Question for Petr re Phantom 4 video quality

[EyesofCanadaGoose]

Hi Petr,

I enjoy the podcast you do with Eric. Thanks!

I know you recently got Phantom 4 and was doing some flying and filming with it. What's your opinion on video quality coming from the camera? I know you can't compare it with GH4 and SLRs, but people were shooting some impressive footage with P3Ps and P4s. Did you notice mpeg compression artifacts in your videos when there is a lot of details in the shot and a lot of movements? Perfect example would be shooting blades of grass or tree branches or ripples on water while flying over it or panning through it. Folks in some other Phantom related forums were very concerned about this issue and I was wondering what your experience is.

I'm about to pull a trigger on P4 (upgrading from P2V+) and want to know what to expect...

Thanks!

 

[Petr Hejl]

@EyesofCanadaGoose - I have definitely noticed this problem, exactly in the situations that you describe. I think that a big part of it is that the camera sharpens things just a bit too much to begin with (great for stills), and all that detail becomes an issue when it's time to compress&write. The way I get around this problem is to use the custom settings to turn down the sharpness to -2, which pretty much eliminates the artifacting problem - and if you really need to, you can sharpen things up in post, but for the most I leave it alone as I like the softer look. While in there, I also recommend turning down the saturation and contrast (both also -2), and set the color profile to d-log. All these will give you a nice flat profile that is a joy to work with in post. Also, ND filters are a must for video, otherwise the high shutter speeds make he footage too jittery. I recommend getting ND4, 8, and 16 for P4. Lastly, invest in a class 10 SD card, the one that comes with the P4 is not fast enough to write 4k without skipping frames. Hope this helps!

 

[EyesofCanadaGoose]

Thanks Petr! There is also "3D noise filter" settings (or something like that). Folks recommend to turn it OFF. It's ON by default. What made me worry is few really good pilots/videographers who shot on P3P had ZERO issues with P3P and now having brutal artifacts with P4. How that can be?! P4's camera supposed to be at least the same as P3P. Look up this guy's videos on VIMEO:

- all are P3P work. No issues even in most challenging shots... On another hand there are slew of videos from P3P where people DO have mpeg compression artifacts, but either did not notice them, or happy with results "as is".

BTW, any similar problems with Inspire camera? Because, if $3000 machine has that, what to expect from 1.4K "toy".

 

[Petr Hejl]

@EyesofCanadaGoose , yes, this is also a problem with the inspire, but as I said, turning down the sharpness solves it. I like the sharpness of the camera for stills, but it does create a problem with the video. I would not say that this is more pronounced on the P4 over the P3, but then, I always use the custom settings I mentioned above, so I would not really know. There is, however, one feature that I really miss and hope that DJI is smart enough to give us. I wish you could set the camera "profiles" separately for the still photos and videos, so I don;t have to change everything around every time I need to take a still while shooting the video. Since we can already have three different gimbal profiles, I'm really wondering why this is still not possible. I would not let the artifacting scare you from purchasing the P4, since there is an easy way around it.