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Trying to make the Mavic Pro look decent


mojo43
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Alright, so the mavic is the perfect size for what I film, but the footage looks so bad. It's aliased and over sharpened. I am just trying to get something decent with it. Does anyone have any good results to share? 

 

 

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I have been trying different apps, different settings. Mostly in our tests, we found that we had to be at +1 sharpening or all of the details would get muddied in the shadows. The problem is that with a sharpening this high there is tons of aliasing. Not sure if you can see it in the YT clip, but it's really really bad.

 

These clips are D-Cinelike +1 -3 -1

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I've not seen 'aliasing' but there are plenty of artefacts from the compression. I keep contrast and saturation at 0 as the bitrate is too low to pull back contrast in the NLE without introducing banding in skies. I also add a bit of softening and if you shoot at max res and output at 1080p it looks OK. I'm very happy with the quality considering it's such a tiny camera.

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14 minutes ago, Shirozina said:

I've not seen 'aliasing' but there are plenty of artefacts from the compression. I keep contrast and saturation at 0 as the bitrate is too low to pull back contrast in the NLE without introducing banding in skies. I also add a bit of softening and if you shoot at max res and output at 1080p it looks OK. I'm very happy with the quality considering it's such a tiny camera.

Are you able to use the footage for client work? If so do you have any footage that I could see please?

Ill try to push the contrast back up in the settings to see if that makes a difference. What are your sharpening settings at and are you using the DJI GO app or the DJI GO 4 app?

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I've had mine a few weeks but had no time to really test it but I'm struggling without ND filters.

What are you guys using?

I was having a little mess around with it earlier today just learning to fly it really (frame grab attached) and I've got no issue with sharpness but without ND its hitting 1/4000th which makes it look pretty terrible in motion.

 

Mavic.png

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40 minutes ago, mojo43 said:

Are you able to use the footage for client work? If so do you have any footage that I could see please?

Ill try to push the contrast back up in the settings to see if that makes a difference. What are your sharpening settings at and are you using the DJI GO app or the DJI GO 4 app?

I use D-Cinelike +1,0,0 and the Go 4 app. I also use DJI ND 16 filter but have ordered a PGYTECH set to get an ND32. Also important to slow down the gimbal speed and yaw speeds to get smooth footage.  I think it's an incredible bit of kit for a price / size / ease of use perspective. 

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29 minutes ago, liork said:

So buy ND filters... there are many to choose from for the Mavic.

And no doubt many garbage ones.

Hence why I was asking longer term owners if they had any recommendations for them....

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15 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

And no doubt many garbage ones.

Hence why I was asking longer term owners if they had any recommendations for them....

The DJI ones are optically very good as they have a good anti reflection coating and don't interfere with the gumball operation  BUT they are fiddly to fit and very easy to break while doing so and for sunny conditions you ideally need a 32x as a minimum and they only go up to 16x. I'll report back on the PGYTECH once they arrive. 

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17 minutes ago, Shirozina said:

The DJI ones are optically very good as they have a good anti reflection coating and don't interfere with the gumball operation  BUT they are fiddly to fit and very easy to break while doing so and for sunny conditions you ideally need a 32x as a minimum and they only go up to 16x. I'll report back on the PGYTECH once they arrive. 

Cheers

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2 hours ago, Shirozina said:

I use D-Cinelike +1,0,0 and the Go 4 app. I also use DJI ND 16 filter but have ordered a PGYTECH set to get an ND32. Also important to slow down the gimbal speed and yaw speeds to get smooth footage.  I think it's an incredible bit of kit for a price / size / ease of use perspective. 

Any chance you can post some footage?

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3 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

And no doubt many garbage ones.

Hence why I was asking longer term owners if they had any recommendations for them....

I'm also wondering about this. The polarpro ones seem pretty well regarded, but they are a bit more expensive than the other ones. I haven't used the DJI ones, but they look really fiddly. 
I've also been wondering about the optical quality of the PGY ones. I've seen some tests with some of the cheaper brands, and the quality seems pretty bad. 
 

5 hours ago, mojo43 said:

I have been trying different apps, different settings. Mostly in our tests, we found that we had to be at +1 sharpening or all of the details would get muddied in the shadows. The problem is that with a sharpening this high there is tons of aliasing. Not sure if you can see it in the YT clip, but it's really really bad.

 

These clips are D-Cinelike +1 -3 -1

Have you tried D-log? It used to be really muddy, but apparently its a lot better now. 
 

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Keep sharpening at +1. It sounds ridiculous but in fact, DJI is absolutely ridiculous. Sharpening 0 and lower they apply a huge NR which destroys all details in shadows with a pastel effect. Killed many of my shots. 

+1 however in Sharpening is too sharp and brings a lot of noise. Therefore applying Neat video removes the noise and keeps the details and you get the best image. I recommend also the new D-LOG, or D-Cinelike. 

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14 hours ago, Kubrickian said:

Check out this guy's settings / workflow: 

 

Everybody keeps posting this and another video as the holy grail of mavic footage. I have shot with it and haven't been able to get anything close to the same results. I assume that this person is doing something in post. He mentions neat video and some other things. I am trying it out, but not with much success.

 

14 hours ago, wolf33d said:

Keep sharpening at +1. It sounds ridiculous but in fact, DJI is absolutely ridiculous. Sharpening 0 and lower they apply a huge NR which destroys all details in shadows with a pastel effect. Killed many of my shots. 

+1 however in Sharpening is too sharp and brings a lot of noise. Therefore applying Neat video removes the noise and keeps the details and you get the best image. I recommend also the new D-LOG, or D-Cinelike. 

Thanks, I have been trying that out. How are you reducing the noise in Neat video? I am not getting very good results at the moment. Can you post any footage that looks decent? I am just looking for an image that is clean.

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After some research and testing..........;

1, The bit-rate for 4k/UHD is 60mbps vs 45mbps for 2.7k i.e you get 2x as much bit-rate per pixel which should reduce artefacts and give more latitude in grading and once in a 1080p timeline the difference in resolution between 4k and 2.7k is virtually invisible. 

2,  D-Log doesn't look as flat and muddy as when I first tried it so maybe it's changed in the latest firmware and (unlike other Cameras LOG settings) you can still adjust contrast and saturation so it should be possible to get a good setting using D-LOG and higher contrast and saturation (more testing needed)

3, If you push the highlights past the zebras clipping point there is still headroom in the actual file  so you can pull them back down with your grading tool of choice and not get any harsh clipping. This means you can be a lot more generous with exposure during capture and consequently avoid the nasty artefacts in the shadows.  

4, Neat video seems to solve the flickering shadows.

These 4 things combined could significantly improve the quality of the footage......

 

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