- Welcome to your beginner's guide for the DJI Mavic number 3. (upbeat music) This video is gonna go through everything that you need to know about this drone to take off and start flying to get some awesome-looking footage and be able to cut that into videos that other people are
gonna enjoy watching. So let me give you a quick rundown of what you're gonna find in this video. First, we're gonna go into an
overview of the drone itself. Then we're gonna go into the controller. Next, we'll get into the DJI Fly app. And I'm gonna break
down what everything is and how you can use this
when you're out flying. The fourth section will all
be about how to fly the drone. Then we'll get into ActiveTrack and some of the other automation features that you have access to. And then towards the end of this video, we'll dig into what to shoot. So what to point the drone
at and what to capture. And finally, we'll dig into editing. And we'll go through some different things that's really gonna help you
put your footage together and make something cool
out of the different shots that you go out and capture. So let's go over the drone itself. When you get the drone out of the box, you're gonna have the strap. And this is different
than previous models. This strap kind of
covers the entire drone, and it actually holds
the propellers in place. And so when you're
putting the strap back on, you wanna make sure that all
the propellers are locked in so that when you're traveling with this, when it's in your backpack, nothing gets broken. So there's just a little flip on the top. You pop this off. And just make sure that when you're pulling this case off, that you pull forward so you don't hit the gimbal. It's a little funky at
first to put back on, but after doing it a few times, it gets easier and easier. Now you wanna fold the
arms out to the front first and then the bottom arms, the back second. Now looking at this drone, I'm gonna just go over what
all the components are. On the front, you'll see the camera on the gimbal. And this is gonna move
on three different axis so that your camera could
always keep a stable shot. Also on the front, you're gonna see two forward sensors. This is gonna be your obstacle avoidance. Now, when we rotate
this drone to the side, you'll see that you could see the two obstacle avoidance sensors, also looking towards the side. That's the big advantage of this drone is you have
those side to side sensors. And then when we go to the back, you'll see at the top, we have those two sensors. But in the center, you have this little flip and this little door has a USB-C and a micro SD card slot. So depending on which
version of this drone, you're gonna be either
using a micro SD card, or if you have the Cine version, you're gonna be using
the internal 1 terabyte that comes in the drone. I don't have the Cine version, so I have to use the micro SD. So I just wanna make sure that I always put a micro SD in here because this version only has 8 gigabytes of internal storage. Now, from this port, you could either charge the drone, or you can connect it to your computer. So if you wanna offload your footage, you're gonna connect to this USB-C that's in this little door, and you'll connect that
directly to your computer. And so if you're using a micro SD card, you'll see both your drone and that micro SD card pop up
on your computer's desktop. Now, also in the back is where you're gonna insert the battery. So the two tabs are gonna
face towards the top. You're gonna push in, and you wanna hear a click. That means the battery is set properly, and it's not gonna come out. On the back of the battery, you'll see a button with the lights. You press once and hold
until all the lights turn on, and then the drone will start powering on. And you'll hear that chime. Press once and hold
until the lights go off, and it turns off the drone. If we look straight down on the drone, you'll see two vision sensors on the top so that it could see
anything above the drone. And if we flip the drone over, you'll see two vision
sensors pointed down, and you'll also see
your two landing lights. So in a darker setting, if you're shooting at sunrise or sunset, these will turn on
automatically to see the ground. It's a pretty cool feature. And you can also turn
them on in your settings if you need to have these lights on for any reason. Now, on each of the arms, you're gonna see lights, and these will illuminate
when you're flying. And then looking down at the propellers, you'll see two different versions. On the front right, you'll see it has a gray
ring around the center. In the front left, it has a black ring. This is because there's two
different types of propellers, the gray circle and the black circle. And so you wanna match up gray with gray and black with black if you're ever replacing these propellers. And to replace a propeller, it's super easy. You just press down, and then rotate counter-clockwise, and the blade will pop off. And you could see when
you're looking at the blade, there's just these little
hooks that keep it hooked on. You can mistakenly put
the gray on the black, they will still fit on. But you wanna make sure that
you match them up properly so that you have no
issues when you're flying. The last thing I wanna go
over is the lens itself. So on the front of your camera, you have just a clear filter
that comes with the drone. If you wanna add your ND filters, you need to take this off
to be able to put those on. So basically, you wanna hold the gimbal with your thumb and index finger so you don't break anything, and you wanna twist counter-clockwise. And it's just a half turn and the filter will come off. Now, make sure you don't get any dust or scratch your actual lenses because this is what's protecting it. And to add on a filter, you just do the reverse. Then the ND filter will
be on and ready to go. There's different ND
filters that you can get. DJI makes them. There's some third-party
companies making filters. Just know it's not something
that you have to use, but there's definitely some situations where you might wanna use an ND filter. All right, so let's get
into the next section, which is all about the controller (bright music) So this is the standard controller that comes with the Mavic 3. Now, I don't have the Cine version. So we're only gonna talk about
this controller in the video, but if you did get the Cine version, there is a pro-controller that's gonna have the screen built in and a few more functions
on the controller itself. But the gray controller is
kind of the DJI standard for all of their drones. So out of the box, your controller is gonna look like this. We're first gonna put the joysticks on. So if you rotate down to the bottom, you'll see that your two joysticks in the controller itself. And you'll just pop these out, and then you'll screw
them on to the controller. So looking down at this controller, we'll just go left to right. You have a function button in
the upper left-hand corner. And we'll talk about that when we get into the app to discuss what you can set
on this function button. And then we're gonna
have your left joystick, and this is how you're gonna
control the drone going up, going down and rotating. Now, next to that is your
Return to Home button. So when you're out and flying, you can click this button at any time, and the drone's gonna Return to Home. It's also your pause button. So if you're in the middle
of tracking an object, well, you can click this button, and it's gonna pause the
motion that you're in. Or if you're in a QuickShot
or MasterShots automation, you can click this at any time, it's gonna pause that action. Now, next to that is
gonna be your Cine, Normal and Sport mode. This is your speed. And there's three different settings that you can have on your controller. So it's basically slow, medium, fast. Now, next to that is your power button. This is the same as the drone. So you press once and then hold, and you'll hear that chime, and then the controller is turned on. You're gonna press once and hold, and then the controller is gonna turn off. Now, above that is your right joystick. This joystick is gonna
control moving forwards, backwards, or moving side to side. And then the button on the far right, that is your camera switch. So you can go from video to photo mode. Now, looking down at the top, you'll see that there's two buttons, a jog wheel on the left and a photo button on the right. The jog wheel is gonna control
your gimbal moving down and up. So you will use this if you
wanna make any adjustments where you wanna point
the angle of your gimbal. And the right button
is free to take a photo or start recording. So whatever your mode you're in, you'll click this button, and it will take the photo
or start the recording. Now, looking at the
bottom of the controller, you'll see a USB-C. This is where you plug it in to be able to charge the controller. Now, this has no screen on it so you need to put your phone up top. And depending on what
style of phone you have, either iPhone or Android, there's different cables
that come with your drone. And you have this piece that
you just pull out of the top. Now, this is also your antenna. So your antenna is up here, and it also is your phone holder. And you could just pull on this to adjust for the size of the
phone that you're using. Now, there is a cable inside. It typically comes with
the iPhone cable attached. And you'll see on the cables provided, there is one end that's
labeled as a controller. That one you'll leave
plugged in the controller. You'll pull out the other side. So the left side is the one that's gonna connect to your phone. Now, the easiest way to plug this in is to take the cable out, have it behind so you don't get it stuck. Put the top end first, and then put the bottom in second. Sometimes if you put the bottom in first, it actually gets caught on this bracket. And I've noticed that it's just easier to put the top in first, and then you just plug it in. So I have the Moment case on my phone, and it works just fine. So slimmer cases will work
with this phone mount, but when I add my Apple
wallet to the back, it won't work. So bigger, bulkier cases won't work with this controller size. However, if you do have slimmer cases, that will work fine. I just have the iPhone Pro. I don't have the Pro Max, but this will open bigger. So if you do have a bigger phone, it should fit in this controller mount. Then that's basically
