The reason why this file should be backed up regularly is because if it gets corrupted, you cannot load your projects.

I’ve seen a couple of posts about this file corrupting, and although Terra may be the culprit there are other more likely reasons a file can become corrupted such as a power outage during a write operation, or a disk issue, so to be safe and not sorry, here’s how to protect the file.

The method we’ll use here is a PowerShell script that runs on a schedule in the background, it’ll create backup’s of Mission.DB and call them mission.db.backup.<Serial Number>, e.g. missions.db.backup.1

We’re going to need to create a new file and a new scheduled task, but before we get underway go and find your DJI Cache folder, make a note of the full path as we’ll refer to it in the rest of this article as <DJI Cache Folder>.

You can find the DJI Cache from within DJI Terra preferences as shown below:

Let’s create that file now, mash that Windows key and type in Notepad and press Enter

When it opens paste in the script from below, and after pasting you must change the DJICacheFolder variable on the first line, make sure it correctly reflects your DJI cache folder:

# Variables to control the script

$DJICacheFolder = “D:\PSTest“
$RemoveFilesOlderThan = “-7”

# Get the last backup sequence number so we can increment it
$currentBackupSerialNumber = Get-ChildItem -Path $DJICacheFolder -Filter mission.db.backup* | Sort-Object CreationTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 1
$nextBackupSerialNumber = $currentBackupSerialNumber.BaseName + “.” + ([int]$currentBackupSerialNumber.Extension.Split(‘.’)[1] + 1)

# Create a backup of the Mission.db file
Write-Host “Next serial = ” + $nextBackupSerialNumber
Copy-Item -Force -Path D:\mission.db -Destination $DJICacheFolder\$nextBackupSerialNumber

# Remove files older than X days old
Get-ChildItem -Path $DJICacheFolder -Filter mission.db.backup.* | Where-Object {($_.LastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddDays($RemoveFilesOlderThan)) } | Remove-Item

I’ve included the script as a screenshot just in case your web browser is changing anything when your copy the script above:

Now save the file to your DJI Cache and call it MissionDBBackup.PS1, before saving change Save as type to All Files (*.*), if you don’t do this the file will be appended with .TXT and things won’t work.

Check that the file is in the DJI cache folder, is correctly named and has the PS1 file extension not .TXT

Now open Microsoft Windows Task Scheduler, you can do this in a variety of ways, pressing the Windows key and typing Task Scheduler should get you there.

Once opened right-click the Task Scheduler Library text and select New Folder

Choose a name for the folder, anything from Custom to your company name

First select the new folder and then right-click and select Create Basic Task

The task needs a descriptive name, I’ve chosen DJI Terra – Backup Mission.db, once entered press Next

Keep the setting as they are, select Next

Same as above, don’t change anything simply select Next

We want to run a program when this scheduled task is told to run, so make sure Start a program is selected and select Next

For the Program/script text box enter the following: powershell.exe

For the Add arguments (optional) text box enter the following after replacing the <DJI Cache Folder> references to become the path to your DJI Cache: -ExecutionPolicy Bypass –File <DJI Cache Folder>\MissionDBBackup.PS1, when done select Next

Select that tick box to open the task’s properties and then select Finish

You should see the properties sheet appear showing the General tab, select Run whether user is logged on or not, this stops the PowerShell window appearing for a second when the task runs, select the Triggers tab after you are done

Click that trigger called Daily and select Edit

Now tick Repeat task every and choose 1 hour, or choose however long in-between backups you prefer, you could set this to every 12 hours so at least one backup is made each day if the computer is turned on. Tick Stop task if it runs longer than and set that to 30 minutes. Now select the Conditions tab

Untick Start the task only if the computer is on AC power which will let the backup run if you are using a laptop. Select the Settings tab.

Tick Run task as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed, this will trigger the backup straight away if you’ve left the computer off for a long time and turn it back on. You can set the other options as shown in the shot below, when done select OK

Because we set the task to run as non-interactive\hidden, we need to punch in some credentials for the task to run under, this should be your local account

You should see your new Task appear in the folder you created

To check this all works, right click your new task and select Run.

Do you see a new backup file in your DJI Cache folder? If so you’re good to go.

And to recover if mission.db does get corrupted or accidently deleted just make sure Terra is closed, rename mission.db to mission.db.faulty, and get one of the latest backups and rename it to mission.db, start Terra see what gives, replace with older backups until you get a non-corrupted copy of the file.

