Went from WOW to Crap

New_Zealand

New_Zealand

Veteran
I did some night filming with the t3i and the Tamron 17-50mm. play the footage back on the camera and it look really GREAT!!! Nice low light shots but nice and clear. I downloaded it onto my computer and pulled it into Vegas Pro 9.0 and rendered it out and it look like crap all noisy. Why did it look so great in the camera but not on the computer? Computer is running 8gb Ram, Tb hard drive.
 
The camera LCD is not a good way to judge your image. I've reviewed still shots on my T3i that looked like I nailed perfectly, then found them to be out of focus, with other issues when I reviewed on my computer.

Also, what settings did you use to render out of Vegas? That could be the difference there. Additionally, your computer monitor might be the culprit. I just rendered some videos, and played them back on the same high-definition monitor. I have two computers hooked up to this monitor, one through the HDMI input, the other through DVI. The video looked grreat through the HDMI connection and crappy through DVI - but that might not even be the culprit. One computer is brand new and the other is over 4 years old.

So there are so many variable. But I assuming that your footage looks good played back on your computer before you run it through your NLE. Just play it back on a program like Windows media Player first. If it looks good untouched, I would start with your render settings. Try rendering out as a high-quality WMV 3MBPS or higher.

Lastly, all computer monitors are different. If you plan to show the video on a TV, try looking at the video there. I've been burned real bad judging video on my monitor, working on it like crazy, then finding the results to be completely different once I played it on my TV.
 
Lately, I am regretting my purchase of the T3I for this very reason. My footage looks wonderful on the LCD screen but I get home from the shoot and find myself saying...ohhh! Nooo! more times than not. May have to consider selling it and moving to the Nikon 5100 or Sony.
 
christriplet said:
Lately, I am regretting my purchase of the T3I for this very reason. My footage looks wonderful on the LCD screen but I get home from the shoot and find myself saying...ohhh! Nooo! more times than not. May have to consider selling it and moving to the Nikon 5100 or Sony.
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Try white balancing to allow the night sky to absorb any halo coming from the surrounding practical lighting (making it more controlled). Then try crushing the blacks by underexposing shadows. If possible, shoot from an area with more light (i.e. under a lamp post).

And use a faster lens where possible (you have to know the type of depth of field you are going for).

These seem to bring my T2i passable results.
 
Don't shoot above 1200 ISO, if you do, get ready to denoise the heck out of the footage.

LCD tells lies.
 
Noise and sharpness are almost impossible to judge accurately on the camera's LCD, most of the noise will vanish due to the LCD down-sampling the image. Prevent as much noise as possible by keeping your iso down.

Edit: Kholi beat me to it!
 
Are you guys using a loupe? I'm suprised to hear these comments because I find with a 3x loupe, the LCD is fairly adequate at revealing noise and sharpness, although not as good as your 1080p monitor, obviously.
 
I use an LCDVF loupe and it does help quite a bit. Most important is to get proper exposure in cam. I've found that keeping the histogram up toward not quite over exposed then bringing levels down in your editor really helps. I can get better images at ISO 2500 by bringing levels down than by shooting at ISO 800 and trying to bring levels up in post.

To me highlights are always blown with these DSLR cams and there's nothing you can do about it. Shoot for a subject that is just a tad hot and crush the blacks from there to supress the noise locked in by the h.264 compression. If you try to raise the levels of those shadows in post even the slightest amount your image will blow up.

Cheers,
Pete
 
I'm interested in what the OP iso was.

I have a t2i and as someone else said noise and focus look better than actual on the screen. Especially high iso. However for the most part I'm usually the opposite and am more impressed after I get it on the computer.
 
as others said, the LCD is deceptive for noise and sharpness (I'd add moire and aliasing too) - resample your footage to 800x450, and play back on a window in the PC, and it should look just as good as it did on your LCD screen; that's not very useful, though
 
So what does all this mean? How can you expect to consistently get usable footage if it never ends up being as good as it did when you were shooting?
 
2 things:

1) Did the footage look terrible before editing in Vegas? Saying it looked one way in camera, and another after rendering opens up so many variables. You have to ascertain whether it was the camera recording bad footage or your editing that screwed it up.

2) Magic Lantern's magic zoom gives you a live magnification window while shooting. I can't stress this enough, especially if you don't have an external monitor to use, Magic Lantern is an invaluable tool. You can see noise and critical focus in the zoom window, and use the rest of the LCD for framing reference.

I know some people out there still think ML is just not their cup of tea, but I really can't recommend it enough. I sometimes am reluctant to use my GH2 if I don't have to because I miss those features.
 
well for one you'll have to get magic lantern so u can get the clean ISO's. as it stands u don't have the clean ones which are 160,320,640, 1250. I dont go over 640 for professional shoots. and 1250 for normal things. then u'll prob need to invest in a loupe or external monitor or EVF of some sort to get focus spot on. I use the Zacuto EVF with my 7d. But as M.Gliden said ML has a Zoom feature so i guess u can use that...cheaper than buying a monitor which is more or the same cost as your camera
 
Yeah I'd recommend an outboard monitor- at least so you get a better sense of what the onboard display really translates to. That said, relying more on the exposure meters and truly understanding what it's telling you as well as not relying on super high ISOs coupled with slow lenses, etc. that's what you get with experience.

Noah
 
The reason focus can look sharp on the camera LCD screen then out-of-focus when viewed at a larger size, is just that reason, size.

As an experiment, I have sized down still images that were out of focus (Not horribly out of focus, but fairly out of focus) and they look much better. However, video is a different story because it has much smaller dimensions than the still images.
 
M. Gilden said:
1) Did the footage look terrible before editing in Vegas? Saying it looked one way in camera, and another after rendering opens up so many variables. You have to ascertain whether it was the camera recording bad footage or your editing that screwed it up.
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I would suggest this also.
 
New_Zealand said:
Not sure what my iso was on that shoot but will do another test and look at the setting.
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Magic Lantern can log every clip you shoot so you will know all the settings used. Extremely useful, especially when cleaning up noise with the likes of Neat video.
 
also, even if you didn't use magic lantern and its log function, maybe you can get back the ISO setting from the metadata of the thumbnail file (rename that THM as JPG and look at its metadata)
 
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