- I've had a question for a little while now,
does the active track in a DJI drone work well
to film myself when I'm out mountain biking?
(bright music)
One of the things I love shooting on my channel
are these adventure style films.
I've climbed to the highest peaks in Mexico,
I've gone deep in the jungles of Thailand
to follow some elephants and a little while ago,
I mountain biked the top of Big Bear.
When I was on that mountain biking trip,
I brought along a Mavic Air,
and I didn't really get the best shots.
I didn't have a good setup to where I could use
the controller while mountain biking
and I didn't really know the limitations of my drone
in that setting.
And so when I did that video,
there's very few drone shots
and the drone shots that I got of me mountain biking,
are pretty awful.
So there's two problems that come up when trying
to operate a drone as a solo creator.
One is how do you use the controller?
Because usually the controllers in your hand
and when you're mountain biking,
well, you have to hold onto the mountain bike.
And then the second issue is the Active Track itself.
What are the limitations when it comes to following someone
on a mountain bike, when they're going up and down, back up,
back down and there's obstacles like trees, bushes,
and just the hillside in general?
Now, one quick side note, all of this footage
is being graded with my new set of drone LUTs
that I just built.
And I'll add links down below in the description
to where you can check those out.
So you might be thinking why not just get the Skydio 2?
While that drone is a good drone
for this kind of filmmaking, following someone
and keeping them centered the entire time.
However, I like using DJI drones
because I don't just want a drone that can follow me.
I also want a good drone that I can control myself
and get really cinematic looking footage.
And also the sensors on DJI drones are great.
This one is the Air 2S, it's got that one inch sensor.
It shoots 5.4k.
Like it's a much better drone overall than the Skydio 2,
which is mainly just a drone for following action.
So the Air 2S has the best active track
that I found in a DJI drone.
When you're using something like a Mini 2,
it doesn't have any active tracking features.
And then the older models like the Mavic 2 Pro,
aren't as good as the Air 2S.
Now, when I was doing my review around the Air 2S,
I found that the active tract works super well
in following my Jeep.
So last week I got a brand new mountain bike,
and I thought this was the perfect time to set up the drone
for mountain bike filming,
because I wanna do some mountain biking adventure films
in the future on this channel.
So let's go over the first issue,
which is mounting the controller.
Well, I found this $20 attachment.
It's basically like a big GoPro attachment
the way that it's set up.
You have a thumb screw on the side,
which hooks a mounting plate to your controller.
And this piece hooks up to your handlebars.
Now this has like a rubber insert,
so you're not gonna scratch up your handlebars
and it hooks to your controller very easily.
You just hook in the top, click on the bottom.
And when your phone's in there,
you're good to go.
Now, this isn't set up for the smart controller,
it's only gonna work with the original controller
that comes with the DJI drone.
The one issue that I've had is going downhill
at faster speeds with lots of bumps.
So I've gotten this piece mounted super tight
on my handlebars,
and it still seems to move slightly when I'm in like a
tu, tu, tu, tu, tu, tu,
kinda setting when I'm going downhill.
And it's very bumpy and that's been like the only gripe
I've had around this Mount.
It's a cheap Mount.
I'm going to look and see if there's other ones out there.
It will work for most situations,
but definitely it does slide a little bit,
and maybe I can add some more rubber
or something else inside here to make it even tighter.
But I've cinched this thing down to where the plastic
is touching the plastic on the outside of it.
And it still slides slightly
when I'm going downhill at faster speeds.
Now, when it's mounted on your handlebars,
it solves all the problems of
actually being able to control your drone,
because you just have this right in front of you.
You can set up your active track, just swipe the screen,
and then you can use your thumb sticks when you need to move
the drone around and reposition.
Also, when I'm riding my bike,
I can quickly glance down and actually see that it still has
a lock on when I'm riding through a trail.
So when the drone does lose connection with me, the rider,
I can tell pretty quickly
that the drone isn't following me anymore.
