Best export settings? youtube HD or Match sequence high bitrate?

[djmattyz]

im noticing on export my videos are quite noisey

i was exporting the medium bitrate files to preview them and show to my customers, and didnt notice the noise but then when i reached a point that the customer was happy with i went to export the final version in as high quality as i could,  if figured that since its destined for youtube ,then the youtube HD option must be the best export option,  but its very noticable noisey, which caused me to go back and have to make adjustments to the color grade etc...

notably the medium bitrate export didnt seem so noisey, of course it had its own artifacts related with the lower bitrate, but i dont know if this had a masking effect on the noise, or if indeed im using the wrong settings for my higher quality export

the projects were filmed on a canon 70d, with the ISO at 800 or less, which normally does produce some noise ,but i am a bit surprised by the level of noise here, to the point where i find it distracting

im willing to accept that perhaps it is simply that i went to heavy on the color grade and simply didnt notice the noise until export, but im rather hoping that this were not the case

can anyone there advise me please?

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

The problem with 'grading' DSLR footage is it's pretty "thin" in actual color data ... so any attempt to work it very much can quickly induce artifacts like macro-blocking and for all practical purposes "Highlight!" the noise that's already present.

One of the things I've learned from colorist friends & sources is that doing a layering of a number of small effects done with different tools to build up the effect typically gets a lot less of the problem issues.

Say you want to darken the shadows & desaturate while lifting mids a bit and bringing up the color there a bit. Quick & dirty ... raise saturation or vibrance in Creative tab, drop the shadow values with the Color Wheels shadow Luma slider, lift the Mids Luma slider, and use the HSL to select the shadows & drop the saturation.

If you've got good media, that's no problem, takes a few seconds total. But some of the drone & DSLR media I've worked with, if you do more than a little of each control at one pass ... induces a ton of junk.

At that point, multiple Lumetri or other effects layered upon each other, or going to SpeedGrade using multiple layers, or Resolve and multiple nodes, becomes necessary.

Maybe start in Basic, barely lift "Exposure" (an odd control ... ) and barely drop Shadows. Just enough of both to barely notice the change in the scopes.

Then go to Creative, raise Vibrance just noticeably in the Vectorscope.

Now to Curves ... and again, a bare change to slightly drop shadows/lift mids ...

Now to Color wheels ... another very slight change ... drop shadow Luma, raise mid Luma a bare titch.

Now to HSL, select shadows and drop saturation a bit.

If you need more saturation, add another Lumetri instance (which should be below the first one on the clip) and then raise Vibrance there a bit.

Doing it like this, I can push "thin" media a bit farther before needing to denoise the whole thing.

Now ... some media, I've simply needed to use a full denoiser (NeatVideo or RedGiant) on all such clips, and export "clean" clips as new Cineform or DNxHD/R files before even starting to work.

Neil

[excited_Genie16B8]

im willing to accept that perhaps it is simply that i went to heavy on the color grade and simply didnt notice the noise until export,

Without being there to see it, that does seem the most likely explanation.