Brief Summary
This video discusses the often-overlooked but highly valuable "QuickShots" feature on the DJI Mini 4 Pro drone. It highlights how these automated flight modes can significantly enhance your aerial footage, even for experienced drone pilots. The video explores each QuickShot mode (Helix, Rocket, Dronie, Asteroid, Circle, and Boomerang), explaining their unique benefits and providing practical tips for their use. It also covers the advantages of using QuickShots, such as their ease of use, ability to capture vertical footage, and potential for creative editing. Finally, the video addresses some limitations of QuickShots and suggests potential improvements for future DJI updates.
- QuickShots are automated flight modes that simplify capturing cinematic drone footage.
- Each QuickShot mode offers unique movements and perspectives.
- QuickShots can be combined with manual flying for enhanced creativity.
- Vertical mode allows for full 4K quality footage suitable for social media.
- Limitations include the inability to shoot in 4K 24fps and a desire for more customizable options.
The DJI Mini 4 Pro has been a fantastic drone, and its QuickShots feature is a standout. QuickShots, often overlooked as a non-professional feature, are actually incredibly valuable and can significantly enhance your aerial footage. The presenter explains why he uses QuickShots every time he flies the Mini 4 Pro, emphasizing their ability to add value to your trips and create cinematic masterpieces.
The Mini 4 Pro offers six automated flight modes within the QuickShot section: Dronie, Rocket, Circle, Helix, Asteroid, and Boomerang. To use these modes, simply drag a box around yourself or select the plus icon, and the drone will automatically fly a fixed route. While targeted towards beginners, these modes are useful for experienced pilots as well, allowing for easy capture of complex shots and transitions. MasterShots combines all QuickShots into a single sequence, but using individual QuickShots provides more flexibility for editing.
Helix is a favorite QuickShot, where the drone spirals outwards. To use it, select the Helix mode, choose your distance and direction, and tap start. This mode creates amazing shots that would take much longer to achieve manually. Rocket mode is particularly effective on cliffs, creating a cinematic top-down crane shot. Select your altitude and press start to capture this dynamic perspective, which can also be reversed in post-production for added creativity.
Dronie is another favored QuickShot, especially useful for ending flights, as it flies backward and rises up, providing a full line of sight. Asteroid mode flies backward, takes multiple photos, and stitches them together to create a tiny planet effect. However, Asteroid mode is limited to 1080p at 30 FPS, unlike other modes that support 4K. Despite this limitation, it's still suitable for social media content.
Circle mode is perfect for capturing a 360-degree view with the drone flying in a perfect circle around the subject. You can adjust the circle's width and altitude, allowing for multiple cinematic shots from different angles and distances. Boomerang mode combines Helix and Circle, flying away to the left or right before returning on the other side, ideal for focusing on both the subject and the landscape. QuickShots can also be used on objects, not just people; if tracking fails, select an area around the object and wait for the location lock.
QuickShots are fully automated, requiring minimal effort to capture complex shots. They allow for hands-free operation, enabling you to focus on the scenery. QuickShots can be captured in vertical mode, providing full 4K quality footage suitable for social media. You can also crop the video to create different perspectives and add variety to your edits. Mixing QuickShots with manual flying enhances the cinematic quality of your videos.
One limitation of QuickShots is the inability to shoot in 4K 24 FPS, requiring you to slow down the 4K 30 FPS footage to match a 24 FPS timeline. The presenter prefers shooting in 30 FPS to avoid this issue. There is a desire for more QuickShot options and the ability to create custom QuickShots with adjustable parameters like altitude and distance, similar to waypoints. Overall, QuickShots are amazing and can be enhanced further with LUTS, which work well with the DJI normal color profile.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “DJI Mini 4 Pro - Why QuickShots in 2025 Will Make Your Travel Videos Better!”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 so it's almost been a year since the mini4 pro was released and I must say this has been a fantastic drone and it still is and one of the things I really enjoy with this and have been taking advantage of over many months now is quick shots and this is a feature that often gets overlooked because it's not a professional feature especially compared to something like waypoints cruise control active track Spotlight and point of interest but there is a reason why you should start are using quick shots more because this is just an amazing feature that adds more value to your trips than you might think so in today's video I'm going to tell you why I use these features every single time I fly the mini4 pro and why I think you should too so inside the quick shot section
0:46 here we have all these different automated flight modes we have drony rocket Circle Helix and Boomerang so for each of these different modes all you do is to drag a box around you or select the plus icon here on yourself and then the Drone will automatically fly using a fixed route within the mode you selected and these quick shots were targeted towards beginners or people that struggle to fly the Drone itself or didn't know how to capture different shots using different drone moves so they could just select either of the quick shots and the Drone would do everything for them which is fantastic on its own but this is something I've been using for years now even as a professional drone pilot this is such a useful feature so I use different quick shots and mix that with manual flying and also Al way points and active track
1:31 and the biggest Advantage with quick shots is that when you want to film yourself you can also use these to create you know transitions between different locations to spice things up a bit we also have Master shots which is using all the different quick shots at the same time and it kind of adds this into a single sequence which is also fantastic but the majority of the time I just use quick shots and do each of the modes separately and you know just a little snippet from each of the quick shots can really add a huge difference to the Cinematic Masterpiece you're putting together so we have a total of six different quick shots here and let's start with one of my favorite ones which is Helix so to apply this all you do is to go into the quick shot section and then scroll down until you see Helix the
