hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome
to drone the sky now sitting here with
my dji mavic mini and my lychee beta
application
sitting and staring at facebook mind you
and i thought to myself we have to focus
on panoramics today i think
so what i want to do today is go over
lineal
spherical and more importantly free
software
in conjunction with the mavic mini and
the lychee beta to show you how to do
this
on your facebook profile look at that
isn't that stunning
so i'll tell you what stick around we're
about to take off in the car now and
we're going to get on with this let's go
okay ladies and gentlemen here we are so
where are we today well we're located
in the hills around perth western
australia and someone's been nice enough
to let me fly near and over their
property today which is very nice of
them
that way we get a nice scenic view while
we run through the panoramic mode so
before we begin
what i want to do is briefly touch on
the settings again and explain them a
bit further because last time i went
over them
the explanation wasn't so in-depth so
bear with me
if you don't want to hear the
explanation for settings feel free to
skip ahead
using the chapters in the video
description but here we go so
obviously we're using the dji mavic mini
in conjunction with
the lychee beta application so we're
going to go into panoramic mode briefly
and here okay so let's go into settings
so i just want to go over these again
so as you can see with the first setting
with 360. so we're doing a 360 panoramic
today
now columns and rows let me explain
these two
i'll put a diagram up at some stage but
what i want to do
is explain exactly what it means so
we're on the right page here
so here we go okay so what is a column
so picture this picture your drones in
the sky ready to go
to take a 360 panoramic now what the
columns are
it's a break up of the circle that this
drone is going to be orbiting in so in
this case
we have 25 columns what that means is
the drone
when it's in the air will rotate left or
right to
25 different positions getting ready to
take a photo
now what rose actually means is within
each of those columns going down it's
going to break the column into 11 rows
as you can see here
so picture the drone coming to a column
coming to a standstill
then rotating the gimbal up or down
into 11 different positions before it
takes the photo
so to give you an idea how this works
out let's take the rows down to
10 and we'll also take this here the
columns
down to 20. so what it should be is
20 columns around the circle in a
horizontal
and then 10 rows up and down so it's 10
times 20 which equals as you can see at
the bottom here 200 photos
makes sense hopefully so let's continue
on
so the height what the height is now if
you look to the right here
just where the record button is flashing
you'll see a little bar running up and
down and a zero that's highlighted in a
gray
circle now that's your gimbal degrees
position so at the moment it's at zero
full straight if i go down it goes into
the minus if i go
up it goes into the positive
okay so that's your gimbal location why
is that important well this is why it's
important we'll just go to zero quickly
so the height 110 degrees here
what that means is say we're at 110 and
your gimbal is capable of
going let's say to 110 up and 110
straight down in this case the mavic
mini can only go
20 degrees positive up and 80 degrees
negative down but anyway say it could go
110 up 110 down
if you had the nadirs here the nadirs is
the very very bottom shot
of your photo set to one which means it
takes one very bottom shot
and you had your height set to 110 that
locks your gimbal
so what it will do is it will take the
nandir first which is the very bottom
shot let's say 110 degrees
and then it will slowly bring the camera
upwards and take photos up to the zero
point
okay so it locks it to the negative the
nadir
upwards to the zero which is straight
ahead if that makes sense now if you're
turning a deer
off which it is at the moment and you
have
height 110 degrees what that now does is
from your starting position in this case
zero it allows your gimbal to go 110
positive takes
photos all the way through 110 degrees
positive and down 110 degrees negative
so as we know
the mavic mini doesn't have that many
degrees so in this case
because the mavic mini can only go 20
degrees positive
and 80 degrees negative basically what
it'll do from the zero point
it will start at the very top 20 uh
positive and take photos all the way
down to 20
negative oh sorry 80 negative okay
now what i found from uh trying this
before is
i don't see the reason behind the nadirs
which is the bottom shot so when you do
a sphere there's usually a black circle
at the bottom where a photo's been
missed the nadir covers that
but if you were to put your columns up
all the way
and your rows up all the way it actually
covers the bottom shot so i don't
understand the purpose of the ds i don't
use it but if you want to try it out
give it a go
