Magic Lantern Raw Video

[kye]

4 hours ago, capitanazo said:

i liked your videoo a lot, its a extremly good quality for that iso.
hope soon will can use stable ml raw with sd hack, sound and 10-12 bit mode.

Thanks!

The ISO noise in the RAW files is a COMPLETELY different beast from the ISO noise when using the same ISOs in Canon stock video mode.  This noise is filmic and soft and, perhaps most importantly, has a fine texture.  That same noise once scaled and compressed in the Canon stock mode is just horrible.

In the above video I did do NR and added some noise before export (on the recommendation from @kidzrevil) but even without that treatment the noise isn't a bad thing.  One thing you might want to do though is to remove the chroma noise (colour noise) which doesn't have that nice feel.

[kidzrevil]

@kye definitely +1 on the bit about the chroma noise ! Im considering just running the noise reduction pass with a very slight luma noise reduction and heavy chroma reduction ?. Another cool feature I stumbled upon that gave a SIGNIFICANT gain in IQ was davinci resolve 15 super scale feature. @mercer you may want to check that out as well

[mercer]

@kidzrevil what is the super scale feature? And what program do you use for Chroma Noise? I can usually fight it with ETTR but as I am starting exterior night shots in my film, I’m afraid of that blotchy chroma noise in the shadows.

@squig in that scene you shot for your film where the guy was tied to the chair, did you have a lot of shadow noise? I assume you lit that scene but I remember the scene was designed to have pockets of light and shafts of shadow, were there any issues, or did your lighting design compensate for ETTR and chroma shadow noise?

[kidzrevil]

@mercer I use Neat video ! You right click your files in davinci resolve and look for the feature. Its pretty dope and a great way to upscale footage

[mercer]

1 hour ago, kidzrevil said:

@mercer I use Neat video ! You right click your files in davinci resolve and look for the feature. Its pretty dope and a great way to upscale footage

Thanks, what’s the advantage to upscaling them? Does it take long to process the render to ProRes when you do that?

[kidzrevil]

@mercer the Davinci super scale algorithim is pretty sophisticated. Idk their secret sauce but it has given me a very visible jump in detail in my 1080 raw files at the expense of extra processing power

[kye]

2 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

@kye definitely +1 on the bit about the chroma noise ! Im considering just running the noise reduction pass with a very slight luma noise reduction and heavy chroma reduction ?. 

I'd be interested to hear your impressions of the native noise that comes out of the camera vs the additional noise settings that you have developed.  To my eyes it looked nice (once you remove the chroma noise of course).  

Considering your style it might even be something you could use for creative effect, using full manual settings at the ISO that gives you the right noise level and then control exposure with a variable ND.  

@mercer I'm probably stating the obvious but Resolve seems to have pretty good NR, which if you put it in a separate node and use masks then you can get it pretty specific.  On the video I shot on the GoPro in the club (with tonnes of ISO noise) I tried to run a NR node with a mask eliminating the edges (as NR is basically blur) but I couldn't find a way to generate an edge mask.  The Sharpen Edges OFX plugin detects them, but the mask channel out doesn't seem to work for some reason.  I haven't looked into this fully but it would be a great way to do heavier NR without blurring the main edges of objects.

7 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

@mercer the Davinci super scale algorithim is pretty sophisticated. Idk their secret sauce but it has given me a very visible jump in detail in my 1080 raw files at the expense of extra processing power

Have you compared it to the "Force sizing to highest quality" option in the render settings?  (it's under Video -> Advanced Settings in the Resolve Render tab).  I typically just turn this on when doing a final render but never tested if it made any difference.

I'm reminded of early photoshop days when rescaling images often gave you options about what algorithm to use (nearest pixel, linear, bicubic, etc).  My memory was that there were lots of different ways to scale images and they made a real difference in both quality and CPU time required.

[kidzrevil]

@kye yup and the super scale feature is magical. It works better than my neat video workflow !

[kye]

2 hours ago, kye said:

@mercer I'm probably stating the obvious but Resolve seems to have pretty good NR, which if you put it in a separate node and use masks then you can get it pretty specific.  On the video I shot on the GoPro in the club (with tonnes of ISO noise) I tried to run a NR node with a mask eliminating the edges (as NR is basically blur) but I couldn't find a way to generate an edge mask.  The Sharpen Edges OFX plugin detects them, but the mask channel out doesn't seem to work for some reason.  I haven't looked into this fully but it would be a great way to do heavier NR without blurring the main edges of objects.

Ok, figured it out.

Here's how to key out the edges and apply any Resolve adjustments to just the non-edges.  This will allow NR without blurring edges (or any other adjustments you want to make).

1. In the Colour panel create two nodes
2. Add the EdgeDetect OFX plugin to one of them to make it the "key" node (Node 1 below)
3. Connect the video signal like this:
   
4. Make the adjustments you want to in Node 2 (eg, chroma NR)
5. Adjust the settings in Node 1 to refine the mask that gets applied in Node 2 (I recommend adjusting Brightness to maximum to get a strong mask)

The above setup excludes edges from being processed in the node, but it seems like you can also exclude other areas as well by adjusting the masks in Node 2 like qualifiers or power windows too, so you could (for instance) use the above to de-noise non-edge shadow areas by having the Qualifier in Node 2 exclude brighter areas of the frame.

