Best camera settings for 4k?
- Thread starter nomnomnom
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This guy is pretty knowledgeable, but it's not P4Pro specific:
Best is subjective but I have ended up with h265/30fps/dcinelike/ sharpness -1 the rest 0. I prefer f / 5.6 unless light prohibits this
I've read up on this, and apparently the way dji encodes is that h265 does not give you better quality but only smaller file size. Have you found that to be true?
Just curious why you choose 265
Just curious why you choose 265
Set your P4P for "cloudy" skies. This sets the iris in the best position to adjust between when the sun is peaking and when it goes behind a cloud. I also use an ND8 filter to enhance the color beyond the bright spectrum of the sky. With those two settings, I barely have to do any adjustments in post production.
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Regarding resolution, it's OK to record in 3840X2160 X 60fps. 30fps is OK too, but stay away from 4096X2160 X 60fps as this doesn't work, it will produce glitches in the video.
I happen to like "true color" setting, but that's me. Others like dlog so they have more range to grade the color later, but my time is more valuable than the ability to grade to the "enth degree", when I can grade from "true color" good enough, but I rarely do. On a sunny day my colors look great IMO, no grading necessary. I like the VIVID color setting even better for a little more saturation, but P4P doesn't support VIVID like P4 and P3P, so I cope with True Color.
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Cloudy is a whitebalance setting and only affects the balance between colors (red/blue temperature and purple/green tint). Cloudy is slightly warmer than the daylight setting. Auto is normally sufficient.
Iris/aperture is controlled by the chosen f stop between f/2.8 and f/11 and affects the overall sharpness of the image as well as the shutter speed.
A non-gradient nd filter only affects the shutter speed by reducing the amount of total light reaching the sensor. It does not affect color or contrast. Ideal shutter speed for 30 fps is 1/60 seconds and a nd filter will help reaching or approaching this as an alternative (or in addition to) setting the f stop.
The third way to affect shutter speed is ISO which additionally increases noise as you move beyond base iso. (Increasing ISO is the last resort in low-light situations after removing any filters and going to f/2.8)
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I second this. I made these adjustments and my photos and videos came out 10 times better.
I don't get what that is saying, I'm a photographer by trade, setting the whitebalance does not have an effect on the aperture (iris??)?? What is this about??
You may have trouble replaying H.265 on some machines. Some editing apps don't support it either. It requires more CPU and GPU performance to decompress H.265 files, but it does store video in less memory. I'm staying away from H.265 until I get a PC that has a hardware decoding solution in a GPU for H.265, which is relatively new.
Also a pro photog for 31 years and setting Picture Style to cloudy does nothing but just up the color temp of the file a little bit. Has nothing to do with the Iris or aperture like he was trying to say. LOL My settings are 3840 x 2160 @ 30fps. Love 24fps but you get a little stuttery as far as the footage look goes when ground or objects are moving fast in the frame. I set custom White Balance to 5000 and never touch it ever. I custom set White Balance for final project later in Raw conversion of stills or Premeir Pro with video. I always shoot totally Manual and am looking for an aperture close to F4.0 to F5.6. Best sharpness in that area! Use ND 8 or 16 all the time when in daylight and none at night. Also I use D-Cinelike and h265. Convert all my footage in premier to proxy files so premier can handle perfectly.
Ok you seem to make most sense here on this thread. Then a question to you. Why Cinelike and 265. Can you share your thoughts on Cine vs log, and 265 vs 264?
Photographers take still shots. When you are flying a drone, the landscape is constantly moving, thus, setting your Phantom for the most optimal settings for the conditions you are filming in is crucial.
There have been numerous discussions and analysis on this here before, and it is probably not random that many use h265/dcinelike.
In short h265 has better detail due to more efficient compression with the same bandwitdth as h264. The difference is slight and not dramatic. H264 is much less demanding on hardware / software for the editing and might therefore be preferred depending on your tools. h264 is also the only option for 60fps.
Dlog has severe issues with banding in highlights (such as a clear sky) and therefore less forgiving than dcinelike for most footage. Dcinelike has slightly more shadow detail than none.
As you have the drone already, I advise that you do your own tests before settling on your own standard settings but use this as a starting point.
Um, this doesn't really help as you give no reasoning why it works. Your statement could be applied to literally any piece of equipment. Setting your juicer to the most optimal juicing settings for the fruit you would like to juice is crucial.
A video is essentially a sequence of still shots so the same settings for a good still image will give the best results for each frame of the video image. I guess for a true cinematic look you actually want to lower the sharpness of the video image using the standard 1/60 exposure, but white balance settings won't help here.
O.k. Then clearly your supreme intelligence is way above my tiny little brain.. You bragged about being a 30 year veteran and then smugly ask a question in which, if you really didn't know anything about apature, iris and such, have no business asking... unless you were just using the question to cloak your arrogance about your experience.
Bug again, I'm just an idiot veteran who is unworthy of giving advice. Thank you for putting me in my place. I'll avoid trying to share my thoughts and recommendations in the future. -What was I thinking?
Ummm no dude! Best still settings will not provide the best video settings most of the time! Frame rate is key for the cinematic look you speak of! None of what you said makes sense at all. Lowering sharpness to the standard 1/60 exposure?????? LOL What does that even mean??? You want faster shutter speeds especially if it is windy for your stills. And then you want the slower shutter speed like double your frame rate to get the best cinematic looking video. So you are def changing back and forth if you are trying to do both stills and video the best!
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I am no drone or dp expert -- just a filmmaker who is starting to use drone shots in his films -- so I can't tell you if my settings are the best or not, but I'm really happy with what I've been getting and this link will show the trailer for the movie I'm shooting right now, including the drone footage I shot with my P4P.
I used C4K H264 at 100 Mbps, 23.98 fps. D-Log, sunlight WB preset. ND16, 1/48 shutter (actually I think the closest you can get is 1/50), usually exposing around f5.6/f8. The key really is the ND filter. You just can't get the proper shutter speed and f-stop in bright daylight without them.
The footage looks horrible when you shoot it.
Then you have a professional colorist work with it and she makes it look even worse (on purpose, this is apocalyptic so we took all the beautiful blue skies away).
www.seedandspark.com/fund/virtually#story
I used C4K H264 at 100 Mbps, 23.98 fps. D-Log, sunlight WB preset. ND16, 1/48 shutter (actually I think the closest you can get is 1/50), usually exposing around f5.6/f8. The key really is the ND filter. You just can't get the proper shutter speed and f-stop in bright daylight without them.
The footage looks horrible when you shoot it.
Then you have a professional colorist work with it and she makes it look even worse (on purpose, this is apocalyptic so we took all the beautiful blue skies away).
www.seedandspark.com/fund/virtually#story
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