[Stagnant]

Muted profile, with everything but saturation dialed to 0. Early morning, around 8 am. The camera was pointing directly at the sun.
Same settings. Shot around 12 am.
Same settings. Different scene.
Handheld. Natural profile. Stabilization was turned off, I think.

The lens used for these clips was 21 limited at F8 or F9. The muted profile seems to give less moire and aliasing. The clips are short and downloadable.

The links were re-made to lead to proper clips.

---

Last edited by Stagnant; 03-12-2014 at 02:33 PM.

[Steve.Ledger]

MUCH better!
Aliasing still evident in clip 3, but yes, attention to picture style settings pays off.

[Stagnant]

Honestly I did not expect, that much of a change. I always thought, that these settings could not affect the quality in such a drastic manner.

[kadajawi]

Haven't had the chance to watch the clips yet, but i think what has happened was that it wasn't real aliasing, but compression artifacts. By lowering the sharpening there is less detail to compress and thus more bits can be used for the actual content.

[grispie]

Honestly I did not expect, that much of a change. I always thought, that these settings could not affect the quality in such a drastic manner.

As Kadjawi stated, i think the flatter the image is, the easier it is for the camera to process it.
Also notice how the shadows and highlights are well preserved.

Now you can pump up contrast, sharpness and the 'overall image' again in post. your pc & software is much more powerful at that than your camera.
But it is the same story here: i learnt by making mistakes that you have to do things the right way...

[PiDicus Rex]

If I could tell you guys how often I've screwed up a shot,.... We don't learn from our successes though!

[grispie]

f I could tell you guys how often I've screwed up a shot

If only i would have received 1 euro for every mistake i've made, i'd be inviting you all to my private island in the pacific now!

[Stagnant]

What software would you suggest for post processing ?

[Steve.Ledger]

You'll get as many different suggestions as people posting them. Video editors are something you just have to try until you find one you click with and doesn't drive you mad [also one that doesn't turn your PC into a slug - life is too short]. For me I've ended up using MAGIX Video Edit Pro 2014 as the learning curve has been much lower than the others, imho it's nicer to look at and many of the tools are intuitive to use. By no means am I an expert with it, but I can use it for basic editing as quickly as I use a photo editor now. Oh, and the preview window is real time and high quality which is an absolute must in my book, editors that show a horrid low res preview window and don't scrub smoothly should be tossed out the window in disgust..

[grispie]

personally i use premiere pro (student pack), but that might be too expensive. Maybe premiere elements would suit you more...

There is a version premiere CS4, which can be downloaded for free btw... (full older version)

Maybe someone else has a better suggestion?

[PiDicus Rex]

First up, lets separate two things, there's Editing programs, and there's video post processing programs.

Editing, is apps like Final Cut, Premiere, Edius (my choice), Vegas and the like.

Post Processing, is programs like Resolve, for doing colour correction and conversion from the recorded CoDec to an Editing CoDec (such as ProRes, DNxHD or GrassValley HQX ).

You can do basic editing and transcoding in applications as simple as VirtualDub, it can be very efficient at compressing to Mpeg4/Xvid/x.264 for upload.


When it comes to editing, In my experience, Final Cut is okay if you've got a month to deliver, Premiere if you've got a week, and Edius if it needs to be on air tonight.

Premiere is now limited to the online licensing and the not secure Creative Cloud.
FCP-X is okay for the Apple folk, but there are still a lot of features missing since they dropped FCP-7.
Lightworks is a real alternative, especially if you're a Linux savvy tech head. It also has a free version, and appears to be pretty powerful, on current spec PC's.

A lot of the major players allow download of a 30-day trial version, I know for sure that GV does for Edius.

