What are exif tags for aircraft and gimbal Roll,Pitch,Yaw?

I've only recently learned that my Mini 2 intentionally doesn't include the Aircraft or Gimbal roll, pitch and yaw values in the jpeg EXIF information. I am going to write a python script to pull that information from the Flight Record so I can make use of the 'Flat Map' work flow of Maps Made Easy. Can someone tell me precisely the format of those tags that Maps Made Easy is expecting to see in the jpeg files? Are there any other important tags that would need to be added to the Mini 2 jpeg photos to support the work flow?

Solar Smith November 01, 2022 16:29

Official comment

Where did you hear that this was "intentional"? We have wondered why the Mini 2 is the only aircraft DJI has made in the last 7 years that doesn't have this information in the tags.

Look at any other DJI image for the format. The pointing angles are in the XMP section.

The Mini 2 images work fine for photogrammetric processing because they have the required lat/long/elevation in the EXIF and relative altitude element in the XMP. The Flat Map workflow needs the gimbal pointing angles which are conspicuously set to 0.

The site we used to like to read the XMP isn't working any more so now we recommend this one:

https://exifviewer.herokuapp.com/

Here is an example of Mavic Mini XMP tags:

Here is what they look like with the Mini 2:

Note the Gimbal Roll Pitch and Yaw values are 0.00.

Zane November 01, 2022 17:23

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9 comments

Thanks for the information, this is my only drone so I didn't have other unprocessed images to compare.

As far as inentionality, in my google searches on the issue I saw a response that included this statement in forum.dji.com:

... Our engineer team have checked your issue ,the result of the issue is that is normally ,it is from our design ."

My interpretation was that their 'design', in light of the fact that the Mini does provide the angle information in the metdata, is to market the use of the Mini 2 for casual consumers and to encourage professionals toward more capable and expensive equipment. Perhaps I'm just cynical, but I would note that although many users have raised the issue, none of the firmware updates have added the simple capability back in.

Solar Smith November 01, 2022 18:47 0 votes

Download some samples that have all the tags here:

https://www.dpreview.com/samples/2596047497/dji-air-2s-drone-sample-gallery

Zane November 01, 2022 22:15 0 votes

Thanks for the link to the Mavic Air 2s images.

Those are some nice shots.

Solar Smith November 02, 2022 14:30 0 votes

So I can convert the MINI-2 Flight Record file to csv thanks to PhantomHelp and I wrote some python code to copy the Gimbal angles into the appropriate XMP tags. However, the Flat Map workflow still refuses to process the MINI-2 images. I'm guessing it's checking some other tag(s) for the aircraft model. I can make some educated guesses as to which tags might be involved. But, does anyone have any insight into which tags are key and whether it simply needs to not find the MINI-2 model info or if it needs to match the aircraft model against a library of internally supported models?

Solar Smith November 30, 2022 02:09 0 votes

The RelativeAltitude is used as well as the gimbal numbers. It is pretty hard (not impossible) to inject values into the XMP because there are various checksums and data verification steps involved in the XMP and EXIF tag segments.

Zane November 30, 2022 02:50 0 votes

I also just realized that you are saying you want to write the aircraft RPY values to the gimbal RPY values. This wouldn't work anyway since the aircraft and gimbal poses are different.

The actual gimbal pitch number is not present anywhere in the tags and that is the most important one.

Zane November 30, 2022 02:52 0 votes

I finally had some success generating a Flat Map from my Mini-2:

https://www.mapsmadeeasy.com/maps/public/7a65f31acadc4b6d86056c9557c54e36/

There are a lot of image placement artifacts I think due to a mostly unplanned flight, but I'm gald to have successfully completed the process.

In addition to updating the Gimbal angle values from the closest(time and space) Flightrecord in the Xmp metadata, I also replaced the Model number using the MINI model, FC7203.

I'd be happy to share my python code, but I have to figure out how to use GitHub better.

Solar Smith December 02, 2022 17:57 0 votes

The Mini (FC7203) is the best value to use there since they both have the same focal length and pixel pitch.

Zane December 02, 2022 20:01 0 votes