it for the controller. What you're gonna do when you wanna start flying
is you're gonna turn on your controller, plug in your phone, and then turn on your drone. And with it connected, you should see the DJI Fly
app pop up automatically. But if not, you'll wanna start the DJI Fly app. And then out of the box, the controller will be
connected to the drone. And so it should just prompt
you to start flying right away. So the next section
we're gonna get into is all about the DJI Fly app and everything you can do
when you're out flying. (gentle music) All right, so let's dig
into the DJI Fly app. So when you're ready to start flying, you wanna plug in your phone, turn on the controller, and then turn on the drone. And your drone should
automatically be connected to the controller. Now, you'll see this screen, and the screen shows a connection guide in the lower right-hand corner. You'll click that, you'll click the drone, and then it's gonna go
through a set of instructions on how to get started and
to connect your drone. And if it's not paired, there's a Help section that's gonna walk you through
how to pair your controller to your drone. Just follow those steps. Now, if your drones paired properly, which it should out of the box, you'll see the screen. And on the screen, you'll see that the Mavic 3 shows up, and there's a little button
in the right-hand corner that says Go Fly. That's gonna go to your flight screen. This is basically your main menu. In the upper left-hand corner, it's gonna show an approximate location. In the right-hand corner, there's a set of tutorials. And then in the lower left-hand corner, you have your Album. And then you have SkyPixel, which is DJI's social media platform. And then you're gonna have your Profile, which is your DJI account that you're gonna need to set up to be able to fly a drone. So the first time that you
plug in and you start flying, there's gonna be an activation
screen that pops up. Just walk through the steps. If you don't have a DJI account yet, you'll have to set one up. And then from there, you'll just have to activate the drone. And then the screen will pop up every time that you're ready to start flying. So let's click Go Fly. So this is the screen that you're gonna see
every time you're ready to start flying. And I know there's a lot of buttons here, and it can get overwhelming, but I'm gonna go through what
each of these buttons are and what all the information is. And it's all there for a reason. So let's just go clockwise
from the top corner. In the upper left-hand corner, you have a back button. Click that, it goes back
to this home screen. So let's click Go Fly. We're back in this. Now, next to that is the
speed mode that you're in. Right now, I'm in normal mode, and that's what you
have on your controller. I'm gonna flip it over to Cine mode. And you'll see that an indication comes in the center of the screen, as well as it now is
switched over to C mode. I'm gonna flip it to
sport mode, same thing. Sport mode indication pops up. S mode in the corner. So next to that is where some
notifications will pop up. Right now, it's saying there's
an altitude zone at 387 feet. You're not supposed to fly above 400 feet. So that shouldn't be an issue for me when I'm out flying. You can click this button here, and it's gonna pop up with a few settings. And this is your pre-flight checklist. So these are just a few
settings you wanna set before you take off and fly. First is your auto
Return to Home altitude. So if there's any issue and the drone needs to
come back automatically, you can set which height you
want the drone to come back at. So if you're in an area with lots of trees and they're pretty tall, you wanna make sure that this Return to Home
altitude is pretty high. Same thing if there's, like,
mountains or anything else. You just wanna make sure that
you're up above any obstacle to bring the drone back because how Return to
Home works is basically wherever the drone's at, if it loses connection
with the controller, or you click the Return to Home, the drone is gonna fly straight up to this altitude, and then straight back. And then when it gets
back to the home point, it's gonna descend straight down. So just make sure your
Return to Home is set at a proper height. Now underneath that, you have your flight protection,
altitude, and distance. So the max is the max that
your app will let you fly. Here in the US, I can't fly above 400 feet. So I have that set so that I just have my upper limit. So you could set your max
altitude for height and distance and just make sure you're
obeying your local laws and regulations. And this is a way that
you can force those limits so that you don't get in any situation where you're flying too
high or too far away. Now moving right, you'll see this green icon. This is my battery icon. And right now, I'm not flying. So all of this is zeroed out. The first is Return to Home. The next is forced landing, and this bottom, your battery completely depleted. So all of those zeros
will actually be numbers when you're out flying to show how much time you have left. And depending on your conditions, these numbers might go down faster than like a normal clock. So look at this as just a quick guide to see how much time you have. But just know if you're in conditions that are super windy, or you're flying in sport mode, these numbers might take down faster than just a normal clock. So next to your time is your RC strength. So that's how good the connection
is between the controller and the drone. And right now, mine is at full connection. So next to that, the red is your obstacle avoidance. This is your vision sensors. You can click on that, and you can see that all of
these icons are gonna pop up. The drone is not in the sky right now so all of these are unavailable. But as soon as you fly, you'll see that all of that will go away. And when you're flying in sport mode, your sensors are gonna be unavailable, so you'll see that turn red as well. Now, next to that is your satellites. Right now, it's showing that I have
17 satellites connected to the drone, and that's your global positioning system. So if you only have one or two satellites, your drone is not gonna know
where it's at on the earth. So you wanna make sure that you have enough satellites connected to the drone before you
take off and start flying. Now, next to this is your menu. And this is gonna have a
bunch of different settings. And we'll go through that after we finished this screen. Now, underneath your menu, you have your icon that's gonna switch between photo, video, MasterShots, Quickshots,
Hyperlapse, and Pano. So this is all your photo and video modes. Now to the left are these binoculars. Now, this is how you use the second camera on the drone. Right now, I'm in just
the main 4/3 camera. But if I wanna use the explore mode, which is the zoomed in camera, you click the binoculars. So now, it's gonna
switch into explore mode. And you have a bunch of
different options for this mode. You have 1X, 2X and 4X. Now, these are all using
that same 4/3 camera, and it's just punching in digitally. When you click the button underneath the binoculars one more time, it's gonna go to 7X. Now 7X is the top camera. So it makes that flip to the top camera when you click 7X. So you basically have two
cameras on this drone, and then it punches in on that footage to give you a more cropped
in and zoomed in image. So if we click this again, we'll go to 14X and 28X. So 28X is a 4X crop on that 7X camera. Now, underneath that, you'll see your focus. So right now, I'm in auto-focus mode. But if you wanna manually focus, you can click that and scroll up or down to
manually focus the image. Now, next to your auto-focus
is the big red button. And this is record. If you switch over to photo mode, this is a white dot and that's to take a photo. And you'll see when you take a photo, there's gonna be a ring
around the white dot, and that's just processing the image. Now underneath that is your video library. So this is everything
that you have shot so far on the drone. And you can see that I
have a ton of footage from some previous trips
that I just got back from. Here's a shot out at the Trona Pinnacles. And you can go through and see everything that's on the card. And when you click on
an image or some video, you'll see that it's showing that it tell you Low-Res Preview. It shows the date and
time that it was taken, has all your information
about that photo or the video. You can favorite by clicking the heart, or you can export it. So you can use the arrow
in the right-hand corner to save to album, or you can click the button in
the lower right-hand corner, which is your download path, which you can bring it
into the app or your phone. And then in the lower left-hand corner, there's a trash can so you can delete photos
and images out of your cart. Now, if you make favorites, which is that little heart, you'll see up here in
the right-hand corner, there's a Favorites Tab, and that will pop up there. Now, also, you can go
through and batch select. So I can click the
upper right-hand corner. I can say, I want all these shots
to download to my phone. And I'm gonna save them to my phone. So now, it's downloading
from the drone into my phone. And now, everything's on my phone so I can edit directly from my phone. Now, also in your album, in the lower right-hand corner, you can create. And this is for creating
quick little videos using the DJI Fly app. So you can play around with that. There's different templates
or there's a pro mode. So you can go through and
do all of your edits just in the DJI app itself. So if you're gonna use
the app to do your edits, then you're gonna just
download the footage and the photos to the app and not to your phone because everything's just
gonna be kept within the app. All right, in the upper left-hand corner, let's go back. And now, we're back to the flight screen. In the lower right-hand
corner is your pro mode. So right now, it's on auto. I can click over to pro mode, and this allows me to
take control of everything on this drone. So I can adjust my shutter
speed, my aperture, my ISO. And I can also adjust my
exposure compensation. In the auto mode, you can only adjust your
exposure compensation. So your exposure compensation
