Watercolour no more.

[Ziggy01]

Glad this is now becoming common knowledge and people are moving away from taking the advice of Youtube "experts".

I shoot in None 0/0/0 30fps and have no watercolor issues.

Well, at 0 sharpness you are engaging the mavics nr, so it probably isn't as clean as it could be.

 

[AyeYo]

Well, at 0 sharpness you are engaging the mavics nr, so it probably isn't as clean as it could be.

It's also not as noisy as +1 sharpness. You only need positive sharpness when shooting the useless log and semi-log profiles (d-log and d-cinelike) or using reduced contrast and/or saturation. If everything is left at 0 and profile is None, there's no reason to shoot positive sharpness. This was tested in the other watercolor thread.

 

[Ziggy01]

I'd still prefer to apply my own nr over the mavics. At 0, that's what you're getting.

 

[AyeYo]

I'd still prefer to apply my own nr over the mavics. At 0, that's what you're getting.

How have you verified this?

 

[Ziggy01]

Set the mavic on a stable surface, shoot the scene in both 0 and 1, check the detail on a decent monitor. 0 is smudgy. 1 is detailed but noisy (as expected. Small sensor, no nr) and -1 and 2 are simply terrible).

The results speak for themselves. The choice is:
Sharpen video that is corrupted (albeit marginally) by Mavic's dreadful NR, or;
Use professional (?) NR in post on slightly noisy but untainted video.

I choose the latter, but whatever works for you.

 

[stratos]

Yeah, I had confirmed it many times before. But definitely, I dont know who came with the idea of going -1 or even -2 on sharpness.
As soon as I did that my footage was mushy and crappy. So I went back and tried with sharpness at 0 and then jump it to +1, there is a world of difference.

 

[Ziggy01]

Yeah, I had confirmed it many times before. But definitely, I dont know who came with the idea of going -1 or even -2 on sharpness.
As soon as I did that my footage was mushy and crappy. So I went back and tried with sharpness at 0 and then jump it to +1, there is a world of difference.

It's incredible, isn't it? Like walking out of mudworld into the Swiss alps.
DaVinci grade and a bit of NR and it simply shines.

 

[Ziggy01]

And all of that has nothing to do with the digital world. Those specs are for analog broadcasting only.

I still don't get why there is a pal/ntsc switch at all in this digital cam.

It does seem peculiar.

Why not just have variable frame rates and that's it?

No doubt they felt that this would be simpler for pedestrians but judging by threads such as this, it would appear to have the opposite effect.

 

[grorr76]

And all of that has nothing to do with the digital world. Those specs are for analog broadcasting only.

I still don't get why there is a pal/ntsc switch at all in this digital cam.

fact is US TV still broadcast in 30fps which is called nTSC and the rest in 25 which is called pal. Yes it refers to the analogue world but its only a term. Those frame rates are still standards as is 24fps for cinema and occasionally that standard is broken the hobbit had a high frame rate version which was 60fps.

 

[Ziggy01]

30fps which is called nuts

A truer phrase never spoken.

 

[MrMavic]

It's also not as noisy as +1 sharpness. You only need positive sharpness when shooting the useless log and semi-log profiles (d-log and d-cinelike) or using reduced contrast and/or saturation. If everything is left at 0 and profile is None, there's no reason to shoot positive sharpness. This was tested in the other watercolor thread.

Wrong. I tried 0 0 0 and had big gobs of mush. Changed to +1 0 0 and it fixed it.

 

[stratos]

Wrong. I tried 0 0 0 and had big gobs of mush. Changed to +1 0 0 and it fixed it.

0,0,0 is not "That" bad, I say its ok, but you can definitely see the blobs everywhere.

I have been using +1 -1 0, it looks that the setting increase the dynamic range (untested)

 

[Ziggy01]

0,0,0 is not "That" bad, I say its ok, but you can definitely see the blobs everywhere.

I have been using +1 -1 0, it looks that the setting increase the dynamic range (untested)

If you're seeing "blobs", you're probably seeing DJI NR.

...and nobody wants to see that.

 

[AyeYo]

Set the mavic on a stable surface, shoot the scene in both 0 and 1, check the detail on a decent monitor. 0 is smudgy. 1 is detailed but noisy (as expected. Small sensor, no nr) and -1 and 2 are simply terrible).

The results speak for themselves. The choice is:
Sharpen video that is corrupted (albeit marginally) by Mavic's dreadful NR, or;
Use professional (?) NR in post on slightly noisy but untainted video.

I choose the latter, but whatever works for you.

That's hardly scientific or a verification of the actual software code. Plenty of people are shooting 0 sharpness without excessive noise reduction issues. I agree that negative sharpness is crazy, but for well-lit scenes with good contrast, there's no reason to just add noise with positive sharpness.

 

[AyeYo]

Wrong. I tried 0 0 0 and had big gobs of mush. Changed to +1 0 0 and it fixed it.

0,0,0 with what other settings?

 

[Ziggy01]

That's hardly scientific or a verification of the actual software code. Plenty of people are shooting 0 sharpness without excessive noise reduction issues. I agree that negative sharpness is crazy, but for well-lit scenes with good contrast, there's no reason to just add noise with positive sharpness.

I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty familiar with the smearing that comes from poor N.R. Given that all things are equal and given the 7 options for the sharpness setting and given that it is generally agreed that the only the values of 0 or 1 produce an image that is not either unusably noisy or unusably smeary and given that only one of those options doesn't display noticeable N.R smearing, that's the option that I prefer.

I agree that neither image is optimal but I prefer digital noise to digital smearing. Only one of those is somewhat controllable in post.

 

[Kingkong]

Exactly, there is a lot of misinformation in this thread about PAL/NTSC. The analog broadcasting standard has nothing in common with the Mavic settings. It is solely a fps question.

As for the Mavic H264 encoder and its resulting flicker, here's a quote from a post in the r/VideoEditing subreddit

Thanks for posting. I.ve had the same flickering and never understood why

 

[Strafe1]

Set the mavic on a stable surface, shoot the scene in both 0 and 1, check the detail on a decent monitor. 0 is smudgy. 1 is detailed but noisy (as expected. Small sensor, no nr) and -1 and 2 are simply terrible).

The results speak for themselves. The choice is:
Sharpen video that is corrupted (albeit marginally) by Mavic's dreadful NR, or;
Use professional (?) NR in post on slightly noisy but untainted video.

I choose the latter, but whatever works for you.

I think we have to take into account that there is a variation among Mavics. The settings that work for one person may be unusable for another. There are tons of great video online shot with softer settings. My Mavic shoots its best video at -1, 0, 0 in D-Cinelike. There really is no single correct setting....it depends not only on the scene, but really the individual Mavic. It would seem that the processing algorithm is variable between Mavs just like the FW updates are.

 

[beatnik]

That is really good information and analysis. Nowhere before have I seen that DJI is introducing noise reduction into a sharpness setting. Almost every other camera I've ever encountered or TV for that matter, simply artificially increased detail with the sharpening setting and reducing it to the lowest setting resulting in a native sensor picture with no after the fact processing. But adding noise reduction (ie blurring) to the settings in the sharpness less than +1 is totally non-intuitive. If true, glad I read this. The examples certainly look like noise reduction processing. What else could explain the "reduce noise" looking effect at 0 and -1?

 

[frequentflyer]

Yes I've increased sharpness to +1 and shoot at 2.7k. No need for 4k. Computer can't handle it and export to 1080p for a great detailed picture quality