I recently bought a Phantom 3 Professional and have been recording in 4K 25fps, automatic  mode thus far. The video has been alright but 1080p in my opinion looked better. I then researched how to use the manual mode and the best settings for 4K video. I set my ISO to 100 and my shutter speed to 50 and used the appropriate ND filter when needed. I also set my colour to LOG as it apparently best in post colour grading and also messed with the sharpness, contrast and saturation settings to reduce moire. However when testing these settings the video was terrible quality, extremly dark with little to no colour and it was very difficult to see what you were filming. The post video editing was useless as it only reinforced the terrible quality. Taking the ND filter and polarizer off and recording again with these settings made no difference. It was only until I went back to automatic mode that it looked ok again.

If anyone has any ideas why the video looks terrible please let me know and suggest settings for me to try out. Thankyou.

If playing video in LOG, it will not look as good as any of the others options UNTIL you edit it.
If you cannot achieve the quality you want in manual, but auto is better then seems like the manual settings need to be changed.
Try to hover in one spot for a whole battery and shoot 10 seconds in auto, then a bunch more with lots of different manual combinations and see whey they look like after editing.
As far as filters, you really only need them in really bright sunlight. If your not flying in a very reflective area (beach,snow) then try without the polarizer.

I always shoot LOG, -3 on sharpness and, -3 on saturation.

I shoot 4K (UHD) 30 fps and I get great results. I do some CC (color correction in post). Usually I drop this in a 1080 30p timeline and it comes out rivaling my S800/Zenmuse/NEX7 footage, quite remarkable for such a cheap MR/cam combo.

The other tips are fly carefully, fast is OK, but fast pan and tilts are not. Keep your moves simple and don't be jerky. One film making rule is, it should take 7 seconds minimum for anything to travel across the screen, this is in 24p, so you can be a bit faster in 30p. All rules are made to be broken though. and actually if you are flying alongside of something moving fast, it is fine to have the background just blur as a matter of fact it is very cinematic.

Another tip is to not use high shutter speed I try to use 1/60 or max 1/120 for 30p. Use ND filters to achieve this.

And possibly the most important is keep iso at 100, any more and you will get a lot of noise.

let us know how it goes. Happy flying...

Um...was it too dark out for your ND filter level?

You're entering the world of true photography and video. Every camera operator for pro cameras have to set ISO, shutter, and aperture, using filtered glass to keep things in line for where they want to be, such as the 1/50th a sec to get smooth motion video for the (about) 24 frame rate.

and yes, Log footage is meant to be color corrected and graded in post video production.

One shoots log, with color, sat, contrast, sharpness low, so that it is not "Burned in" and the can be changed, altered, enhanced later on. This is how all films are made.

I guess what I am trying to say is, if you want to do photography and videography in the air...you have to know how to do photography and videography in general.

Good for you for trying to figure it out though!
Do you know about the histogram? Using that helps you get correct exposure. I mean... you basically have to use a histrogram when shooting manually. It's your visual light meter. If the hump is far to the left, your image is too dark, under exposed. If hump is in the middle, you're doing alright. If it's to the right, it's over exposed and anything white will not have any detail in it.

ps - I have found the P3Pro to not be all the great video quality even with manual settings and doing everything right. Here's as good as I have been able to get it. 4k, 30fps (transformed to 24 in post to get slight slowmotion) using ND to keep the shutter around 1/50th, shooting in log and reducing each setting to -2, and then doing color in post.

Beau Posted at 2016-1-9 06:17
Um...was it too dark out for your ND filter level?

You're entering the world of true photography an ...

I enjoyed your Alaska video! Can you let us know which software product was used to produce it?

Beau Posted at 2016-1-8 22:17
Um...was it too dark out for your ND filter level?

You're entering the world of true photography an ...

Yeah thanks for the advice. I think I will try the settings you used as that video looks amazing! What colour corrections did you do in post as I have only recently started to edit my videos?

woodypace Posted at 2016-1-8 15:23
I enjoyed your Alaska video! Can you let us know which software product was used to produce it?

Adobe Premiere, part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, (formally Adobe creative suite) Same people as Photoshop.

abturkington Posted at 2016-1-8 15:49
Yeah thanks for the advice. I think I will try the settings you used as that video looks amazing!  ...

Thanks. In hindsight I could have done it better... but I did a little bit of contrast adding, and added saturation. I then added a pre-made LUT built into Adobe Premiere (look up table).

The traditional way to work with "Log" footage (any clips shots in a flat look, to maintain data in the darks and highlighted areas of the image while recording) is to import it, go to color correction, bring down the blacks, bring up the whites, the add saturation. Then add a LUT if you want.