What am I doing wrong?
 

Alright, so I have some video footage I shot at a little 30's themed "swing dance" party I had at my apartment.. different rooms, different lighting so of course the footage is going to be a bit grainy.. But, how do I compensate for that so as to get the sharpest possible image?

Also, when I export the video, it looks ten times worse..what to do about that?

Below is the video, Thanks for your help everyone.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

Hi Terry

I think maybe let people know what format the camera was shooting in and what NLE you are using to edit the footage?? That will make giving advice a lot easier

Chris

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

Thanks Chris,

The video was shot on a 60D in 24fps at f2.8

using Premiere CS6

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

Does the original footage look like that or just after you've exported it from your NLE?

What are your export settings?

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

I suppose I should have put more detail,

The raw footage looks grainy but I had the ISO set to somewhere between 200 and 800. The first scene is bright enough so it shouldn't have been grainy.

Upon export, initially I did it as an AVI which unknowingly limited my options. I was looking for the Youtube setting but couldn't find it.. right now i'm exporting it as an H.264 and Preset Youtube HD 1080p at 24fps. That should help.

However, that still doesn't help my video going INTO the editing system. I am doing something wrong with my settings upon capture. I thought I knew my way around my camera...shutter speed set at 1/50th...ISO set to the lowest setting possible for the lighting situation and aperture set at 2.8 which gives me a shallow DOF the faster it is...

But am I missing something? or am I not right?

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

the clip you referenced is only 360p, useless to judge anything by.

and still not clear what you're trying to say about the footage going into the edit system. just make a sequence which matches the camera settings, and render to the youtube preset you mentioned. you mentioned wanting the footage to be sharper, you can add some sharpening filter, but anything more than 30 points will start to create other problems. there are also plugins for noise reduction.

iso800 on that camera should be fairly clean, you might be sitting too close to your screen

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

As Darren said your Youtube clip is 360p. Apparently you didn't upload a HD version so sure it will look bad. Why don't you go back and re-encode it for Youtube again as an MPEG4, 7mb/s 1080p and upload it. I suspect it will then look fine.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

Hello -

I changed some things and made it Youtube friendly and its a lot better



What I was concerned about now is camera settings..The raw footage was still grainy once I got it to CS6.. not sure if I am missing something or not..

What steps should I take to ensure that I am capturing the best quality for the situation?

Thanks all.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

I'd guess the camera is capturing some form of compressed codec to begin with, and then upon exporting from NLE, it is getting re-compressed making it look worse-er.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

As mentioned, If you're using ISO 800 or below on a 60D then I'd be surprised if the footage was grainy straight out of the camera. Even higher ISOs should be reasonably clean.

Download a little program called "MediaInfo" and run it on your raw footage. It'll tell us what codec, resolution and bitrate the raw footage is which could provide some clues.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

I have a 60D and I've shot some video with it.
For video capture, I suppose you are choosing the highest possible resolution within the camera setting? In my case, I have 1920x1080 at 30fps (or 24 fps).
The other thing that struck me is that you are using f2.8. The depth of field can be quite shallow. Therefore the grain you might see may be actually the slight out of focus? Best to try and get as much light in the room and adjust aperture if you plan on getting the whole scene in focus.
In my experience, my Canon XA10 performs better for moving scenes. The DSLR is good when trying to make nice DOF shots, but I find the dslr "grainier" than my XA10.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

One thing to remember with Canon DSLR's is that lower ISO does not necessarily mean lower noise. For instance, you'll get more noise using ISO 400 than. There is a very technical explanation that I won't go into (you can easily Google it). The ISO's to use in order from least noise to more noise are:

160,320, 640,100, 200, 400,800, 1250, 125, 250, 500, 1000, 1600

So, if you're shooting at say 250, thinking wow, low ISO so low noise, you'll be disappointed.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

Also, for sharpness, your lens full open at f/2.8 is probably not that sharp to start with. Most lenses will be soft at their extremes. Also, do you have your camera setup optimally for shooting video? Proper adjustment on your picture profile? Sharpening, contrast, and saturation set correctly?

