DJI Mics and I crashed my Mavic 3 Pro...I'M STILL HERE :D | 278

I discuss my thoughts on DJI Mics in general and give my experience after crashing my Mavic 3 Pro.

[e-mail]

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Geek Therapy radio podcast. I'm your mental curator,
Johnny Hemberger. Trying a little experiment here. Obviously you can
see that for this video anyways, if I released it
as a video, I am very much in the left
part of the frame. So we'll see how this goes.
I need to mount my mount a little bit differently

(00:24):
to frame me up a little bit better. But this
is what we got for now. Maybe at a light
if I can add one safely. I've been thinking about
ways to do podcasts efficiently and with two kids. For
those of you who don't know, I had another child, well,
my wife had our child in May of twenty twenty four.

(00:46):
So as of recording, we are a few months into
life with an almost four year old and a three
or four months old. About four months old by now
is my second son. So four month old and a
three year old. That's what we got going on at
the house currently. So that's fun and life goes on

(01:14):
in other ways too. Work is going great. Work is
going awesomely for me personally, but it is between work
and two kids. At this point, it's it's becoming hard
just to sit down and do an episode of geek
therapy radio. So I've been thinking of ways to kind
of where i can do that between different stops, between

(01:39):
picking up kids from the school, between going to work
at the museum, between coming home from the work in
the museum. It's kind of tight. So a while back,
a good friend of mine calling from this does not compute,
I need to be honest, I don't know if he
still does podcast that this does not compute podcast where

(01:59):
he used to care I think it was in a
super ru and hekerws around doing his podcast. It was
a really cool kind of format. I thought, you know,
you do what you gotta do when you can do it.
I'm gonna make sure not to look at the camera
too much here while I'm driving, for safety reasons, but
I just thought, hey, you do what you gotta do.
He was doing it in the car while he was
running errands or doing this and that, and I thought,

(02:21):
that's maybe that can work for me too. So to
explain the technicals of what I've got set up, at
least for this video. Obviously, I've got my cameras here
mounted to the glass with a suction cup mount, but
I'm using my DGI MIC. I've got the Gen one
DGI MIC and I've got it clipped to the sun visor.
It's just out of frame here because I can't get

(02:42):
my camera my phone mounts to show it all for
you right here. But I do have it clipped to
the visor the sunshade of my vehicle, which is the
twenty seventeen Chevy Bolt with a B if anyone cares,
but yeah, it's aimed kind of more or less down
towards my mouth. So I feel like this is kind
of the best car audio that you can possibly get,

(03:05):
with the caveat that it is vehicle audio. So obviously
I'm driving down the road and I'm using my turn
signals like a competent human being. So you're gonna be
able to hear probably the clicks of the turn signal.
You're gonna hear the road noise of the tires. But
what you won't hear, because this is an electric vehicle,
is the is the hum of the engine. We're in

(03:25):
a way, a four cylinder, cix cylinder, eight cylinder, what
have you. But that does mean that you will hear
road noise a little more. I think that's that's one
of the things about EV's I know this is kind
of old news by now. I mean it's a decade
old news by now. But yeah, there's no gasoline engine
in a electric vehicle obviously, so you don't have that

(03:50):
engine noise. But that just means that you hear all
the other noise a lot, not a lot more. You
just notice it because the engine isn't drowned it out anymore.
So depending on the road surfaces, it will sound a
little bit different. I'm gonna probably rely on the noise canceling,
the AI noise canceling quite a bit, and Da Vinci

(04:11):
Resolve no matter how I release this podcast, if I
release it audio only or I release it alongside this video,
which by the way, I think is only being recorded
in seven to twenty p Also, I'm gonna use Da
Vinci Resolves amazing suite of audio tools. That's one reason
I love Davincia Resolves so much is because I come
from a background in audio and Da Vinci Resolves audio

(04:35):
tools are robust. One of the awesome tools that DaVinci
Resolve has and I'm sure Adobe has it too, and
I'm sure Final Cut has their version of it as well.
But one of the awesome tools is this AI noise canceling,
and it's it doesn't. So the thing is like it
will save takes. So that's the good thing about noise

