X5R ProRes SD Footage vs SSD RAW

[Preston Vance]

I found an issue that I would like to get help with. I recently took my OSMO and X5R to Venice Beach and shot some footage. When I got home I wasn't happy with the quality of the RAW footage (haven't been super happy about it the entire time I have had the camera). I happened to compare my SSD RAW footage to the SD ProRes footage and was shocked. The ProRes was sharper and looked better. In addition to that, I noticed that in certain creative lens flare shots that there was purple and turquoise haloing on some of the edges in the RAW footage but not in the ProRes. Also noticed today that there is a lot of noise in general in the shadows of the RAW.
I called DJI support and got a lot of interesting answers. First, I was told that I should use the Adobe RAW in photoshop. I did that and the haloing was still there and it required a lot of sharpening. Then I was told that exporting DNG RAW out of Cinelight is not the way to go. They told me to export log. I thought the X5R was a RAW workflow? That doesn't work for me, I invested a lot in equipment to do RAW not log, plus it is way slower to export recompressed log. Then, they told me to download an application from their website called DNG Cleaner. What the heck is that? Ran it and it didn't really do anything. Why do they have that application? They want to replace my camera but I don't really believe that this issue is my sensor, I have another theory:

DJI won't tell anyone what bit rate they use for their RAW recording and won't let anyone see those files until after they leave Cinelight. I feel like maybe the RAW stream they are recording is heavily compressed and then just re-wrapped in Cinelight and dumped to DNG. The SD card footage comes off of the sensor and is recorded immediately and with better compression so it is sharper. If this is true, it puts all X5R users between a rock and hard place. SD footage is better quality but without the range to edit. SSD RAW footage has the range but is so compressed it requires sharpening and looks thin.

Basically I would love it if other X5R users would compare one frame in HD 1920x1080 from SD card and the same frame from SSD RAW and do a side by side and post here. In my files the RAW is a little softer and there is compression in the blacks.

I would love to be wrong on this so I didn't fork out $6000 for a system that is not ready for professional users. I hope that it is my sensor but when they keep their bit stream secret and they only let you use Cinelight to export it seems like they don't want anyone to see that the only way they can record 4K RAW to that one SSD card is to compress it so heavily it has less quality than the SD card.

I uploaded images to look at. The set with the guy on the right has the purple and turquoise haloing on the right noticed in the people in the back and on his pant legs. In general there is a softness to it and there is turquoise in a lot of edges. The close up of his pants that is purple (the purple isn't the issue, this particular frame has a lens flare over him and it is revealing the weakness of the quality of the image. The ProRes from the SD does not have this issue as it most likely has less compression. These frames are original DNG frames and original ProRes.

Thanks everyone in advance

Preston

 

[Kilrah]

RAW is RAW, you get more data but you lose all of the image enhancements and processing the camera is capable of doing, it allows you to try and do better but as a drawback it REQUIRES you to at least manage to do as good. All you're seeing there is that it can be a complex job in some situations like this one where the combination of lighting choice and lens characteristics leaves you with something quite dirty.

BTW your camera doesn't do ProRes on the SD card, but H.264 which everyone typically complains about being too heavily compressed. If you're happy with that your problem with RAW certainly doesn't stem from DJI hiding the way they handle the RAW that is about 40x less compressed...

 

[Preston Vance]

RAW is RAW, you get more data but you lose all of the image enhancements and processing the camera is capable of doing, it allows you to try and do better but as a drawback it REQUIRES you to at least manage to do as good. All you're seeing there is that it can be a complex job in some situations like this one where the combination of lighting choice and lens characteristics leaves you with something quite dirty.

BTW your camera doesn't do ProRes on the SD card, but H.264 which everyone typically complains about being too heavily compressed. If you're happy with that your problem with RAW certainly doesn't stem from DJI hiding the way they handle the RAW that is about 40x less compressed...

i understand about the RAW format. Also thank you for the correction about the h264 I think I had logged it in my memory it was ProRes for some reason

This still doesn't go toward resolving my issue. Are you justifying the softness and compression artifacts I am seeing in my RAW footage? This quality doesn't fly in my professional circles and I am just wondering if someone can please confirm that this is as good as it gets right now with the X5R.

 

[Kilrah]

Softness - it's again because RAW comes RAW, if you want it sharper you have to sharpen it yourself. The H264 footage is sharpened by the camera, the whole point of using RAW is to have control over that instead of having to go with what the camera chooses, so the job becomes yours to do as you please.
The purple noise is really due to that flare. If the frames you posted as H264/RAW comparison are really exactly the same frame then the solid purple instead of purple noise is also a result of the camera processing/denoising. If you prefer the solid look you'd have to find a similar denoising process in your RAW processing workflow...

