Noise in Lock Downed Footage of Pine Trees

David Saraceno

David Saraceno

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Staff member
I hate to report this, and I otherwise love this camera, but we are seeing noise in static. locked down shots of pine trees that are gently moving in the wind.

Shot at 720/24pn on a bright, sunshine day.

It is not dissimilar to the same footage shot with our Sony Z1U.

Anybody got an some insight into this. Does it come with the territory?

Not bashing the cam, just wondering.
 
David S. said:
I hate to report this, and I otherwise love this camera, but we are seeing noise in static. locked down shots of pine trees that are gently moving in the wind.

Shot at 720/24pn on a bright, sunshine day.

It is not dissimilar to the same footage shot with our Sony Z1U.

Anybody got an some insight into this. Does it come with the territory?

Not bashing the cam, just wondering.
Click to expand...
Some footage or grabs maybe?
 
I can't host footage.

I can provide a short clip if someone else can.

It's there, and we're on a tri pod just focusing on some pine trees at a baseball game in the Pacific Northwest.
 
Sad to report but it just seems to be part of the camera. I see it all the time at zero gain on a bright day outside. It doesn't appear in bright areas but if there is a dark area somewhere it almost always shows up.

Ironically I was also at a baseball game in the park filming for a local TV spot and saw noise in the reds on the uniforms and also against a park conession stand that is painted light brown. It was lit but due to the sunlight a shadow was cutting the wall in half diagonally. The part with light was OK but where the shadow falls there is noise. Gain like noise.

It is so bad I am wanting to go check to see if I accidentally bumped the gain or something. Is that info stored in the metadata somewhere? Ironcially I have shot here before last summer with an XL2 and a DVX100 grabbing "b" footage and it was much cleaner. Not as high res and the colors weren't as pure, but there was significantly less noise in the shadows.
 
I've found that the noise is always worst in the mid-darks (30 IRE?). Is that the basic level the trees fall into? Also, what are you viewing it on. The Dell 2405 is notoriously awful in this regard.
 
Noise

Noise

For me, this is the only real drawback of the cam. I've figured out a decent workflow. But the noise issue is just crap. Before my company got the cam, I thought people were just blowing the problem out of proportion. But as soon as I did work with it, of course, there it was. And with regards to proper lighting, yes, we lit the scene almost perfectly. We used a Sony Broadcast monitor and a Samsung HD monitor to edit.

I hope Panny comes out with a software fix for this problem. My company just bought 2 more of these.
 
David S. said:
I can't host footage.

I can provide a short clip if someone else can.

It's there, and we're on a tri pod just focusing on some pine trees at a baseball game in the Pacific Northwest.
Click to expand...

You can't host one frame that shows the noise? How 'bout attaching a frame grab here? C'mon!
 
It's a colgate commercial. Where are the pine trees? I saw a littl ebit of noise to the right of the ladies head in the darker areas, but it looked like grain (as if shot through 35mm adapter or from compression).
 
Finn,
Sorry for the confusion. I put that link there so that David (who started this thread) could have something to look at for reference. I was wondering if he saw noise in my HVX footage (colgate commercial) that is similar to the noise in his footage (pine trees). Does this make sense?

BTW, for future reference, you can never trust pine trees. They're just naturally noisy.
 
I see HEAPS of noise in that on my basic 17" LCD monitor, but at MP4 compression that could be the casuse of most of it.
 
My commercial

My commercial

The noise on my commercial was actually like grainy 16mm. It didn't hurt the TVc so much cuz it was supposed to be a dramatic piece for mother's day. But I'm worried about other projects that are supposed to look glossy and crisp.

I'll try to post footage as soon as the spot has aired.
 
Colgate

Colgate

Hey Darwin,

Do you mind if I ask you if that Colgate spot was a spec commercial? Also, creatively it would've been nice if the director didn't put the woman flat against a dead background. A light source, ie. window, might've worked better off to the side.

Just my 2 cents.
 
I'm curious as to how the HVX noise looks on a standard television set. I keep hearing about how the noise varies on different LCDs. More than likely, most people will be watching the final product on a standard television through a DVD or broadcasted off beta.

How does the noise look then?
 
Jan_Crittenden said:
What are you using as a monitor?

Thnaks,

Jan
Click to expand...

No monitor Jan.

FCP and QT.

The cam and cards are all we can afford currently.

We did a component feed out of the cam to a 42 inch plasma.

Same thing.

Now can I upload a screen grab to a post?
 
Last edited:
Regarding the Colgate commercial, why was the camera constantly panning back and forth? It made the commercial very hard to watch!
 
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