(04:56):
AI noise canceling is it it will let you use
otherwise possibly unusable audio when you're running something through AI
noise cancelation. It doesn't. It doesn't make the tone of
someone's voice sound better. Actually it makes the tone of
voice sound sound different. It affects eq, It kind of
makes the It can have adverse effects on the human

(05:16):
voice as a human voice, but yes, it will mostly
eliminates the background noise. The heavier the background noise, the
louder the background noise, or you could just call it
the noise floor for any of my audio people listening
right now, the louder, the higher the noise floor. So
if you're at a museum or you're out a crowd
and there's lots of people cheering and core and you're
trying to have a conversation, the AI is really good

(05:37):
at isolating your voice from that. But since the noise
floor of the crowd is so loud that it affects,
it modulates the human voice, It modulates whatever you're trying
to isolate. So it makes the audio usable that would
otherwise have to be thrown away. But it doesn't clarify like,
it doesn't make the audio extra crispy. It just kind

(05:59):
of it makes the voices a little more muffled, but
you can still hear the voices and only the voices.
So anyways, I'm going to see how well this DJI
mike coupled with Da Vinci resolves noise reduction. Does the
Gen two Dji mics have built in noise reduction, which

(06:19):
is really cool. I have not tested out the Gen
two dj I mikes. A buddy of mine did get
the DJ mikes. Another videographer DJI mike Gen two's, and
he had some issues with it. A lot of people,
most people, anybody who bought the Gen two DJI mikes
right out of the box opening day, so to speak,

(06:41):
had issues, had some audio issues, had some equeuing issues.
It just didn't sound right. I think from one transmitter
to the other, it kind of sounds a little bit
different when they plug in there certain labs into the
port of the DJ Mike Gent two. It had some
funny if it had some weird effect going to it,
maybe not enough gain, maybe too much gain. It was

(07:02):
tough to kind of dial in if plugging certain like
Sony labs into it. Don't quote me directly on that labs.
I think the issue in that regard kind of rested
in whether or not the lab could use or required
phantom power from the pack. And since there's different different

(07:25):
variables between different labs on the power requirements and whatnot,
then the DJI might kind of sounded different plugging in
different labs and gave some labs a lot of problems.
My friend who's a videographer, is a Sony guy. He
works with a lot of Sony equipment, and he was
having problems with some of his his Sony stuff. I
think Sennheisers. His Senheisers also gave him a little bit

(07:47):
of guff. I gotta try to get out of this lane.
I'm stuck behind the garbage truck and there's a Bronco
behind me, just right up on my bumper, like dude,
going as fast as I can. Nice blinker, thanks for
letting us know what you're doing. Anyways. Sorry, I'm road
raging here in Houston, Texas. So yeah, the DJI Mike
Gen twos had some issues when they first released. They

(08:10):
have since come out with firmware updates that have largely
I think sure most, if not all, of those issues.
I know that as of recording right now. Dji came
out with a recent Furmore update a couple of weeks
ago for the Gen two mics, and the the users
were just blown away up this. Wow, this fixes so

(08:30):
many things and it sounds really good. One of the
things that the new update for the JJM Mike gent
twos did was re eqed. It added a different EQ
curve to the LAB, so right out of the lab
you had a nice scooped kind of EQ where you
took out You can just look at the EQ. It
looks like they took out the low mids, the and

(08:50):
the upper mids, well the mid mids, so they took
out around three hundred herdz. It looks like to me
eight hundred herds. Don't quote me on that. I'm not
looking at the frequency graph right in front of me.
But one way that I sweetened the sound of LAB
mics and a lot of different mics for that regard
is I for my own voice, I pull four to
six dB from three hundred I pull four to six
dB usually from around eight hundred or around one thousand.

(09:15):
That kind of gets rid of the kind of boxiness
and the woodiness, if you will, of the human voice
of my voice, at least in a laugh. So I
think DJI added a similar EQ profile just baked into
the audio recorded with the laugh. So if you're running
and gun and you don't want to do a lot
of queuing too your DGI mics, that kind of solves that.