is basically telling the drone to expose brighter or darker what it thinks is the perfect exposure. So if your image is overall too dark, and you want a little brighter, you can click your exposure compensation and go +3, +7, +1, whatever makes sense for the
scene that you're flying in. And in the pro mode, the reason that you would use your exposure compensation would be if your settings are set to auto. So right now, you can see that I have this little A above each of my shutter
speed, aperture and ISO. I can click any one of
these go out of auto by clicking the auto button, and then adjust that setting. So I wanna adjust my shutter speed to double out of my frame rate so I can get motion blur. Now, I have my shutter set, locked into 1/60 of a second, but my ISO and my aperture
are both going to be on auto. So then I could just use
the exposure compensation to make it brighter or darker. So you can either go full manual and completely control
all of these settings, or you can pick which ones
you wanna stay on auto. So if you wanna set your
ISO and your shutter speed, but then leave your aperture to auto, you'll see that the aperture
is gonna auto-adjust depending on what you're pointed at. And so it's always gonna keep the image at what the drone thinks
is proper exposure, and then take into account
your exposure compensation, and find the proper exposure. Next to your exposure compensation, exposure value EV, you'll see resolution
and frames per second. Now, this is where you can
adjust all your frame rates and your resolutions
for when you're flying in this video mode. So let's go to 5.1K, 50 frames per second. Now, if you're in the photo mode, you'll see that that button
is now a format button. So it can go from JPEG to RAW or JPEG+RAW. Now, next to that is your storage. And that's gonna show you how many photos you have left. We switch back to video, it's gonna show how
much time you have left. So right now, it's showing me that I
have 28 minutes left. Now you can click this storage, and it will show you both
internal and your card. And you can click these and switch between which
one you're recording to. Now, moving left, we have our information of
where the drone is in the sky. We have distance away, that's the D, and we have height. And then above that, you'll see miles per hour. The miles per hour is how fast it's moving in that direction. So next to the D, that's distance away. If you're moving forward, it's gonna show you how
fast you're moving forward at that miles per hour, and the same with the height. Above the height, and it's gonna show you
how fast you're climbing or dropping. Now in the far left-hand
bottom corner is your map. So right now, you don't see any map, but if we click on this, you'll see an overview of
the area that you're at. And when the drone's flying, it's gonna create a blue path that shows where the flight
path is for the drone. Now, this box has some
different functionality just on this box itself. In the lower right-hand corner, you can switch to this radar mode, which just basically
shows where the drone is in relation to you. And then you can double click this and make the map full screen. And then your camera
view is gonna be small in the lower left-hand corner. So you might wanna see this view just to see where the drone is in relation to different things on a map, or you need to see your flight
path on a bigger screen. So on this full screen mode, you have a few buttons here
on the right-hand side. First is information, so you can show different zones. I usually leave these all clicked on, but if you wanna turn any of them off, you can do it here. You can erase the path that your drone has
created the flight path. You can orient the map
based on where the drone is or based on where the home point is. You can switch to true north. You could also add layers. So if you wanna do a satellite, you could see basically an
overview of where you're at. And then last is indication of
other airplanes in the area. Right now, mine set to
medium, high collision risk, but you could switch this to low or high. These are just different settings that are gonna tell you if there's another plane in the area. So we can minimize that on the main screen if you don't need to see the map. Now, the last thing I wanna show you on the screen is your takeoff. So up above the map, there's this takeoff button. And you click this once, and then press and hold it in the center, and the drone is gonna take off. You press and hold it in the center when the drone is flying, and the drone will land. Now, the other way to
take off is to bring both of these controllers down into the center, and it's gonna start the propellers, and then you pull up on the left stick, and that's gonna ascend
the drone into the air. And then how you would land
a manually is you just get the drone into a perfect landing spot, pull down on this left joystick until the drone fully lands, and then keep holding this
until the drone turns off. Now, let's dig into the menu in the upper right-hand corner. So you click the three dots, and it's gonna pull up
these different menus. There is a lot in here, but it is organized nicely, so you can find exactly
what you need pretty quick. So first is your Safety menu. And you're gonna have flight assistance. So if you have an object in your way, you can either go around that object, or you can break and the drone will stop. I have mine on Bypass, but you can stop, and the drone will just
stop where the object is, or you can turn that off. But when it's off, the drone might fly into
some sort of object. Next is your Display Radar Map. And this is real-time obstacle
detection on the main screen. So when you're flying, there'll be different colors
that pop up on your screen to show you how close
you are to an object. Quick visual thing to see
your obstacles in your way. Underneath that, you'll
have your Flight Protection. These are your max
altitude, and max distance, and auto Return to Home. So if you don't wanna set
them in the pre-flight menu, you can set them here as well. You can update your home point, and you can do this when you're in flight. - [Voiceover] The
Homepoint has been updated. Please check it on the map. - Now, underneath that
you have your sensors. This is where you can
calibrate your sensors, your IMU. It also has your battery info. So if you need to know
anything about your battery, you can click on this. It's gonna show your voltage, your battery temperature, and the number of times charged. Underneath that, you have your LED. Now, right now, mine is set to auto. I can turn that on. It's gonna turn on those lights on the bottom of the drone, or I can just turn them off, and they don't come on ever. I just gonna leave it on auto. Now, you can also turn
off the LEDs on the front. So when you're recording, if you're getting some reflections, or you're seeing the
colors of those front LEDs, turn it on auto. And basically, they shut off
when you start recording. And then they turn back on
when you stop recording. And it's just a feature that allows you to get a clean image when you're shooting in darker settings. Now, if you need to unlock a GEO Zone, you'll do that in this menu here. Also, there's a section of Find My Drone. So if you lost your drone, you'll go to this Find My Drone setting. And then in the Find My Drone, there's button in the lower right, you can click that. It will cause the drone to
start beeping and flashing. So if it's lost in a
tree or bushes somewhere, it will be easier to find. And then there's the
Advanced Safety Settings. So if your signal is lost, you can tell the drone what to do. I have mine on Return to Home. So if I lose connection to my controller, the drone will automatically come back. Now, you don't necessarily
always want that on. If you're flying in a situation where Return to Home is
not the safest thing to do, you can either have the
drone automatically descend, or you can have it just hover. And then you can also set
your Emergency Propeller Stop, which basically when you pull both joysticks inwards or outwards, it will cause the drone
to shut off at mid-flight. Now, also, this is where you can turn
on and off your AirSense. Now, you're not gonna wanna turn this off because this is your
indication that tells you if there's airplanes nearby. If a plane comes nearby, you'll see an indication pop
up on the screen that says, "Manned aircraft in the nearby area." And this is something that you're gonna wanna
keep on while you're flying. Now, let's go over to the Control menu. So first, you're gonna see your units. I'm in the US and we use Imperial. But if you're on Metric, you can switch that here. Next to that is your Gimbal Mode. So Follow Mode is where your gimbal is gonna
keep the horizon level. In FPV Mode, you're gonna see the gimbal tilt. So if you want that look, you can switch it here
in the menu setting. Now, underneath that, you have your Gimbal Calibration and your Advanced Gimbal Settings. So if we click into our
Advanced Gimbal Settings, this is where we can
change some of the settings for your Cine, Normal, and Sport mode. So make it work best for the
way that you like flying. Okay, so next is your Phone Charging. So you can have your
controller charge your phone while you're out flying. Next is your Stick Mode. Automatically, you're gonna have Mode 2. And that's what I'm gonna be
talking about in this video. Now, if you like a
different configuration, this is where you can
change your Stick Mode. And this is how these joysticks work. So there's three different
modes that are preset, and you can also do a custom mode. Next, let's talk about
your button customization because in the upper left-hand
corner of this controller, you have this function button. And you can operate it at two ways. You can either click or double click, and it's gonna bring up
different menu options. So here is where you can change that. So right now, I have it set to Recenter
Gimbal and Advanced Camera. So when I click this button, you'll see that the camera
will automatically go down straight down. Click it again. It's gonna come back up to straight 90. So looking straight out. That's a good tool to have
just to reset yourself and know where horizon is
straight out from the drone or straight down. I often use that feature
just to snap the camera back to be able to get a different shot. And if we double tap, it brings up my Advanced Camera Settings. And these are settings that you
will change once in a while. So these are the two standard buttons that come on this drone, but you can change them. You don't always need
