Hi,

I have an Inspire 1 Pro with the Zenmuse X5 and I am truly struggling with DLOG and is not able to get back to normal colours in post production applying a wide set of LUTs I have purchased.

Shooting in colour VIVID or NONE gives me absolute fantastic results but being able to do DLOG would be even better. I have seen various posts in the forum about issues and firmware issues.

Here are two files on my dropbox. There is an ND16 filter infront. If anyone is able to get the results with the DLOG file to match or surpass the VIDID one please share your workflow with the rest of us. I am using Adobe Premiere and successfully fails getting anything sensible out of the DLOG recordings :-/

Meta data: 3.8K, ISO 100, Shutterspeed 1/60

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/p315a ... XHxd91cLajevva?dl=0

DJI: Any updates on this and what we could expect in the next firmware update?

ThnX in advance everyone who will be looking into this.

I could not get any useful result with your D-LOG file.

However I dont have this problem with my X3

Try this in Premiere on your Colour_Mode_DLOG file. Not perfect but it will give you a good start.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jlx3k3x3ksu71ze/D-Log.prfpset?dl=0

flighttime1 Posted at 2016-9-19 09:34
Try this in Premiere on your Colour_Mode_DLOG file. Not perfect but it will give you a good start.

...

Hi Flighttime,

Definitely giving me a really good idea what you need to tweak using the RGB effects. ThnX for looking into this!

bjoern.steffens Posted at 2016-9-19 07:32
Hi Flighttime,

Definitely giving me a really good idea what you need to tweak using the RGB effec ...

Consider this. When you reduce contrast and saturation, you have more 'room' for detail. That's pretty simple logic for D-Log. The problem most have is that you can then shift the basic look in almost any direction. That's a big plus if you want to be creative but it can be daunting if you just want to get back to the original look. I find using curves the easiest method but that's because I'm very familiar with them.

What do you guys set the sharpness, contrast & saturation too? Cheers

dopeytree Posted at 2016-9-21 00:31
What do you guys set the sharpness, contrast & saturation too? Cheers

I have tried everything from 0,0,0 to +1,+3,+3. As flighttime indicated it is a complete and lenghty exercise in post production fiddling with mostly the gamma curves.

Guess I will need to spend more time with this. While I am working on this I have found using Style Vivid and Colour Mode Landscape with manual shutterspeed, apperture, focus and 1920HD with 60fps giving me at least a decent results. 60fps event gives me smooth results flying myself while filming versus Autopiloting the bird.

Guys, best advice you'll ever get is this - altogether forget about using D-LOG color profile on this camera. Of all available profiles Cinelike mode is by far the best and here is why (this is a very short and to the point explanation to avoid too much tech talk):

Problem with H264 compression on all DJI cameras - X3, X5, X5R is the 60 Mbps bandwidth limit which reduces the amount of data that can be packed into the video stream. This means that video looks fairly good until you start tweaking it. The moment you apply a fairly minor color grading, the compression "stitches" and artifacts pop out for everyone to see. Key to getting great footage with these cameras is shooting close to final version at "baking" stage, i.e. capturing stage so minor tweaking is required in post to avoid making compression issues visible.

This is where Cinelike profile comes into the picture - it does excellent job protecting highlights while packing tons of data into shadows, it does it so well that color grading ends up consisting of very minor adjustments. With so few changes needed in post image ends up looking excellent and has a very HDR look and feel to it. After extensive tests I have not had any desire to use any other color profiles on the camera as they only give me nightmares. The best Sharpness/Contrast/Saturation settings I ended up using are -1, 0, +2 or +3
Try this out for yourself especially in very challenging lighting conditions and see how Cinelike compares to others.

In short, D-Log mode provides tons of benefits on high bitrate cameras which DJI cameras are NOT. Therefore normal, industry standard approach does not apply to these cameras, thus the need to go the "minimal tweaking" route described above.

ge0se Posted at 2016-9-23 06:42
Guys, best advice you'll ever get is this - altogether forget about using D-LOG color profile on thi ...

I am also thinking of abandoning D-LOG.

WITH D-LOG:


WITHOUT D-LOG:



I am really not sure D-LOG has any positive effect and using D-LOG you cannot watch the files without processing first

ge0se Posted at 2016-9-22 23:42
Guys, best advice you'll ever get is this - altogether forget about using D-LOG color profile on thi ...

Thank you for your excellent explanation.  

Regards,

Mike

I stick to Cinelike. My video grading guy prefers it.

ge0se Posted at 2016-9-23 06:42
Guys, best advice you'll ever get is this - altogether forget about using D-LOG color profile on thi ...

ge0se,

Thank you for this rather illunitaing and helpful post. I have gone through ampel sessions with DLOG and made a few test with your suggested CineLike. This is definitely the way for me to go forward with my X5 and get truly serious about this.

Here the results using CineLike with style -1,0,2 and some minor color grading effects in post vs Mode None and style 0,0,0

https://www.youtube.com/embed/lUwlw87DDPE

bjoern.steffens Posted at 2016-9-28 15:14
ge0se,

Thank you for this rather illunitaing and helpful post. I have gone through ampel sessions ...

My pleasure! Glad I could be of help

ge0se Posted at 2016-9-23 12:42
Guys, best advice you'll ever get is this - altogether forget about using D-LOG color profile on thi ...

I really don't think it's the 60Mbps bitrate that causes D-Log troubles. It certainly is low for 4K, but the P4/X3/X5 struggle with D-Log even at 1080p.

Case in point, I have (and have worked with) quite a few AVCHD cameras over the years now, all of which are shooting 1080p24 to 24Mbps H.264 and they get excellent results (The Canon C100, for example, simply blows away the P4/X3/X5 in recorded video quality even with similar quality lenses).

I think where you're really going to run into issues with D-Log is that, fundamentally, you're talking about trying to post-grade 8-bit 4:2:0 footage. No matter what camera, that's always going to have fairly limited headroom. DJI is advertising 13 stops of dynamic range on X5. With 8 bits, you have a (not so) whopping 18 gradient points per stop on a linear curve. That's not a lot of data to work with and you're always going to be fairly limited in your grading abilities as a result.

It's not that simple of course - the LOG curve itself changes how much data per stop you get, adding variability based on where the camera is designed to perform well in LOG profile.

HOWEVER, the bigger issue I think is that D-Log seems to have actually changed earlier this year. My guess is that they optimized it for X5R rather than creating a D-Log Raw curve as a separate entity.

If you go here:
http://www.dji.com/zenmuse-x5/info#downloads

Download the sRGB LUT pack from DJI. Within that you're going to find:

DJI_X5_DLOG2sRGB.cube
DJI_X5_DLOG2sRGB_before20160401Firmware.cube

So DJI is providing a LUT that for pre-April. This happens all the time with other camera vendors (Blackmagic has multiple versions of their BMDFilm LUTs for Cinema Camera, for example) but it typically happens as a way to improve the LUT performance. My guess (and it's just a guess) is that the "before 20160401" curve that DJI provides isn't an improved LUT for D-Log footage so much as it's a LUT for footage shot on firmware BEFORE 20160401 - suggesting the D-Log curve changed back in April.

This implies you can simply use the new LUT as a basis for where D-Log performs well with current firmware - but it's not that simple in practice. Really, it feels like DJI kinda broke D-Log for their 8-bit encoding cameras in favour of their RAW camera and the current LUT simply tries to mask that as much as possible. That really doesn't help you if you're not using their LUT and are just grading the footage directly (as many will be doing) - you have to work with the (seemingly broken) new curve.

Just my guess.

OK, I'm somewhat embarrassed to even post this but I want to give credit where credit is due even if this thread is so old and none of you see it.

I've been shooting video with the Inspire 1 and X5 using D-Log and ND filters since the X5 was introduced (not sure when that was). I have NEVER been happy with the results especially when color grading (WHAT A NIGHTMARE). I'm on probably my 4th or 5th ND filter thinking those were the culprits. No telling how much I've spent on those. This post has kept me from going insane! Switching to Cinelike and custom Style settings totally eradicated the nasty color cast I was getting with D-Log. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I'm embarrassed it took me this long to find this post (or one stating the same information). Virtual handshake to all of you!