If it isn’t working things that can go wrong are:

• PowerShell cannot find the script, is it named correctly, is the file extension set to PS1?
• The script or the scheduled task cannot find the DJI Cache folder, do you have the path to your DJI Cache set correctly in the script and task?
• Worth checking that you have not typed something in wrongly somewhere, go back and double check what you entered

This is part 2 of a multi-part guide on Agisoft Metashape.

In Part 1 we talked about the competing professional photogrammetry products and their costs, now we’re going to go over the installation of Metashape on Microsoft Windows using the 30-day free trial, and in the following parts in this guide we’ll cast out and begin exploring the features.

The version of Metashape being installed is 2.1.0. I doubt major version changes in the future will change this installation workflow, which is pretty much a next, next, finish affair.

Required reading

A good rule-of-thumb on hardware requirements can be found here:

https://www.agisoft.com/downloads/system-requirements/

There are quite a few guides to check out, useful ones at this point would be:

Hardware recommendations

https://agisoft.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/31000161532-recommendations-when-choosing-new-hardware-for-metashape

GPU recommendations

https://agisoft.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/31000150614-general-information-related-to-gpu-processing

Memory recommendations

https://agisoft.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/31000157329-memory-requirements-for-processing-operations

I couldn’t find a Disk recommendations guide, it would no doubt talk about the importance of achieving high disk IOP’s, placing your project and photograph files onto solid state drives, either via SATA or the PCI-E based NVMe M.2, and putting multiple disks into a RAID 10 array for even better performance. If you turn disk caching on after adding a UPS, you can get a bit more performance out of the RAID array. Its worth noting that if you’re using RAID and turn on disk caching, if a power-cut takes place you will lose data and most likely corrupt the file system on the disk, hence a battery-powered UPS for an automated graceful shutdown before the UPS’s battery runs out. Most people won’t need that kind of setup for performance and reliability, so a slightly spec’d up mid-range PC will often do the job. If you centre your render engine around an expensive laptop, you’re going to be limited when it comes to upgrading in a year or two’s time, so go with a desktop PC straight away.

I recall that DJI Terra will not work without a GPU, whereas Metashape can operate purely on the CPU’s if you wanted it to, but your investment in a decent graphics card is very much key here, part of making sure your rendering platform (the hardware and software) or render engine is going to tear through the workload as quickly as possible. Maybe in another post in the series I’ll cover what an optimal setup would look like, but we’ll leave all that for now.

Installation

The installation is pretty straight forward, the only change I make is to the path for where the application will be installed. I like to change this from the Operating System (OS) drive to another drive, but depending on your setup you might have only a single disk so choose C: as the destination in this case, otherwise put the application on to a separate drive.

This is really just best practice to remove any possible disk read\write contention from the OS disk. I think that due to the way Metashape works, its hardly ever going to touch the disks to load part of itself in and out of memory, but, if you do run very low on memory you won’t want Metashape trying to do this while the OS is trying as well. Like I said, you cannot do this if your hardware setup is a laptop with a single disk drive.

Note: A new disk partition on the same disk the Operating System uses is not the same as creating a partition on another disk

Go download the installer, its sub 200MB in size and is in Microsoft Installer (MSI) form, support is there for macOS and Linux. That’s three key operating systems supported, unlike Terra or Pix4dMatic. If you want to run your render engine on Linux, you can, although I’m not sure if the graphics card drivers are going to be as good as they are for Windows.

https://www.agisoft.com/downloads/installer/

Launch the MSI to begin installation:

Select Next:

Accept license terms and Select Next:

Select Next

As I pointed out earlier, I like to install applications away from the OS disk as much as possible, the same can apply to Metashape, but if you hdo not have another disk go ahead and use the recommended path on C:, and Select Next, otherwise change to whatever drive letter you are using, example would be D:\Program Files\Agisoft\Metashape Pro, Select Next:

Select Install:

Accept the User Account Control prompt if one is produced by the operating system:

Once its done Select Finish:

Above: You’ll see it appear in the Start Menu if you have one, sorry if you’re on Windows 11, wait for Windows 12 when they re-introduce it:

Now launch Agisoft Metashape Professional.

You’ll see a command prompt appear, it’ll note your unlicensed state and shortly after Metashape will load in:

Now its time to activate the 30-day trial

Select Start a free 30-day trial and select OK, after a few moments the licensing will be completed and your trial will begin.