access to this camera menu. So let me show you some other options. So we can have Auxiliary LED. That's gonna control the light underneath. We have Toggle Map and Live View. We have Gimbal Follow or FPV Mode. We have Advanced Camera Settings, Auto-Exposure Lock and Unlock, Hyperlapse Cruise Control, Increase Exposure Value, Decrease Exposure Value. That's the exposure compensation that we were talking about
with the auto settings. And then we have Explore mode. So if you find yourself using some of these functions often, then set them to this function button, and it makes it super easy to have this on your
controller at all time. And then underneath that, you have some advanced settings
for your RC Calibration. Now, at the bottom, you have a Flight Tutorial, which at any time, if you wanna go back and learn the basics of
how to fly your drone, you can click this Flight Tutorial, and it will take you through
this preflight checklist and some different things
that you need to know before you start flying. Let's go over to your camera settings. So this is all your
advanced camera settings. First is your format. So you can record in .mov or .mp4. Underneath that, you have your color. So right now, I have it in the normal color. So it has contrast, and it has saturation. If we use D-Log, you'll see that you have
a much flatter image. This is what you'll shoot in if you wanna color grade your footage. Next, we have our Coding Format. You can shoot on H.264, H.265. If you have the Cine version, you have ProRes as well. So moving down, there's a few things that are
gonna help you mid-flight. So you have your Histogram
and your Overexposure Warning. I'm gonna turn it back on normal color. And then I'm gonna put on my
Histogram and Overexposure. So your overexposure are those zebras that you're seeing here on the screen. This is showing parts of your
image that are too bright, and they're just turning white. Now at your histogram, that's this box that I'm moving around. That is all of your
exposure values from black on the far left to white on the far right. So ideally, you just want all
your exposures in the middle. And you could see if I turn
my exposure compensation up, everything's gonna slide to the right. And I have zebras all across my screen. That basically means that
everything's overexposed. If I go into my Advanced Camera Settings, and I turn off the Exposure Warning, you'll see that everything
is way too bright. Let's turn that back on. Let's bring our exposure
compensation down, and let's go the other direction. If we go -3 you'll see that the image is very dark. And you'll see on the histogram here that everything is on the far left. That means it's super dark. So you don't necessarily wanna
fly too bright or too dark. You wanna fly somewhere in the middle, especially when you're shooting
with the normal settings. With the D-Log, you'll see that you'll
have a much flatter image. So let's turn on D-Log. And you'll see that your
exposure values are all crunched into the middle of that histogram. Again, you don't want that histogram to be at the very top or the very bottom. You want it somewhere in the middle because if you're gonna use D-Log, you're gonna add contrast later on. And if it's too high on
your histogram or too low, you will have some troubles
color grading your footage. Let's go back into the camera settings. Next, you have guidelines. So you can add across which will give you just
lines across both directions. You can have 1/3. So if you wanna shoot with your subject in one of the 1/3, you can add on these lines. And also, you have a center mark. So you could have crosshairs in the center And I'll move the camera
so you can see that. Just as some guides to help you know where different elements
are placed in the frame, just so you can compose
better-looking shots. So next is your Peaking Level, and this has to do with focus. So right now, I'm an auto focus. It's not gonna show up. But if we switch it over to manual focus, you'll see that the red
is what is in focus. Next on your camera menu
is your White Balance. So right now, I have mine
set to manual 55 Kelvin. But if you set it to auto, it's gonna auto adjust your white balance. Now, there might be situations where your white balance will fluctuate. So you have to go into this
menu here to set it manually. Now, the last section
underneath this has to do with your storage. First is your storage location. So you can set your internal
storage or your SD card. Then the one that's highlighted is the one that you're gonna be recording too. And then you can click Format in the upper right-hand corner. When you click Format, you can format either your
internal storage or your SD card, and it's gonna erase all your images and all your footage. Now, you can sync your downloaded
files to your phone album, which basically means
when you bring images or footage from the
drone to the DJI Fly app, it's automatically gonna
sync them to your phone. I'm gonna turn that off because I don't need that to happen. And then last is your
Cache When Recording. So when you're flying at 30
frames per second or below, your DJI Fly app will
record a lower-res version of that footage, whatever it's seen from the phone. So the image that's being transmitted
is also gonna be recorded. And you could set this up to only do a certain
gigabytes worth of footage, or you can set it to auto. Now, the last menu is your transmission. So I typically just leave
this on dual-band and auto. I've never really had to mess with this, but if you do have issues
with your transmission, you can go in here and you can tweak it, putting it to 2.4 or 5.8, or you can change your channel mode by using the manual setting. Now, the last, About Tab is just basically
your information about your controller, your drone, your battery. And it has things, like, serial numbers, and it has a place to check for updates. So that's basically
everything for this app. There was a lot to cover in this section. And I know there's a lot of buttons and a lot of things to think
about when you're up flying, but the more that you practice, the more that you're out there
playing around with this, the more that you'll get
comfortable with this interface, and it will be much easier to fly, and everything that's on the
screen becomes super useful for when you're out flying. All right, so let's go outside and let's get into our first flight. (gentle music) All right, let's get
into your first flight. So I found an area that's pretty open. I've got this weird little
structure over here. But I brought my controller, my drone, and a few components that you need every
time you go out and fly. So one is batteries. Always make sure your
batteries are charged. And the second thing is a memory card. So if you have the Cine version, you have that built-in, 1 terabyte drive. But if you have this version, well, you only have the 8 gigabytes. It's not gonna last that long when you're shooting at 5.1K. So always make sure that
you have a micro SD card and that your batteries are full, and also make sure that all
your propellers are good before you leave. You just don't wanna get into a situation where you get outside, you go explore somewhere, you're ready to fly the drone, and then you forgot a battery or a card. So the first thing you wanna
do is just find somewhere that's safe to take off the drone. So you wanna make sure
that it's not on the ground because the ground has
lots of dust and dirt. You can get into the propellers. And you also don't want
any major structures or trees nearby. I've got these little pillars back here, which actually a great little launch pad. So I'm gonna use that. Or you go somewhere with some concrete, a parking lot, a park, just somewhere where you can take off and you don't have any issues with what's gonna be in the takeoff area. So you're gonna take off the drone, unfold the arms. Remember, front to first, back to last. You wanna set the drone up. Before we power on, let's get our phone connected. You wanna put your phone
in your controller first. You wanna make sure it's plugged in before you get started. And then you wanna attach your joysticks, and then we'll power on the controller. Make sure the DJI Fly app is turned on. Everything's good here. Let's turn on the drone. So we're gonna power on the drone. Press once and hold. I'm gonna move my sunglasses so they're out of the way. And I'm also gonna turn
on my screen record so you can see exactly
what I'm seeing here. So let's start the pre-flight checklist. First, check your propellers. So you wanna make sure that your propellers are good to go. Make sure they're locked on. And then you wanna make sure that your gimbal is clear
of any obstructions, so it's freely moving. Next, you wanna make sure that your controller is connected so that you have good connection between the controller, the drone. So if you ever need a refresher
on how to use the drone, you can always go back into
this pre-flight checklist, and it will walk you through the steps. So let's just take off. I'm going to have this set to auto. We are gonna take it off, D-Log, just so you guys have a better
view of what's going on. And I'm gonna just use
this button on the left. Click once, press and hold. The drone is now gonna take off. Now, the first time you
take it out and fly, you wanna make sure that
everything's working properly. So try the record. Okay, it's recording now. Everything looks good. Stop recording, And then land. And then the drone will land. So you always want to make sure that everything's working properly before you take it off and just go whip it around because if something's not set properly, and you just take off and fly, well, you could cause a crash. So you just wanna make sure
that the drone is all good. Now that we've tested it, let's take it off and go fly. And let me walk you through
some of the basic motions on how you actually fly the drone. (gentle music) All right. So let's talk about flight directionality. So you have the two joysticks, and you have eight different
