Advice for reducing grainy artifacts?
 

Hey everyone. I recently purchased my HVX200 and the main problem I keep running into is grain, even in not-so-dark situations. I've played with the various scene settings and some are better than others, but I was curious if there were any general tips I could get from seasoned users until my copy of Barry Green's HVX book arrives.

Thanks in advance.

Better lighting....

Continue playing with those scene file settings....

Do a search of the forums here for settings, grain, scene files. There's a wealth of info here on this subject. Also depending on your intended delivery of the footage, grain can be dealt with in different ways in post too.

lower the Master Ped settings, it should make it better. And read Barry's book, It'll help you a lot.

The HVX carries detail coring within the sceen files, so u can crank that up.. also if u lower your vertical detail a bit that helps..

Can you post some footage ? Are your sure its not just your monitor ? Which monitor are you using ?

I'm using the Samsung SyncMaster 244T 24IN LCD. Is it garbage?

The full setup is:

• HP xw8400 Workstation w/ Axio LE
• Two (2) Quad-Core Intel® Xeon's 5335 2.00 GHz 1333 MHz FSB 4x2MB L2 cache
• 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2-667 ECC FBD
• GeForce 7950GX2 1GB (512MB x2) GDDR3 PCI Express x16
• 80GB 10K SATA System Drive
• 3TB Interal Video Array (4x750 Seagate SATA 7.2k)
• 2 HP L2035 20" LCD Monitors 1600x1200 500:1 16ms
• Samsung 24IN LCD 1000:1 1920X1200 6MS 244T

I had to replace the Panasonic production monitor for the Samsung due to costs...but I didn't know it'd be such a drastic quality difference. I'm using component cables from the Axio breakout box to the Samsung. Would an actual tabletop HDTV be a better replacement?

-I can post some footage in the next couple days when I get back to my office.

I HATE you... lol
Thats an incredible setup... :) Im jealous!

In all honesty, we wont know about your noise levels until u show some footage.. but one thing with Axio, is that there are no noise reduction filters... none that i can find anyway...

Oh my gosh, yes it is garbage, Ill help you get rid of it, Ill be over soon. . . .

;)

Jim,

The best way to deal with HVX noise is proper lighting and exposure. One quick trick I've used to help reduce "visible" noise is to use the B PRESS gamma setting in the camera. This will crush blacks a bit and does an amazing job of making the noise appear less visible. Lowering the pedestal settings manually can also help but depending on your preferred look for your imagery this might reduce shadow detail more than you want. My theory about shadows however, is to make them work for you rather than fighting them.

Jim,
As Roberts says, better lighting is definitely the the key.
But in case someone on your set said the dreadful "we'll fix it in post".
here's 2 tricks:
After effects 7 (not sure if lower version have it) as a great De-graining tool, I got some great results with it.
You can also use a Photoshop plug-in called grain surgery.
You'll have to export your shot as a TIFF or TGA sequence in order to process the frame in PSD.
These 2 plug-ins combined with the Exposure plug-in your shot end up looking great.
hope that helps.
e.

The problem is your equipment. Tell me were I can pick it up and I'll trade you for an old MAC.

The advice in this thread has already helped immensely with some outdoor tests I did.

I shot some very dark footage around the office to see how this camera would handle it: http://www.creativelybankrupt.com/videotest/ (video doesn't buffer, it just downloads, then plays)

detail: 0
v detail: 0
coring: +3
chroma level/phase: 0
temp: 0
master ped: -3
a. iris: 0
news gamma: off
gamma: hd norm
knee: auto
matrix: fluo
skin tone: off