I haven't really had any situations where I've gotten super
far away and the drones not following,
because I've just been able to glance down once in a while.
And I could see where the drone is.
Now, the second thing I wanted to explore
was the limitations of active track in DJIs drones.
So first we have to understand how active track works.
It's a visual tracking.
So it sees an object on the screen,
and it tracks that using visual line of sight.
Now, the act of track has gotten better.
Where if you do go behind something,
the drone will continue to track for a short period of time.
And if you pop out the other side,
it will grab you and continue tracking.
So the visual tracking has gotten better,
but ideally you're going to wanna have a visual line of
sight the entire time when you're filming.
So I took the drone up to the mountains around where I live,
and there's a lot of good open areas where I could test out
all the different limitations when it comes
to the actual tracking style.
Now, there's not a whole lot of trees.
However, it is very hilly and there is some tall brush.
So I was able to test how this drone works
when moving up and down,
because one limitation on older models of drones is that
it wouldn't follow you down.
However, with the new tracking,
it does follow you both up and down.
But I found that it only works in certain settings,
and sometimes it doesn't work fast enough,
and you'll slam into the side of the hill.
So let me show you how the tracking works.
When you have your drone turned on,
you just pull from one corner of your object
to the other corner, and it's going to grab that subject.
So for me on my bike,
it's just going to grab me and lock on me on a bike.
If I was using my Jeep, it would lock onto my Jeep.
Now there's three options that pop up on screen.
Once the subject is locked,
you have active track on the left.
You have spotlight in the center,
and then you have point of interest.
So spotlight basically just keeps the drone in one spot,
and the drone will move wherever you go.
But the drone itself is not going to fly in any direction.
It's gonna stay one point in the sky,
and just move and,
control the camera up and down and rotate.
That's pretty much it.
Point of interest is where
you have your subject in the center,
and the drone is going in a full 360 around that subject,
keeping you centered the entire time.
And then active track is where the drone
is actually moving through space, tracking the subject.
Now, I found that when mountain biking,
using the spotlight feature is actually really useful.
You get the drone up in a spot where you can see
the landscape and the drone will be able to follow.
So you can see a big wide expansive shot of wherever
the subject is moving.
And when I'm mountain biking,
it looks really cool to be able to see this big perspective,
and using the spotlight tracking feature.
I found that you can actually get pretty far away
from the drone and it's going to continue to track.
So I can see myself using the spotlight feature,
put up the drone, lock onto me,
get it a little bit ahead of me on the trail,
and then I could ride through the trail,
and it will follow me so I can see the path
of what's going on from moving towards the drone,
and then away from the drone,
or do I have the drone off to the side,
and it's slowly following,
and panning as I'm moving through the scene.
Now, point of interest is great to use
when you're mountain biking,
When I get to like the top of a peak,
I found that every time I would get up
to the top of a point,
I would put it in point of interest and just let it run,
and I could just get this 360 view of wherever I'm at.
So both of those are super useful for mountain biking,
spotlight, you're not gonna have to worry about
the drone hitting anything,
and point of interest as long as you're up high,
and then you can visually see that your drone
is not gonna hit anything in its orbit,
then it's easy to use because you just changed the
speed from slow to fast and let the drone do its own orbit.
But let's get into the active track
where the drone is actually following you
as you're traveling through space.
So when you click the active track button,
there's two options that pop up trace and parallel.
Now trace is interesting because basically what
that feature is supposed to do is just follow you.
It's like a follow cam.
It goes right behind and wherever you go, the drone goes.
But there is something interesting that I found,
and that is if I put the drone super like dead in front,
I could put it on the trace mode,
and it will actually follow in front,
and it will keep me centered.
So if I slide to one side of the trail,
I'll actually see the drone follow me to that direction.
It's like it's bound to you,
and it's going to move with you wherever you go.
Now, the tracking's not perfect,
and it's not gonna move immediately,
but what I've been finding is that
it stays pretty locked on.