motions that you can do between these two joysticks. And you're gonna use them in unison to get creative-looking footage. So first on the left side, if you press up on the left joystick, it's gonna go up into the sky. And if you press down on that joystick, it's gonna bring it down. So I'm descending down as I hold down on that joystick. If I push that joystick right, it's gonna rotate to the right. And you can see it's spinning super fast. So let's put it into Cine mode, and it's gonna go a little bit slower. Now, if I push the joystick to the left, it's gonna rotate to the left. So basically, think of the left joystick as going up and down and rotating. Now, the right joystick
is for movement away from that kind of center point. So if you press forward
on that right joystick, it's gonna fly forward. And if you pull back
on the right joystick, it's gonna fly backwards. Now, if you pull right
on that right joystick, it's gonna move to the
side towards the right. And you could see this
tree coming into frame. So it's almost like a
slide or a dolly shot. Now, if you pull left
on that right joystick, it's gonna do the opposite and just move to the left. So you can think of your right joystick as being the directionality moving away from that center point. So your left joystick is a center point. It goes up and down that point or circles. The right joystick moves
away in every direction. So either forwards,
backwards, left or right. So the last control that
you have is your jog wheel. So if you pull left on the jog wheel, it's gonna tilt the camera down. And if you pull right
up on that jog wheel, it's gonna tilt the camera up. Now, when you use these joysticks, you don't always wanna be
pushing them full throttle, like all the way to the end. You wanna feather it. So a lot of times, when I'm out filming, basically what I'm doing
is pushing these joysticks in different directions. And I'm just giving it slight movements. So I'm gonna do a quick
arc around us here. So I'm gonna pull the
right joystick to the left, and I'm gonna pull the
left joystick to the right. And what that's doing is
it's gonna move to the left while rotating to the right. And that creates an orbit. So you can see we're just
circling around the area that we're shooting this video at. And if I do the opposite, I pull the right joysticks to the right and the left joystick to the left. And I just feather it slightly. I'm not putting a whole lot of
pressure on these joysticks. You could see that it's moving slower, and it's doing this circle motion. Now I have another video that I did here on my channel that goes through tons of drone moves, that jumps off basically
what we just talked about. And it goes through a ton
of different combinations on how to use these two joysticks and this jog wheel to get
creative-looking shots. And I'll link to that
down below the description so you can check it out after this. But once you learn the basics, you'll wanna use two to three
different moves in unison to create dynamic footage. (gentle music) All right. So the next section I wanna
talk about is ActiveTrack. Now, ActiveTrack is a feature that allows you to track a subject, whether that's a person, a car, a boat, a train. Whatever that object is that's in motion, you can use your ActiveTrack to be able to follow that object, and you don't actually have
to touch the controller. And there's a few things that
you can do with ActiveTrack that's really cool. So let me just show you how this works. First, we're gonna grab the
subject that you wanna film. So let's just grab me because I'm gonna be walking around here, and we're gonna track me. So on the screen, you wanna draw a box around your subject. All right. It's found me as the subject. And you can see right now, it's in spotlight mode. So spotlight mode is basically the drone is just gonna stay in one place. And wherever I move, the drone is going to follow and just keep me in the center. So you can use this as basically
a moving tripod in the sky if you wanna follow your subject and not move the drone. Now what's also cool is
you can grab your subject, and you can move the drone
using your joysticks, and the drone is going to be moving while keeping that subject centered. So it's almost a easy way
to be able to shoot a scene with a subject, and not have to worry about trying to keep that subject always perfectly centered, but you're more focused on the controls of where the drone is in the sky. So I'm gonna start moving the drone. I'm gonna move it to the right and up. And you can see it's creating
this kind of orbit around while it's keeping me in the center. And I just create a really dynamic shot that's hard to do manually because the drone is tracking and keeping me centered the whole time. And so, now, I'm gonna bring the
drone down and forward. It's keeping me centered. And you'll see, as it comes over me, it's gonna point directly down, creating like that rocket
ship droney effect. So I'm bringing the drone down. I'm not touching the gimbal at all. And the gimbal's keeping
me perfectly centered the entire time. So it's a super easy way
to get creative shots. And you don't have to worry about making sure
your subject is centered because the drone is
doing all that for you. So beyond just the spotlight mode, you have point of interest and you have ActiveTrack. So let me jump up on this. We're gonna bring the drone up so there's no obstructions. We're gonna click Point of Interest, and now we hit Go. You could slide this
disc further to the right or to the left. And so that's the directionality. So I wanna move to the right fast. Now, the drone is gonna spin in a complete circle
around me indefinitely. It's just gonna keep spinning. And you can actually move the drone while it's doing this movement. So you could see, as I spin around, I'm gonna push up on the left joystick. The drone's gonna ascend into the sky while keeping me right in the center. So I'm creating a spiral effect. And I can do the same thing. I'm gonna bring the drone down. And it's gonna come
down keeping me centered and move the gimbal so that it always has a
shot with me in the center. Now, one thing that's
pretty cool about using this ActiveTrack is you don't always have to keep your subject
centered the entire time. So if you want your subject
off to the right 1/3, you just pull left or
right on the left joystick, and it will change your center point. So right now, you can see I'm in the right 1/3. So if I do by point of interest from here, you'll see that it's gonna
spin in that same arc, but it's gonna keep me in that right 1/3, rather than keeping me dead center. And this was something
that you might wanna use if you want to get these creative shots, and not always have your
subject dead center. You can shift them to
the left or to the right. And the last thing I wanna go through with this section is ActiveTrack. So on the left, you'll see that there's
this ActiveTrack button. And right now, it's tracking me from behind. So as I start walking, I'm gonna hit Go. It's gonna find the
direction that I'm walking, and then it's gonna go behind me. And it's pretty cool that you could set which direction that you
want the drone to move to follow your subject. So if I wanna change this, I click the little icon in the bottom, and then I click left, the drone is gonna swing over to my left and follow me from the left. And so it's gonna take a second to figure out orientation. But then once it finds that spot, it'll just continue to track the person, or the car, or whatever
it is that you're tracking from that directionality. Now, let's go from the front. So it's gonna swing to my front side, and then it will start
tracking me from the front. So it's always gonna be
looking for that orientation. And it will start tracking
from that directionality. So I just found this little area to stop. Let's hit Point of Interest. Let's go to the left about a medium speed. Press Go. Now, it's gonna spin around me. And I'm gonna show this
epic view this direction. Cool. Let's stop it. Let's click ActiveTrack again. Let's follow from my right side, which is gonna be over here, and let's hit Go. So now, it should follow
me back as a side shot. And the thing is, when you're working with ActiveTrack in the Cine or Normal mode, it's gonna be using the
vision sensors on the drone, so you're not gonna hit anything because the sensors can see if there's an object in the way, front, back, side to side, up and down. It's omnidirectional. So anything that you might encounter, the drone is gonna stop. And I'm gonna show you how this works as we get towards this tree. I'm just gonna walk in a circle here. So the drone should swing off this way. And there's this big tree in the way. And what it's gonna do is stop, bypass the tree, and it's gonna look for that subject. Now I'm not in frame, so it doesn't see me. And it's gonna turn off the ActiveTrack. So ActiveTrack isn't perfect. But if your subject does
have a visual line of sight, it will keep tracking that subject. Let's go back to ActiveTrack. Let's go from the back right corner. So you can also do the corners. You don't have to do forwards, backwards, left, or right. You can do from an angle as well. So it's gonna follow me
from this back right angle as I hike through this trail. And just from doing this
little bit of walking around, you could see how you can
get super dynamic shots when you're out by yourself filming, or you're working with a subject that's moving in a lot
of different directions because the drone is
always gonna be keeping that subject centered as long as there's a clear line of sight. I'm gonna turn back around. Now, I'm gonna move the
complete opposite direction, and you'll see the drone
needs to swing up and over me to find that back right
corner that I have set. And now, it's following
me from that direction. So if you wanna use ActiveTrack, what I suggest you do is take this out to a place like this, where it's open, and you have some different things that you can play around with, and just try all of these settings because the more that you play with it, the more that you'll get an
understanding of how it works and when it actually doesn't work. Because if I was to go behind
these columns back here, you'll see that it will
skip and try to find me. And it doesn't work that good, at least with the current firmware. But if you have a clear open area, the drone will always keep you locked on. Now, your ActiveTrack does not
work with the Explore mode. So if you wanna shoot
with that longer lens, you can only do it in manual settings. You can't use the ActiveTrack. (upbeat music) Okay. So now, let's talk about MasterShots. And this is an automated way to put a few different shots together. That's gonna create a