grid pattern linear and spherical so
linear
gives you that standard panoramic shot
that you can do with a camera now
safiricool
takes the photos in a way that later on
if you want to upload it to something
like facebook
or google maps and choose to upload it
as a sphere
it now puts that photo in a spherical
setting so you can actually rotate left
right up down and look around so that's
the idea behind that
we'll show you later anyway when i
upload it to a facebook group that i
run so let's get out of that now delay
before each photo so the importance of
this is as i explained in another video
which i'll put the link
for it should be popping out the top of
the screen now you can click on that and
have a look at the previous tutorial but
what the delay is when the drone rotates
to the next position to take a photo
it gives the drone one second delay
before the photos taken this is
important because it allows the camera
to focus on the new light and focus on
the scenery
before it takes the shot if you have it
saying like uh 0.1 of a second
it's going to rotate and then take a
photo almost instantly before the camera
is adjusted to the settings and lighting
so always have a delay there now delay
after each photo is the same concept but
it's after the photo now again i don't
use that because i think
one second after the drone stops is
sufficient for it to lock on so i'm
going to leave that at zero
okay that's it that's that's the boring
part i guess would say is now over so
what we're going to do
i'm going to take three versions of
shots today so the first one
is going to be around about 50 photos so
a basic
linear panoramic and then i'm going to
do a spherical panoramic
and then for comparison i'm going to do
another panoramic but we're going to put
the columns and rows up so we're taking
something around about the
150-170 mark so the reason for that is
the reason you take so many photos is
when you stitch your panoramic together
the way the software works
it identifies points in each photo taken
and links them together like a puzzle
now the way it works is not exact puzzle
it actually overlaps photos
so they blend better so the theory is
the more photos you take
the easier it is for the software to
match it and the better the panoramic so
we're going to put that to the test
anyway i haven't tried it yet
i'm going to give that a go and do a
comparison between a 50-shot panoramic
and something like 150-175
so let's get on with it now now sorry
just before we do that
for your information i've actually got
an nd filter on the
lens today a neutral density filter
usually it's used for
getting natural movement to videos by
slowing frame rate down today i'm just
using it for the benefit
of blocking light out because it's a
very sunny day all right now we'll take
off and give the first panoramic a go so
let's do it
okay so here we are we're in position
we're at 90 meters off the ground
so what we're going to do go into
settings and the first one is we're
going to do
a minimal photo 360 degree panoramic so
let's take it down to let's say
10 columns let's go with that scroll
down so the height
look like i said we've only got an 80
minus and a 20 positive so we'll just
take it to
let's say 85 it's going to take it
through the full range of motion anyway
because
-80 85 it will cover it now rows
we'll go down to 10. actually no we
won't we'll go down further
till we get to about 50 photos
there we go 50 photos going down no
nadir's and we're going to do it in a
linear pattern now
capture strategy so picture column by
column what that means is
the drone will rotate first column take
the photos using the gimbal up and down
and rows then rotate to next column if
you went
row by row what would happen is it would
start by taking
the photos up and down first then rotate
to the column it's personal preference
doesn't really make a difference still
going to get the photo so we'll go
column by column
delay is at one and now what we're going
to do is kick this off so let's go
oh sorry my mistake bear in mind you
need p
mode p gps enabled so the drone can lock
onto the gps signal and sit in position
while it gets the panoramic so we're
going to change that now
and now let's start okay
so that's the simple panoramic done as
you can see i've landed and just
transferred some data now we're going to
go up again
and we're going to do the spherical or
spherical panoramic so let's take off
okay so we're at about 91 meters similar
location what i'm going to do now is go
across to settings
and we're going to leave it at 10
columns again and rows by five and it is
zero
but this time we're going to change it
from linear to spherical
okay looks like 44 photos so what i'm
going to do is i'm just going to bring
the column
row up and uh column up just to get a
bit more so 57 should do us
so let's go to that remember always p
gps mode
okay and we will start now okay so
that's the sphere
completed what we're going to do now i
just changed batteries we're about to
take off again
what we're going to do is the larger
more detailed panoramic
linear by taking more photos for more
overlap
so let's go into settings quickly before
i take off what we're going to do is
we're going to take it up to about
let's go 16 columns or 17 columns
and about let's go nine rows so
the max i've had on here before is 275
bear in mind with the one second delay
between photos and the amount of photos
to be taken especially in
adverse like windy conditions your
battery is going to go from 100
to 12 percent after the photos have been
taken
when i tried it the other day i had
warnings going off that my drone was
about to come into land due to the fact
it drains so much battery so we're going
to sit at
132 we might even take it up to 148 that
way we're almost double
the first linear sorry triple the first
linear photo we took so let's see how
that goes
okay that's the final panoramic done now
i'm going to bring the drone in to land
and what we're going to do is we're
going to put all those images through a
stitcher
and also a few other little techniques
to come up with a different panoramic
designs which i'll run you through
anyway so
let's go land and we'll continue on from
there okay so we've arrived back home
i've got all my photos off the mini and
categorized them into
the order of panoramic that we did so
what i'm going to do now is i'm going to
start with the first
free program called auto stitch so
that's what we're going to use right now
so let's go into auto stitch
and auto stitch here we go so i'm going
to have this in the video link
description
go in there download it if you like this
is the easier program to use we'll just
click on folder
and in this case we're using the big
pano big pano is the one with multiple
photos in the hundreds
so click the first image here go down
shift and open open them all
so you notice i left one file behind
that's because it was a video file so
i'm just going to fast forward here
because this takes a little bit of time
okay so that stitching's now concluded
and this is what we've got this is the
panoramic that's been stitched together
of the big
i suppose session we had where we did
130 or 140 i can't remember how many
photos we did but this is what you get
here
so as you can see the width and height
is pretty good there are some black
spots at the top which can be cropped
out later that's because we couldn't
cover the zenith of course
and obviously down the bottom here the
deers we didn't include so you're going
to have those black spots there
but as you can see it did a very good
job of covering the majority of the
bottom
because like i said even without the ds
you do that many photos it covers the
bottom so there you go
we'll zoom in so the quality is not too
bad obviously if you get further in it's
going to get pixelated but
for a uh for the dji mavic mini this is
not too bad considering
the price so what we'll do now is we'll
go into the next
software and i'll show you how to stitch
with that one
okay so here's the next program i was
talking about this is also free to buy
microsoft it's called image composite
editor now i like this one more than
auto stitch well look that's
that's a lie auto stitch is good if you
want to make a quick panoramic now this
one here i use a bit more
because as you'll see later when we make
a 360
rotatable facebook image and when i say
360
it's pretty much full 360. it's not just
around left or right it's up
down everywhere we use this program to
do that and this is one we have to use
to make that image so let's go and do
new panoramas
and we go down to our folder what i'm
going to use this time is pano standard
retry now
it's called retry for a reason the
simple panoramic that i took or the one
with about 50 photos i took
over the hills didn't work now i think a
sneaky photo that didn't belong to the
panoramic actually got in there and
destroyed it so i couldn't actually
sew that one together so i'm going to
use this instead unfortunately it
doesn't give us a comparison because
it's a totally different location but it
will show
the size and width and so forth all
right continuing on i've loaded the
photos in
we go to stitch all right here we are i
skipped ahead again just so we could get
to this screen stitching complete
now this section here this just
basically tells
the program how you want the orientation
of the panoramic so is it spherical is
it
transverse cylindrical so on and so
forth just leave it as spherical because
we're not actually going to be putting
into anything we're going to be leaving
it linear
so we go up to crop now
okay as you can see we've got the little
black lines at the top uh
zenith and nadir so what we're going to
do is we're going to crop it we'll go
down here
yeah like that yep fine go to export
okay here so as you can see the width is
uh 20 0480 pixels by five one two one
that's fine we're gonna leave it at that
jpeg yeah and look we'll make it a
superb quality you can change the format
quality there obviously superb i've got
enough disk space