Now, if the drone is off to the side,
so say I'm riding down the trail this way,
and I have the drone off to the side here,
and I have it on trace, it's going to let me pass,
and then come behind and follow.
Now I tried this going downhill going uphill.
And if you give your drone enough time to be able to react
to the surface, it does go uphills and downhills.
The Air 2S has front sensors, back sensors,
tops, and bottom.
So when it does see a hill, it does go up the hill.
Now let's talk about the parallel active track
because it acts a little bit differently,
and it's a little bit more limiting in terms of
how it tracks you as the subject moving through space.
So how parallel works is basically wherever your subject is,
if the drone's off to the side,
it's going to follow on the side.
And no matter where this subject goes,
the drone stays in the same position.
It's not going to rotate.
At least it's not supposed to rotate that much.
It's not going to be like trace
where it comes swoops behind.
The idea of using parallel is that it keeps
the same drone direction.
And there's definitely some issues I've found
with the obstacle avoidance, and using the parallel mode.
So it will follow you up and down.
It does take a second for it to start moving down
after you descend down a hill.
Now, using the parallel mode,
it doesn't have to be in front or just to the side.
You can have it right behind you,
you could have it off to the corner,
basically anywhere in a 360 view, wherever that drone is,
it's gonna stay that same position and follow.
So say I wanted it behind
at like a three-quarters moving down a trail.
Well, the drone will stay at that three quarters.
It's a pretty cool mode to be able to get cinematic looking
footage from a specific perspective,
and hold that position without panning.
If I want the drone to pan,
I'm either gonna use point of interest
or I'm gonna use the trace mode
where it's actually following me through the scene.
So after working with the Air 2S on a few rides,
I can safely say that the active track will work well when
mountain biking with a few limitations.
So one is if there's any scene where there's lots of trees,
the only two modes that will really work well will be the
trace mode where the drone can be right behind me,
and just following me, and in that mode,
I won't be able to move super fast on a windy trail.
If there's lots of trees and I'm on a single track trail,
the drone might get stuck because you could see on some of
the single track footage, the drone will follow,
but it's not gonna follow the trail exactly,
It's gonna go up and over some of the little sections
where you're weaving back and forth.
So if there's a tree on that section
where you're weaving around,
well, the drone is gonna get caught,
and it's gonna get stuck.
But if it's a trail that's a little bit more open
or there's more straight lines, and not so curvy,
then the trace will work super well.
The other mode that's gonna work is the spotlight,
because you can put the drone up.
It's not going to fly into anything,
and it will follow you through trees.
So if you go in and out of trees,
the drone will pick you up as you move through the trees.
Obviously, if it's super wooded,
and you're seeing only bits of you, it's not gonna follow,
but if it's sparse enough where you can actually see
the person moving through the scene, then that will work.
Now on trails that are more open, say a mountain trail.
Well, I could have the drone in parallel or trace mode,
and the only thing I really have to worry about
is using the parallel mode, and going uphill.
Because that's when I've had issues where the
drone actually gets stuck on the hillside.
But if I'm traveling downhill
or it's more flat I'd say am on a ridge-line,
that parallel mode is gonna be super useful
because it has such a cool perspective where
I could be moving on the trail,
and you could see everything in the distance,
and you're off to the side.
And this gets me really excited for the Mavic 3,
because that drone is going to have side sensors.
So it might actually help solve these issues where the
drones not able to react quick enough
because of those side sensors.
And I'm interested to see how much better the
active track gets with that drone.
So if you want to learn more about the Air 2S,
I'll put a link down below in the description to my review,
and my beginner's guide all around this drone.
And also I'll add links to the bike Mount that I used
so that you can go get one,
and play around with it yourself.
Also, I have a brand new set of drone LUTs
that you can use for your log or your standard footage.
I'll put links to those down below in the description.
And next I highly suggest you check out this video here.
It's a complete beginner's guide on how to fly your drone
for creating awesome video content.
I will see you over there.