quick little sequence And DJI has these preset
shot lists put together. All you have to do is center your subject, select them on the screen and hit Go. And it's gonna automatically
create a video out of that. So let's walk over here to
this little peak over here, and we'll show you how it works. So the first thing that you wanna do is click
the little film strip icon, click MasterShots. It's gonna say based on
the subject and distance, the aircraft will automatically
shoot a number of clips and create a sequence out of it. Okay. I'm gonna grab the subject. You just click on that plus icon, and then it's gonna give
you a few different options. So these are basically the settings that are gonna control how far away, how far distance around, and how high the drone is gonna go to create this MasterShot. So let's click start, and let's do a MasterShot. You'll see, on the right hand side
where the record button is, there's now an X with a percentage. So what it's doing is gonna
record a few different shots, and it's going to fill up
this percentage for each one. So it did that first shot, zoomed out. Now, it's doing the second shot, a circle of medium, And it's gonna prompt you as it goes to tell you what it's doing. And if you wanna stop this at any time, you can just click the red X, and it's gonna stop the recording. But we'll let this run. It's gonna take about two minutes here. (gentle music) So the drone flies back
to the original location, and then you can start flying it again. So let's turn off the MasterShots, put it back, just a video. And we'll fly back around here manually. Come back to this camera. So easy way to create these
little sequences of shots if you just wanna grab
something cool of the area that you're in. Now, it's not gonna
track a moving subject. It just picks a spot on the earth, and then does all these
shots around that one area. Now, QuickShots is a very similar feature. It's not available in the
current firmware that I have at the time of making this video. But QuickShots are basically single shots with an automation built in. So you don't have to
control the drone at all. And it makes it really easy to create these different effects that DJI has programmed
for you in the software. So let's talk about Hyperlapse. Basically, a Hyperlapse is a time-lapse, but it's moving And with a drone, because they're so stable, you can get these really
dynamic-looking shots. So in your menu, you're gonna click your filmstrip icon. Go down to Hyperlapse, and it's gonna give you a few options. You can freely move the drone. You can circle it. You can do a CourseLock, or you can do a Waypoint. Let's do a circle because
of where we're at. And we'll just do this really quick. So I'm gonna grab the subject, which is me standing right here. You could say the intervals that you wanna take your photos, the length of the
desired video at the end, and the speed that you
want the drone to fly. So we'll let this run for three minutes. And this will be a
quick three-second shot. But a lot of times, you wanna use a Hyperlapse in a setting where you have
things like clouds moving over a period of time, or you have the sun
setting or the sun rising. You want some sort of action
happening in the footage. And then when you use this Hyperlapse over the course of, say, like,
10 minutes or 20 minutes, you'll create really cool-looking shots that have a lot of movement and show the passage of time. But also, the drone is moving in the sky. So super unique shot. All right. So we finished the Hyperlapse, and this is what it looks like. (bright music) Super quick Hyperlapse, but you can see how powerful this is. We're using a drone
that's stable in the sky and being able to move in all
these different directions. (upbeat music) And the last two features
that you have are photography and panoramic mode. So in photo mode, you have a few different options. So you just have a single shot. Let's take a photo. Great. We just took a photo. And you could use the button on the top of your
controller to take the photo, or the white button on the
right-hand side to take a photo. Now, when you click this, you can click AEB. So this is gonna take a series of shots that are different exposures. You might wanna use if you're in a setting
where you have bright skies and a little bit darker ground. So let's do 5. Now, it's gonna take a series of shots, normal exposure, darker, brighter, even darker, and even brighter. Now, the last mode you
have is your timed shot. So you could set how much time that you want to wait
before takes a photo. All right. So let's switch it to two seconds, and you'll see that it's taking
a photo every two seconds. So if you wanna do a time-lapse, and you just wanna have the camera as a tripod in the sky, well, you can use this setting here and just manually do a timed lapse. It's just gonna take a
photo every two seconds. So great feature if you need to have a situation where you're moving around, you want it to be taking photos. You can set up how much
time in between shot. And it's constantly gonna just take photos at that interval. So I've been shooting all
of this in auto exposure, but if you did wanna take
full control and go manual, you click in the lower right-hand corner, and then you could set
all of your settings depending on the situation
that you're flying in. (upbeat music) So we've gone through
everything on the DJI Mavic 3 and how to actually fly the drone. But now, what do you
shoot with this drone? That's a question that is going to change based on what your use case is. So are you someone who
wants to just take photos, or use someone who wants to shoot video, And then, also, you have to ask yourself, "Well, what are you gonna
use this video for?" I think the trap that a lot of us will get into is getting to a really pretty spot, and then just grabbing a bunch of footage or a bunch of photos without
actually having a plan of what you're gonna do with that footage or those photos. But the vast majority of us wanna use this for a specific purpose, whether that is helping
tell a better story, or have some cool photos
to post on our Instagram. So the biggest question you
need to ask yourself is, what is the end goal? So what do you want to
achieve using this camera? The Mavic 3 is just like any other camera. It's a tool to capture a
scene or help tell a story. When I first got into flying drones, I would just shoot a lot of pretty shots, put it together, but ended up being pretty boring when you just see a bunch
of shots strung together with no real reason of
why they're together. So when I'm going out to fly, I always try to have a purpose before I actually take the drone off and start flying. For me, personally, I'm either shooting for clients, or I'm shooting for
videos here on my channel. And I'm not gonna just use a drone just because it looks cool. I'm gonna use it to help tell my story, or to help enhance the
video that I'm creating. So when I approach what I'm filming, I think about it in terms of how do I want to use this footage for
the story that I'm telling. So recently, I went up to Death Valley. And I was shooting a project with my buddies around
driving through this area in California and the different obstacles
that we were encountering. Now, Death Valley is national park so you can't fly a drone. That is one thing you
have to keep in mind. You have to look at your
local laws and regulations. However, for this story, we actually started in BLM
Land before and after the park. So I actually used the
drone to set the stage and shoot the first scene, and then to shoot the final
scene when we were leaving. It was a great way to
open and close this video. And I use the shots to set
the scene of where we're at to show someone this part of California and what it looks like. So a good way to use your
drone is to set the scene, to show areas from this perspective that you can't get with other cameras, show these big open landscapes. It's a great way just to capture the view and really show this unique perspective. Now, another project I've recently shot. I was out in Utah, and I was in BLM Land so I could fly the drone
pretty much anywhere for the majority of this trip. Now, there is an area that we were at that had this crazy landscape. It was all these weird,
colorful mountains. And I used my drone to create a sequence. So instead of just being a few shots to open or close a scene, I created an entire
sequence out of my shots to progress someone through us as actually interacting with the space. And if you're struggling on
how to put shots together for a sequence, I do have more videos on my channel. And I'll link down below the description. But a great way to go about creating a sequence is think of it in seven shots, two wides, two mediums, two closeups, and one that's kind of unique
and something different. And the good thing about
drones is you can easily get that unique and different shot by just putting the
drone straight up above and looking straight down. That's a perspective you
can only get with a drone. So think of how you can get
two different wide shots from a scene. Think of how you can get
two different mediums, and think of how you can
get two different close-ups. And with that, think about movement. So how are you gonna move the drone? Are you gonna be moving it left to right, up, down, forward, backwards? Are you gonna spin around? There's so many dynamic shots that you can make with your drone. And when you start
stringing these together, and you have your subject
moving through the scene, progressing from point A to point B, well, you'll be able to create a sequence. So for this scene, we were climbing these mountains. And the final shot is
us getting to the summit and looking at the landscape. It's a very simple storyline, us getting to these mountains, climbing up, and then being at the top. But I shot it with this
progression in mind. And I was able to cut
together this little sequence in the video that feels
a lot more engaging than if it was just a few
shots of the pretty landscape. So one of the biggest
things that you can do when you're working with
your drone is think, "How can I use this
tool to show my audience this area that we're
at in a different view from a different perspective?" So if you're shooting photos, what's a different shot than
just putting the drone up and looking out over the landscape? So for example, I have three photos here up