RAW never looks good as is, YOU have to make it look good.

 

[The Editor]

Moved to correct section.

 

[Preston Vance]

Softness - it's again because RAW comes RAW, if you want it sharper you have to sharpen it yourself. The H264 footage is sharpened by the camera, the whole point of using RAW is to have control over that instead of having to go with what the camera chooses, so the job becomes yours to do as you please.
The purple noise is really due to that flare. If the frames you posted as H264/RAW comparison are really exactly the same frame then the solid purple instead of purple noise is also a result of the camera processing/denoising. If you prefer the solid look you'd have to find a similar denoising process in your RAW processing workflow...

RAW never looks good as is, YOU have to make it look good.

Your input is not helping. DJI RAW is not uncompressed, it has compression. The issues I am seeing COULD be related to how much compression is being added by DJI to their RAW data and that is what I am trying to get to the bottom of. I have worked in post for years and saying that RAW is soft coming out of the camera is not always true. High data rate, high quality RAW files should be fairly sharp. If you have to sharpen the footage to the degree that has to be done to my X5R footage it adds other issues like aliasing.

If you look at the specs given by DJI they call their RAW "JPEG Lossless" That means they are using JPEG as a compression method after pulling the data from the sensor. Is it 12bit? is it 10bit? or is it 8bit? Is it 4:2:2 or 4:2:0? We don't know because they won't say. If it is a lower data rate and 8bit, which is what I am suspecting, the compression and softness put the RAW in a category that to me is apples and oranges compared to the H264 and accounts for the problems I am seeing.

Storage Rates
4608 x 2592
CinemaDNG RAW - 513MB/s
CinemaDNG RAW 3:1 - 180 MB/s
CinemaDNG RAW 4:1 - 135 MB/s

These are the published RAW data rates for the Blackmagic URSA mini. They use 12bit color space and 4:2:2 and their best rate is 513mb/s. Again, my issue is that I don't know how much compression is being done and what bit rate is being used to record to the DJI SSD card and what color depth. The GIGO expression applies here. If you start with a garbage DNG you can work the hell out of it and you will still get garbage out. That is what I am experiencing and I am looking to this community to help me do a little R&D. I am not looking for a RAW lesson. If you want to help me vett this and determine whether it is my sensor or whether it is a systemic DJI issue then please post comparison shots, if not please move on to help other users.

 

[The Editor]

Your input is not helping. DJI RAW is not uncompressed, it has compression. The issues I am seeing COULD be related to how much compression is being added by DJI to their RAW data and that is what I am trying to get to the bottom of. I have worked in post for years and saying that RAW is soft coming out of the camera is not always true. High data rate, high quality RAW files should be fairly sharp. If you have to sharpen the footage to the degree that has to be done to my X5R footage it adds other issues like aliasing.

If you look at the specs given by DJI they call their RAW "JPEG Lossless" That means they are using JPEG as a compression method after pulling the data from the sensor. Is it 12bit? is it 10bit? or is it 8bit? Is it 4:2:2 or 4:2:0? We don't know because they won't say. If it is a lower data rate and 8bit, which is what I am suspecting, the compression and softness put the RAW in a category that to me is apples and oranges compared to the H264 and accounts for the problems I am seeing.

Storage Rates
4608 x 2592
CinemaDNG RAW - 513MB/s
CinemaDNG RAW 3:1 - 180 MB/s
CinemaDNG RAW 4:1 - 135 MB/s

These are the published RAW data rates for the Blackmagic URSA mini. They use 12bit color space and 4:2:2 and their best rate is 513mb/s. Again, my issue is that I don't know how much compression is being done and what bit rate is being used to record to the DJI SSD card and what color depth. The GIGO expression applies here. If you start with a garbage DNG you can work the hell out of it and you will still get garbage out. That is what I am experiencing and I am looking to this community to help me do a little R&D. I am not looking for a RAW lesson. If you want to help me vett this and determine whether it is my sensor or whether it is a systemic DJI issue then please post comparison shots, if not please move on to help other users.

