I've been working with a local pro-sports team to document the construction of their new stadium, and I recently just did a shoot of the building about an hour after sunset. While this was my first commercial night flight ever (I do have the waiver!), I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about how cameras and camera settings work so I figured I knew the right settings for the shot (DLog, wide-open aperture, 180* shutter, ProRes 422HQ). I typically have the MicroSD card set to capture 4k Rec.709 H.265 clips along with the ProRes. After reviewing the footage, I noticed that the H.265 footage looked quite nice and with minimal noise, yet the ProRes/Log clip was extremely noisy but definitely had more shadow detail. From my understanding of how EI mode works (and how the H.265 versions work), the video is always captured at native ISO (400) and when I bumped it up to 1600 ISO it is just effectively applying a LUT to bump the gain by a couple stops (reversible in post). I also assumed that the H.265 version may have had less noise because DJI is applying well-tuned noise reduction to it along with the Rec.709 color profile.
That said, I figured my client (who is admittedly way more knowledge about about video than me) would know why the ProRes looked so much noisier, and he could apply his own noise reduction and stop it down a bit if it was too bright. Unfortunately I just got the feedback that he considers the ProRes footage unusable due to noise and the H.265 versions passable. How is that possible that DJI's noise reduction is so well tuned that a video professional prefers the H.265 version of a clip to a LOG ProRes file? Is my understanding wrong here? Any advise on Noise Reduction settings in Premiere for X5S DLOG low-light footage?
I can share a few of the clips privately if you're curious but I'd prefer not post them here. Thanks for any help you can provide!
That said, I figured my client (who is admittedly way more knowledge about about video than me) would know why the ProRes looked so much noisier, and he could apply his own noise reduction and stop it down a bit if it was too bright. Unfortunately I just got the feedback that he considers the ProRes footage unusable due to noise and the H.265 versions passable. How is that possible that DJI's noise reduction is so well tuned that a video professional prefers the H.265 version of a clip to a LOG ProRes file? Is my understanding wrong here? Any advise on Noise Reduction settings in Premiere for X5S DLOG low-light footage?
I can share a few of the clips privately if you're curious but I'd prefer not post them here. Thanks for any help you can provide!
Last edited: