Hello Freeflyers! My name is Andy, I am a product designer on the R&D team here at Freefly. As part of an ongoing effort to improve our products and services, we are reaching out to existing M10 users to collect feedback. Towards that end, we'd like to hear from you! What MoVI shots wow your customers? How could the MoVI increase your speed / production value even more? What is the one thing you wish MoVI could do, that it doesn't? Let us know what you think by sounding off in this thread. Thanks in advance for your input, we appreciate it! Cheers, Andy and the Freefly Team
I think this is excellent continued customer support. I have a dozen ideas and I want to share them all, but I'm going to think about this in a more serious way. For now, may I suggest extended arms so that longer cameras could fit?
Several M10 users have been disappointed that they cannot use the M10 inverted on top of the ALTA, Andy. Thanks One of the other Andys.
I was really disappointed with Freefly for having ignored completely M10 owners. We were the first ones to "trust" our money to you guys by paying a huge ammount of money for something we saw prices dropping to half. Anyway I think you should just drop the M10 and sell only the M5 and M15. At IBC this year I was told that the M10 couldn´t be used inverted on the Alta due to construction and that the M10 it is what it is and can´t be changed. I used the M10 on Tero but the forces on the Alta will not be handled by the M10. I don´t think it makes sense your question so my answer is: Charge us money to upgrade our M10 to 15 but remember how much we spent to buy the M10. I should have waited and now I would be a satisfied customer with the M15. I paid extra for the Mimic when I could have got it for free with the M15. I am tired of being part of the bunch of people that has always supported Freefly and then we are treated like the rest of the schepticals that waited until the dust settled and got the model they wanted and the fair price. Frankly I repeated over and over again. I am no happy with this situation and you guys only think about $ not about the loyalty we showed by being pioneers. P.S. - I am sure it is not that expensive to replace the third axis carbon at a nice price to M10 owners. It is really carbon booms and 2 pieces of plastic. That would be the thing to do.
To be honest I think a little like Augusto. Initially I was totally wowed by the M10, I wanted to buy anything and everything I could get for the device including the controller, tero and whatnot. Then after the M5 and M15 were introduced and later minor upgrades like the cage and the handle were horrendously priced for us "pioneers", I felt ripped off. We even have to buy a WIFI adapter for functionality that once was promised if I remember correctly. That just doesn´t feel right. But to answer some of your questions: What would increase the speed: toolless pan-tuning (there was an again expensive kit once, but that was just in the days when i was really disappointed and not willing to pay the money including the high shipping costs) Maybe geared finetuning of the three axis - that would add weight, but it would have quite an impact on speed (and maybe accuracy) Good cable management - maybe even glide contacts with plugs. A cableless setup would be amazing, and that´s probably the one thing the MoVI can´t do that I wish it could. Create some sophisticated Steadicam adapters, car mounts, cable cam solutions etc. Freefly started an amazing thing here, but I miss continued "innovation" around your product. Especially in a time where Drones are banned for filmwork in some countries or where you need to have special licenses where your flying systems just won´t pass the license needs. You seem to leave the playing field for others. I know you might not sell as many units as you did from gimbals, but to stay in the market and alive as a company, I think you need to come up with something every now and then. I hope that helps and gives you the feedback you´ve been looking for. Cheers, Wolfgang
Wolfgang: *I bought the tooless Pan knucle as freefly again didn´t sent any upgrades to help us. * The fine tuning is available on M5 and 15 * Cable management would make much more difficult for us users to replace something while we´re shooting and something happens. It´s not a good option to take 2 Movis to the set at least in my case where I shoot often far from home * The staedicam adapters need to invert the gimbal which is "unsafe" with the M10. Listening to customers is the first step and supporting them should be side by side. That is why and due to Freefly policy that the Chinese sell so much sub standard (arguably) stuff but they do sell and inovate. We are not happy with their products but at least we see new products to support their new discoveries (business plans). They have a beta tester program they reward customers for their loyalty and they got hugely successful by doing it. Instead Freefly is assuming they had the whole market in their hands and I got to see my Alta order sent back to Freefly due to construction flaws. Freefly marketing is too old fashioned...too self centered and completely disregarding customers. I know I am a pain to say this but at least I go straight to the point. I am saying this to try to help like I did many times before but from that side people seem to be playing the "deaf game". It doesn´t matter what I say you guys don´t care. I am not a stranger or even troll. I own a cinestar8, Movi10, Tero, Mimic etc...Where is your apreciation? Your customer appreciation for our support? Freefly stop having that umbilical feeling about your company and start talking to us and listen to what we say.
We get some real wow comments from the panoramas we take. However to do this we take a shot, pan a bit, take another shot, pan a bit etc until the full 360 is achieved. Gernerally we look at an overlap of 60-80%. What would be really beneficial is the ability to do this automatically as this would greatly speed up obtaining the full panorama and enable us to do more heights per flight. There are a lot of people in the UK doing such shots and whilst not many people of asked for this feature I think it would be a bit like an iPad- you didn't know you needed it at first but once you had it.....
