The noise is killing me!

G

Gompa1985

Member
Hi there!

I have a huge problem with noise and artifacts on my HVX200E.
Sometimes the footage turns out good (but probably noisy to the trained eye), but often It's just a mess. And I mean a major mess. It's cleaner to watch a compressed DVD. My friends MiniDV cheap handheld camera produces less grainy pictures.

I have tried a heap of things, (using Cinelike V, and NORM settings), making sure that my manual gain switch is on L and read through Barry's guide to less noise in the HVX BOOK.

I went out and did a test today, but the footage looked really bad again.
Im new to professional camcorders and I might have missed a thing or two. I would appreciate all the help I can get.
 
I am going to save you a lot of headache right now.

Go get a light kit.

You can thank me in the form of checks or money orders. :)

In order to get good images, you will have to use lights. But this is nothing new or unusual. You walk onto the average film set and you'll just about fall over with how much light they have. Same with grain. You run around in natural light with a 16mm, you get grain out the wazzoo.
 
well, I dunno then. We shoot in daylight all the time, and the images are beautiful. The sun should be enough light.

Can you put up some grabs? Full Res.
 
I don't think this forum would be complete without a noise thread every week or two.

Pick up Barry Green's HVX book immediately and spend time reading it.

Some of us will say they don't see noise, the others will agree that it's noisey as hell. I'm with the latter. That doesn't mean it's unusable or terrible. It just means you need to familiarize yourself with the camera and learn your settings.

I've never used the Cine-Like Gammas. I always use B-Press and adjust from there.

I also never use the extra detail sharpening. Most of the time I'm on Negatives on those values.

As it's said: Pick up Barry_Green's HVX book and get to reading. Also, scrub some of the threads here to find people's settings.
 
I have read the HVX Book a number of times. But this is something that seems seriously wrong. The shots looks VERY compressed and grainy. With quite a few motion artifacts. Im using RAYLIGHT to import the files to Sony Vegas, but that should not affect the quality.
 
Try using B-press and turn the chroma down, im talking about almost all the way down. If you want candy coated colors do that in post. also try -2 to -4 masterped to get rid of the noise in the blacks. Save your pennies for a light kit because it will be your best friend. hope that helps :)
 
What do you mean Motion artifacts? The hvx 200 doesnt display motion artifacting other than motion blur.??? Please post up 5 consecutive frames. this way we can see the noise difference from frame ot frame, and help you diagnose the problem.
 
gompa,

when shooting try to have the iris open as much as possible, i usually use the build it nd filter to darken if needed, also reduce the master ped to kill noise in black areas. reduce chroma a bit, make sure you white balance before shooting and maybe try a black blance also. Also consider it might be your monitor u are viewing your footage on. test the footage on different screens also to see the noise difference.
 
Post some pictures of the noise. I am also noticing a lot of noise in shots that are well lit and would really like to compare the footage.
 
If you bought the camera without enough knowledge of lighting then you probably should have bought a dvx and a light kit. It is a better set of tools to work with. Cameras come and go lights stay the same.
Too many people fall into the trap of buying an overly expensive camera and non existent or too inexpensive a lighting solution. I was one of them. I have been converted. I shot with one of the best DOP/Grips I've ever seen and I will never shine a garage light at a person with the intent of aiming a camera at them again.

A pro will probably tell you that you want at least one or two 2k lights and one or two 1k lights, and some diffusion frames and stands. Maybe even a 300-500w as an eye light. Thats just to get you going. You can work with less. You can do it with more with much greater ease, elegance, and efficiency with more and BETTER light. Some of the people on this board will be cobbling together a few home depot work lights and flos into something resembling light.

And don't forget negative fill . On a green screen shoot I did recently we used ONE 2K Junior and ONE 1K baby and a couple reflector strips for talent and 2 kino flos for the screen. There were more black flags up on stands than lights.
 
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flagging and negative fill is two different things. Flagging is shaping the shadows, and negative fill is to remove spill. its sounds similar but ... its actually different.
 
I have the same problem with noise, but there seems that lot of noise appears in shots with lot of sun light in its dark green surfaces like trees.
But you know what, it seems to me that I have lot more noise now when I am aware of it, now I see it everywhere, but before I didn't payed lot of atention to it.
 
Unless you're willling to post some footage, it's going to be impossible to "help" you with "your grain problem".
 
TimurCivan said:
flagging and negative fill is two different things. Flagging is shaping the shadows, and negative fill is to remove spill. its sounds similar but ... its actually different.
Click to expand...

I know this is kind of off topic from the original post...but you're the one who brought it up. :)

Could you expand on that a bit Timur?
I'm not sure I'm seeing the distinction that you're making...
is it just that the definition of the terms reflect a different intent?
Because the technique still seems the same... wouldn't flags be used in much the same way to 'shape the shadows' as they would be to remove spill?

Not saying you're wrong - just trying to understand the difference here.
 
like, if its an overcast dull day, you hold a big piece of black Duvateine to the left or right of the talent to remove some of the light that spills onto them from the ground. thats negative fill. you can do the same anywhere really. Flsgging is more like, setting up an arri, and cutting a shadow onto the end of the couch and making a pool of light on the subject. Its kinda the same thing, but in my eyes one is cutting passive light, one is cutting directed active light. At least thats my understanding.
 
TimurCivan said:
like, if its an overcast dull day, you hold a big piece of black Duvateine to the left or right of the talent to remove some of the light that spills onto them from the ground. thats negative fill. you can do the same anywhere really. Flsgging is more like, setting up an arri, and cutting a shadow onto the end of the couch and making a pool of light on the subject. Its kinda the same thing, but in my eyes one is cutting passive light, one is cutting directed active light. At least thats my understanding.
Click to expand...

I think I see what you're saying - so is the idea that with negative fill you're working to absorb the spill light, whereas with flagging you're working to block direct light?
 
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