Noisy video with Ursa mini 12K

I've have the Ursa Mini Pro 12K for about 60 days. I am blasting light onto my sets and still getting noisy footage 8K 120 fps ( see attached jpeg) added to 1080x1350 timeline

Firmware 7.7
Lens: Canon CN-E 30-105mm T2.8 LS
T15 aperture
8:1 compression

Tried different setting with the NR in the COLOR panel of DR and getting little to no effect. Then tried Premiere with BCC Noise Reduction and same thing, no effect.

Hey there - can you post the log image? Do you know how you exposed the image in-camera? Wondering if, or to what degree you were overexposing TTR?

Did you black shade the camera sensor?

Share a BRAW frame from one of the clips where you feel there is excessive noise. Single BRAW frames can be exported from the raw tab of the a color page in Resolve.

Just be aware also that at T15 you are definitely running into the diffraction limit of this sensor, which is costing you a lot of sharpness.

1 BRAW is 7MB and the attachment limit is 2MB.

The forum admin doesn't allow me to add Dropbox links in my post either. Not sure what else I can do to share those. Any tips on how to share a BRAW file?

I also wasn't aware of a Black Shading calibration. I'm familiar with black shading on our Chronos 2.1 camera but I don't see any sensor calibration in these menus.

I just checked the camera and the calibrate sensor is greyed out. Can only calibrate the motion sensor. Manual says thats available for the 4.6 G2 (nothing about the 12K camera)

The 12K doesn't have that. It seems to be self calibrating with the help of those white sensels.
If you want to post a DropBox link, add a single space somewhere in the URL.

I have a couple different frames (space added in the dl link)

The Coke label is what I am specifically concerned on this one:
https: //www.dropbox.com/s/11qdpywqds0eq45/A001_01211200_C053_104.braw?dl=0

This one was shot in 4K and seems to have less noise:
https: //www.dropbox.com/s/ceqgy2rkv8x81se/A001_01241313_C062_2053.braw?dl=0

you have to delete the space between the colon and /.

Otherwise I couldn't post the link without the forum moderator software blocking the post for pasting links

The Coke label is what I am specifically concerned on this one:

Burger and Coke

burger and Coke_1.1.1.jpg (943.97 KiB) Viewed 1831 times

I think you are at least a 1.5 stops underexposed. I would try again with F5.6, F8, F11, record exposures of all three.

My quick development settings are below:

Raw Panel Dev

Screenshot 2022-01-26 153608.png (29.47 KiB) Viewed 1831 times

Play around with the noise reduction sliders too while watching the video in motion.

These are set to "30" in this example, but you can slide all the way to 100.

Screenshot 2022-01-26 154720.png (22.47 KiB) Viewed 1822 times

I did use NR at different settings to little or no effect. I will try adjusting aperture at different settings and see how that turns out.

I am recording to a Samsung 980 Pro inside an eternal NvME case. Still cant record at 120 8K or 240 4K at any better compression than 8:1. And that Samsung drive has uber fast read write speed

I think you are at least a 1.5 stops underexposed. I would try again with F5.6, F8, F11, record exposures of all three.

Agreed. Closer to 2 stops under IMHO. But even at 2 stops under, it cleans up nicely with some spatial noise reduction (and likely with a bit of temporal too, though that has no impact on a single frame, so I wasn't able to test that).

If the goal is to have as noise free a result as possible without noise reduction, I'd do a test setting the ISO as low as 400 and expose so middle gray on a color chart is green on the camera false color.

Alright guys, thanks for the info.

I shot new shots, a Coca Cola pour at 8K 120 fps and 4K 240fps at T 4.2 ISO 800. 4K has a lot of noise but the Spatial NR + Temporal NR did get rid of the noise mostly (tiny bits in the shadows). 8K 120 fps looked good with no NR.

The Coke bottle label still has a pattern on it but there will be ways around having to show product labels with slow motion action

8K: https: //www.dropbox.com/s/8g1vdxd8p55mtdy/A001_01261623_C069_0834.braw?dl=0

4K: https: //www.dropbox.com/s/21rc6bgfppmm8bo/A001_01261620_C068_2350.braw?dl=0

Have you tried overexposing 1 stop or 2 stops over?

Yes, these are underexposed. But I wouldn't advise overexposing, it would clip the highlights. Just expose to the right for clean pictures.
I've seen folks making the same mistake in the early times of the Red One, and believe me, it was more noisy than the 12K.

Also are on you on the latest firmware? That apparently improves noise!

Camera came with 7.3 firmware installed and I shot a couple of spec videos with this firmware. After a test a couple weeks ago I started noticing the noise ( probably underexposed) and found/updated the newest firmware on the BM Support page.

I now feel confident I was probably underexposing all my recent tests after pushing yesterdays tests down to T 4.2. I'll probably live in the world between T4.2 to T8 from now on

I'll probably live in the world between T4.2 to T8 from now on

But that is completely scene dependent. Plus, there are aesthetic reasons for the choice of a T stop. That's why the camera has ND filters. But it's a good idea to stay below 8, since diffraction will make your images soft above that, as already mentioned before.

You need to also manage your expectations a bit.

4K@240 FPS is a very tiny cut from the least pixel density mode of the 12K camera. Even with good exposure, you’re still kind of expecting the sensor to work miracles using a fraction of the available photosites.

If you need these kind of frame rates, you really need to go to more specialised high speed cameras.

JB

Phantom rental is out of our customers price point or we'd have one already.

We have a Chronos HD 2.1 but have had nothing but problems with that camera shooting similar with lighting and exposure around T 5.0. 1000fps is pretty cool for speed ramps but 240 fps is kind of a sweet spot I feel. We were inclined to sell the Chronos once I get the Ursa sussed out.

Very interesting - please let us know if exposing to the right helps with the noise. FWIW I've been exposing + one stop over for years now, I believe that these sensors really benefit from more light.

Agree a stop over is a good choice when you’re not risking blown highlights. If most of your image is dominated by highlights though, don’t add more light or those highlights may seem too thin.

Raw has good flexibility whether you nail the exposure or are over/under in combination with the tools available in DaVinci Resolve, especially the 6 HDR log primary correctors.