Grainy / crappy quality IDK WHY???

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Ripitupfilms

Member
I film motocross and with my hmc150 ive been getting really grainy crappy looking video. is there any setting someone recommends like shutter speed or exposure . i don't get it . sometimes i will get ok quality but its mostly crappy. please help. i can load a sample clip if needed.

Ive seen other users of the hmc150 shooting motocross with amazing quality and i just cant get it to work .
 
Some questions....
1. Are you shooting with manual control or auto.
2. Is gain somehow being applied....gain = noise (if it's not at a reasonable level).
3. Did you perform a black balance. (This one happens to people a lot, (and can create noise even in daylight) esp. coming from cameras where there is no such thing)
4. Do you have DRS on, etc.

There's so many variables, it would be hard to know...without knowing the settings you used. For instance detail coring can help reduce noise, but many other settings are important as well. Some of the gammas are noisier than the others for example. So.... please give everyone some more info to go on.
 
um shutter about 1000 with auto exposure. i just recently read about AGC and it was at 6db and not off so that could have been the problem. IDK about the drs ill have to check. Im new to the Hmc150. where would i find that. also i haven't done black balance i dont think i ever have.
 
Absolutely do a black balance.....this is a common problem, and can really make a difference. I'd also turn off the AGC, and do those settings yourself. I think we may have found two causes of noise right off the bat. Hopefully your next shoot will be clean and clear!

Also if you don't have Barry Greens HMC book.....buy it!
User manuals are very dry and don't go into scenarios...but Barry's book will help you get the most from your camera.
 
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i think i have it. i read into black balance but i dont get it. how do the black balance. whats weird is my camera will shoot amazing then some days it will be crappy. im hoping it was the AGC .
 
Ripitupfilms said:
i think i have it. i read into black balance but i dont get it. how do the black balance. whats weird is my camera will shoot amazing then some days it will be crappy. im hoping it was the AGC .
Click to expand...

To black balance...you press the white balance button on your camera and hold it in until ABB shows up on the screen. The Iris will close and the process takes a couple of seconds.
 
Ripitupfilms said:
also what should i have DST At
Click to expand...

If you mean DRS...don't use it until a situation shows up where you'll absolutely need it. The DRS is dynamic range stretch, which means the camera will try to pull detail from the shadows that sometimes gets lost...but it can introduce noise as well.
 
I've noticed that the HMC150 is noisier than some other cameras - noisier even than my HMC40. Turning up detail coring seems to help a lot, on top of doing what everyone else has suggested.
 
I'd highly recommend manual exposure control, but that is up to you. If you get the HMC book by Barry, it comes with a DVD that has a bunch of scene files. I assume they are similar to the ones that came with my HPX/HVX book, where one of the files is a low noise scene file. It eliminates a little detail, but a very small amount. It makes the image very clean. Also, I wouldn't keep my shutter at 1/1000. Even when shooting fast-paced action, I never exceed a speed around 1/250, especially if I am shooting in 24p (which I almost always do).
 
HMC150 isn't that bad when it comes to noise and definitely better then the hmc40 since its way more sensitive from the start. I limit my gain to 12db and only use it if I HAVE TO. You need to look into lighting if you want to shoot in severe darkness.

Knocking the master ped down a notch or 2 helps too.

WHAT are you playing your footage back on?? I had an old dell monitor that boosted the noise at least 50%, also noticed cheap sanyo TV's are noisy as hell too.
 
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Yeah I too have found black balance to be the difference between lots of noise and super clean. I just shot a comedy show (funny show called Laughing Liberally) and it was very dark there besides the performers under a spotlight and the camera and the footage is pretty damn clean. Check it out:

LL1.jpg

(p.s. - this was shot using Barry's LoNoiz scene file and no gain. Iris wide open.)
 
Ripitupfilms said:
um shutter about 1000 with auto exposure.
Click to expand...

That may be part of the problem... the difference between 1/120 shutter (assuming you're in 1080i or 60p) and 1/1000 is huge in terms of lightloss. If you have autoiris kicked in, it may be automatically bumping up the gain to compensate. Bump the shutter down to 1/120, or turn it off (where it will default to 1/60 in 720p60 or 1080i). And as others have stated, do the black balance and turn of DRS is at all possible.

Also, what scene file are you using?
 
MadHMC150 said:
WHAT are you playing your footage back on?? I had an old dell monitor that boosted the noise at least 50%, also noticed cheap sanyo TV's are noisy as hell too.
Click to expand...

When i first got my HMC150, I played it back on a heavily used 50"plasma at work, and was frustrated by the noise. Then I realized I saw all the noise because it was heavily used... and I was 12 inches from it.

When I stepped back to a normal viewing distance, it looked *much* better :)
 
So I played with the shutter at the soccer match I shot tonight. After sunset under stadium lights (it's an NFL stadium, so the lights are *really* bright), I could get a fairly bright image at f/4.0 (I could have easily closed it to f/4.8) with shutter off (which defaults to 1/60) while shooting in all manual at 720p60. At 1/120 shutter (which is where I actually shot the game), I had to open to f/2.8. By bumping up the shutter to 1/1000, I had to open the iris all the way up and put gain all the way up and it still wasn't even close to being usable. I mean it looked like the iris was almost closed.

So I'm thinking that the combination of auto-iris + AGC +1/1000 shutter is probably the main culprit for why your footage looks like pooh. The footage is so dark that the camera is bumping everything up to compensate resulting in a lot of that noise. If I were you, I would turn AGC off (which it sounds like you did) and try and shoot in manual iris, and not do above 1/250 shutter (having shot enough sports, anything over 1/120 kinda seems like overkill anyway). The scene file and black balance could also help.
 
Yeah man, 1/120 for 60p is fine - and compared to 1/1000, that would have given you a LOOOOT more light. I always keep GAIN OFF unless I am already wide open and shutter is the same as frame rate, if I still need more light I kick gain up to 6-12.

I also recommend Barrys Handbook. Shooting Manual is the only way to go.
 
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