P4 Recording Quality

[Jblunt90]

I was out filming yesterday and once i got home put the SD card into my laptop (high speed good quality card) and was very disappointed with the video quality.

It looks very grainy and pixely. Can anyone help me with this? I was shooting in 4K

Does anyone know whether i should be shooting in PAL or NTSC?

Can anyone just provide me with some basic decent settings please.
Thank You!

 

[Erised]

If you are in North America it's NTSC. I looked at your video and it looks real good, it may be that your computer or tablet can't play this resolution.

 

[r62ewa]

I have a custom built computer that can easily play 4k video and a 28" UHD 4k monitor and when I play my videos from my SD card full screen on my monitor it looks terrible, which I cannot understand why. I play the same video on my Windows Surface Pro 4 and the videos look great, they even look better if I shrink the window size on my 4k monitor and don't play full screen. If I only ever saw my video on my 4k monitor full screen I'd say there was something wrong with the Phantom's camera.

Maybe our issue is the same and I wish there was someone who could explain it to me, seems like this 4k monitor is a waste of money. I have it on the highest recommended resolution as well with the highest refresh rate.

 

[Fester]

Can't speak from my own experience yet, but just saw a thread on the DJI Forum that might be helpful...
Very poor quality in 4k video !

 

[tchit]

I have a custom built computer that can easily play 4k video and a 28" UHD 4k monitor and when I play my videos from my SD card full screen on my monitor it looks terrible, which I cannot understand why. I play the same video on my Windows Surface Pro 4 and the videos look great, they even look better if I shrink the window size on my 4k monitor and don't play full screen. If I only ever saw my video on my 4k monitor full screen I'd say there was something wrong with the Phantom's camera.

Maybe our issue is the same and I wish there was someone who could explain it to me, seems like this 4k monitor is a waste of money. I have it on the highest recommended resolution as well with the highest refresh rate.

Hi,
It's because "4K" is the number of pixels, not the overall quality. There are other parameters like the bitrate of your video, the compression, the captor, etc. The P4 video chip is not very advanced, the quality is far from videos from the iPhone 6s for example. That's why the Phantom line of products is not that expensive.
I shoot 4K because I think that when it's converted to 1080 afterwards, it looks better than shooting in 1080 directly. But watching your P4 4K video full screen on a 4K monitor is going to be disappointing. You'd need a 3000$ camera (and a drone that can carry it) if you want really better quality. A GoPro camera also can do better quality. That's why it's that expensive and bigger than the tiny P4 camera.
Anyway, the overall Phantom 4 image quality is good enough for YouTube or broadcast HD television. Just don't watch your videos in the original size (or watch your screen from a nice distance!)

 

[r62ewa]

Hi,
It's because "4K" is the number of pixels, not the overall quality. There are other parameters like the bitrate of your video, the compression, the captor, etc. The P4 video chip is not very advanced, the quality is far from videos from the iPhone 6s for example. That's why the Phantom line of products is not that expensive.
I shoot 4K because I think that when it's converted to 1080 afterwards, it looks better than shooting in 1080 directly. But watching your P4 4K video full screen on a 4K monitor is going to be disappointing. You'd need a 3000$ camera (and a drone that can carry it) if you want really better quality. A GoPro camera also can do better quality. That's why it's that expensive and bigger than the tiny P4 camera.
Anyway, the overall Phantom 4 image quality is good enough for YouTube or broadcast HD television. Just don't watch your videos in the original size (or watch your screen from a nice distance!)

Thanks for the explanation. I usually do sit further away if I want it to look smooth. Watching up close makes it seem like it was shot on a $40 camera, pixalated and very noisy. I am in the process of getting the Inspire 2 with X5S in the next month, we'll see how that compares. Needless to say I was extremely disappointed when I first watched it expecting 4k quality.

 

[tchit]

Thanks for the explanation. I usually do sit further away if I want it to look smooth. Watching up close makes it seem like it was shot on a $40 camera, pixalated and very noisy. I am in the process of getting the Inspire 2 with X5S in the next month, we'll see how that compares. Needless to say I was extremely disappointed when I first watched it expecting 4k quality.

To help: you should shoot in Cinelike and colorgrade after. Turn Contrast, Sharpness and Saturation to -1.
Always shoot in manual mode to chose the right Iso and shutter speed.
Most importantly: you need ND filters when you shoot on sunny days. Your shutter speed should ideally be the double of your fps. If you shoot 30fps, it's a 60 shutter. (And without filter you'll often get more than 300 on shutter). So in order to not overexpose you need to remove a lot of light with a filter (minimum ND16) . This is critical to better looking images.
Last point, some people say that the Remove 3D noise option is creating artefacts. It's a useless option except when you shoot in the dark, so try without.
But I am in your situation, often frustrated when I watch my videos on computer. It's opposite to the "wow" effect I get when I watch the films I can shoot with my GoPro Hero 4 black.

 

[r62ewa]

I have been incorporating these shooting techniques. I have been shooting in D-log with -2 or -1 settings and editing in post. One of my main problems is I only have up to ND8 filters, I need to get the 16, 32 and 64 pack as well.

 

[tchit]

I have been incorporating these shooting techniques. I have been shooting in D-log with -2 or -1 settings and editing in post. One of my main problems is I only have up to ND8 filters, I need to get the 16, 32 and 64 pack as well.

I've read some bad things on D-Log and Phantom 4. People say it doesn't make sense with a 8-bits camera. You should try and compare.

 

[RémyHeli]

I have a custom built computer that can easily play 4k video and a 28" UHD 4k monitor and when I play my videos from my SD card full screen on my monitor it looks terrible, which I cannot understand why.
I wish there was someone who could explain it to me.

Question is to which port of your custom built PC is attached your SDcard? USB directly supported by motherboard? USB 2.0 or 3.0? Got USB hub in between? Because speed might be slower than expected and required with high res vid. Also if you attach/mix at least one USB device version 2.0 to USB 3.0 chain the whole USB hub will downgrade speed to 2.0 as to accomodate presence of low speed device.

First copy your media to local SSD or hard drive. Then play it and should work fine as then using SATA port if recent PC, which have enough speed. If works this confirm your PC can handle high res and bad quality starts when movie data in transit thru the port where sdcard is attached (and possibly also using physical adapter)