2:18 next thing is to either drag a box around you or you can tap this plus icon which you see on the screen here so I'm just going to tap that and then select the distance and which direction I want so I'm just going to go with 100 m on this one because I have some trees behind me and then tap [Music] start and I mean this shot turned out absolutely amazing I just love Helix and if I was doing the same shot with the manual flying it would have taken a lot longer to pull off but here you know just tap start and it does everything for you which is fantastic the next one is rocket I just love this one especially when I'm on a cliff like
3:04 this so here again just select myself and the altitude I want so let's go with 60 M on this one and then press start and also this shot turned out amazing just having that super cinematic top down crane shots and not only that you can also reverse these in post to get a different perspective of the Drone coming down to reveal the subject or object it's just amazing how easy it is to capture these cinematic shots with the mini4 pro when you use quick shots over to drony here this is also one of my favorite quick shots but as you can see here there was quite some wind going on and these gusts were just smashing it from below so I had some bumps along the way I can say but drone is one of those quick shots I always end my flights with it's so easy to use and you have full
3:51 line of sight because it flies backwards and then it will rise up and I think this is you know the best mode to use on a cliff like this another one is asteroid so again selecting myself and then tap start and the Drone will fly backwards then up and take a bunch of photos and Stitch these together creating that tiny planet at the end of your video I mean it is a cool feature but not something I would use so uh if you go over to the quick shots here and then down to asteroid and select that we also have a limitation here so you're only able to use this mode in 1080P at 30 FPS so no 4k on on this one unfortunately but if you're using this for social media for example maybe as real on Instagram you know 1080p is
4:37 going to be more than enough the next quick shot is circle and this I would say is the perfect mode to get a 360 view with your drone so again just going to tap myself here and then hit start and the Drone will fly around us in a perfect circle but what's awesome with this is that you can actually decide how narrow or wide you want this circle to be also the altitude so let's say I want this exact same shot but I want it to be higher I can just sply the mini4 pro a bit further away and place it a little bit higher and then press start and the Drone will now do a circle from this exact location going left or right so you can basically decide how wide you want this to be and also at what angle and I can even pull this closer and do the exact same thing so that means I now have three different cinematic shots I
5:23 can mix together in post [Music] now the last one is boomerang and this is almost like a mix between Helix and circle so the Drone will start from the position you set then fly either to the left or right as it goes further away before it comes back on the other side you know just like a boomerang and this is a really nice mode to use if you want to focus on the the subject as well as the landscape at the same time and you can even use these quick shots on objects so it doesn't have to be a person so for this one here the mini4 pro actually failed to maintain track on me so instead I just selected a part of the fence and just waited a few seconds
6:10 before I had this location lock here so if this happens that the tracking is off it's sometimes better to just select an area around you and then just wait for this lock ion so there we have the different quick shots but why is quick shots so useful and why is it something you should start using more well first of all these are fully automated flight mode so there's basically no effort that you need to put into it all you do is to just select the quick shots you want and then press start which is mind blowing so look at this shot here for example the Drone is flying up and to the side around the trees and then it reveals this amazing scenery on the other side at a wider
6:55 distance and you can literally do all of this handsfree which is just fantastic so that reason alone is why we all should start using quick shots more and another reason is that we can also capture these quick shots in vertical mode so not only landscape and that means you're also going to get the full 4K quality another thing is that you can also do a crop to this video to make it appear closer or you can have one cropped and one normal and just cut in between these two for example so there's a lot of different things you can actually do to spice these up just go on and test yourself in your editing software next time now in general quick shots are amazing and something I use all the time but what I really like to do is to also mix these with some manual flying which often adds to a better
7:42 cinematic video [Music]
8:39 now there's also some limitations to quick shots for example you cannot shoot in 4k 24 FPS so if you mainly shoot videos in 4k 24 you would need to match those quick shots which are shot in 4k 30 with the clips on your timeline which means that you would need to slow these quick shots down to about 80% but in my opinion that often makes the quick shots look better because it smoothens everything out a little bit but what I really hate though is that if I forget to slow them down if I'm working on a 24 FPS timeline you know I will have all these Jitters and I will have to go back into the video and adjust everything so it doesn't matter if my video is finished I still need to adjust it to make the footage look appealing so
9:25 that's one of the reasons I always shoot in 30 FPS because that means I will never have this issue now I also wish we had more quick shots uh I find it quite limited now after so many years so it would be nice to see something new or even better to be able to set up a custom quick shot to a certain degree of course like Max altitude max distance and something like that and everything within that radius you would be able to make a few points similar to way points for example and then have those saved as a custom quick shell profile yeah I want that place so please DJI if this is something that we can have in the future that would actually be awesome but all in all quick shots are amazing I also use my signature LS to
10:11 make these quick shots look even better and because these work with the DJI normal color profile as well I can just drag the ls on top of the footage and I'm all done I'm also having a 40% off on these LS right now so make sure to check them out down in the description below if you're looking for something unique that will make your videos pop and I also have my free DJI mini4 Pro Chi-Chi down there which also applies to both the Mini 4 Pro and the mini3 pro uh so make sure to grab those as well like I said 100% free just do me a favor and hit that subscribe and like button that would be really appreciated and in a few weeks I will have something really exciting things to share with you guys so make sure to hit that Bell icon as well so you will get notified when that
10:58 video is up so that's it for today's video I guess thanks for watching and I will see you in the next one bye-bye [Music]
