out about 200-300m the slave i.e. my operator is experiencing jams and corruptions and also lag... I use a galaxy 4 active at the moment and it has never been "real time" really... it was always a bit behind but the latency was / is not one second... speaking of all this I had a lot of 4K recordings that were corrupted and therefore I could not edit. I tried to repair them with not much success. it was only a test to no harm done but I was wondering if my SD card was to slow (class 10 yes but only 48mb/s)...
I will try to make some video if wanted and post them to show what my experiences are / were.
on the other hand when I hook up my broadcast monitor with "fast mode" to compensate the latency time there is no noticeable lag whatsoever.

m00se · Apr 30, 2015

Ok,
im using the old firmware as im halfway through a gig and dont want to risk any new problems,
but ......
yesterday I had perfect video for about 3 mins, it then went all laggy, it stayed laggy for the rest of the day, with about 0.75 seconds lag, and garbled video where you basically only see a green ghostly outline of the moving subject,

I looked over to a 32 inch HD tv i had connected to the second controller, and absolutely no lag or corruption of video, the thing was sweeeeeeet.

So either,
1)my ipad mini 3 isnt powerful enough to get the job done
2)the ipad overheated (it was incredibly hot)
3) the controller has a bad lightbridge in it
or
4) the ios app causes the lag..........

I may consider getting a small HD monitor for on the controller and ditch the ipad idea

brandonaldred · Jun 10, 2015

Have you guys come up with resolutions to the latency issues? I purchased an inspire and have flown it a few times. The first few flights were perfect even long range, but lately it's nearly impossible to frame shots or fly by looking at the monitor because my video is so choppy. I'm using an iPad mini 2.

m00se · Jul 5, 2015

i highly suspect that heat in the ipad is an issue here, as my video works a lot better if i leave the ipad infront of the ac outlets in the car,,,,

when I move it away then the video gets laggy and choppy, then the ipad shuts down,
It could also be the lightbridge in the controller overheating, I havent tested by seperating them yet during a flight.

Will do that at some point over the coming weeks

AmphybiouS · Feb 19, 2016

I have Inspire 1 and I use a cheap tablet.. The video stream is little laggy.. Then I tap to register and the video become more more laggy...
It's a problem of my quad or the problem is the cheap tablet?

Thank you.

Inviato dal mio Nexus 6P utilizzando Tapatalk

m00se · Feb 21, 2016

there are a few people on here who have experience with different tabs, I tried to use my smartphone and had about a 5 second lag, I got the Ipad and it was almost perfect. I would recommend a better tablet.