My reasons for using Edius - it's always stable, it uses standardized plug-ins, it will open pretty much every type of camera's video files - the only flies I haven't had it able to use is Youtube .FLV's - and it's a 'real time' editing app, so long as your system has enough processing grunt for the type of work you're doing.
That last point means it's fast, you can play out live from the timeline if you need to, you can render if you want, or play once to let your system create the temp files as it goes.
And the interface makes sense to me - Canopus and Grass Valley haven't done any radical changes, they evolve the interface slowly so that users don't have to deal with massive changes between versions. Beneath the skin, they make continual updates, adding features that are really useful. Usually, when I see a press release for FCP or Premiere, my usual reaction is 'really, Edius has had that for 3 or 4 versions,...'


Now, as for Post Processing, Resolve is considered top of the heap. It works particularly well with Prem, FCP, and now Edius, in taking care of the colour correction, letting the editors keep working on the story telling, while the DoP can tweak the grading until everyones happy.

I did see ( I think Kadajawi ? ) a post on how to get Adobe Lightroom to create colour correction profiles that could be applied to video footage, so it's an option too.

There are filters for doing colour correction and noise reduction in VirtualDub, they're a bit clunky, but the do work, and if your budget is $0, it's a place to start.
Oddly enough, the types of plug-in formats that work in Edius and Premiere, also work in VirtualDub


Choice of NLE and Colour Correction application is as much a personal choice as what camera you bought is.
There is no right or wrong choice, only tools that either work for you, or don't, depending on the way you assemble the story telling ideas in your head.

[grispie]

First up, lets separate two things, there's Editing programs, and there's video post processing programs.

Ok, i agree.
But let's look at where the question came from. I don't know the level of expertise of stagnant nor the money he is willing to spend. I can only speak for myself. I've started a year ago and i use premiere pro both for editing and the color correction. For now, I am pretty happy at what i can do with premiere pro for color correction (and there is a lot you can do with it). more importantly it helps me in the learningcurve while staying in one package.

But indeed, for now... :-) I am starting to experiment with what else is on the market..

[PiDicus Rex]

I don't know the level of expertise of stagnant nor the money he is willing to spend.

Neither do I, hence the mentioning of VirtualDub and Lightworks being free versions, and the trial version downloads

For most things, I'm happy with the colour correction tools in Edius. The availability to go back and forth between Edius and Resolve in the latest versions appeals, though the limitations of the h.264 CoDec show up very quickly when you start pushing the levels around.

[grispie]

Never heard of Edius. I'll give that shot this weekend.
I tried the back & forth between premiere and resolve but have issues with that..

[PiDicus Rex]

Muted profile, with everything but saturation dialed to 0.
Early morning, around 8 am. The camera was pointing directly at the sun. Same settings.
Shot around 12 am. Same settings. Different scene.
Handheld. Natural profile. Stabilization was turned off, I think.

Thanks for those, downloading to watch, I'll re-edit this post with comments as I go.

First up, in comparing with the 7192.mov from the other day, the 2166.mov has the camera set a lot further back from the waters edge.
( I assume the lower numbered file is from the K3 and the earlier file from the K-01 )
That one change has made for a significantly larger section of image that remains the same, and can be copied further along the GOP, reducing the space required within each of the subsequent frames, freeing up space in those frames for more detail in the sections that are changing - the water and the ship.

So while those two files aren't a great comparison for the differences between image profiles, they are a fantastic example of how the camera operators choices in framing can affect the file size.

Edit,.. Just for the heck of it, I dropped the 2166 file in to Edius and applied a few of the colour correction tools.
Quite impressed by how far I can push the levels, reducing the bright spot of the sun and getting a little bit more detail out of the rough surface of the concrete in the foreground.
The colours and the flare come up nicely with just a very small tweak.
The sky does begin to show banding around the Sun as the Contrast gets pushed, but that is as much a reflection of the CoDec's bit-depth as it is the camera looking At, The, Damn, Sun (!).
It's my understanding that all three versions of BlackMagic Designs cameras have major issues when the Sun is in frame, such as the bright spot turning to a black spot when the light level goes too high for the sensor.
I've deliberately done a similar test, ramping the Iris with the Sun in shot, the K-01 does the same as the K3 does shown here - the Sun remains the Sun, not becoming a Black Hole.....

---------- Post added 14-03-14 at 05:33 AM ----------

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