Enjoy!

I wish I had worked this out before so I could do heavy NR processing without heavily blurring the video!!

[kidzrevil]

davinci resolve 4x super scale from 1080p. I took a couple of shots of foliage because they are usually a dead giveaway for sharpening artifacts

[cantsin]

Is Super Scale a new feature in Resolve 15? I can't find it in 14.

[kidzrevil]

@cantsin yeah ! Its in the 15 beta

[squig]

On 5/15/2018 at 11:12 AM, mercer said:

@kidzrevil what is the super scale feature? And what program do you use for Chroma Noise? I can usually fight it with ETTR but as I am starting exterior night shots in my film, I’m afraid of that blotchy chroma noise in the shadows.

@squig in that scene you shot for your film where the guy was tied to the chair, did you have a lot of shadow noise? I assume you lit that scene but I remember the scene was designed to have pockets of light and shafts of shadow, were there any issues, or did your lighting design compensate for ETTR and chroma shadow noise?

ETTR? LOL That was pre raw bro, It's all H264. I lit that room with a single overhead 20w LED. I can't remember the ISO but it was high (for H264) probably 1250, maybe even a bit higher. I shot it as hot as I could to keep the noise down, so yeah I did ETTR. There was some overexposure on the skin, but it graded really well. There's no denoising, but I did add some grain and crushed the blacks as hard as I could. I shot it with my Leica-Rs, mostly the 35mm f/2

Shooting raw, shadow noise isn't usually a problem when you ETTR up to 3200 ISO. For example:

[kidzrevil]

God damn ???those screengrabs look amazing @squig

[mercer]

5 hours ago, squig said:

ETTR? LOL That was pre raw bro, It's all H264. I lit that room with a single overhead 20w LED. I can't remember the ISO but it was high (for H264) probably 1250, maybe even a bit higher. I shot it as hot as I could to keep the noise down, so yeah I did ETTR. There was some overexposure on the skin, but it graded really well. There's no denoising, but I did add some grain and crushed the blacks as hard as I could. I shot it with my Leica-Rs, mostly the 35mm f/2

Shooting raw, shadow noise isn't usually a problem when you ETTR up to 3200 ISO. For example:

Haha, seriously?! Sometimes I really think all of the talk about this camera or that camera, is a bunch of nonsense... I visit this site and watch most online videos on my phone, like 95% of the rest of the world and since I knew you shot ML Raw, I just assumed that scene was shot Raw as well. Crazy.

Either way it looks awesome, man! All of it does. Those screengrabs are epic. I love the choice of making some of your lighting practical... SMART!!!

Did you use the same Leica Rs with the Raw shots as you did with the h.264?

On 5/14/2018 at 10:54 PM, kidzrevil said:

@mercer the Davinci super scale algorithim is pretty sophisticated. Idk their secret sauce but it has given me a very visible jump in detail in my 1080 raw files at the expense of extra processing power

Hmm, that’s pretty cool. I’ll have to give it a try when I upgrade to 15. But to be honest, I’m shooting 2:35 at 1920x810, and I’m still blown away by the detail with the right lens, so I don’t even know if taxing my MacBook Air with the higher resolution is worth it to me... it would just fall on deaf ears I think. 

[squig]

5 hours ago, mercer said:

Haha, seriously?! Sometimes I really think all of the talk about this camera or that camera, is a bunch of nonsense... I visit this site and watch most online videos on my phone, like 95% of the rest of the world and since I knew you shot ML Raw, I just assumed that scene was shot Raw as well. Crazy.

Either way it looks awesome, man! All of it does. Those screengrabs are epic. I love the choice of making some of your lighting practical... SMART!!!

Did you use the same Leica Rs with the Raw shots as you did with the h.264?

Thanks. Yeah, bottom one is the Leica-R 35/2 and the top one is either the 135/2.8 or the 90/2. Practicals are great, I modded those Tilley lamps myself with 4000k LED strip lights and 12v batteries concealed in the oil tanks.

Most important thing with cameras is knowing their limitations and how to work around them, with the 5D it's underexposure and FPN. With only around 10 stops to play with at high ISOs, some blown highlights are better than unusable noisy footage. I've tested a bunch of other cameras like the A7s and the BMMCC, but I always come back to Magic Lantern because matched with the 5D MK3 sensor, it's killer.

9 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

God damn ???those screengrabs look amazing @squig

Thanks. I had to bust my arse to get that shit right. And they're just tests, I've still gotta go back and shoot the damn scene.

[kaylee]

4 hours ago, squig said:

FPN

::sigh:: smh why dont i know what this is

[squig]

1 hour ago, kaylee said:

::sigh:: smh why dont i know what this is

Fixed pattern noise.

[kidzrevil]

@squig so thats what that ugly mesh looking noise is when you underexpose huh ? ?? Do you think it might be a better option to overexpose +0.5 to +1 and normalize the exposure in post ? 

[squig]

1 hour ago, kidzrevil said:

@squig so thats what that ugly mesh looking noise is when you underexpose huh ? ?? Do you think it might be a better option to overexpose +0.5 to +1 and normalize the exposure in post ? 

Either get your exposure dead on or overexpose a bit. If you're shooting in bright light at 100 ISO you can get away with a bit of underexposure but at 3200 ISO I wouldn't recommend it.