M10 is great - real workhorse for us (we also have the M15). Not that it is unique to the M10, but improve: transmission distance between the Movi Controllers and the Movis - nowhere near the 1,200 feet claimed in the marketing pieces - see http://forum.freeflysystems.com/index.php?threads/movi-controller-transmission-distance-poll.6892/
I think a kill-switch on the actual gimbal would be nice instead of having to lug around the Spectrum remote control. Also, faster pans in Majestic Mode would be nice also
This applies to all three of the Movis. When you set a tilt limit, for instance for aerial use on my Alexmos based gimbals I set the tilt limit so that the camera will tilt straight down and stop with the camera looking straight down. On those gimbals with the limit set I can use the remote control to tilt the camera down until it is looking straight down while holding the control input on the transmitter and when the camera gets to the set limit it will stop and stay there and when I let go of the command to tilt down the camera still stays there. On the Movi if you set it to do this it will stop with the camera looking straight down, but as soon as you let go of the control input the camera will bounce back about five degrees. Someone really dropped the ball on this one. Also to be able to look straight down with a Movi as it is now you have to set the limit so that the camera will actually tilt quite a ways past 90 degrees or past looking straight down or the tilt axis will occasionally get random glitches that destroys the shot. This is one firmware/software update that needs to be put on the to do list. Edit: I forgot to mention that my Ronin also does this perfectly. Wayne Mann www.HeliCamHDmedia.com
C300mk2 and C100mk2 and FS7 and maybe URSA mini doesn't good fit with M10. I have used and could balanced C300mk2 and C100mk2 and FS7 on my M10 with many counter weight but it took a lot of time to balance it. So extension arm is needed. Please don't say just buy M15. I already paid 15K for my M10. At least full cage kit and tooless Pan knuckle must be supplied by free to early customer I think. And yes invert mode is needed as well. So what I want to say is, why my M10 doesn't have less function than M5 and M15? I paid 15K. Now M15 is 11K. I paid more that M15 cost already. But if I see what I got with 15K now... I'm not happy with my situation. That point I really feel it's unfair. What is the one thing you wish MoVI could do, that it doesn't? I wish my M10 will have same equipment as M15 but of course I can understand M15 can carry more heavier camera. I still remember that Freefly said that 15K is including upgrade cost in the future. So 15K is like a investment for it. You guys said so but what upgrade which I could got so far? How could the MoVI increase your speed / production value even more? Same as above. At first M10 must have full cage kit etc... same as M5 and M15 at least. After that, it's nice to have the solution for avoid vertical shaking. It's great if MoVI could use like a artemis stabilizer. What MoVI shots wow your customers? jib and MoVI with Mimic. But again, C300mk2 and C100mk2 and FS7 doesn't fit with M10. So it's difficult to use these camera for it. Needed extension arm. Also full cage kit and full cage kit and tooless Pan knuckle is needed for keep good balance. Mimic is nice especialy with jib though...
Hello Andy, first of all I have to agree with Augusto and Wolfgang. Freefly's policy regarding its early adopters has really been disappointing. I ordered an M10 a few days after it was announced at NAB. M10 prices cut in half less than a year after receiving it, no real upgrade path (buying an M15 within a 1 month window at a discounted rate isn't an upgrade), having to pay high prices for the parts that could be upgraded (full cage, tool-less pan bar) and worst of all, having to buy a Wifi module to get iOS compatibility, which was supposed to be included from the start. And now it seems that if I get the Mimic, I won't be able to use the Wifi module at the same time because it uses the same port, so in the end it might still be worthless. So, yes, I hate to say that because I love the Movi, but I've been really disappointed with the way Freefly has treated its loyal customers so far. I would actually have ordered a Beta Mimic many months ago if I wasn't concerned I might once again have to pay extra again once the final version gets released. So I decided to wait for the release version. Now, for the positive part : The M10 has been a real workhorse so far, never let me down, always worked flawlessly. It has allowed me to do shots that would have taken way more time and money otherwise. From cars, motorcycles, boats, cranes, stairs, quads,... It took me a year or so to find the right setup (including easyrig, Serene, Puppeteer, V-mount battery plate to power my Epic, flexible cables to power the epic and use the Redtouch monitor), but now I often use it for a whole day without even putting it back on its stand. I just spent two 10 hour days shooting Movi 100% with an Epic. I do love it, and so do all the people I've worked for so far. So what could be improved ? - cable management : having a D-TAP connector on the bottom of the cage would be a great help. - Dual pan (tool-less) tubes : there has to be a way to bring that upgrade to the M10 ! Please ! - Longer arms so we can fit slightly longer cameras in there. 1 or 2 inches might be enough. - an easy/quick way to save, reload and name various configurations in the setup app (various smoothness/window settings for instance) - the rubber bands that hold the batteries are crap, they keep breaking. No big deal but it's annoying. I can think of a few other things (software improvements), but these are the more important ones that come to mind. And of course : making a groundbreaking product is great, supporting the people who supported you from the start is also extremely important. Thanks.
1. dual batterie holder would be nice 2. longer booms update (for longform cams like FS700, etc) 3. any update to secure the M10 while using with the ALTA on top... i wouldn't have a problem when the left/right balance need to be done with some small weights. a simple screw to fix it...
Nils, This was my solution for the sad little battery bands. 1/8" x 3" O-ring. One lasted all last summer.
For aerial use all the MoVIs are just fantastic devices that just work. That being said. In order of importance: 1) a way to make the pan motor stronger!! 2) make the vector skewing more manageable. (we had zero luck with the new GPS antenna) 3) top mountable for the ALTA
Andy, Is the primary purpose of gathering user feedback to offer future upgrades for existing M10 users or for development of a future replacement for the M10?