Color mode & Dynamic Range

[AIRSPACE]

Some pearls of information for pilots here in this thread. Great video Andrei you are very knowledge on the subject and it is great to hear expert opinions. I am watching your video now Brian I am interested as most people tend to suggest d-cine, none or art.

 

[Raptorman0909]

OK, second video up featuring the D-log color profile.

Brian

 

[SkyOhio]

OK, second video up featuring the D-log color profile.

Brian

Thank you for these videos Brian. Some of the subject matter goes over my head, but I can at least appreciate the recommendations.

Is there any chance the problems you are seeing could be the result of a malfunction with your particular P4P? Or is this completely software related? Thanks

 

[Dronefriend]

Brian, these are very informative videos. Thank you for your work! However, if you have the time and you're keen to find out yourself, could you possibly redo the first test of D-Cinelike, None and Art, using -2/0/0?

That way we would see which of these modes renders the most dynamic range. The clipping in your previous videos was due to Contrast being -2.

You could of course put Saturation to whatever you would like, in fact it would be very interesting to see the difference in color spectrum from -2 to 0, but Contrast should stay at 0, if I have understood the matter correctly.

Adjusting contrast will, similiarly to using d-log, put the recorded footage into a narrower dynamic range, with the same gamma curve, resulting in less possible gradiation and DR in the spectrum available to us. I think the actual info degrades with about 8% per stop from 0 -> -3.

 

[Raptorman0909]

Brian, these are very informative videos. Thank you for your work! However, if you have the time and you're keen to find out yourself, could you possibly redo the first test of D-Cinelike, None and Art, using -2/0/0?

That way we would see which of these modes renders the most dynamic range. The clipping in your previous videos was due to Contrast being -2.

You could of course put Saturation to whatever you would like, in fact it would be very interesting to see the difference in color spectrum from -2 to 0, but Contrast should stay at 0, if I have understood the matter correctly.

Adjusting contrast will, similiarly to using d-log, put the recorded footage into a narrower dynamic range, with the same gamma curve, resulting in less possible gradiation and DR in the spectrum available to us. I think the actual info degrades with about 8% per stop from 0 -> -3.

Yeah, I plan to reevaluate with the custom setting for contrast set to zero to eliminate that as a culpret. I won't be able to do it for a bit as I have to return my P4P due to the gimbal problem. I should have a replacement Friday but the weather's not looking good for a bit.

And also keep an eye out for the testing that Andrei is doing -- I'd like to think w're both working to find the best settings and understand what's going on.


Brian

 

[Tomas Wangen]

I was editing my first footage tonight and was not able to notice similar pulsing in the source-material. I shot in h265, 4k / 30 and both waveform scope and parade as well as the actual video showed no signs of pulsing. However, when I exported to lower-bitrate h264 i did get similar pulsing in scenes with high contrast (especially noticable around sunbeams through trees).

Did you shoot in h264? Could you perhaps retry with h265 and see if the problem goes away / is reduced.

(for reference, I transcoded the x265 to Prores using ffmpeg to be able to edit in Resolve)

Final note, as I have only about 20 minutes of footage, I might have been just lucky so far..

OK, second video up featuring the D-log color profile.

Brian

 

[Raptorman0909]

This pulsing effect is not new to the P4P as it is ever present in my Inspire 1 Pro with X5 camera. Also note that the magnitude of this pulsing is dependent on the scene and sometimes it's barely noticeable while at other times it hits you in the face with a baseball bat. I have more experience with the I1 and with it I find that the video out of the camera has only mild flickering, but after applying curves or other contrast stretching tools the flickering gets a lot worse. It appears that pretty much all the video is effected but that the effect is most noticeable in shadow detail and particularly after contrast stretching.


Brian

 

[Dronefriend]

I look forward to Andreis tests as well. I will be getting my own P4P on Friday as well, will be fun to do some testings myself. Sold my P3S in August, feels like a great upgrade. Did you order ND filter to combine with the aperture control? I preordered an ND8 from DJI.

 

[Raptorman0909]

I look forward to Andreis tests as well. I will be getting my own P4P on Friday as well, will be fun to do some testings myself. Sold my P3S in August, feels like a great upgrade. Did you order ND filter to combine with the aperture control? I preordered an ND8 from DJI.