on my wall that I've taken. There are all the
straight down perspective, and I really love this shot with a drone because it's so unique. And when you get the drone up in the sky, you can see the landscape from a completely different perspective. Also, think about shadows. Shadows are gonna completely change when you're up above
looking down at objects. You can see how they interact with the landscapes differently. And you can get unique shots that you just don't get
using other cameras. So use your Mavic 3 as a tool to find these different perspectives. And the more that you fly, the more that you'll get used to finding these different shots and figuring out ways to use the drone that will feel more creative than just putting the drone up and looking straight
out over the landscape. (gentle music) So the next section, let's talk about editing
and color grading. So when it comes to editing your footage, you don't just wanna put
full clips up from your drone and just think that somebody wants to watch a whole 30-second, 40-second shot of just a landscape. You wanna cut that down and make something interesting
for your viewer to watch. Now, I did an entire two-hour
course on how to edit. And I'll link to that
down below in description. It's on Skillshare. And if you've never
used Skillshare before, you can get your first 30 days for free. So you can take this
course completely free within that first 30 days. But I did wanna include a section from that course in this video. I wanna show you how you can edit your drone shots together and add some music and cut to the beat to be able to create sequences that are more engaging to watch. So this is a small section
from that full course. Okay. So now, let's add some
music to the project because music is always
gonna enhance your edit and make it more dynamic. I'm gonna use this little
sequence from Alaska. I recut the B-roll. And what I wanna do is
layer on a little bit of music underneath the A-roll. And then as soon as we get
into the B-roll transition, I wanna have the music come up louder and actually cut to the beat of the music. Now, one technique that I like to use when I'm doing music sections
in my videos is cutting to the beat. So every time that there's
a major beat in the song, I'll make a cut. And this actually enhances
the visual experience because you feel every time there's a cut. If you have a song with every four count, there's a big beat. Well, that's a good
point to cut your video and go to the next shot. And it actually flows super nicely when you're cutting to the beat, rather than just doing random
cuts throughout the song. So first, let me just show you this clip. Let's play it. Let me turn up this audio for you. Yeah, we just got to the Columbia glacier. Flew through it a little bit. And now, we're like on this beach, watching from a distance. But this is like... This is why I came to Alaska to test out the Mavic 3 Pro. I mean, this is insane. So a little bit of everything that we've been talking about. I did a cut with some A-roll. I covered those cuts with
some B-roll on top of it. And then I also did a fade transition here into the sound of the Mavic
3 taking off for a flight. Now, I have some B-roll
that I wanna use coming up, but I wanna select my music first before I cut the sequence. So let's pull in a music track. Let's pull on two music tracks. One, ambient music track, and then one that's
gonna have more of a beat for that B-roll sequence. Now, I get all of my
music from Epidemic Sound. I've been using them for years. And it's a great way to
get royalty-free music that you can use anywhere. One of the big issues that's gonna come up when you're using music for YouTube is that licensed content
is gonna get flagged. And so if you don't wanna
have your videos taken down, or you don't wanna have some issues, you wanna use royalty-free music. And there's a bunch of websites out there. I've used them all, but my favorite has been Epidemic Sound. And you could get a ton of music from this one source that you
can use basically anywhere. And then, also, they have a lot of
sound effects available. I'll include a link to Epidemic Sound in the Resources Section. But let's find a couple of tracks, and I'll show you my process
when I'm looking for music. So this is Epidemic Sound. And I'm gonna just go into the Music Tab, and I'm gonna go into Genre, and I wanna find something ambient. So I typically go to the
Electronic Ambient section, and I'll just start listing
for the different songs. (gentle music) Has a nice sound to it. It's just an ambient track. I'm gonna be putting it
pretty low over my A-roll. I'm gonna download that one. Now, let's find something
with more of a beat. Let's go back to genre. I know there's some good
stuff in Future Bass. And let's just find
something that sounds great. (upbeat music) Okay. So I like this track because
it's a little bit slower, and I know I'm gonna be
cutting shots of the glacier. And I don't wanna be going,
boom, boom, boom, boom. But I still wanna cut to the beat. So let's download this one as well. Great. I got two music tracks. So in my event, I'm gonna make a new keyword for music. Now, what I'm gonna do is
bring these into this project. So they're on my desktop here. And I'm gonna just add
them to this keyword by dragging and dropping them in. So there are both of those. I'm gonna use my List View. This one is the ambient track. And you can see, as I scrub through it, you're gonna hear it. I'm gonna use this section. I'm gonna drag it, drop it down here. I'm gonna cut that first section. This is kind of what I want. Okay. So if I just wanna hear the
music without anything else, I could click the headphone icon here. And it's gonna solo this clip, so I only hear this track. Now, I'm gonna do a little bit of fade in on the front half. Play it. And let's pull up our audio meters. And you could see this as
hitting negative 12-ish. I'm gonna drag it down slightly. I want a little bit lower. And then, now, we're gonna have the shot where I'm taking off. I'm actually gonna cut the music there. Delete that section. And I'm gonna slowly
let that just fade out. And you can hear, it just slowly fades out in this section because I'm gonna start
bringing in some other music. So let's turn off the headphones, which is the solo. Find that song that has the beat. (bright music) Okay, so that's where
I want that first clip to drop for this B-roll sequence. It's kind of a buildup and then boom, I want that first shot to hit. So I'm gonna drag this down. I just set an end point
to somewhere around there. So you see this point
here where it's steep, that's the first beat of the song. I wanna line that up with this point here. So I can even put my
cursor there as a line, so I could see where I wanna shift this. And let's put it right there. So let's solo this clip. Turn on our audio. So as soon as it hits that beat, you see I flip the camera. Now, this music is really loud. It's hitting around zero. So I'm gonna bring this down to mix with the other audio
that I've been working with. Somewhere around negative
-6 makes sense for this edit because the rest of my
audio has been mixed around that level for the A-roll. Now, let's listen to what
happens before that beat drops. So I wanna fade this in at some chime. I'm gonna have this other
ambient track fade out. I'm gonna have these chimes fade in. And then I'm gonna have that beat drop right when we start the B-roll sequence. All right. So let's take the solo off. This shot here is the drone
audio of it taking off. I'm gonna use V to just silence that 'cause I just wanna listen to the music. Or I can highlight both of these, and isolate just both of those. So there's different ways that you could do the
same thing in final cut. Just comes down to what
makes sense for you while you're editing. So I just soloed just
these two music tracks, 'cause I wanna hear how they blend. So let's listen. This one fades out. Maybe I want a few more chimes, but I wanna change this. So this down here, it has this kind of arc. So it gets quiet, and
then gets louder, quicker. Well, I'd like that to drag out and be quiet or longer and then ramp up. So I could Control+click this point. And you could see, I have these different types of curves. I like using the S curve. So it takes a little bit
longer to get louder, and then it kind of goes
up at a steep angle, and then tapers off. For this kind of a transition, I like using that. (gentle music) Okay, cool. All right, so we have a great
little transition there. We have some music. Ambience, that's gonna
be underneath me talking into this little transition section where I take the drone off to me flying the drone with the beat. Now, let's figure out where
the cut points are gonna be for the music track. So I wanna find the beats. And I'm just gonna listen to it. And I'm gonna use my marker to be able to mark each
one of those beats. Now the marker tool is M on the keyboard. So every time you click M, you're gonna create a marker on whatever shot is selected. Now this marker is just
what it sounds like. It's just a marker, so you know where that point is. And you could use those
to snap different things to a marker, or just so you know where things are. So I'm gonna delete this,
Control, click Delete. And let's listen and set some markers. (uplifting music) So just by listening and listening for those beats, I set markers where I think
my edits are gonna be. Now I could go through and just cut my B-roll to hit on each one of those edits. So let's just do that real quick. So I just did a quick
cut using markers only, and just grabbing some
shots and throwing it in. Let's play this back and
see how it cuts together. (uplifting music) So that's enough shots that
I want for that sequence. And now, I want the music to taper off. So one of the things that
I like to do is change around my song. So I might only want that one section, but then I want the end of the music to come a little bit forward. So we're gonna use a storyline, and we're gonna cut this
music up a little bit. So the first thing I wanna do
is find where this beat is. So this last markers on a beat where it goes into another verse of this kind of harder-hitting beat, but I want the softer beat that you have at the end of the video. So I'm gonna find this. So first, I'm gonna highlight
this music selection. I'm gonna Control,
