Processing Drone Images with GCPs using Pix4D Mapper

This is a video tutorial on how to process drone images to make accurate map products using Pix4D Mapper software.
[Updated on 16/11/2021] The sample data set used in this video can be found in :
drive.google.com/drive/folder...

[@flighttherapybullisticfpv133]

This video is INCREDIBLE! Thank you so much Sasanka! I hadnt used pix4d in almost a year and this was the perfect refresher.

[@chiranjeevsaikia7007]

Same here...after a long gap of 3 years....

[@matthewkelley9200]

Well done Sasanka! Very clear instruction and very helpful! Thank you!

[@tningal]

Kudos to you, sasanka, a very clear and concise tutorial for anyone to follow and replicate.

[@sairs5061]

Great instructional video at a the perfect pace to keep up! Worked through my own project alongside yours. So clear and concise. Easy to follow! Thank you!

[@tharakaweragama8042]

Good Job mate , I was very happy to see one of my Uni mate doing this. Keep it up mate😍👊👊👊

[@dilipkawli426]

Nicely explained, thanks Mr. Sasanka.

[@anemoi2634]

Thank you! That's the best tutorial by far!

[@s10blazed]

Thank you! Your video was a huge help in getting my GCPs incorporated.

[@ashishmalaviya]

Thank you so much Sasanka for making such a wonderful video you really explained it very well 🙏🏽🙏🏽

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

Thank you so much

[@alybadaracamara2005]

hello mr sasanka! happy to meet you through one of your videos (how to process drone images with pix4D). I am French speaking.

[@MrDukkee]

Great tutorial! Please keep it up!

[@Nicole-gk8jk]

Thank you so much!! This was VERY helpful and easy to understand.

[@SamithaDaranagama]

Great explanation. Thank you for uploading

[@harbulence]

Very helpful, I could have paid for this, No jargon, straight to the point

[@rabiah6887]

Thank you sir, really appreciate your work ,sharing your knowledge with others . Your explanation really well.

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

Thank you so much

[@akshaychavare1368]

Very helpful 👍 great job. Thank you

[@nicolamurru7880]

Thank you sir! Nice video!

[@mantiekopok2983]

Sir, you did a good job. Well explained, thanks.

[@sootherswontknow]

Absolutely, well done! By any chance do you have a video for "Merging"? I am having a difficult time trying to merge GROUND/Terrestrial images with aerial images. I have been using Pix4D "Catch" to get my terrestrial imagery and it just doesn't seem to want to process properly.

[@chiranjeevsaikia7007]

Such a brilliant lesson....tnxx brother ❤️

[@rollo2052]

This tutorial is awesome!!! Thank you so much for uploading :) Do you remember which settings you used in pix4d capture to create the grid? Like how much overlay and so on? I´m just asking because I am new to this and would love to start a similar project as well. Thanks in advance!!

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

Thank you. For flight planning, I used 80% front overlap and 75% sidelap. This setting is optimal most of the times. :)

[@alfredbockarie5085]

Great tutorial well explained

[@brianjohnson475]

Nice Job! I had a hard time understanding you until I turned on "closed caption" and trying to keep up with all those mouse clicks. I can see how this is probably the most important critical step into map making. Even when you used automatic marking; the control point(s) still needed re-centering. I must admit an error less than 3cm is as perfect as this can get. Your video was great because you pointed out the most important attributes to be familiar with. I subscribed because you help provide me with enough confidence that Pix4D will be the next software that I will buy. One question though, that route you chose to fly, what was the software used in your mission? Was that Pix4D part of the mapping software? Thanks a Billion!

