Grainy Footage. Even at low ISO.

Pedro.FR2K · Jan 13, 2020

Problem? Grainy footage.

Was unit in a crash? Yes. 3 actually.

First accident (July 2018): Bird strike, impact was at the rear left arm, landed safely.
Second accident (September 2019): Collided with a tree at full speed (after checking logs, found out that the impact was at around 63 kph / 39.1 mph) in sport mode, broke all propellers, still managed to land safely.
Third accident (1st January 2020): Took of in 2019 to record the fireworks, suddenly it started raining heavily. As soon as I felt a drop of rain I started to fly back ASAP, Took me 2 min to fly to my location but the drone was hit with lots of water for sure. I made sure to fly backwards to avoid water entering through the intake fanat the front. When I finally landed in 2020 the drone was soaking wet, removed battery as fast as I could and placed the drone in an AC heated room. Gimbal was also wet. A week later I made some test flights and it was all OK.

What have you tried so far? Reset settings to factory. Removing sharpness in custom settings. Praying.

What device are you using? Huawei P20.

What firmware are you running? Most recent (drone and controller).

What Go app version are you using? Most Recent.

Any modification? N/A

Did you change anything or install any apps? N/A

Do you have a video or pictures of the problem? Grainy Footage. (RAW video straight from SD card)

The video was recorded in 2.7K 30p, 100 ISO, shutter at 1/120, D-Log and custom settings 0, 0, +1.
I know the footage is slightly dark. I have tried removing the sharpness on custom settings. This didn't happen back then, just noticed this issue recently in post. Made some tests and it's still there. Grain is much more noticeable in darker areas of the video.
I'd be glad if someone knows what could be the problem here. Is it the settings? Is it the sensor going bad? I don't know.
This little beast has been flying every weekend since 2017 and it's still going strong! Well.. until now

Thanks in advance.

lannes · Jan 13, 2020

Have you tried another color setting to see if it's only d-log, which brings out the shadows but also causes noise in them.

Have you tried over exposing while using D-log , to balance out the shadow and highlights

Pedro.FR2K · Jan 14, 2020

lannes said:
Have you tried another color setting to see if it's only D-log, which brings out the shadows but also causes noise in them.

Have you tried over exposing while using D-log , to balance out the shadow and highlights

I've tried using other color profiles, but I really need D-Log in order to color grade better and match my other footage, since every camera in the studio is recording in S-Log2.

If I remove the color profile or over exposure, the noise is less noticeable but it's still there.

lannes · Jan 14, 2020

Pedro.FR2K said:
I've tried using other color profiles, but I really need D-Log in order to color grade better and match my other footage, since every camera in the studio is recording in S-Log2.

If I remove the color profile or over exposure, the noise is less noticeable but it's still there.

Is the AC a mavic pro ?

Pedro.FR2K · Jan 14, 2020

Yep, Mavic Pro. Bought it in February 2017.

Dave Maine · Jan 14, 2020

I have had a lot of problems getting good video from the dlog footage from my P4adv. I now use d-cinema and get much more predictable results.

In attempting to make d-log work I tried a number 10 at least LUts, as well as building several LUTS from scratch.

In general, you will always have big matching problems with imagery generated by professional cameras outputting S-log2 footage. They have generally far better sensors, and often much better lenses. DJI uses reasonable sensors and lenses, but to get equivalent image quality they need far better. You will have much better luck doing overall correction on the DJI imagery to mask it’t defects subjectively to help it blend better.

jimlips · Jan 14, 2020

It doesn't look grainy to me, it looks washed out. Very low contrast.

BEAUTIFUL footage, however! Where is that where they have the tiered levels (country/city)?

Pedro.FR2K · Jan 14, 2020

Dave Maine said:
I have had a lot of problems getting good video from the dlog footage from my P4adv. I now use d-cinema and get much more predictable results.

Thanks for the tip, will test it out today and check the results on post. I guess it's time for an upgrade though, this tiny little beast held strong through all these years, but it's giving me some problems lately.
Tons of conectivity issues, random GPS loss, lagging video feed, weird noises on the motors... Some of these problems probably came because of the accident I had just at the beggining of this year.

Pedro.FR2K · Jan 14, 2020

jimlips said:
It doesn't look grainy to me, it looks washed out. Very low contrast.

BEAUTIFUL footage, however! Where is that where they have the tiered levels (country/city)?

The video is washed out because of the D-Log color profile. Helps a lot when color grading and applying LUTs.

This was shot on the city of Amarante, Portugal.

Dave Maine · Jan 14, 2020

It is washed out. That is the look of log footage. It requires post processing or a LUT to bring it to viewable standards. Even after doing that, it will never match closely the S-log footage the writer is trying to compare it with, because of the differences between cameras.

As I indicated in my earlier post, I have attempted to intercut d-log footage from DJI with other footage (Nikon Z7) with no success. The base image from DJI, well corrected' doesn't happily intercut with it. The DJI image is over sharpened to a degree, and softening it a little helps, as would reducing the sharpness on the original shooting.

That all is the biggest advantage of the bigger drones. They have the lift capability to carry better cameras.