Flat Video Color

[Auggie]

I flew my second session ever yesterday and I finally took some videos and photos. I noticed after downloading them (Final Cut Pro and iMovie) that the colors of the videos looked pretty flat/washed out to me, example attached:



I had a DJI ND16 filter (the histogram showed this provided the most even distribution) installed, and video settings (these were already set and I didn't change them prior to filming) were:

Video Size: 4K Full FOV/30fps
White Balance: Sunny
Style: Landscape
Color: DLog-M
Camera Video Coding: H.265

I also took a still photograph and colors seem to be better overall than the videos:



Photo settings (untouched by me) were set to Auto.

Now are the flat colors of the videos due to recording in 10-bit H.265 and/or color profile of DLog-M and it's up to editing to adjust the colors?

I haven't dabbled in any video editing in almost 20 years so I'm not familiar with adjusting colors, which I would be doing in Final Cut Pro or iMovie for now as I'm more familiar with those editors, but I also have Adobe Premiere which I will some day tackle learning its use...

 

[slup]

...I noticed after downloading them... that the colors of the videos looked pretty flat/washed out to me

It's due to that you use D-log ...

In D-Log, dynamic range and color gamut recorded by the sensor is significantly expanded. Since a much larger dynamic range has been compressed down to 8 bit, the image shown on a common screen (sRGB or Rec. 709) may seem to be flat, which is not suitable for direct viewing. As a result, it's required that you correct and grade the footage to create a pleasing look. During the grading process, you can selectively preserve or compress the tones that interest you most.

 

[Fizzbang]

It just needs colour grading and/or apply a LUT.
Look up Davinci Resolve on the internet.

 

[Auggie]

It just needs colour grading and/or apply a LUT.
Look up Davinci Resolve on the internet.

Yea, I just came across suggestions for Resolve, the free version...

 

[boblui]

You may want to reconsider whether to go down the path of using log profile. The reports I have seen plus my own experience says that there is little to gain. Here is one of the reports : Mavic 2 Pro Normal vs DLOG

 

[Auggie]

You may want to reconsider whether to go down the path of using log profile. The reports I have seen plus my own experience says that there is little to gain. Here is one of the reports : Mavic 2 Pro Normal vs DLOG

Wow, what an eye-opener. It makes sense that the 100Mbs write speed of the M2P requires significant compression of the larger 10-bit image data that much of it is tossed/interpolated to squeeze into the restrictive data pipe bandwidth to the MicroSD card.

I'm a believer and switching away from 10-bit/DLog-M...