(09:39):
At the same time, my only as an audio guy,
anytime you're adding it's called the destructive edit to a
destructive modification to an audio signal, like when you add
a compressor inline, like sometimes when you're tracking drums and
sometimes when you're tracking loud vocals or whatever, you'll have
a compressor acting in line into the audio recorder. So

(10:02):
instead of recording something raw unaffected at all, and then
after the fact on playback adjusting EQ and adjusting compression,
if you had a compressor inline, then that compression is recorded,
like you cannot undo that compression more or less. I know,
there's expanders and different things, but it's baked in. It's
a it's called a destructive edit. Really. So with DJ

(10:26):
Mike gen twos add this EQ curve that's on the
way in, so you better like how it sounds, and
because that's just that's the way it's gonna sound, you
can go back and EQ it maybe a little bit
more to taste. But it's kind of like I remember
I mentioned this in a comment on YouTube somewhere, basically

(10:47):
that I thought it was really cool that they added
that sweetened EQ curve to the lab. But at the
same time, as an audio guy, I kind of want
to be able to EQ to my taste. I want
to flat signal as flat as possible. I just want
whatever the sounds like. I just want to record whatever
the mic sounds like naturally and then do my equing.
So I equated it too. In this comment. It's like

(11:08):
if you're a videographer and you shoot in a log format,
you're shooting in a flat color profile. You are just
taking the pure data from the sensor, because then you
want to go back into DIVENTI resolve or you want
to go back into Premiere and you want a color
grade to your heart's content, versus choosing a profile in camera,
a color profile in camera like vivid or natural or

(11:30):
what have you, black and white, and you record it
like that. That's just baked in. That's a destructive edit.
You can't really undo that you don't have You don't
have nearly as much flexibility in post production if you
are recording video and a preset color profile or preset style.
So it's the same thing with audio. When I'm recording audio, personally,

(11:52):
I want just the flat response, just the whatever the
microphone sounds like. I want to record that, no EQ,
no compression, no delay, no reaver of anything like that.
I just want the raw sound out of the mic
because I want to alter it later. I want the
full flexibility of altering it later after the fact in
post production. So I was kind of on the fence

(12:14):
about Dji's update. On the one hand, DJI mics are
very much geared towards run and gun content creation. You
just want it to sound good out of the microphone,
and then you want to use a camera that just
has that just looks good right out of the camera
without adding a whole lot of color grading, without adding
a whole lot of equing to the audio. And that's

(12:36):
what DJI did really well in the GENT two. From
the samples that I heard and the DJI Mic GENT two,
the new EQ profile is super duper usable. I mean
I would use it right out of the box and
be quite happy with it. I might alter it just
a teeny tiny bit, but if you're not going to
EQ it, it sounds really good baked in audio to

(12:57):
whatever you're recording. And if you need to turn around
something really quick and just upload it to social media,
lickity split and have it sound really nice, it's awesome
in that regard. My only wish, and I have not
checked on this, My only desire is that since DJI
in the Gen two mics upgraded or enhanced the EQ
out of right out of the mic pack, is there

(13:19):
a way to set it to a flat profile? So
what you when you go into audio settings, there's kind
of the typical audio settings that you have in a
lot of recorders, a lot of field recorders, a lot
of microphones with built in you know, solid state drives,
what have you that you can choose if you want
a high pass filter or another way of putting a

(13:40):
low cut filter where you want to get rid of rumble,
so it like cuts off everything below seventy five hurts
everything below eighty hertz or so that's kind of how
you reduce a lot of wind noise is you do
that cut that you cut the rumble below eighty hertz,
but you can also just leave it flat. So that's
what I hope is for the EQ profile. I have
not check this because I don't have a set of

(14:02):
Gen twos myself, but I hope you can go in
and maybe there's a tab on the screen under EQ
flat or enhanced, whatever it is. I hope that exists.
I don't know. I can't verify. I'm not using that
right in front of me. I'm using the first gen
DJI mix, which, by the way, I can't speak highly enough.
This sounds like a big giant ad for DGI, but

(14:23):
I cannot speak highly enough of DJI mike's period, whether
it's Gen one or Gen two, they are here's a
really good way to put it. If you're a carpenter,
it's a hammer. That is how useful the tool is
if you are a content creator. And I know that
there's people that don't use DJI mikes that are still

