Holy Crap! Image Noise Be Gone!

T

tommygdawg

Well-known member
Hey all,

So, this is going to make a lot of people (probably mainly Barry) say "I told you so!" I just received my AF100 and prior to receiving it I had heard about some noise issues (or lack-there-of, depending on who you ask). I took my first test shots, plugged the SD card into my laptop, and lo and behold, ugly God-awful blue noise all over the place! I had read that Barry said it could be a TV/monitor calibration issue, or a GPU issue. So, I took the footage upstairs to my desktop with an i7, 8GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 with 1GB VRAm. Guess what? Hardly no noise, what-so-ever! Just to see if it was a difference in calibration, I brought the footage into After Effects and wildly blew out the shadows. Almost no image noise, especially none of that ugly awful blue noise. This has lead me to believe that the noise many people speak of is indeed (if nothing else) correlated with the hardware in your system. The shot I took was of a dark room, lit by an overhanging light that was around the corner in the next room. It is very important to iterate that when I saw this on my desktop I literally said outloud "holy crap!!"

I shot at ISO 1600 with a Canon 50mm FD f/1.8 and a 180 degree shutter angle. Once again, on the laptop, awful noise all over. On the desktop, very clean. Of course, there is some noise from pushing the sensor that high, but especially compared to my GH1, it's like night and day. I hope this post isn't a waste of space, I just wanted to reiterate as someone who just got his AF and as someone who doesn't know anyone on here at all that at first I was concerned about my camera, and now I'm confident that this is one of the best investments I've made in a long time! I can post screenshots/video if you all want.

- Tommy
 
Okay, less cheeky, I really do think that the computer hardware involved is what creates the reports of "crazy noise." Viewing the footage the way you did pretty much verifies that. Thanks for going the extra step to verify it before starting a noise thread! Congrats on your new camera and we look forward to some footage!
 
Barry_Green said:
Okay, less cheeky, I really do think that the computer hardware involved is what creates the reports of "crazy noise." Viewing the footage the way you did pretty much verifies that. Thanks for going the extra step to verify it before starting a noise thread! Congrats on your new camera and we look forward to some footage!
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I agree. There may be some involvement with monitor calibration, but the fact that I can't find it on the desktop computer even when completely blowing out the image tells me that it has to be a hardware issue. Not sure why though. I'm glad I could help with this and provide real world examples.

Thanks for the congrats, I'm quite excited after having spent so much time with the GH1 (which is still a wonderful little camera). I'll hopefully be shooting my first AF100 short within the coming weeks, I'll post it here as soon as it's done.
 
Yea playing back my AF100 on my plasma in the living room always gave me the no bull representation of how it looks. Not calibrated mind you, but still...there's no computer wackiness going on to mess with things. Computers rarely display things properly.
 
I thought I was sayin' that your graphics card needs updating if you're seeing image noise a WHILE ago?

>=] I think Barry stole that from me. MAUAHAHAHAHA (kidding)

Doesn't just affect the noise, but your highlights, saturation, etc.

However, something really weird: I've found that RED footage, compressed well, always works on any laptop or desktop I view it on. I tried switching my GPU on my laptop (which has two built in) and the RED footage STILL looked great, where as most of my GH2 footage needed the boosted GPU to look right.
 
Kholi said:
I thought I was sayin' that your graphics card needs updating if you're seeing image noise a WHILE ago?

>=] I think Barry stole that from me. MAUAHAHAHAHA (kidding)

Doesn't just affect the noise, but your highlights, saturation, etc.

However, something really weird: I've found that RED footage, compressed well, always works on any laptop or desktop I view it on. I tried switching my GPU on my laptop (which has two built in) and the RED footage STILL looked great, where as most of my GH2 footage needed the boosted GPU to look right.
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Interesting. What are you encoding the Red footage to? I've really only seen an issue this pronounced with footage off the AF100. I can't recall how GH1 footage looked on my laptop, it's been so long since I checked out any GH1 footage on my laptop.
 
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tommygdawg said:
Interesting. What are you encoding the Red footage to? I've really only seen an issue this pronounced with footage off the AF100. I can't recall how GH1 footage looked on my laptop, it's been so long since I checked out any GH1 footage on my laptop.
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Here's something you can do. Check out AF100 footage on Vimeo then RED Scarlet footage on Vimeo, on whichever computer tends to end up looking the worse. Then check the same footage on your better computer. Scarlet footage isn't that different to me, where-as the change in other footage is drastic.
 
tommygdawg said:
Hey all,So, this is going to make a lot of people (probably mainly Barry) say "I told you so!" I just received my AF100 and prior to receiving it I had heard about some noise issues (or lack-there-of, depending on who you ask). I took my first test shots, plugged the SD card into my laptop, and lo and behold, ugly God-awful blue noise all over the place! I had read that Barry said it could be a TV/monitor calibration issue, or a GPU issue. So, I took the footage upstairs to my desktop with an i7, 8GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTS 450 with 1GB VRAm. Guess what? Hardly no noise, what-so-ever! Just to see if it was a difference in calibration, I brought the footage into After Effects and wildly blew out the shadows. Almost no image noise, especially none of that ugly awful blue noise. This has lead me to believe that the noise many people speak of is indeed (if nothing else) correlated with the hardware in your system. The shot I took was of a dark room, lit by an overhanging light that was around the corner in the next room. It is very important to iterate that when I saw this on my desktop I literally said outloud "holy crap!!"I shot at ISO 1600 with a Canon 50mm FD f/1.8 and a 180 degree shutter angle. Once again, on the laptop, awful noise all over. On the desktop, very clean. Of course, there is some noise from pushing the sensor that high, but especially compared to my GH1, it's like night and day. I hope this post isn't a waste of space, I just wanted to reiterate as someone who just got his AF and as someone who doesn't know anyone on here at all that at first I was concerned about my camera, and now I'm confident that this is one of the best investments I've made in a long time! I can post screenshots/video if you all want. - Tommy
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While I agree that computer hardware can affect the appearance of noise, some settings on the AF100 can be really noisy. And I say this watching it trough SDI on a FSI monitor. I've spent a year trying to get the best settings and I've finally succumb to shooing BPress and Norm1. That produces the least amount of noise. I've found that trying to shoot with a flatter profile with the intent of more heavy color grading doesn't work so well with this camera, there is just too much noise. Shoot as close to your intended look I say. And I do really like this camera, especially after finally finding my favorite settings.
 