and we're gonna export it to yeah mavic
footage let's go with that all right
it's saving there you go so that's what
you got there let's actually go into the
image itself
no we don't need that where are we
up here
and that's your end result okay so again
as you can see from this one but it's
not as wide or sorry
high as the uh a larger one we took
earlier that's because it hasn't used as
many
photos so that's not a problem but bear
in mind less photos
it's not not going to be as high as for
quality well
let's let's zoom in
yeah it's about the same quality
actually that's not too bad considering
i had the sun in there without an nd
filter this time
okay see look yeah not bad at all so
just so you're aware as well that was
about
70 photos for this one i just took it up
a little bit so i didn't have an error
like last time so there you go
that's both of those done what i'm going
to do now is i'm going to move on to the
specialized panoramic which is the 360
degree
facebook type now this one has got a few
steps so take note
again skip ahead if you don't want to
watch it but the effect is pretty
amazing so let's get on with that
okay so for the facebook based 360
spherical image
or panoramic we're going to use again
image composite editor
and we're going to go into new panorama
it's pretty much the same process as we
did before so
i'm just going to get rid of a file
quickly that one there okay so i'm going
to use
sphere so what sphere is is the images
we took in spherical mode when we had
the drone up in the sky make sure you
click that one you can use a standard
panoramic but it doesn't look as good
so select all images like we did before
yep that's fine
let's stitch them together okay it's
completed as you can see same as before
we want to leave it spherical very
important in this case because we are
making sphere
do not crop it at all when we go across
here we don't want it cropped we want
everything there in all its glory okay
fine go to export
and we will change the quality here to
superb
now i want to explain something here
before we export it with facebook you
need a thing called a two to one ratio
what that means is
the width of your image must be double
the height
okay and it must be exactly double the
height so what it means is if your width
is eight thousand
the height must be four thousand okay if
that makes sense to you
secondly the maximum upload you can do
for a 360 image in facebook is a six
thousand width
by three 3000 height so what we're going
to do when we export here
these two here are interlinked which
means if i change the width here
the height will follow with whatever
ratio and it's in at the moment so what
i want to do
i want to actually reduce the size
because the next program program we use
it sometimes works sometimes doesn't if
your file is huge or it's got a massive
width so
i'm just going to change it down here
like i said remember facebook is six
thousand by three thousand
let's just change this to four thousand
so we've got something to work with and
click here as you can see the ratio
changes because it's whatever the ratio
is at the moment might be four to three
or i'm not doing the math
but i'm thinking it's four or three or
something like that we're just going to
export it like this okay
i'll explain why soon so export to disk
we'll export it to the same folder and
we'll call it
sphere 1. okay export
okay done let's continue on
okay so here's the last program that we
need to use again it's free
and what the program is called it's
called gimp
and it's an image manipulation program
what that basically means is we can
manipulate the image which is what we're
going to require at this stage now
i call this the cheap man's photoshop
because usually i use photoshop
but that costs money for a subscription
this case this one's free and has great
functionality
so we're going to use this first of all
what we need to do is we need to go to
edit
preferences we just need to change the
setting here see where it says maximum
new image size
make sure that's set at 5 gigabytes now
the reason for that is
if it's set at megabytes which it
usually is and you try and export an
image
that's uh too big for the maximum new
image size
you're going to find it's going to throw
up errors so just put five gigs there
that will cover any image size you're
never going to do a five gigabyte image
unless it's so
unless it's a million pixels i don't
know but anyway put that at five
now let's go open the file that we
stitched together before i think it was
called
finished so let's go there let's get out
of that
mavic footage and it was called actually
sorry it was called sphere1 that's the
one we stitched together before as you
recall
right here it is so what we need to do
is we need to go up to image
and we need to go scale image so again
remember facebook two to one ratio and
also max image size to go on is six
thousand by three thousand so
what you need to do very important
unlink the two
see how the chain's now broken if you
don't unlink that you won't be able to