Next steps …

Install Datums \ Geoids

Now would be a good time to fetch a geodetic coordinate reference model, or Datum, that represents the coordinate system needed for your part of the world. Agisoft have quite a few available for us to download:

https://www.agisoft.com/downloads/geoids/

Browse the list and download the ones for your country. The installation instructions are quite clear, download a datum in to a folder called GEOIDS, which is located in the Metashape installation directory.

For the UK both the previous and current datums are available. Copy these to that GEOIDS folder and restart Metashape, you’ll then see them become available for selection when handling coordinate systems for your projects.

Above: The Geoid’s downloaded from Metashape and copied to the GEOIDS folder

Above: The Geoid showing up in-product as a selectable coordinate system

Configure Metashape

There isn’t much that needs configuring out of the box, I’ll post the tabs so you can see what’s there for version 2.1.0.

To take a look yourself open Metashape and go to Tools > Preferences:

Above: General Tab – Depending on how you roll, you can switch from dark to light theme for the application

Above: Appearance Tab – Most of the colours used throughout the interface and some of the UI settings can be modified here

Above: Advanced Tab – Make sure Store absolute image paths is not enabled, otherwise your project files will not be portable

Well that wraps up install and gave you a quick peek at some of the settings that can be changed, as I said before the product’s pretty much ready to use straight out of the box.

Useful links and resources

Here’s some links you might find useful while exploring Metashape and Datums.

Ordinance Survey Data – https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/

OSD OSTN15/OSGM15 – https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/ostn15-new-geoid-britain

OSD OSTN Update Tool (old OSTN02/OSGM02 to new OSTN15/OSGM15) – https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/gps/transformation/updateOSTN

OSD Grid InQuest II ETRS89\WGS84 to OSTN15\OSGM15 conversation software (Windows) – https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-government/tools-support/os-net/transformation

ECEF-LLA Converter – https://www.sysense.com/products/ecef_lla_converter/index.html

BNG\NGR to WGS84 Online Convertor – https://webapps.bgs.ac.uk/data/webservices/convertForm.cfm

Notes on coordinate system conversion – https://digimap.edina.ac.uk/help/gis/transformations/

Metashape Manual – https://www.agisoft.com/downloads/user-manuals/

Metashape Knowledgebase – https://agisoft.freshdesk.com/support/solutions

Metashape Tutorials – https://www.agisoft.com/support/tutorials/

Metashape YouTube channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPheXwPeFLnWHo8u4ksSH7w

In this multi-part guide we’re going to take a look at Agisoft’s Metashape, deep diving as much of the feature-set as I can fit in.

I’m Robert Marshall, and I work @ ElevatedVision as the Chief Pilot and founding director, with a hint of an IT background, and as of the date of this post I’ve been a UAV pilot for about 18 months.

These guides are my go at helping others that like me, began their journey needing to learn a lot very quickly, doing so by reading as much can be found online, swinging from one blog or video to another, hoovering up knowledge. I hope that this series adds to the volume of community knowledge already out there, and that there’s something in here that helps you along your way.

Some assumptions that are made for this guide are:
•You have used DJI Terra
•You haven’t used Agisoft’s Metashape but want to take a look
•You’ve gotten a smidgen of talent from using Terra, and feel ready to go to the next level

It is worth noting that as of the date of this guide, the version of Metashape that will be used is Version 2.1.0.

Apps with Skin In The Game

So far I’ve used two of the three products that I know are considered leading in the UAV industry for professional photogrammetry software, there are other apps out there such as Autodesk ReCap with its BIM features\functionality, Meshroom, and RealityCapture, some of which I will cover in another series.

Agisoft Metashape, DJI Terra and Pix4dMatic

In most cases if you have DJI equipment, especially a camera, then you received a key for a 6 month free trial of DJI Terra, and you most likely have some experience with it. What with Terra being given away like candy by DJI, I’ll assume that like me it was your first bit of professional photogrammetry software used to render 3D models, cloud points, surface models and Orthomosiac photographs.

I started out with DJI Terra after purchasing a DJI Matrice 300 RTK and Zenmuse P1 camera. Terra’s simplified interface and good-looking results make it very usable, and fundamentally it forms part of the DJI Hardware\Software eco-system. You can fly and render end-to-end using DJI technology, the documentation isn’t the greatest, the product gets regular updates, support is there on the DJI Forums if needed, and the price is competitive but it lacks broadness of functionality.