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

Thank you for the critical feedback on the video. I really appreciate it. About the flight planning software there several free apps that you can use, which are capable of acquiring data to create a 3D map. Im using DJI GS Pro (www.dji.com/at/ground-station-pro) which is the most reliable for DJI drones. Other alternatives are Pix4D capture (www.pix4d.com/product/pix4dcapture) and DroneDeploy (www.dronedeploy.com/). If you are using a DJI drone, I strongly suggest running your flight planning software in an iPad because DJI SDK for iPad is more reliable compared to Android. Hope this would be helpful and happy flying :D

[@godwillsagiya3803]

Thabk you Mr Sasanka, this is a great video i have really learnt a lot from it. can you do more video on exporting of data to other softwares. map creation etc

[@lithatyamzashe6349]

All I can say is Thank God for this Video

[@themiftah2000]

Hey Sasanka, it was amazing. Much better than ........😄

[@mwaledex]

Excellent video thanks

[@haqj]

great explanation thanks alot

[@claudelguiella1280]

I really appreciateThank you so much, amazing video really insightful

[@DeepApnea]

Hello could you make a video on how to calibrate images (in red) without control points?; I would like to calibrate some images and relaunch the processing in order to get better 3D reconstruction of a photogrammetry

[@user-vn2hf8gx3i]

Hi Sasanka awesome video. I see the Accuracy Horz and Accuracy Vert columns default to a certain value when you dropped in your CSV. Would you ever change those values?

[@aqeelnahi8470]

Thank you so much,very informable

[@RAVIKUMAR-bn9wx]

Absolutely, well done! By any chance do you have a video for "Merging

[@alizitounahamed9668]

thank you Very helpful

[@oktawialewicka2249]

Thank you :D You are good teacher

[@ahmedalzain2]

you are the best

[@obedmensah8276]

great vid

[@hazarvivlogz9410]

GOOD JOB

[@haradhannandy8652]

Hi Sasanka, I have seen the ortho mosaic but there was some problems in building edge if you see it in 1:200 scale you can clearly see this problem.

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

Yes, some distortion is there at the building edges. The way to minimize this distortion is by adding more images with more overlap, preferably as a double grid.

[@dahaproject3498]

how to solve wrong format on CCV?

[@niamhodonoghue112]

I have a question. My Drone imagery is WGS84/UTM29 and GCPs in ITM. Should I convert drone imagery to ITM or gcp to wgs84? Want final output in ITM. I have already done initial processing and converted gcp to wgs84. But maybe I should start again? Thank you video is very helpful

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

It's not necessary to convert manually. Pix4D will do that for you. When importing the images select the coordinate system as WGS84 (in most cases its automatically detected from image metadata). But when you are importing the GCPs in GCP/MTP Manager, make sure you select ITM as the coordinate system. You have to do this before importing the coordinates. Cheers. Happy processing

[@frikfrikdovideos]

Hello, just wanna ask, can you explain why 3 of the gcp is changed to checkpoint? and is it okay to mark it all as 3D GCP and no checkpoints?

[@shinichiconan9323]

Hello There, i want to ask, why when we export GCP.txt for GCP but the number of loaded become zero.?

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

sorry for the late reply. Are you trying to export alredy loaded GCP file or do you want to load GCP coordinate file to Pix4D GCP/MTP manager?

[@nanakwakye9415]

When the point classification is done, does Pix4d use only ground points to generate the DTM?

[@TheJoel1964]

hi - great turturials - can you export this diles to jepg & pdf format ? thanks

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

It's possible to output as JPEG but not as PDF. ref: support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000897346-Inputs-and-outputs I suggest using QGIS to reformat and get your outputs in PDF/JPEG format

[@abderrahmanezineelabidine4725]

thank u soooooo much

[@sattarali763]

thank you

[@satyaPrakash-fe4cx]

Yery nice sir

[@amaniadha6272]

what happen after we tie the GCP, and then we click the Load Optimized Parameter ?

[@geoid1596]

Then how to calculate volume of a stock ya dumped area

[@mohammedmakawe1427]

Hello Sasanka, Did you figure out why the drone shows the error in elevation ?

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

Not yet, but I have a guess. The drone normally uses the barometer readings to determine the altitude because it's more reliable and sensitive than the integrated GNSS. It might be due to this but this is just a guess

[@chefsurveyor]

Hey dude I follow your tutorial but I cannot reoptimized my project when I click the gcp only one images come out. I'm using panthom 4 pro v2

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

Well, there can be several possibilities 1) Randomly select several GCPs and check in the dataset how many images containing that GCP is available 2) If your dataset is correct, double-check the GCP coordinates and especially the coordinate system Let know after doing this

[@mtmtgis47]

Very informative. I think you missed to define the 6and7 check points GCP Manager . Initially you said that points Will not involve in georeferencing. Thanks alot.