click, Create Storyline. I'm gonna zoom in. I'm gonna make a cut at this beat. I'm gonna go find where I want, the end of the song to start playing. Right there. So I'm gonna delete this section. And then, now, I've seamlessly cut the tracks so that moves a little faster, and I don't have more of that heavy beat. And on that beat, I wanna add another shot. - We just flew in a helicopter. So, like, five different spots. Jake's, like, "Come up to Alaska, we'll do some cool stuff." And I ended up in a helicopter
flying to these peaks. So what I want the music to do at this section is play lower and then slowly fade out because from here, we would go into a whole section about talking about this experience. So I'm gonna unsolo that A-roll. I'm gonna just turn off all this so that we're focused on one thing. And I want this music to drop down lower. So I'm gonna change the volume. I'm gonna go to my inspector. It's at -6.4 right now. Let's bring that down to -16. And I'm gonna do a transition fade between the two music points. So I'm gonna do Apple T. It's gonna create this fade. We just flew in a helicopter till, like, five different spots. Jake's, like, "Come up to Alaska, we'll do some cool stuff." And I ended up in a helicopter. So I'm gonna cut out some of that music. I'm gonna fade this
out from the right side by just fading it that way. And so, now, you get a clear picture
of how my music is built into my video. My lower music here, which goes under this A-roll, I slowly ramp that down and slowly ramp up this song. I cut to the beat of the music, and then I do a transition here. And then I do a transition
here to this part of the song that's 10 decibels lower than this part, just so I can have it as underneath and a good transitional moment, and then I fade that out. And so I'm constantly
doing this in my videos where I'm fading in music, fading out. And I'm using it to create a flow and pace out my videos so that sometimes there is a lot of music and sometimes there's no music at all. And you just wanna make sure that when you're using music, you're not just blasting
your viewer with music. If you're doing a review or a tutorial, there might be times where you wanna have music underneath. There might be times where
you just want it quiet. Now, if you're doing a story piece, there's a lot of times where, yeah, you're gonna wanna B-roll transition. And music is really gonna help with that and really enhance the story. All right. So let's just play this back, and you can hear how the music flows with this whole section of video. Yeah, we just got to the Columbia glacier. Flew through it a little bit. And now, we're, like, on this beach watching it from a distance. But this is like... This is why I came to Alaska to test out the Mavic 3 Pro. I mean, this is insane. (gentle music) (uplifting music) We just flew in a helicopter
to, like, five different spots. Jake's, like, "Come up to Alaska, we'll do some cool stuff." And I end up in a helicopter
flying to these peaks. I think it's a great start. And you could see that
there is a lot of issues with this edit. We need to go through, fix a lot of the clips. Obviously, a lot of it's
not color graded yet. And then there's just
a lot of little tweaks. But the key thing is with any
video that you're creating, you really wanna get this down first. You wanna just put all the pieces there, and then you can go through, and do your little tweaks, and clean it up and make it much better. But the key is get that first cut done. When you can get that first cut done, and that's the hardest part to do, the first cut is always
the toughest to get out. But once you got past that, you could see all the elements and you can see where you wanna add stuff or take stuff away. (gentle music) All right. So let's dig into some
basics of color grading because in this drone, you have D-Log and you have the normal mode. And normal is a look that's ready to go. You don't have to do any color grading with normal, only if you wanna do something creative on top of the look that
you're getting out of camera. Now, D-Log, you're preserving your highlights and preserving your shadows. So the idea with D-Log is you're
getting more dynamic range, which means that you can
create cinematic-looking shots from your footage. So here's a shot that I have
from the Trona Pinnacles. This is an area I went
to explore recently. And you can see how flat this is. Now. I'm using Final Cut
Pro for all of my editing, but a lot of these tools, you'll find in other
editing software as well. So I'm gonna bring up my Luma Waveforms. And a Luma Waveform is all
of your exposure values from zero being black to 100 being white. And you can see right
here on the left side, this is my Luma Waveform. And all of my exposure is in the middle. It's a very flat, ungraded image. And then I'm gonna pull up
my vector scope as well, which is showing all my saturation. And you can see that the
dot is in the center. There's not very much
saturation in this footage. So you're not seeing
any color extending out to the different directions. So let me show you what happens when you add some contrast and some color. I'm gonna just use the basic tools, and I'm gonna drop the
shadows down to zero. And the highlights, way past 100. And you could see now, this footage has tons of contrast. And on this graph, you'll see that there's lots of exposures that are over 100 and a
lot that are under zero. And so I effectively just added
contrast into this footage. Now, this doesn't look super good. This is just a sample for me to show you how these graphs work. And then I'm gonna take
my global settings, which is basically everything. And I'm gonna boost the saturation. So this image now has a lot of contrast and a lot of saturation. And you can see that
here on these two graphs. So once you dig more into color grading, you're gonna use your vector scope and your Luma Waveforms to help see the different
exposures and color values. But let's just do a quick
color grade on this footage to show you how you can take this D-Log and actually make a good-looking shot without doing a ton of color grading. Basically, what I wanna
do is add contrast, but I don't want my
highlights to blow out, and I don't want my
shadows to get too dark. So I'll take my highlights. I'm gonna bring them up towards 100. And then I'm gonna bring my shadows, and I'm gonna bring
them down towards zero. And then overall, I want a dark in this image. I'm gonna take the mid-tones. I'm gonna bring those down slightly. And I'm gonna tweak the highlights. And now, I have contrast in the footage. It needs a little saturation. So I'm just gonna take
my overall saturation and bump it up. And now, when I turn
this effect on and off, you'll see that very quickly. We have a much better-looking shot. And this was just a basic color grade, bringing your highlights up, bringing your shadows down, and then changing your
mids to your liking, and then adding saturation. That's all it really takes to get good-looking footage from D-Log. If you wanna make this even easier, what you can use is a conversion LUT. So in Final Cut Pro, I can just search for LUT. And there is a plugin called Custom LUT. and I just drag that onto my footage. Now, with this plugin, I can add a Mavic 3
conversion that I've built. And overall, my footage
just looks still washed out, which means I've probably
overexposed it a little bit. So I'm just gonna bring
down my exposure overall. So using a conversion LUT just makes it a lot faster to edit and grade your footage. And as you could see with this footage, it's not perfect all the time. If I take off these color wheels, you could see that I expose too bright. So I needed to bring down my exposure, but all I had to do is
tweak the exposure overall. I didn't have to go through and tweak individual components to be able to get my footage to look good. Now, what you can do from
here is do creative looks. So if you wanna get
deeper into color grading, you can come up with different ways to tweak this footage and make it look a lot different. This is just straight out of camera with a little contrast and saturation. But let me just show you if I was to use hue and saturation curves. I could actually change
the hue of this landscape. So I'll grab this area here, and I'm gonna make it more red. And I'm gonna grab the sky, and I'm going to tweak it
a little bit more teal. And then I want the sky to have
a little bit more saturation so I can use a hue saturation curve and bring up my saturation
just in the sky. And then I could use a Hue Luma Curve, and I can bring down the
exposure of landscape a tad. And then I could add a vignette and darken the corners using
a Final Cut Pro plugin. And now, I've completely
changed the look of the shot. That was just a quick sample to show you what you can
do with your color grading. But if this is something that
you wanna dig deeper into, I'll include a link down below description to some videos around color grading, and it will dig into how you can learn to use all of these tools. If you just wanna use LUTs, you can quickly add a look and do something similar without going through the process of manually color grading. So I'm gonna take all this off and go back to that original, just look with the conversion LUT. And I'm going to add a secondary LUT that just has a look. So we're gonna use my JD_Hollywood, which is a LUT that I've created. And you can see right there, just adding that LUT
does a very similar look to the custom one that we just built. So you can find lots from
creators that you like and put them on your footage and be able to create looks super fast. And all I do is dial in my mix. So at 100%, that's a really strong-looking LUT. I'll just bring that down to a spot that I think looks good. And sometimes that's like 50%, 75%, and it completely changes
the look of the shot. Now, let me try it a different LUT. This one's much more yellow and a little bit more washed out. You could see strong. This one actually looks
pretty cool for the shot. And if you wanna use my drone LUTs, I'll include that down below
in the description as well. I know this was a super long video, but there is a lot to talk about when it comes to flying drones. And if you have any questions, please let me know down in the comments. Now, next, I highly suggest
you jump into this video here, which goes through a ton
of different drone moves that you can use to get
better-looking footage. I'll see you on the next video.
