Best camera settings for 4k?

I am no drone or dp expert -- just a filmmaker who is starting to use drone shots in his films -- so I can't tell you if my settings are the best or not, but I'm really happy with what I've been getting and this link will show the trailer for the movie I'm shooting right now, including the drone footage I shot with my P4P.

I used C4K H264 at 100 Mbps, 23.98 fps. D-Log, sunlight WB preset. ND16, 1/48 shutter (actually I think the closest you can get is 1/50), usually exposing around f5.6/f8. The key really is the ND filter. You just can't get the proper shutter speed and f-stop in bright daylight without them.

The footage looks horrible when you shoot it. :)

Then you have a professional colorist work with it and she makes it look even worse (on purpose, this is apocalyptic so we took all the beautiful blue skies away).

www.seedandspark.com/fund/virtually#story

Have you tried cinelike? What made you choose dlog over other settings?
 
Have you tried cinelike? What made you choose dlog over other settings?

I haven't tried cinelike yet. I know several people have had bad experiences with dlog, but I did a quick test with it and it was fine for my needs. The rest of the footage was shot log with an Arri Alexa and I wanted to do everything possible to make the footage match. That said, for all I know cinelike would have done even better....

Something to test before we resume filming....
 
I am no drone or dp expert -- just a filmmaker who is starting to use drone shots in his films -- so I can't tell you if my settings are the best or not, but I'm really happy with what I've been getting and this link will show the trailer for the movie I'm shooting right now, including the drone footage I shot with my P4P.

I used C4K H264 at 100 Mbps, 23.98 fps. D-Log, sunlight WB preset. ND16, 1/48 shutter (actually I think the closest you can get is 1/50), usually exposing around f5.6/f8. The key really is the ND filter. You just can't get the proper shutter speed and f-stop in bright daylight without them.

The footage looks horrible when you shoot it. :)

Then you have a professional colorist work with it and she makes it look even worse (on purpose, this is apocalyptic so we took all the beautiful blue skies away).

www.seedandspark.com/fund/virtually#story


Absolute nonsense! Take a look at this video shot with the following settings: UHD 4K30, D-Cinelike with -1/0/-1, WB=6000, f/5.6 and shutter speed at about 1/1000 with NO ND FILTER.

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A lot of folks coming from traditional film making bring with them habits and old wives tales that they insist against evidence to the contrary that those same settings will work perfectly with drones. 24fps is not advisable as that results in video with obvious stutteriness. The insistance on using ND filter and a shutter speed no more than 2X the frame rate is also not necessary as the perspective a drone has IS NOT THE SAME AS A CAMERA ON THE GROUND ON A TRIPOD SHOOTING SLOW OR STATIONARY OBJECTS. And D-log just flat sucks and exacerbates the banding problem all 8-bits cameras have.

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Brian
 
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Absolute nonsense! Take a look at this video shot with the following settings: UHD 4K30, D-Cinelike with -1/0/-1, WB=6000, f/5.6 and shutter speed at about 1/1000 with NO ND FILTER.

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A lot of folks coming from traditional film making bring with them habits and old wives tales that they insist against evidence to the contrary that those same settings will work perfectly with drones. 24fps is not advisable as that results in video with obvious stutteriness. The insistance on using ND filter and a shutter speed no more than 2X the frame rate is also not necessary as the perspective a drone has IS NOT THE SAME AS A CAMERA ON THE GROUND ON A TRIPOD SHOOTING SLOW OR STATIONARY OBJECTS. And D-log just flat sucks and exacerbates the banding problem all 8-bits cameras have.

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Brian

I can't speak for D-Log, but if you are shooting a narrative film project, you need to shoot at 23.98 with 1/48 shutter if you want the footage to look like film. If you are shooting a video project that isn't meant to look like film, then yes, you can use whatever shutter rate you want.
 
Cloudy is a whitebalance setting and only affects the balance between colors (red/blue temperature and purple/green tint). Cloudy is slightly warmer than the daylight setting. Auto is normally sufficient.

Iris/aperture is controlled by the chosen f stop between f/2.8 and f/11 and affects the overall sharpness of the image as well as the shutter speed.

A non-gradient nd filter only affects the shutter speed by reducing the amount of total light reaching the sensor. It does not affect color or contrast. Ideal shutter speed for 30 fps is 1/60 seconds and a nd filter will help reaching or approaching this as an alternative (or in addition to) setting the f stop.

The third way to affect shutter speed is ISO which additionally increases noise as you move beyond base iso. (Increasing ISO is the last resort in low-light situations after removing any filters and going to f/2.8)

As a pro photographer with over 30 years experience, I'm delighted to see a very technically accurate reply that I didn't write myself. Guys please, if you don't understand photography it's best not to make guesses.
 