12bit
VBR average 1.9gbps
JPEG lossless Huffman compression
4:4:4

 

[gruvpix]

Try 4k is really all I can suggest... DJI has repeatedly botched the 1080p and 2.7k settings to the point where they are completely useless.
I see exactly what you are saying with the artifacting on that purple flare, and you are right it has nothing to do with needing to 'sharpen' the image or fix it in post. If the camera is a professional camera, which they are marketing it as, you shouldn't need to sharpen or denoise anything to make it look good, sorry Kilrah.
I'm not sure what to tell you on that front except to try 4k and down convert it to 1080 right off the hop. I have seen some pretty **** impressive X5R videos, all of which were shot in 4K. On the other hand I have heard lots of complaints about the 1080p setting providing unusable footage. I have been toying with the idea of buying this camera for a while, but there are just too many issues that plague it for me to consider it a reliable b or even c cam on pro productions. I will stick with the X5 for drone shots and lower end Osmo stuff as it does the trick and can be matched up to other cameras seamlessly enough.
EDIT: if you look at the two images side by side (I am talking about the purple flare one of the guys pants), you can tell easily that this the fault of the camera and not the user. All other areas of the image are superior on the RAW frame, less of the water is blown out, the wood grain and the sand looks more true to life because of the increased bit-depth. The thing is that the camera is simply not able to handle that magenta cast and creates noise in the image... Beyond the impressive camera 'specs' I really don't trust that DJI has any idea what they are doing in the imaging department... Reminds of of black magic where everyone gets excited over what's promised in the specs, and then their cameras are fraught with design flaws and major issues when they do ship months after they are promised.

 

[Brendan]

The 1080 should be avoided on the camera at this stage unless they improve it. it's night and day to 4K and does show the purple you mentioned.

4K RAW exporting via Cinema DNG is the way to go. I've been blown away by the quality and the detail retained verses the h264 stream of the same clip. There are also two 4K settings, a lower res at 30fps and higher at 25fps. The highest one is the way to go. One recent thing i've learned is to shoot in D-Cinelike also if you can, it seems to get closer to the RAW exposure from what you see on the screen. It needs to be exposed correctly to reduce any noise from underexposure for best results.

 

[DrMrdalj]

Despite resolution choices available in Go App, for X5R to behave in RAW recording - you should choose native resolution, that is 4K... For recording 1080p on SSD, camera does some pixel binning and produces artifacted recording... So, X5Rs RAW is (semi)usable just in 4K in 24/25/30 fps, to my best knowledege for any other resolution/framerate it is flawed...

 

[Sebastiendeg]

Interesting read... I'm new to video in general and X5R seems to be a bit of a challenge. Lots to learn

So, 4K is best for RAW but does it matter if it is 3840x2160@30fps or 4096x2160@24fps? Experience, observation?

I see that my images are in sRGB, that surely is not ideal, I'll move to Cine/D-Log.

 

[Johnsimatos]

Interesting read... I'm new to video in general and X5R seems to be a bit of a challenge. Lots to learn

So, 4K is best for RAW but does it matter if it is 3840x2160@30fps or 4096x2160@24fps? Experience, observation?

I see that my images are in sRGB, that surely is not ideal, I'll move to Cine/D-Log.

RAW is always best when shot open gate, sensor resolution, which should be the biggest you can shoot on the x5r - 4096x2160

When you're shooting in RAW there is only pure sensor data, so you are not shooting sRGB or Cine/D-Log. Those are merely interpretations after the camera has debayered the RAW footage for you to be able to see something. All these only matter once the footage is brought in and then reinterpreted on a computer, most of it depends on what you're using to interpret the footage and where you want it to be seen.. cinema, tv, computer/phones etc.

If you want to understand and learn how to use raw pick up Alexis Van Hurkmans Colour Correction Handbook, it's the best resource for anything colour correction and mostly dealing with RAW footage.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Sebastiendeg]

RAW is always best when shot open gate, sensor resolution, which should be the biggest you can shoot on the x5r - 4096x2160

When you're shooting in RAW there is only pure sensor data, so you are not shooting sRGB or Cine/D-Log. Those are merely interpretations after the camera has debayered the RAW footage for you to be able to see something. All these only matter once the footage is brought in and then reinterpreted on a computer, most of it depends on what you're using to interpret the footage and where you want it to be seen.. cinema, tv, computer/phones etc.

If you want to understand and learn how to use raw pick up Alexis Van Hurkmans Colour Correction Handbook, it's the best resource for anything colour correction and mostly dealing with RAW footage.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks Johnsimatos,

It does make perfect sense then to use the highest/native resolution! If it's like photography, I never work in sRGB but keep it in a wider color space all the way until export and depending on the target. sRGB for web, adobe RGB for print...

Great book recommendation, I'm buying it right now!!

 

[Johnsimatos]

Thanks Johnsimatos,

It does make perfect sense then to use the highest/native resolution! If it's like photography, I never work in sRGB but keep it in a wider color space all the way until export and depending on the target. sRGB for web, adobe RGB for print...

Great book recommendation, I'm buying it right now!!

Haha good to know! Worth every penny!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk