What am I doing wrong?

[Terry Lee]

Alright, so I have some video footage I shot at a little 30's themed "swing dance" party I had at my apartment.. different rooms, different lighting so of course the footage is going to be a bit grainy.. But, how do I compensate for that so as to get the sharpest possible image?

Also, when I export the video, it looks ten times worse..what to do about that?

Below is the video, Thanks for your help everyone.

Swing Dance Party - YouTube

[Chris Harding]

Hi Terry

I think maybe let people know what format the camera was shooting in and what NLE you are using to edit the footage?? That will make giving advice a lot easier

Chris

[Terry Lee]

Thanks Chris,

The video was shot on a 60D in 24fps at f2.8

using Premiere CS6

[Jody Arnott]

Does the original footage look like that or just after you've exported it from your NLE?

What are your export settings?

[Terry Lee]

I suppose I should have put more detail,

The raw footage looks grainy but I had the ISO set to somewhere between 200 and 800. The first scene is bright enough so it shouldn't have been grainy.

Upon export, initially I did it as an AVI which unknowingly limited my options. I was looking for the Youtube setting but couldn't find it.. right now i'm exporting it as an H.264 and Preset Youtube HD 1080p at 24fps. That should help.

However, that still doesn't help my video going INTO the editing system. I am doing something wrong with my settings upon capture. I thought I knew my way around my camera...shutter speed set at 1/50th...ISO set to the lowest setting possible for the lighting situation and aperture set at 2.8 which gives me a shallow DOF the faster it is...

But am I missing something? or am I not right?

[Darren Levine]

the clip you referenced is only 360p, useless to judge anything by.

and still not clear what you're trying to say about the footage going into the edit system. just make a sequence which matches the camera settings, and render to the youtube preset you mentioned. you mentioned wanting the footage to be sharper, you can add some sharpening filter, but anything more than 30 points will start to create other problems. there are also plugins for noise reduction.

iso800 on that camera should be fairly clean, you might be sitting too close to your screen

[Mark Williams]

As Darren said your Youtube clip is 360p. Apparently you didn't upload a HD version so sure it will look bad. Why don't you go back and re-encode it for Youtube again as an MPEG4, 7mb/s 1080p and upload it. I suspect it will then look fine.

[Terry Lee]

Hello -

I changed some things and made it Youtube friendly and its a lot better

Swing dance party - YouTube

What I was concerned about now is camera settings..The raw footage was still grainy once I got it to CS6.. not sure if I am missing something or not..

What steps should I take to ensure that I am capturing the best quality for the situation?

Thanks all.

[Jonathan Levin]

I'd guess the camera is capturing some form of compressed codec to begin with, and then upon exporting from NLE, it is getting re-compressed making it look worse-er.

[Jody Arnott]

As mentioned, If you're using ISO 800 or below on a 60D then I'd be surprised if the footage was grainy straight out of the camera. Even higher ISOs should be reasonably clean.

Download a little program called "MediaInfo" and run it on your raw footage. It'll tell us what codec, resolution and bitrate the raw footage is which could provide some clues.

[David Cordero]

I have a 60D and I've shot some video with it.
For video capture, I suppose you are choosing the highest possible resolution within the camera setting? In my case, I have 1920x1080 at 30fps (or 24 fps).
The other thing that struck me is that you are using f2.8. The depth of field can be quite shallow. Therefore the grain you might see may be actually the slight out of focus? Best to try and get as much light in the room and adjust aperture if you plan on getting the whole scene in focus.
In my experience, my Canon XA10 performs better for moving scenes. The DSLR is good when trying to make nice DOF shots, but I find the dslr "grainier" than my XA10.

[Garrett Low]

One thing to remember with Canon DSLR's is that lower ISO does not necessarily mean lower noise. For instance, you'll get more noise using ISO 400 than. There is a very technical explanation that I won't go into (you can easily Google it). The ISO's to use in order from least noise to more noise are:

160,320, 640,100, 200, 400,800, 1250, 125, 250, 500, 1000, 1600

So, if you're shooting at say 250, thinking wow, low ISO so low noise, you'll be disappointed.

[Garrett Low]

Also, for sharpness, your lens full open at f/2.8 is probably not that sharp to start with. Most lenses will be soft at their extremes. Also, do you have your camera setup optimally for shooting video? Proper adjustment on your picture profile? Sharpening, contrast, and saturation set correctly?

Ideally you choose your frame rate, shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, and set lighting for the look you want. Then you use filters to adjust for the correct exposure. If I can't completely control lighting and I don't have time to stop and pull or put in ND, I will find a good ISO setting and then stop up or down as necessary.

[Warren Kawamoto]

Terry, before you go any further, please check your camera settings. What resolution are you recording your videos? It doesn't look like it's set at 1920x1080. I say this because your opening title is very sharp, but as soon as your video comes up, it's not as sharp as it should be.

[Terry Lee]

Hey everyone sorry it took me so long to reply.

The camera is set 1920x1080 24p

I downloaded the suggested program MediaInfo and it told me the following:

MPEG-4

Bit Rate: 46.8

Video stream: AVC

Even in raw footage, when I simply drag and drop my footage from the card to my computer..it looks choppy..


Thank you all for the help!