Kholi said:
Here's something you can do. Check out AF100 footage on Vimeo then RED Scarlet footage on Vimeo, on whichever computer tends to end up looking the worse. Then check the same footage on your better computer. Scarlet footage isn't that different to me, where-as the change in other footage is drastic.
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The footage that I shot specifically or just any 'ol AF100 footage? One thing to consider is Vimeo's encoding software. I see a lot of people uploading MTS files straight out of the camera, and if Vimeo's encoding software for whatever reason has issues with the AF100 footage, then it could cause unwanted noise. Since I've never worked with Red, I've only ever seen footage on places like Vimeo and YouTube, so I don't have much to compare it to.

Also, Eidolon, I do feel that it can be a hit or miss thing depending on the kind of noise you're seeing. At the very least, if people are getting a lot of noise, they can check out the footage on other systems and monitors. If it doesn't fix the problem, you haven't wasted too much time. I just know that for me, changing the computer system drastically changed the amount AND type of noise I was seeing.
 
Newbie question but can someone explain why the underpowered laptop introduces noise or is it the laptop screen?

I've had this issue with the 60d.

Whats the lowest noise matrix, profile, coring setting?
 
There's lots of variables with any computer...graphic cards, applications, etc, but one thing to remember is most every laptop screen is 6 bit, & not a good choice for judging color, or gradation. Many onboard monitors are 6-bit too.

I was spooked by excessive noise early on, & thought I blew a shoot with Bono, but it turned out to be something with my 17" MacBook setup, & the footage was fine.
 
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As Bern said, it could be a number of things. It could be a shorthand way of decoding h.264, for example -- in order to get the necessary speed, the graphics card might make rounding errors and whatnot that results in the appearance of a lot of rough edges. Or it could be the six-bit panel, which causes your lovely 256 shades of each color to be compressed and packed into 64 shades, which makes all your fine gradations look like big ugly blocks -- and that'll definitely exaggerate the appearance of noise! Or it could be caused by a "sharpening" circuit in the laptop's monitor, which highlights all the edges of everything that gets displayed; edge enhancement greatly exaggerates the appearance of noise.

Point is: the only way to truly know for sure what your footage really, truly looks like, is to play it back FROM THE CAMERA onto a real production monitor. Playing back from the camera sidesteps any shortcuts or cheats in your graphics card processing or computer-based h.264 decoding and results in the footage actually being uncompressed 100% accurately. And playing on a real production monitor will result in seeing the incoming signal displayed accurately, rather than squashed onto a six-bit panel or excessively edge-enhanced like a consumer TV will do.
 
Here's the question I have, will the footage re-encode looking this way? That is, say I bring the footage onto my laptop and it looks like crap in media player and/or VLC, etc. What if I re-encode the footage with, say, Premiere to another format? I haven't actually tried this, but technically the footage is still being decoded by the cpu/gpu in Premiere, right? Or am I way off base? I guess I'm just curios of the best way to edit this footage the way that it appears in camera. It's easy enough to bypass computer issues by playing off the camera, but how do we bypass these issues when we actually have to work with the files on a computer?
 
Well, that's a Premiere-specific question that wouldn't have anything to do with the AF100. Best asked in our Premiere forum.
 
Kholi said:
However, something really weird: I've found that RED footage, compressed well, always works on any laptop or desktop I view it on. I tried switching my GPU on my laptop (which has two built in) and the RED footage STILL looked great, where as most of my GH2 footage needed the boosted GPU to look right.
Click to expand...

It's true. Not just RED footage, but Cinema trailers, Bluray/DVDs, Photos etc.

Things always look better on an Apple Cinema Display, or an actual TV, or a Cinema Projection System. There's this crushed softness gauzey magic going on.

Laptops and computer monitors are less forgiving and show the real deal. So I often double colour correct my photos and videos to make sure they look great on my laptop (lol, I have to tilt the screen to check shadows/highlights) and then I'd check on other sources. Rather it'll look okay on laptop and good elsewhere, rather then good elsewhere but crap on laptop.

http://spyder.datacolor.com/ <-- these are cool
 
Barry_Green said:
Well, that's a Premiere-specific question that wouldn't have anything to do with the AF100. Best asked in our Premiere forum.
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I was curios because as far as I know Premiere still uses the hardware on your computer to decode footage...so it's not really Premiere related but related to any encoder. If a software encoding program uses the hardware in your computer to re-encode footage, won't it still bear the same hideous noise that playing it back in, say, Media Player gives you? Or is this not how encoding software works?
 
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