Hery guys, I've been playing around with some videos, and when exporting them ready to upload to youtube, I've found the image qualty to be terrible, in particly, all the small detail is lost. This is the file before uploading to youtube, which tends to get worse as youtube works it's magic on it.

The quailty straight out of the drone is pretty good, I've been recording in 2.7k 24fps d-log, and transcoding useing the DJI Transcoding tool to ProRes 10BIT 4:2:2, and after editing and color grading, outputting them at 1080p h264, intailly at the recomended 8mb/s, although I tired higher bitrates as well.

The orginal footage, both before and after transcoding looks great, although a little flat/dull which is to be expected with Dlog.
Is there any way to improve this, I even tried adding a decent bit of sharpening in editing, but it didn't seem to help, is this just that the h264 codec sucks?
I've uploaded plenty of video from DSLR, and while there is always a decent quailty hit uploading to youtube, I've never noticed it being this bad before.

If it would, I could upload both the orginal and outputted h264 to dropbox etc?

Hi Pantera
I use the h264 codec for my MP4s when ripping dvds or blu rays and it's absolutely fine at 1080p.  
If yo'ure struggling with small details, thats ounds like teh compression is too much.  Have you tried outputting at 720?  That will still look very decent, but you can try higher bitrates and still end up with a reasonable sized file .
Ian

Small sensor, lots of pixels, h264 on top..

We never gonna get details on grass from 2m and above with this sensor/codec/bitrate combination.
Just take a look at some panasonic gh4 & sony a7 samples

It is usually the last part of the process, the final rendering that all the damage is done. I usually do not use the rendered output to upload to YouTube, I render a high quality intermediate then pass it through Handbrake to produce the MP4 file that is uploaded. The tradeoff is between an upload that takes forever or loss of quality in rendering. But Handbrake offers you almost infinite tuning.

I've been dealing with h.264 video acquisition since 2009.  Biggest issue besides being an intraframe codec (Blocks of frames vs interframe where each frame is processed individially) is the bit rate and 4:2:0 chrominance sampling.  Especially with 4K video.  I don't know what the encoding hardware can handle but I would love to see something akin to AVC Intra 100 (A 100 mbit/s 4:2:2 codec).

I shoot everything in 1080 since there is less compression required.  Same 40 mbit/s data rate so a 1080 24p video will in theory have 1/4 the amount of compression required for a 4K 24p video.

I'm surprised they aren't at least using AVC50.  Same 4:2:0 color sampling (Chrominance) but 10 mbits/s more data and both AVC Intra 50 and 100 are 10 bit color!

I know  AVC-Intra is technically a Panasonic codec but it's just a version of h.264 so a non panny h.264 codec could be used with basically the same stats.

Geebax Posted at 2016-2-3 08:08
It is usually the last part of the process, the final rendering that all the damage is done. I usual ...

Thanks Geebax, are you saying to upload a high quality format to youtube and then let youtube do the transcoding etc? (at the expensive of upload time)

dennylajeunesse Posted at 2016-2-3 08:54
I've been dealing with h.264 video acquisition since 2009.  Biggest issue besides being an intrafram ...

I think this is why the UHD Premium standard is coming about, I don't know the codecs/bitrates involved, but it has a minimum of 10bit colors. It's also a standard for the output device, so a TV with the "UHD Premium" tag had to meet certain standards to get it. (kind of like the THX standard for sound I guess)

pantera989@gmai Posted at 2016-2-3 12:19
Thanks Geebax, are you saying to upload a high quality format to youtube and then let youtube do t ...

In essence, yes. I have not conducted exhaustive tests, but I did find that a higher bitrate copy uploaded to YouTube looked better after YouTube had its way with the file. Of course it did take hours to upload though. My finished product is always a 10 bit 4:2:2 AVI file, then I decide what to code it to based on where it will be seen. Handbrake happily ingests the AVI file and makes very good MP4s from it.

Geebax Posted at 2016-2-3 09:40
In essence, yes. I have not conducted exhaustive tests, but I did find that a higher bitrate copy  ...

For youtube, do you just use handbrake to create high bitrate h264, or another codec entirely?

Upload speed isn't too much of an issue for me
4340179418 by Riley Baker, on Flickr

pantera989@gmai Posted at 2016-2-3 12:44
For youtube, do you just use handbrake to create high bitrate h264, or another codec entirely?

Up ...

Handbrake is my goto MP4 codec, and the one used by a lot of professionals, it is just one of those simple, free and extremely capable gems.

I am in rural Australia where the digital packets are carried by worker ants to and from the exchange.

Geebax Posted at 2016-2-3 09:49
Handbrake is my goto MP4 codec, and the one used by a lot of professionals, it is just one of thos ...

Apparently Melbourne is the place to be for internet, I got faster results speed testing there, then to any of the New Zealand servers, which must be limited by the server's internet connection (who would've thought an residential internet speed would outperform commercial business lines ).

I wrote a final encoder for Yuneec as well as DJI video encoding, Best quality and compression you'll get...
http://hypedphoto.com/q500mods/index.php/q500-video-encoder/

gustofusion Posted at 2016-2-7 05:11
I wrote a final encoder for Yuneec as well as DJI video encoding, Best quality and compression you'l ...

Interesting, but a bit tentative to hit buy without being able to try it/see the results first.

Also will it taken any type of input file?

Riley-NZL Posted at 2016-2-7 00:50
Interesting, but a bit tentative to hit buy without being able to try it/see the results first.

A ...

It's for video encoding so no it will not take any type of file, All major video containers, avi, mp4, mov etc.  Ill post up a sample for you to download with a raw video from the phantom VS the encoded version so you can compare.

Riley-NZL Posted at 2016-2-7 00:50
Interesting, but a bit tentative to hit buy without being able to try it/see the results first.

A ...

I have included a downloadable zip file containing 3 video clips. One straight from the Phantom 3 and 2 others encoded with the encoder
http://hypedphoto.com/storage/Encoder_Examples.zip

The color that becomes flat in the .mov container is a long standing apple "Gamma bug"
It's because the apple .mov codec does not use a full color profile, it's color range is
16-235  rather than a full color profile which is 0-255, therefor they look flat, washed out and the blacks are less black and more grey.

The color that becomes flat in the .mov container is a long standing apple "Gamma bug"
It's because the apple .mov codec does not use a full color profile, it's color range is
16-235  rather than a full color profile which is 0-255, therefor they look flat, washed out and the blacks are less black and more grey.