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I can't speak for D-Log, but if you are shooting a narrative film project, you need to shoot at 23.98 with 1/48 shutter if you want the footage to look like film. If you are shooting a video project that isn't meant to look like film, then yes, you can use whatever shutter rate you want.

First, let me apologize for coming on a little strong in my prior -- not my intention to do that.

Yes, much of traditional film making involves controlled lighting AND controlled BG and often involve a primary subject of people and for this D-log, even in an 8-bit camera, is advisable as it allocates more of the levels to the mid-tones giving greater latitude in post. But, drone videos are not shot indoors, for the most part, and we do not have control over the lighting or background. I would also mention that the kind of exposure and color profile settings that work in a studio setting are not always advised when shooting out of doors such as wildlife even when that is done without a drone.

The perspective a drone provides changes everything and what works in the studio will kill you in the air. I was like you when I first started with drones and went by the 24fps for the "Cinematic" look, but it became obvious that 24fps with a drone made the video uncomfortably stuttery. In fact, although I recommend 30fps at this point if we had higher bit rates and the actual ability to shoot at higher frame rates then I'd be inclined to go to 50fps or even 60fps, but at this time the image processing capabilities and bit rate are no enough to go higher than 30fps at UHD resolution. If I were shooting HD then I'd certainly be at 50fps or 60fps.

Additionally, the believed need for ND filters, which I also believed, did not turn out to be the case in reality as my ND filters sit unused in my case. A look at my P4P videos on my channel should reveal that ND filters are not needed. Lastly, the insistence on D-log, which as I said is probably a good idea in the studio is a killer in the real world of drone videos unless the lighting and BG are tolerant of it. The biggest problem with D-log, as I see it, is that when you have low detail skies without detailed clouds the reduction in levels to code for highlights make the already evident banding issue that much worse. If you have highly detailed clouds that tend to break up the banding then D-log is usable, but I'm unconvinced that D-log is advisable at least 90% of the time.

Again, I apologize for coming on a bit strong in my prior.


Brian
 
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First, let me apologize for coming on a little strong in my prior -- not my intention to do that.

Yes, much of traditional film making involves controlled lighting AND controlled BG and often involve a primary subject of people and for this D-log, even in an 8-bit camera, is advisable as it allocates more of the levels to the mid-tones giving greater latitude in post. But, drone videos are not shot indoors, for the most part, and we do not have control over the lighting or background. I would also mention that the kind of exposure and color profile settings that work in a studio setting are not always advised when shooting out of doors such as wildlife even when that is done without a drone.

The perspective a drone provides changes everything and what works in the studio will kill you in the air. I was like you when I first started with drones and went by the 24fps for the "Cinematic" look, but it became obvious that 24fps with a drone made the video uncomfortably stuttery. In fact, although I recommend 30fps at this point if we had higher bit rates and the actual ability to shoot at higher frame rates then I'd be inclined to go to 50fps or even 60fps, but at this time the image processing capabilities and bit rate are no enough to go higher than 30fps at UHD resolution. If I were shooting HD then I'd certainly be at 50fps or 60fps.

Additionally, the believed need for ND filters, which I also believed, did not turn out to be the case in reality as my ND filters sit unused in my case. A look at my P4P videos on my channel should reveal that ND filters are not needed. Lastly, the insistence on D-log, which as I said is probably a good idea in the studio is a killer in the real world of drone videos unless the lighting and BG are tolerant of it. The biggest problem with D-log, as I see it, is that when you have low detail skies without detailed clouds the reduction in levels to code for highlights make the already evident banding issue that much worse. If you have highly detailed clouds that tend to break up the banding then D-log is usable, but I'm unconvinced that D-log is advisable at least 90% of the time.

Again, I apologize for coming on a bit strong in my prior.


Brian

Again, I haven't done much experimentation with D-Log vs. Cinelike, etc., but the 24 fps and 1/48 shutter is absolutely necessary for my footage. Which means the ND filter is also absolutely necessary. Again, I'm not filming Drone footage, but scenes for movies. Which has very different needs. If I was just shooting drone footage to share, I would definitely use 60 fps if it's stable at 4k. And 24 fps will definitely stutter if not done properly, so you do need to be careful, the same as you do with any 24 fps shooting.

So I guess to bring this back around to the OP's question -- there is no best settings. It depends on your needs and what the end product will be.
 