change them individually of each other
it will keep changing going off the one
below or the one above it so
what we're going to do is turn this into
if i can click on it
6000 by
3000 it's exactly half the width
there you go so that's the max facebook
image size and that's a two to one ratio
so we're now going to scale that
right that's what we want to see so it's
scaled down two to one max image size so
we're going to go to file
and we're going to go export
and we want it to be a jpg or jpeg
we will actually put it in desktop again
mavic mini footage and we will call it
finished maybe maybe if it wants to
let me there we go we'll call this
finished
okay and export
done so exit that program don't worry
about that
let's go into the folder here so here is
as we said finished product
right there okay so last step this is
the most important if you want that
facebook
effect right click go to properties
go to details now this is the metadata
of the file this tells you everything
about the file
what we need to change is camera maker
camera model
let me just click there a second the
reason for that is there's certain
cameras that natively shoot
360 images and facebook knows that and
when it's got this metadata from that
camera in its file it will turn it
straight away into a 360 full globe type
panoramic
now we're going to trick facebook into
believing this has been taken with one
of those cameras
so the maker is going to be riko
and the camera model is going to be a
ryko again
theta s now i just want to point
something out
see the capitals if they're not there it
doesn't work
must have the capitals it must match
this exactly okay
so i'm just going to press apply
okay so that's done so now we've got an
image we can upload and turn into a 360
on facebook
so i'm going to get out of this i'm
going to go into facebook
so here's a little group this is called
show your drone picture this is a group
i'm part of
i'm now going to upload this a modified
image with a trickery metadata
and you'll see what i'm talking about so
finished is there how do we know if
we've done it right
see that see how it looks like a little
atom in the middle just there
that means it's a 360 image that's
getting uploaded as opposed to a
standard image
and you'll notice as well it takes a bit
more time to process that's because it's
360 now
so we've done it right we've changed the
camera maker settings and so forth
and it's now uploading so let's wait
it's just processing in the background
there we go so it's now uploaded i'm
going to post this in the group
and then we'll go into it and have a
look actually let's write a comment
look what i made what's i
made there we go post
right here we are so let's click into it
let's click into it again there you go
that's what we've just made by tricking
the camera
so now you've got a full 360 globe type
panoramic that you can drag around
now bear in mind if we go up remember
the zenith of the photos there's a
zenith that we can't cover
and remember we also didn't put nadirs
in
or we didn't take multiple photos to
cover the nadir so therefore
we have an idea remember more photos you
take
more likely that's going to be covered
anyway so if you do 175 photos that's
probably going to be gone
so there you go that's how you make the
360 rotational panoramic in facebook by
tricking it okay let's get out of that
so there you have it the dji mavic mini
with the lychee beta application
in panoramic mode so hopefully that
gives you some insight into what you can
actually do
with the mavic mini and lychee now just
for your information in the background
here
this is footage from a dji mavic air 2
that i happen to use around the area
on the day as well so enjoy that while i
have a little chat here
regarding the software programs we used
here today
the links will be in the video's
description so you can download those
programs if you need to
also if you want to subscribe to the
channel it helps me out
gives me an indication if i'm doing
something right and if you're actually
liking the videos i'm putting out it
also alerts you when i put out
videos in the future now you can also
subscribe to my facebook group if you
want to there's a few like-minded people
on there who like the chat about drones
and other things
in regards to droning so feel free to
subscribe if you like
now regarding the video feel free to
like the video if you want if you didn't
like it
dislike it it gives me an indication if
i'm doing something right or wrong
now more importantly comments please
feel free to comment
positive negative it doesn't matter i
like all feedback and also if you have
technical questions or need a hand with
anything you've seen in the videos
i'll endeavor to answer if i can now
lastly
if you want to share the video around
feel free feel free maybe
to throw it around if you think there's
other people out there who might like
watching it
that's it so that's it for now i'll end
the video here thanks very much for
watching and
i'll see you all again soon
