Just unboxing our Movi Pro. Have achieved pretty much perfect balance on tilt and roll. I seem to be missing something with pan balance. The pan wants to always fly off to the left no matter where the pan balance is positioned. If I go by the book, I'm understanding I should point the camera 90º to the side, basically at the side of the ring, and tilt backwards, and hope that it stays. I'm actually not able to have the camera point to the side completely, as the back of the gimbal hits the ring. If I get it as close as possible, without touching, I'm able to tilt the rig backwards considerably, and the pan stays in this position. But as soon as I return it to sitting on the feet, it wants to come to rest at like 65º-75º to the left. Anyone have any theories as to why if everything is "balanced properly, the pan position doesn't want to behave?
Here's a video I made the other day about how I balance the Movi. Maybe it will help. EDIT: I updated this video and discarded the old one, but here's a better version:
Hi Graham, thanks for the reply. I got a chance to watch your video while I was going through my initial forum searches. One big thing I took away from your walkthrough was tipping the rig to the side, instead of backwards. Our current build apparently doesn't allow for the camera to but pointing to the side, without hitting the bars, which I think is ridiculous. I was under the impression that this rig would support 360º rotation on pan. I can't quite put my finger on what my issue seems to be. It's almost like there is something off balance from the factory, causing the pan arm to swing out to one side every time it's sitting at rest.
What is the use case where you would need to have 360° rotation of pan, while handheld, with the ring?
Bryan, for one, the owners manual tells us to have the camera oriented pointing to the side, in order to test pan balance, and I'm not able to do that at the moment. Can you advise why our rig may be behaving this way when the motors are paused?
Dave, I was asking 360° operational use cases, not balance checking. The pan balance check in the manual is based on our general balancing process, which was developed with a handlebar setup. The manual doesn't make a note for this method won't always work, depending on your camera payload. I'll pass that feedback along to the guys that work on manual revisions. As Graham pointed out, the alternate way to check balance is by tipping the ring, especially helpful payloads that don't allow 90° rotation as the manual suggests. I would be happy to help you troubleshoot your balancing issues, via our support email system. Just shoot in an email to support@freeflysystems.com with some pictures of your Pro setup, and a video showing the issue.
Using the Ring is one way of operating the Movi, but many people also like the Handlebars for different things. There are lots of handle options out there -- quick adjustable ones, extension handles, short top bars, briefcase mode, etc. The beauty of the Movi is its versatility. If you want to post a video and\or photos of your balance problem, that would be helpful to diagnose it. I can't tell by reading your post what the issue is, if it's Balance or something else. I like it when problems get resolved on the Forums because it helps other users learn to self-resolve their Movi issues, but Freefly offers excellent customer support as well. Just email them, like Bryan said.
Dave, I understand your issue. Ours does the same thing. With the m10 you could fix this issue by adjusting the angle of the down tube from the pan tube to the roll bar, however with the m5, m15 and now pro you are not able to adjust that. We get ours as close as possible and just call it good. We haven't noticed any performance issues even with a 15.75lb payload. Josh
Found the video from FreeFly that shows the issue Dave and I are talking about. Video should start at the correc time. If not he starts talking about it at the 2:03 mark. Josh
Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. So we're talking about rotational balance on the pan axis. Is this adjustable?
I put together a video highlighting the issues I've been having. Hopefully this helps explain what I've been experiencing.
When you adjust the pan balance (below the batteries) and move the whole assembly forward, is there a point where it seems to be "front" heavy rather than "back" heavy as it currently is?
First off, that's the most beautifully shot support video I've seen. Kudos, Dave! I agree with Ryan, it looks a back-heavy to me. If you start sliding it toward the lens on the pan tubes, does that not reduce this problem? The Movi Ring has a built-in angle to it because of the way the Toad in the Hole doesn't hang straight down, and that may cause your imbalance to be more pronounced.
Thanks for the replies everyone. If I move the pan tubes forward, it actually increases the speed at which it falls into this position.
Dave, General rule of thumb, no matter what MoVI you are using (M5, M10, M15, MoVI Pro)... The larger (size) and more mass you have mounted on the gimbal, the further back the Pan Knuckle or pan adjustment should be. Moving the pan adjustment forward (as suggested above), only throws the balance off more, with that camera/lens package.
One thing that helped with my Epic was putting a little ballast on the back to help slide the camera back a bit.
Thanks Chris, I've been following that concept from the beginning. The above suggestions from others were ideas on a way to isolate the problem, and come up with a solution.
Here's an observation. Currently, if the ring is siting vertical, and not tilted forward on the ring feet, the pan balance seems perfect. But, when sitting on feet, the pan is off to one side, so much so that it seems to be affecting auto tune. After a 60% auto tune, the pan motor starts to vibrate excessively, and will not allow for smooth pan operation from movie controller.
In my experience, the movi pro is not perfectly balanced for pan when it comes to left/right. Take the right side battery off (when viewing from the back) and it will fix the balance, or if you want to run to run two batteries you can add some weight to the left side (I had to add 9oz) and it will perfectly balance. I don't find the need to remove a battery and make the L/R balance perfect in HH mode. The motor has more than enough power to compensate when you aren't flying.