What it does really well is simplify the workflow needed to get results, appealing to the most basic of user who, with minimal hand-holding, can produce 3D models, Orthomosiacs, dense point clouds and surface (DSM) models with ease. Capable of producing good-looking results, with a small learning curve its a tool ideally suited to beginners, carrying most of what they need to do until they get to the point when they realise what’s being missed, what the others do, and in many cases do far better.

I understand that some of us don’t need to push Terra that much, all you need to do is forward on to customers the raw results Terra produces and in most cases its job done, without the need to take them into other products to tidy up or produce further materials, such as a contour map, or cleaning up cloud points to name but a few, and if that’s you then it may seem like there isn’t much point leaving Terra, but my opinion is that if you are in this business and want to be serious about it, you will want to plan to move off of Terra at some point, and into one of the bigger more feature-rich products, perhaps your license is coming up for renewal, now is a good time to consider the switch, preferably with some overlap for business continuity sake.

Pricing

There’s two pricing models, subscription-based licensing or a permanent license. I prefer to own a product in some circumstances, and this is one of them, I see it as a long-term investment in the business, and I don’t want the engine that underpins the entire business to have a kill-switch built into it. It leaves me able to plan-in the upgrade at a time that is right for the business, and if a feature in a newer release is important enough to need, I can simply bring forwards the upgrade.

Pricing is different between all three products for both types of license, if we look at the costs for a permanent license for each product its Pix4d, Terra and Metashape, if we look at it per year its Pix4d and Terra. Metashape doesn’t do a yearly license but the concept is there, in the form of charging for major milestone upgrades. They state that to go from version 1.x to version 2.x was supposed to be chargeable, but they recently allowed their 1.x customers to upgrade for free to 2.x, meaning no one was charged to get the latest release, so their investment in Metashape continued for another year free of charge with support and updates. I’m sure they will charge to go to 3.x but that should be another year off, I expect that they will charge at the next major milestone release, I do not know if they will charge the permanent license again or a discounted upgrade charge like DJI Terra.

Pix4dMatic

PIX4D is a family of products each with specific use-cases and license costs, the notable one being PIX4Dmatic, and PIX4DMapper, PIX4DSurvey, with perpetual and subscription-based licensing.

I have not used Pix4dMatic, I will give its trial a go at some point, I was introduced to their products by my DJI reseller and RAE, but since Terra was free for 6 months, I wasn’t ready or keen to look into it. When it came time to upgrade, I decided to go with Metashape with a bit of steer from another pilot. To be fair I could have gone either way, with Pix4d’s products being loaded with features, and the overlap is considerable in what they both do, but I liked the technical and very geeky aspects of Metashape, so went with that instead.

DJI Terra

DJI Terra is a great product, but I think its permanent license is way over-priced. Don’t even look at the price for the clustered version its eye-watering for what you get. The permanent license is over-priced because the feature-set is limited and as an application its not that versatile. It costs less than Pix4d Mapper and yet more than Metashape, while delivering less than either. There’s hardly any in-product editing, the workflow is on-rails and quite rigid, a project is often a one-time run-through affair, its great at what it does acting as a factory production line, put photo’s in, do some post-render prep work with GCP’s and Datums, configure the engine a little more, and let it render to finally manually export the results. For what it delivers the price for a permanent license is just unrealistic, I wonder if its priced so high because of the Electricity license that lights up parts of the product that remain dark with the Pro license. Aside from the Electricity edition and its value in that niche the energy industry, I think after a few posts of this guide you’re going to see how limited Terra is.

Agisoft Metashape

Agisoft offer Metashape, which can best be described as the swiss-army knife of photogrammetry software, lot of in-product tooling to cater for the phases in whatever workflow is taking place, most of it is exposed via Python and can be scripted, and it comes in two editions, with Professional being the one we’ll be focusing in on. Along the way we’ll also check out Agisoft’s Cloud service, that integrates with Metashape Professional.

I see that there is a good reason to use Terra, but its limitations overcome its usefulness over time, with exports being imported into other paid or free products to fill the gaps, and to choose between Metashape or Pix4dMatic, you are going to have to take a good look at their offerings both online (Cloud) and offline (Desktop), and make your own decision. The price shouldn’t put you off, consider how each fits within your company and existing\future workflows, its a big investment.

Next up in Part 2 we’ll begin the installation of Metashape before we get underway with an overview, we’ll look at the trial, install the product and do some post-installation configuration.