Again, I haven't done much experimentation with D-Log vs. Cinelike, etc., but the 24 fps and 1/48 shutter is absolutely necessary for my footage. Which means the ND filter is also absolutely necessary. Again, I'm not filming Drone footage, but scenes for movies. Which has very different needs. If I was just shooting drone footage to share, I would definitely use 60 fps if it's stable at 4k. And 24 fps will definitely stutter if not done properly, so you do need to be careful, the same as you do with any 24 fps shooting.

So I guess to bring this back around to the OP's question -- there is no best settings. It depends on your needs and what the end product will be.

Yes, delivering content to the movie industry means conforming to the standards they work at and 24fps for that, even if shot from a drone, is necessary. And that really is the apples versus oranges we're talking about.

Of course, the major film studios are likely to use the bigger drones so they can use cameras like a Red Weapon and not the comparatively crappy cameras in the Phantom 4 Pro -- exceptions do apply.


Brian
 
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I have to disagree on a couple of those points. From my experience, 24p is absolutely necessary for cinematic video. I shoot 4K 24p all the time with no stuttery footage at all. Of course you do have to have the shutter speed set to twice the frame rate. As far as ND filters, I swear by mine. Getting that f5.6 on a sunny day is crucial to a nice motion blur on foreground objects as you pass them. Also, someone earlier in this discussion thread suggested auto iris... yikes. Please don't do that. I agree that D-log is not necessary and I've seen no advantage to H.265 at all.
 
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Yes, delivering content to the movie industry means conforming to the standards they work at and 24fps for that, even if shot from a drone, is necessary. And that really is the apples versus oranges we're talking about.

Of course, the major film studios are likely to use the bigger drones so they can use cameras like a Red Weapon and not the comparatively crappy cameras in the Phantom 4 Pro -- exceptions do apply.


Brian

While I agree that the studios aren't using P4P's, I'm using my P4P intercut with Red Epics and Arri Alexas and it blends pretty seamlessly if you do it right....
 
I have to disagree on a couple of those points. From my experience, 24p is absolutely necessary for cinematic video. I shoot 4K 24p all the time with no stuttery footage at all. Of course you do have to have the shutter speed set to twice the frame rate. As far as ND filters, I swear by mine. Getting that f5.6 on a sunny day is crucial to a nice motion blur on foreground objects as you pass them. Also, someone earlier in this discussion thread suggested auto iris... yikes. Please don't do that. I agree that D-log is not necessary and I've seen no advantage to H.265 at all.


Perhaps your eyes are less effected by the slower frame rates but I can say without question that for me the use of 24fps is a no go when using a drone. I don't use auto iris and shoot full manual exposure all the time and that includes locking the WB usually at 6000. I do use H.265 but can't say with certainty it makes much difference in recorded quality and to be sure the playback is a pain with current gen PC's -- as more PC's come out using Intel's newer CPU's or higher end GPU's the playback issues should be a thing of the past. One additional problem with D-log is that it is now locked at ISO500 so if you want to slow the shutter speed down to about 1/50 when conditions would otherwise drive a shutter speed of 1/5000 you'd need one hell of a ND filter for that -- 5 stop isn't enough!


Brian
 
Perhaps your eyes are less effected by the slower frame rates but I can say without question that for me the use of 24fps is a no go when using a drone. I don't use auto iris and shoot full manual exposure all the time and that includes locking the WB usually at 6000. I do use H.265 but can't say with certainty it makes much difference in recorded quality and to be sure the playback is a pain with current gen PC's -- as more PC's come out using Intel's newer CPU's or higher end GPU's the playback issues should be a thing of the past. One additional problem with D-log is that it is now locked at ISO500 so if you want to slow the shutter speed down to about 1/50 when conditions would otherwise drive a shutter speed of 1/5000 you'd need one hell of a ND filter for that -- 5 stop isn't enough!


Brian

When you have a chance, look at the trailer in the link I posted, I'm curious what you think -- you have way more drone experience than I do...
 
When you have a chance, look at the trailer in the link I posted, I'm curious what you think -- you have way more drone experience than I do...

Nice, I missed this before, what kind of release is this going to have?

Here's the thing, the video has a mix of drone footage, like the opening scene, and non-drone footage and even though they are both shot at 24fps the drone footage at 24fps is very noticeably stuttery whereas the non-drone footage is not. I do have to say that I've been blessed or cursed with very fast reactions and even at 60 years old the opening scene and the other drone footage I see the very obvious step,step,step,step of each frame. I should also add that even at 30fps I can see stuttering as is evident in this video I shot a few months back. The point beginning at 4:30 as the drone pans with close by objects betrays noticeable, at least to me, stuttering. This is much less of a problem when you do not have objects so close.