(14:45):
run around using labs or have different audio solutions which
on a set, on a pre defined pre like a
set where you can take a few hours or whatever
days beforehand before a shoot to like, really set things up, really,
get the shotgun mic going, really things set up the
best for the shoot. Yes, you're gonna want to use

(15:05):
your thousand dollars Centheiser shotgun mics. You're gonna want to
use your super expensive labs. You're gonna want to use
the body tape to put the lab up in the hair,
up in a hat, or get it all set up
just right. But if you're just a running gun content creator,
not just a running gun, but you need mics that
work in every situation, that sound great, that EQ grade,
that are so incredibly versatile, and how you can apply

(15:28):
these the applications where you can apply these mics if
you were a videographer or a sound guy or both,
which a lot of us are. DJI mikes Gen one
or Gen two are like a hammer if you're a carpenter.
That's how useful, that's how game changing. Once you get
a set of DGI mikes, you will never go back

(15:48):
to using your old way. You'll keep your old ways,
you'll keep that gear around. Like I said, for those
shoots where you have a lot of prep time, a
lot of setup time, you want to get the absolute best,
most controlled audio possible yes, you'll keep the expensive gear
for that, but just having in your bag along with
your your mirrorless I almost said DSLR mirrorless camera with

(16:09):
your phone, both Android and Apple. It has the lightning
adapter for ey device is Apple devices that still use
that has the Type C adapter for new Apple devices
that use Type C and all Android devices. So that's
what I'm doing right now. I just have the receiver
plugged right into the USB port of my Samsung Galaxy

(16:31):
S twenty four Ultra and it just plugged play, good
to go. But I also can use the audio output
line output going into my mirrorless camera, my LU mix
S five two X. It's so incredibly versatile. It has
eight gigabytes of built in memory. So you just hit
record on the pack. No cameras, no nothing, just hit

(16:52):
record on the pack and it's recording audio right into
the device itself. You can use that as backup track.
Like let's say you are recording into camera. You can
also have the mic pack recording in its own internal memory,
so that you have just a double you have two
audio files. Now you have redundant it's a safety thing.

(17:12):
You can ever redundant audio file Anyways, they're super virtual,
they're super valuable, they're super useful. They cost about three
hundred bucks, give or take. I think you can get
the Gen ones for like two hundred and fifty bucks,
which is beyond a good value. Like I said, if
you're gonna the next two hundred fifty to three hundred
dollars you spend maybe three fifty for the Gen twos,
the next few hundred dollars you spend on your content creation,

(17:35):
shut up. Setup should be a set of DGI mics,
either the Gen ones or the Gen twos, and you'll
be right as right, and you'll see exactly what I'm
talking about and what everybody else who buys them is
talking about. They are that good. DJI is not paying
me at all. I wish they would speaking of that
because I didn't know really what I wanted to talk
about today. I recorded a podcast a month ago. I

(17:59):
recorded like an hour and a half of just me rambling,
and I never posted it. But speaking of DGI stuff,
and I'm not being a shill for DGI, just the
MIC's are really good. I recently crashed. I know a
lot of longtime listeners know that I crashed my Phantom
two or Phantom three into a skyscraper and there is

(18:19):
a video of that floating around somewhere right into the
Williams Tower here in Houston, Texas. This was a long
time ago, just like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. But I
had another crash of my Mavic three Pro and it
was another type of well, it was a situation where Riker,

(18:40):
my son, three year old, had launched some foam rockets
up onto the roof and I said, well, I'll just
blow them off with my with my drone. And I
knew in my gut, I was like, Johnny, that's a
really bad idea you have you brought. You crashed another
drone by trying the same thing with pine needles, by
trying to blow pine needles off your mom's room. Don't

(19:01):
try to get things off the roof with your drone.
That's what my gut said. But my brain was like, no,
I'm gonna I'll be super careful this time. So I
put it into sport mode so that I could get
rid of all the obstacle avoidance. Because with obstacle avoidance,
it was like, Noah, You're not getting anywhere near this room.
It was doing an excellent job of taking my stupidity