Yeah, I need to get an ND8 and ND16 and a couple more of the high capacity batteries and I should be good.


Brian

 

[Roamer105]

Great stuff! Thank you for sharing.
I have been using dlog pretty much for all my shots. I do not have a P4P yet, so my observations are using a P3P. I found that among others, dlog reduces the amount of noise in the video and the attached series of screen shots will demonstrate just how much mid-range detail is enhanced by using dlog along with the DJI provided LUT to undo the dlog compression and subsequently grading the video. The attached examples show 2 clips taken within a minute of each other in very bright late morning light using UHD (2160p) at 24fps. I used no filters. The first clip is with Color:None, Mode:None and the second is with Color: Dlog, Mode:None. I created 6 screen shots with both clips in Adobe Premiere Pro. The first two show the clips ungraded and the next two graded. The last two show a section of each blown up to 400% to demonstrate the effect of using dlog on difficult lighted areas.

 

[Dronefriend]

Great stuff! Thank you for sharing.
I have been using dlog pretty much for all my shots. I do not have a P4P yet, so my observations are using a P3P. I found that among others, dlog reduces the amount of noise in the video and the attached series of screen shots will demonstrate just how much mid-range detail is enhanced by using dlog along with the DJI provided LUT to undo the dlog compression and subsequently grading the video. The attached examples show 2 clips taken within a minute of each other in very bright late morning light using UHD (2160p) at 24fps. I used no filters. The first clip is with Color:None, Mode:None and the second is with Color: Dlog, Mode:None. I created 6 screen shots with both clips in Adobe Premiere Pro. The first two show the clips ungraded and the next two graded. The last two show a section of each blown up to 400% to demonstrate the effect of using dlog on difficult lighted areas.


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Thanks for the effort.

I think your graded None shot is the superior one, looking at the curves and histograms and the picture. They are similiar, but the None is better IMO. In the 400% crop I can see a minor difference between d-log and None, but none of them is better than the other. They are equally bad, not because of your photographer and editing skills but because of limitations of the P3P camera.

 

[Kevin Paluch]

Thanks. That's a good word. Thanks for the speeding up the learning curve.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

 

[yannick_c]

From a video found on youtube shot in DLog 0,-2,-2 with the P4Pro

It's bad, blown highlights at 65

source here (not mine) : youtube video
original videos here : P4P - Google Drive

 

[AIRSPACE]

Yeah, I plan to reevaluate with the custom setting for contrast set to zero to eliminate that as a culpret. I won't be able to do it for a bit as I have to return my P4P due to the gimbal problem. I should have a replacement Friday but the weather's not looking good for a bit.

And also keep an eye out for the testing that Andrei is doing -- I'd like to think w're both working to find the best settings and understand what's going on.


Brian

Just wondering what was wrong with the gimbal on your P4 Pro Brian?

 

[tml4191]

Just wondering what was wrong with the gimbal on your P4 Pro Brian?

Wait what gimbal problem?

Sent from my HD900 using PhantomPilots mobile app

 

[tml4191]

OK, second video up featuring the D-log color profile.

Brian

Thank you raptorman for taking the time to explain it. This needs to be sent to DJI.

Sent from my HD900 using PhantomPilots mobile app

 

[AIRSPACE]

Wait what gimbal problem?

Sent from my HD900 using PhantomPilots mobile app

His post I quoted mentioned something about returning his P4P for a gimbal issue..

 

[mikesher]

I shot some video in D-Log over the weekend, and experienced the same issue that Brian described. It looks terrible.

 

[yannick_c]

Same thing on the D-Log mode from the Mavic. Can't say if it's the same prob on the X5, but DJI killed DLog mode months ago, it's not a new thing but what can we do so they make a real Log profile?

 

[Tomas Wangen]

From a video found on youtube shot in DLog 0,-2,-2 with the P4Pro

It's bad, blown highlights at 65

source here (not mine) : youtube video
original videos here : P4P - Google Drive

Here you can clearly see what disasterous results you get when you try to reintroduce contrast and, in particular, color in the dlog / low saturation / low contrast combo.

I did this mistake myself with my old Phantom 4 after following "best image quality" advice (dlog -3 -3 -3) and had to throw away a whole days footage.

Again, until Dji hopefully corrects their dlog implementation, stick to "none" with at most minimal adjustments to sharpness only.