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Brian
 
Nice, I missed this before, what kind of release is this going to have?

Here's the thing, the video has a mix of drone footage, like the opening scene, and non-drone footage and even though they are both shot at 24fps the drone footage at 24fps is very noticeably stuttery whereas the non-drone footage is not. I do have to say that I've been blessed or cursed with very fast reactions and even at 60 years old the opening scene and the other drone footage I see the very obvious step,step,step,step of each frame. I should also add that even at 30fps I can see stuttering as is evident in this video I shot a few months back. The point beginning at 4:30 as the drone pans with close by objects betrays noticeable, at least to me, stuttering. This is much less of a problem when you do not have objects so close.

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Brian
Thanks. I'll be making a 2k DCP for festivals when the final film is done. And you must be very sensitive to frame stutter. I don't see anything other than the normal 24 fps cinema motion in the footage from either the camera or the drone.
 
Thanks. I'll be making a 2k DCP for festivals when the final film is done. And you must be very sensitive to frame stutter. I don't see anything other than the normal 24 fps cinema motion in the footage from either the camera or the drone.

As an aside ... I suspect that even the movie industry will move to higher frame rates and I would expect that it will be higher than 30fps at that. Show me a gamer that is happy with anything less than about 60fps and I'll buy you lunch the next time I'm in LA. I believe that the 24fps rate is largely a holdover from film days when a goodly proportion of a films budget went for film so anything that lowered film usage was jumped on. Much of the current usage of 24fps is a legacy of the film industry being, well, film, and much is a consequence of that legacy.

I think before we see 8K video in the home as anything other than a novelty for rich people we'll see the industry move towards higher frame rates. Of course, being able to support NTSA and PAL formats complicate the picture somewhat, but I suspect we are not far from a global convergence that drives these higher rates. Most HD/4K TV sets made today can support differing frames rates as well as line frequencies.


Brian
 
As an aside ... I suspect that even the movie industry will move to higher frame rates and I would expect that it will be higher than 30fps at that. Show me a gamer that is happy with anything less than about 60fps and I'll buy you lunch the next time I'm in LA. I believe that the 24fps rate is largely a holdover from film days when a goodly proportion of a films budget went for film so anything that lowered film usage was jumped on. Much of the current usage of 24fps is a legacy of the film industry being, well, film, and much is a consequence of that legacy.

I think before we see 8K video in the home as anything other than a novelty for rich people we'll see the industry move towards higher frame rates. Of course, being able to support NTSA and PAL formats complicate the picture somewhat, but I suspect we are not far from a global convergence that drives these higher rates. Most HD/4K TV sets made today can support differing frames rates as well as line frequencies.


Brian

I don't make films. But from what I understand, they want actually care about the frame rate. What filmmakers want is a lower shutter speed, for the motion blur. So I guess unless there's a way to have high frame rate with low SS, the byproduct is to use low frame rate. Maybe there's a way? I don't know you would do that, say, 1/48s but at 60fps.
 
I don't make films. But from what I understand, they want actually care about the frame rate. What filmmakers want is a lower shutter speed, for the motion blur. So I guess unless there's a way to have high frame rate with low SS, the byproduct is to use low frame rate. Maybe there's a way? I don't know you would do that, say, 1/48s but at 60fps.

Motion blur, if wanted or needed, can be added in post. Having a low shutter speed condemns all the video to being less sharp and as we move to 4K and onward to 8K sharpness is going to be ever more important. As a photographer for many years I've seen the quality of still images improve enormously in just the last 15 years and with each improvement, particularly resolution, the need for better lenses to get the higher res is actually a bigger part of Nikon and Canons profit picture for pro/serious gear. Additionally, the higher res images put an even higher premium on proper focus and control of movement.

But, getting back to motion blur for a moment, I think this is again a holdover from film days -- if you don't want to spend more for expensive 35mm film you develop a justification for lower frame rates. Nothing makes the industry happier than being able to justify something on artistic need even if that need isn't real. OTH, when you are at 24fps adding a little motion blur can help limit the perception of stuttering. The higher the frame rate the lower the need for motion blur and the sharper the video. Bit of a chicken and egg thing I'd argue...


Brian
 
Remember the backlash when the first Peter Jackson Hobbit movie came out and there was a 48fps version you could watch in theaters. The vast majority of people hated it because of the crisp "video-like" images. Sure it was super clean and the pans had no jittering at all. It just didn't look like a film. Personally I can see use for high frame footage for games and sporting events (maybe reality TV) but I hate it for movies. The time you see jittering in 24fps footage is during fast pans. I don't generally do fast pans with my drone flights so I don't have a problem.
 
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