Does Mavic Shoot Video or Watercolor Paintings? Don’t settle. Get Involved!

[RitterRunkel]

Now that is good news for both us as punters and DJI as well as it is fixable without a recall. A software update costs DJI very little to distribute- but if the GPU needed replacing.....

Yes. And this should be told to the customers by DJI. Otherwise they have unnecessary cost and we customers risk to get back a unit with decentered lens. I got a nice lens, sharp from edge to edge and I'm not willing to end up with a partially soft image ... So I'd rather swap between PAL and NTSC each time my bird goes up ... rather than try RMA.

I simply don't believe this is a hardware issue. Somehow NR is applied too heavily or more than once. We still have to find out, what triggers this. Settings, style changes, exposure compensation ...

It's a difficult topic, since a moderate denoising seems to be common (= wanted by DJI) with sharpening set to 0 and most discussions end up confusing each other. Especially in bright light it seems difficult to tell what's normal. ^^

 

[photoboy]

I may add If you don’t have a 4k monitor to view the footage and only look at it on a 1080 display you will not see the water color issue AS bad it will be in the video but not as noticeable but the moment you view it on 2k or higher you see it loud and clear ! I have the iPad pro 12.9” and use a adaptor iReader USB SDHC SDXC Micro SD OTG Card Reader (amazon) to look at my footage from the card and this shows every little detail water color and all !

 

[frikovc]

Switching PAL/NTSC/PAL didn't work for me.. I did a series of tests just now. First I turn on, made the switch checked settings that d-log -1-1-1 was used. What I did noticed is that darker detailed parts of image gets muddy while the rest of the image is in focus and more crisp. I am using manual exposure and I expose for the sky so land objects are normally little to medium underexposed. Once the sun came over the clouds there was more light, image became lighter but also same muddy darker details (pine trees) were in better quality but still little muddy.
At the end of testing I tried in same scene with same exposure for d-log -1-1-1 then d-cinelike -3-2-1 and it got even worse, then I set it to none 0 0 0 and the image was without muddy parts and there was too much saturation and contrast. After that I did a switch again and made test with d-log -1-1-1 on same scene and the muddiness was still there.

It appears that if image is underexposed and in d-log or d-cinelike then it will muddy shady areas, switching between d-log -1-1-1 to d-cinelike -3-2-1 made things worse. My theory is that if there is not enough of contrast to the image the compression of video will eat details away.

Next test I will do with d-cinelike -1-1-1 to see if this sharpness settings has issues have any affect on muddiness and test none with less saturation and contrast.

Images with muddy issues



Image with settings set to none 0 0 0 - much better although underexposed (to match same exposure as with d-log -1-1-1) with too much contrast and saturation

 

[photoboy]

Switching PAL/NTSC/PAL didn't work for me.. I did a series of tests just now. First I turn on, made the switch checked settings that d-log -1-1-1 was used. What I did noticed is that darker detailed parts of image gets muddy while the rest of the image is in focus and more crisp. I am using manual exposure and I expose for the sky so land objects are normally little to medium underexposed. Once the sun came over the clouds there was more light, image became lighter but also same muddy darker details (pine trees) were in better quality but still little muddy.
At the end of testing I tried in same scene with same exposure for d-log -1-1-1 then d-cinelike -3-2-1 and it got even worse, then I set it to none 0 0 0 and the image was without muddy parts and there was too much saturation and contrast. After that I did a switch again and made test with d-log -1-1-1 on same scene and the muddiness was still there.

It appears that if image is underexposed and in d-log or d-cinelike then it will muddy shady areas, switching between d-log -1-1-1 to d-cinelike -3-2-1 made things worse. My theory is that if there is not enough of contrast to the image the compression of video will eat details away.

Next test I will do with d-cinelike -1-1-1 to see if this sharpness settings has issues have any affect on muddiness and test none with less saturation and contrast.

Images with muddy issues
View attachment 6631
View attachment 6632

Image with settings set to none 0 0 0 - much better although underexposed (to match same exposure as with d-log -1-1-1) with too much contrast and saturation
View attachment 6633

Try D-cin +0+0+0 the moment you go to neg- @ any value it triggers the NR back. You must keep the camera on during the switch as it resets its self back to the issue after you power off and back on… you also have to re set your color profile as it resets back to normal color thats why you see the extra saturation

 

[jjmucker]

Tried again today. Went from PAL - NTSC - PAL and everything is great. Hard to say if this works or it was just a fluke because i dont always get the dreaded water colour issue so cant be sure if doing this made it great or it would already have been great regardless, but i'll be doing this from now on anyways to be safe. I did have it at +1 sharpen though and its actually too sharp haha, but its better than that NR nonsense. I'll switch back to 0-0-0 and try a few more. I seem to spend more time "testing" than actually enjoying the little thing

 

[alirz]

Here is my example. Shows both Water paint effect and the focus issues i have with videos.. notice at 8 second mark in the video, camera tries to focus, gets sharp focus for like half a second and then loses it...
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4883446/focus_problem.mp4

 

[jjmucker]

Can also confirm that a camera switch to PAL -NTSC -PAL doesn't NOT reset your profile. I used Cinefilm +1 0 0 and after switching it, it was still the same.

 

[frikovc]

Sometimes during changing between cinelike, dlog and none from 0 0 0 to other values like -1-1-1 and -3-2-1 or others and back again, sometimes if it is displayed at 0 and I want set it to -1 at one click it jumps to -2. I wonder if it displays different value than it actually shows, I mean different between cinelike, dlog and none. This did happen to me at least three times today. Just stating it if someone else connects the dots.

