Video noise/grain

ondrejsustik · Nov 2, 2017

Hi guys,

I filmed a little clip, and I just started editing it tonight, and I noticed an awful amount of grain, or whatever it is. This is completely ruining my footage. I filmed a few videos before, but this never happened to me.

I'm not usually editing 4k videos, as my computer is not fast enough, but I wanted to do it on this one.

Here's the link to the video
Is there anything I can do, to make this look better? Is it a wrong camera setting on my mavic?

Thank you for any help!

Chirp · Nov 2, 2017

ondrejsustik said:
Hi guys,

I filmed a little clip, and I just started editing it tonight, and I noticed an awful amount of grain, or whatever it is. This is completely ruining my footage. I filmed a few videos before, but this never happened to me.

I'm not usually editing 4k videos, as my computer is not fast enough, but I wanted to do it on this one.

Here's the link to the video

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Is there anything I can do, to make this look better? Is it a wrong camera setting on my mavic?

Thank you for any help!

Check your film speed. It's under ISO. It looks like you have it set pretty high.

You'll get the best results (clearest, least grain) at 100 ISO but you will need lots of bright sun for that.

When you start getting above 400 ISO or so you will start to get grain but you will get better exposure at low light.

It that is the case maybe try setting it on Automatic.

ondrejsustik · Nov 2, 2017

Thank you for your reply! The weird thing is, I'm filming in manual mode, and I'm always trying to film with the iso set to 100, unless it's really dark. I'm not completely sure, but I believe the iso was set to 100 while filming these clips.

Chirp · Nov 8, 2017

ondrejsustik said:
Thank you for your reply! The weird thing is, I'm filming in manual mode, and I'm always trying to film with the iso set to 100, unless it's really dark. I'm not completely sure, but I believe the iso was set to 100 while filming these clips.

I watched your movies again and it seems like they may be out of focus. I could be wrong.
There are 2 focus modes. Auto and Manual.
Here are a couple photos showing the difference.
Since scenery is what we photograph most it is usually best to set the camera to Auto Mode and point the camera to something in the distance and tap on the center of the screen before you take off.

mikeGR · Nov 9, 2017

Chirp said:
I watched your movies again and it seems like they may be out of focus. I could be wrong.
There are 2 focus modes. Auto and Manual.
Here are a couple photos showing the difference.
Since scenery is what we photograph most it is usually best to set the camera to Auto Mode and point the camera to something in the distance and tap on the center of the screen before you take off.

View attachment 24565 View attachment 24566

Agree that it's best to set to Auto, however I would not recommend touching the screen to focus before take-off. I'd rather focus while in-flight, as during take-off there might be an object in front of the drone and by touching the screen you will lock the focus on that object, thus all the subsequent footage comes in blurry...

As a best practice, I have assigned C2 for auto-focus and I press it every time before taking a photograph or record video. This is a foolproof way of making sure all your shots will be in focus.

Chirp · Nov 9, 2017

mikeGR said:
however I would not recommend touching the screen to focus before take-off. I'd rather focus while in-flight,

As a best practice, I have assigned C2 for auto-focus and I press it every time before taking a photograph or record video. This is a foolproof way of making sure all your shots will be in focus.

Yes. That makes sense. I did say 'focus on something in the distance' to avoid that problem. You must point at something far away.

mikeGR · Nov 9, 2017

Chirp said:
Yes. That makes sense. I did say 'focus on something in the distance' to avoid that problem. You must point at something far away.

That's right, just clarifying for the novices out there who wouldn't read your sentence with full attention; been there myself unfortunately so I learned the hard way...

Callum · Nov 9, 2017

What's your sharpness set at? I got similar results with anything below +1.

Video looks a bit jumpy in places, was the original files like that before editing? Same with noise?
What software are you using?

Personally I've found best results at 2.7k although have seen some stunning results in 4k also.

Davzone · Nov 9, 2017

This looks like a lot of digital sharpness applied either on the drone or in post.
Noise is fine.

Shawn3D · May 26, 2018

Rather film in 2.7K as 4k has the compression blocking/arefacts. So yes, your issue is the +1 sharpness parameter, however it’s better to have +1 than 0 which will cause blurry darks and green. The +1 will add noise but It’s much better to have that picture info and then reverse engineer it to a softer cleaner look. You can denoising in edit with software. Here’s a tutorial however it does involve getting other software which is well worth it for future use...