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

Points 5,6 & 7 are used to validate the geolocation accuracy so they were assigned as check points (see 22:23). Please note that even though points 5,6 and 7 do not contribute to georeferencing the map, it is required to mark them in images to observe the errors and compute the accuracy. Those points were correctly marked in the images (see 41:10). I do not find any mistake here :)

[@dahaproject3498]

how to fix error e0015? when I input GCP csv. wrong format. I follow procedure. please solution

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

It will be better if you can send me a screenshot and more details about the issue.

[@mahendraranadeep7105]

Hello there! Can you please tell me what camera is using for capturing the images.

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

Its the inbuilt camera of phantom 4. The sensor is good enough.

[@jean-francoisfortier8727]

I did a mapping with my drone. the assembly of orthomosaic is perfect. However, once in KML in google earth all my mapping is shifted by 3.5 meters from the RTK point. How to remedy the situation?

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

Google earth is an amaizing tool but keep in mind that it has significant amount of positional error (read: www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/8/12/7973/pdf) which can be varied from place to place. So its not a good idea to verify the accuracy of your products using google earth. Most probably your products are accurate in terms of geo coordinates. There are few things you can do if you want to use google earth to be a base map for your products: 1) First verify the product overlay in Pix4D, use google base map 2) if there is a shift, use QGIS to do a translation to your orthomap and export to KML afterwards, using QGIS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- another possibility is that an offset is introduced to your base station coordinates which has affected your GCP survey and hence photogrammetric products as well. Since the offset is constant for all GCPs and check points you wont see an error in the quality report.

[@samarjeetsalunke6962]

Hello!! Your video is incredible. I am trying to fetch the sample data which you have mentioned in the link discription, but i am uable to fetch it. Can you please help me with providing the link to this sample data?

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

Thank you so much for pointing this out. I have updated the link and now you can download the images, GCP/CP coordinates and the layout. :)

[@dingding-lj7lq]

I think there is something wrong，because pos system is GPS PTK system. The elevation system is WGS84.

[@nikhilvinay6794]

Thank so much for effective explanation step by step and i have some doubts abt processing and how can i contact

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

thank you for the comment. you can drop me a msg on skype. sasanka.madawalagama

[@MrPhakdey]

You may remember me from Cambodia. I miss AIT.

[@wryahade4540]

gooood work my dear. i want to buy DJI Phantom 4pro plus 2.0v. is that good accuracy? i want for land surveying and contour map. thanks.

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

DJI P4P V2.0 is a good choice. keep in mind that you will need an RTK GNSS unit to establish ground control. Also check the RTK version of the phantom 4 and go for it if your budget allows. www.dji.com/at/phantom-4-rtk?site=brandsite&from=nav

[@wryahade4540]

@@SasankaMadawalagama many thanks.

[@ragavand8331]

You took it as smooth as a breeze. Kudos. If you can come up with another video on different settings to use in different terrains, managing homogenity or heterogenity in the landcape, it would be great. Thanks.

[@jonashulslander4259]

😂😊❤

[@jonashulslander4259]

❤7😮

[@jonashulslander4259]

5😢0😂😮❤😂2😮🎉😢❤

[@jonashulslander4259]

😊3😢😊

[@jonashulslander4259]

2😂😢 44:06 😢

[@salimyapc3826]

can you please reupload the used sample data set, i want to follow along and try it out myself but have no data

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

sorry for the late reply. I have updated the lik to the dataset

[@salimyapc3826]

@@SasankaMadawalagama thank you

[@aleeyafarishaidzwan5627]

What the title of this project

[@kasunrathnayaka6]

I just need pix4dmapper account for my final year undergraduate research..Can you help me plx

[@SasankaMadawalagama]

drop me an email: [e-mail] i ll provide you further instructions

[@dingding-lj7lq]

I want to your data,you are good .If you give me your data for my study, I will thinks a lot

[@Sarfraz_CHK]

thank you