 

[Grey Wolf]

Always use ND filters and if you are shooting 30p, use a shutter speed of only 60fps.
24p use 48 fps etc.
Always shoot in 4K to get the maximum quality. Buy a sunshade for the lens as well.
I have no issues at all with mine, mind you I only got it two weeks ago after waiting since mid October, so I might have received a newer upgraded version.

 

[jjmucker]

Always use ND filters and if you are shooting 30p, use a shutter speed of only 60fps.
24p use 48 fps etc.
Always shoot in 4K to get the maximum quality. Buy a sunshade for the lens as well.
I have no issues at all with mine, mind you I only got it two weeks ago after waiting since mid October, so I might have received a newer upgraded version.

All of that is good tips mate but none of that helps this issue some users are experiencing.

 

[jjmucker]

Sometimes during changing between cinelike, dlog and none from 0 0 0 to other values like -1-1-1 and -3-2-1 or others and back again, sometimes if it is displayed at 0 and I want set it to -1 at one click it jumps to -2. I wonder if it displays different value than it actually shows, I mean different between cinelike, dlog and none. This did happen to me at least three times today. Just stating it if someone else connects the dots.

Even if that were the case mate. -3 -3 -3 shouldn't be as bad as the image I posted a few pages back.

 

[Grey Wolf]

All of that is good tips mate but none of that helps this issue some users are experiencing.

On the contrary Monsieur!
If you follow my guidelines, you should NOT have the perceived issues you are having!

 

[jjmucker]

What guide lines? I always use nd filters and shoot at the appropriate shutter speeds. I know what I'm doing in this regards. I don't use a sun shade as I sometimes like the lens flare, none of that stops the water colour effect fella.

 

[alirz]

ND filters have nothing to do with the water effect issue that the Mavic has...This horrible issue is due to the encoding and compression algorithm DJI uses for the mavic.

 

[photoboy]

I have used ND filters with and without HAS NO relations to the Water Color issue !!! THIS IS A DJI NR ISSUE !

 

[Owen Manderfield]

I have to say that since my original PAL/NTSC "fix" I have left my colour profile as None and the other settings at 0,0,0.

The video is oversaturated and a tad over sharpened for my taste but I can live with that for now. I want to see if I can keep things working for a significant period of time. As others have said here, we don't know what triggers this digital artefact to kick in. I'm almost frightened to fiddle with anything that makes it return!

You would think that turning saturation/sharpness down to -ve numbers would reduce the amount of processing the encoder does - but some testers here have found the effect is worsened.

It's almost like the camera sensor chip has some inbuilt video processing that the other software tries to "undo" rather later rather than processing the original raw.

I'm going to try another night-time flight later to see if it was this that make it all go so horribly wrong.

Sent from my iPad using MavicPilots

 

[photoboy]

I have to say that since my original PAL/NTSC "fix" I have left my colour profile as None and the other settings at 0,0,0.

The video is oversaturated and a tad over sharpened for my taste but I can live with that for now. I want to see if I can keep things working for a significant period of time. As others have said here, we don't know what triggers this digital artefact to kick in. I'm almost frightened to fiddle with anything that makes it return!

You would think that turning saturation/sharpness down to -ve numbers would reduce the amount of processing the encoder does - but some testers here have found the effect is worsened.

It's almost like the camera sensor chip has some inbuilt video processing that the other software tries to "undo" rather later rather than processing the original raw.

I'm going to try another night-time flight later to see if it was this that make it all go so horribly wrong.

Sent from my iPad using MavicPilots

Guys when you do the switch it “COLD RESETS “ the camera and changes the profile to the generic settings “normal mode” If you had your settings set to D-log or D-cin that witch the saturation is low it changes back to the normal settings that witch saturation is kinda high. This is probably where your getting the color change. You have to set it back to the setting you had before as it will not go back to the water color (NR) mode until you power down. Trust me, I have done every setting under the SUN ! You can also record while switching profiles as you recored. You can go through every single profile and add ++++ sharpness ——- subtract it same for contrast and saturation all while recording and after or before the cold reset… I hope this helps !

 

[jjmucker]

Guys when you do the switch it “COLD RESETS “ the camera and changes the profile to the generic settings “normal mode” If you had your settings set to D-log or D-cin that witch the saturation is low it changes back to the normal settings that witch saturation is kinda high. This is probably where your getting the color change. You have to set it back to the setting you had before as it will not go back to the water color (NR) mode until you power down. Trust me, I have done every setting under the SUN ! You can also record while switching profiles as you recored. You can go through every single profile and add ++++ sharpness ——- subtract it same for contrast and saturation all while recording and after or before the cold reset… I hope this helps !

I switched from pal to ntsc then back to
Pal and it didn't change my settings bud. Still have -1 and the profile i had it on before switching.

 

[photoboy]

well mine goes to 000 and normal setting profile Agin if you start messing with the sharping after reset and go into the -1 or -2 or -3 it will re-instate the water color issue …..keep it at +0+0+0

 

[jjmucker]

Here is my example. Shows both Water paint effect and the focus issues i have with videos.. notice at 8 second mark in the video, camera tries to focus, gets sharp focus for like half a second and then loses it...
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4883446/focus_problem.mp4

****. Ive never seen it do that before. Actually get sharp in real time like that and go back to mush