"Flight to the Forts"

EXPERIMENTAL VIDEO: Allow me to think out loud for a moment. I've read that the average attention span of a YouTube viewer is about 2-3 minutes. Most drone videos I see are extremely short snippets. Personally I don't see myself posting many 2-3 minute videos. If I have 20+ minutes of battery & can only come up with 2-3 minutes of decent footage maybe I should take up fishing instead? I try to make things into a little mini-movie of sorts.

That said the real-time "Flight to the Fort" video is 23:07. I did a 2X version by request that cut it to 12:44, which is still pretty long by drone video standards. What I've done here is apply a variable speed throughout the video. Long segments over water are 8x, some land segments are 2x, while select segments remain at normal speed. This allowed me to cut the video down to 9:37 while still retaining the continuous "full mission" feel. I could shorten it by another couple of minutes if I ditched the intro/exit credits & a bit of the video start/finish, but that would take a lot of fun out of creating a video.

So now that I've expressed my thoughts, please have a look & let me know what you think about this format for longer mission videos. Thank you & I appreciate everyone's comments & support.

--DB

ORIGINAL VIDEO DESCRIPTION: This mission could have been called "Far, Far Away"! The Phantom 4 "Night Fury" catches the sunrise on a 55,101' (10.436 mile) early morning Litchi mission. The bird launches from Fort Armistead, passes Fort Carroll & Sparrow's Point, then flies over Fort Howard before turning towards home. The aircraft is a stock "Special Edition" P4 with a high-capacity battery. She returned with 19% remaining. I had full contact until about half way between Sparrow's Point & Fort Howard where my altitude dropped to only 26'. I am amazed that signal was regained 5.25 miles away as she flew above Fort Howard at the furthest point of the mission! Aircraft & RC are stock but I did have a WindSurfer on the remote. The flight was nearly 22 minutes so grab an adult beverage, enjoy the music, pucker up, & imagine your bird way-way out there! :)

The "real-time" video is available here: https://youtu.be/Z6WYV69-JvQ