Ideally you choose your frame rate, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, and set lighting for the look you want. Then you use filters to adjust for the correct exposure. If I can't completely control lighting and I don't have time to stop and pull or put in ND, I will find a good ISO setting and then stop up or down as necessary.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

Terry, before you go any further, please check your camera settings. What resolution are you recording your videos? It doesn't look like it's set at 1920x1080. I say this because your opening title is very sharp, but as soon as your video comes up, it's not as sharp as it should be.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

Hey everyone sorry it took me so long to reply.

The camera is set 1920x1080 24p

I downloaded the suggested program MediaInfo and it told me the following:

MPEG-4

Bit Rate: 46.8

Video stream: AVC

Even in raw footage, when I simply drag and drop my footage from the card to my computer..it looks choppy..


Thank you all for the help!

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

Hope I still have everyone's attention with this. I have a shoot next Saturday and i'm still worried that my camera is doing something weird...or i'm doing something stupid haha..

Anyhelp is much appreciated

Thank you!!!

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

What do you mean "it looks choppy"? Is it stuttering? If so, it's possible the files are a bit too large for your computer to play live. I have 16gb & sometimes AVCHD files kinda stutter as I play them. I don't know much about DSLR's per se, but a good way to reduce grain is to improve lighting (obvi). Standard household lighting pretty much sucks. Maybe its sufficient for your 60D I'm not sure. Typically it's enough for photographers but keep in mind they shoot using incredibly high powered flashes which give a split second burst of light during the photo capture process. Depending on what kind of shoot it is, would a small on camera light work?

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

Hello,

The problem, If you've watched the video is that the images are too grainy when captured. When I take them from my camera to my comp, they appear underlit and look to be shot on ISO 1600. However I shot it ok around 600 to 800 with decent light at f2.8 and I still get grain. It's as if the files that the camera is capturing is a very compressed format. I posted statistics in a post above.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

if you can send me the file through google drive. My email is Victornnguyen12@gmail.com

You still haven't told us what picture style you were using. It looks extremely contrasty. If you haven't done this yet, download magic lantern and put on the histogram. It'll get you 70% there with your exposure.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

Make sure to heed Garrett's advice about ISO settings on the 60D. That was an eye opener for me. If you need to get to 600 - 800 range ISO for a proper exposure, then use 640 or 800 ISO to get the best from your current lighting set up. (Better lighting should give you sharper images, but maybe that is not an option for you in the apartment.). I've checked your footage, and I don't see what the actual problem is based on my experience using the 60D for video. Using f2.8 at a very close range suggests to me that you are using canon's 40mm pancake lens or something even wider. I don't have experience with that lens, but I do notice that your images are soft at the background and foreground. That is to be expected with a 2.8 setting.

One last thing you can try to do to improve sharpness, is to bump up the sharpness in Premiere. You can try setting it at 20 to 30. It will take more time to render your video, but I dont think there is much you can do with the camera given your lighting environment. There may be manual picture sharpness controls in the 600D (under picture style) but I have not fiddled with that yet to share any meaningful experience.

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

I've just read through this thread and it sounds to me like you underexposed the video in the camera and found it to be grainy. Yup! Doesn't matter what ISO you're using, if you underexpose the shot it's going to be grainy when you pull it back up. If you want good exposure with minimal noise on a Canon DSLR, you need to be right at the edge of blowing out the highlights.

Your video is also very contrasty. If it came out of the camera that way, you need to go into your menu and fix this. You should have a nice flat picture style. You can google how to set that up or you can install the Technicolor Cinestyle picture style on your camera and use it.

Once you have something usable out of the camera, you can season to your liking in post.

Bob

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

Hey Victor, The picture style was standard. I haven't decided if I want to put Magic Lantern on my 60D yet or not.. I just foresee it crashing my camera, but that's probably me just being nervous.

What picture style should I shoot under..? Where can I learn about this?

Thanks!

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

+1 Technicolor Cinestyle

You don't need Magic Lantern to get a nice flat Gamma profile. If you get the most recent firmware for your camera, follow that by loading one of the Cinestyle profiles onto it. Things will look less eye-popping coming right out of the camera upon playback, but the flatter gamma gives you way more room to play with color-grading after the fact.

If you've got noisy source material, you might try Neat Video - best noise reduction for digital video De-noiser. It doesn't solve the problem, but it can clear things up quite well, especially at that price.

Good luck!

Re: What am I doing wrong?
 

This is actually false just fyi..

Canon DSLR's & the wrong 'native ISO' - fcp.co