(19:25):
out of the equation. So anyways, I disabled all the
obstacle avoidance by putting into sport mode, and it as
being very careful. And I was being very careful for
ten minutes or so, five minutes or so, and I
was being careful the whole time. But what happens with drones?
And I knew this. I knew this was a bad idea,
and I did it. Anyways, shake your finger at me,

(19:48):
slap on the wrist for me. It got you creach
these vortices. The roof is angled and there's different walls
and things like that. So the rotor wash from the
quad copter and a helicopter for that matter, creates these
season these different aerodynamic effects that kind of want to
suck the aircraft into whatever obstacle it is next to.
It's a really it's like a magnetic feeling. It just

(20:10):
kind of sucks itself into obstacles. So the Djimavic three pro,
with all the obstacle avoidance disabled, sucked itself into my
angled roof and it slid down the wall and like
there it goes, there goes twenty two hundred dollars tumbling
to the ground. I can't believe I'm so stupid. I
was thinking, am I still in warranty? Will they still

(20:30):
honor warranty if? When they undoubtedly set no, they checked
the logs and see that I had obstacle avoidance disabled.
I was still under warranty. The damage visually was not
that bad. I was it was throwing these esc motor errors,
power delivery issues, send into DGHI for service, and I

(20:50):
was like, is it really that is because it doesn't
look too bad from the outside. It looks it has
some scuffs, but it looks rather fine under. The arms
are broken, the props were a little bit chipped on
the end because they had smacked into the roof and
the wall on the way down. I killed it. I
killed the drone. I did the two sticks you know,
down and inwards to shut it off, which it did,

(21:12):
but it still went sliding down the wall and incurred
its damage. So anyways, I contacted DJI to get a
shipping label. I said, I'm just gonna ship it to
DJI and see what the estimate is. I got out
it costs a little bit of money. I think. All

(21:33):
in it was like one hundred and thirty bucks shipping
it there, having the repairs done. Part the parts were
super cheap. Parts are like fifteen dollars or whatever. But
I got out of this mess for one hundred and
thirty dollars. And I'm telling y'all, y'all with drones, y'all
know how bad it really could have been. Y'all know
how I could have totaled it. Man, if it was

(21:55):
any worse than that, it could have easily been like
one thousand dollars to fix. Or I was budgeting in
my head. I was like, Okay, if it's anything below
five hundred dollars, I'll get this fixed. You know, as
rationalizing this is really stupid, but I need this drone.
If it's anything below five hundred, I'll get it fixed.
So when they came back with a quote one thirty,
like yeah, go for it, it was done so quick, y'all.

(22:16):
Like this obviously sounds like such a shilling for DGI,
I promise you it's not that. It's just recent experiences
I had. So I sent the DJI Madvert Pro three
and DJI had a serviced back in my hands for
one hundred and thirty bucks, super quick, super clean. The
drone came back so nicely and in a box that

(22:39):
said drone only that I thought, did they just send
me a new drone? This looks so good? Is this
just a new drone? Which I've heard does happen to
where it's kind of just easier on their end to
just fix the send you a new drone while they
fix the minor ones on the one you sent in,

(22:59):
and then they all that drone refurbished for a few
hundred dollars less. So I was like, I should have
put a little like ink somewhere, like a little dab
of red paint somewhere inconspicuous to make sure that did
you all send me my drone back? I mean, the
serial numbers have to match up, but can you change
the serial number of the firmware like on the way

(23:19):
out of the factory. How does this work? So anyways,
I got my drone back. Oh there's a dude playing
guitar in the back of his car. That's awesome, man,
I wanna go jam with that guy. So got the
drone back one hundred and thirty dollars. Slap on the wrist,
reminder that listen to your gut when you're flying your
drone and you're in a situation that you're thinking, as

(23:40):
should I do this? This seems kind of a little bit,
it seems a little bit risky here. The answer is
don't do it. I mean, that's just really all it
boils down to is listen to your guts. It's not
worth it, especially with a very expensive drone. Part of me,
when I was trying to fish rikers foam darts off
the roof, I was like, maybe I should use my

(24:02):
I have the Mini four K. It's not the Mini
four pro DGI is also victim to its own kind
of naming scheme. But I got the Dji Mini four K,
which is like three hundred dollars. All in comes with
the controller he has to you have to use it
with your phone. But three hundred dollars for a four
K drone looks great. If someone has asked me right now,

(24:24):
Johnny Hembury or what drone do you recommend to put
somebody by a first time drone? B Mini four K,
I mean easy. It's three hundred bucks at cheap enough
to where you will crash it. You will definitely crash it,
but you're only going to be out potentially three hundred
dollars when you do crash it. Some say beginners should
get drones that have lots of obstacle avoidance. This is

(24:46):
here's my personal opinion, and I'll kind of start wrapping
up the podcast with this because I got to go
into work. I'm here at the museum, got to go
to our Tuesday meeting. Anyways, my I say get the
cheap one with no obstacle avoidances. Three hundred dollars is
not cheap, but it's certainly cheaper than spending seven hundred,
eight hundred, nine hundred on a Mini three Pro or
a Mini four Pro or a word of dgi's I'm

(25:10):
blanking out of their mid their air Dji Air series.
So all the stuff that has obstacle avoidance is very expensive.
It's very expensive, and you will still crash it even
with obstacle avoidance, especially if it's your first drone. I'm
on my fifth drone and I just had another crash.
It's been years since I've had a crash, but I
did have another crash in my very expensive twenty two

(25:31):
hundred dollars Mabig three Pro. So you're gonna crash it,
and especially if you're beginning and you're learning, you're gonna
crash it. So some people say beginners should get the
drones that have the obstacle avoidance because you won't crash it,
and like, well, you still will crash it and it
will be out. You'll be out of a lot of money.
Obstacle avoidance is not the end all be all. It
is not a guaranteed. It helps, definitely helps, but it

(25:52):
is not a guaranteed. It's not a guaranteed feature that
will help you avoid crashes long term. You're gonna get
in a sticky situation even with obstacle avoidance, you will
crash it, and you're gonna have crash a seven hundred
or fifteen hundred dollars drone, So I say get the
cheap one, the cheapest one, three hundred dollars, no obstacle avoidance.

(26:12):
You know that there's no obstacle avoidance, So you're gonna
learn safe practices. You're gonna learn the best practices by
not having a safety net on the cheap drone versus
a false sense of security with a more expensive drone
that you will still crash and be out one thousand dollars.
It's like drivers said, they don't teach you how to
use cruise control and driver's d You learn how to

(26:32):
control the vehicle yourself in every different fast and every
different situation. That's the same thing with a cheap drone
with no obstacle avoidance? Is it teaches you best practices,
best flying practices because you are going to crash it eventually,
and it just teaches you how to be as safe
as possible and how to pilot the drone as safe
as possible. Yeah, I guess this is called the DGI
episode because that's all I talked about. Do you like

(26:53):
this format? Because this might be the way that I
go forward with these types of geek there periodio episodes.
There is big news for geek Therapy Radio. I'm still
working out logistics. This is not the next generate, next
iteration of geek therapy Radio necessarily, there are some really
big things coming I wish I could talk about. I
just have not laid down the first episode yet, so
I don't want to talk about it too much while
it's doesn't exist yet. It's not in the can yet.

(27:17):
But I'll keep these going as often as I can
if y'all like it. Also, it's just therapeutic for me
to talk. So anyways, thank you so much for listening
if I upload this, Thank you so much for watching
on Geek Therapy Radio YouTube channel, follow me on all
the socials, talking to me on the socials. Thank y'all
for your birthday wishes. Y'all are emailing me from around
the world. Thank you for your birthday wishes, Ed and

(27:41):
oh who else, who else? Why might just blame Enzo
Like all y'all from around the world have been sending
me warm birthday wishes. It was my birthday a couple
days ago. Thank y'all so much for that. But without
further ado, I gotta get going. Thank you so much
for listening. You are worthy of love, worthy of giving love,
you're worthy of receiving love, and you are worthy of

(28:02):
your own self respect. Thank you so much for listening
to Deep Therapy Radio today. And I'll see y'all next time.
The sound good