Poor video quality or normal?

[Julia_LL]

Hi,

I have an EOS M and I like it very much for photos but as I tried the video mode I was a bit disappointed.

It looks less sharp und less detailed. If I capture a still image ("Photo in Movie") in the 2 MP mode (In the menu the option "Image quality" and then "S2" and "Aspect Ratio" 16:9) I will get a much better quality. Here are two samples, one with the 2 MP Still-Photo-Mode und the other a Screenshot from the video-file:

2 MP Still-Photo-Mode: img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/image3dn50klcmp.jpg
Video-Screenshot: img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/videontj6xoak7m.jpg

As you can see, the "normal" Photo is much better, better colors, better sharpness, details, etc.
Both were shot at the same time ("Photo in Movie") with the EF-M 18-55mm IS STM, 18 mm, ISO 125, Av 9.0, Tv 1/40.

What I also noticed is, that shadows in the videos are more darker.

So is this normal or does the camera have a defect?

Thank you very much in advance and I look forward to your reply.

Best regards
Julia

 

[Tinky]

Although you have the same settings ostensibly, there could be a few other things going on.

1. Colour profile mode. Video will be sRGB, your stills may be set to Adobe RGB, they have quite different gamuts, abobe rgb being geared towards printing, sRGB being geared towards monitor display.

2. You are comparing a jpeg from the camera file with a screen grab from the graphics card. The same issue as 1 may creep in here. They are different devices with different calibrations. It's not surprising that they will look different.

3. The way the shutter operates in each mode is different. In video there is a relatively slow electronic read off across the sensor, in stills mode there is a faster scanning mechanical first and second curtain. Although the exposure time over each area of the sensor be 1/40th in both cases (if thats what you've set in both modes: the settings don't carry across between stills and video) the video frame scan will probably have started earlier and finished later than the stills scan.

4. I note an iso of 125. Do you run magic lantern on your M? The camera cannot give you iso 125 out of the box.

5. There are all sorts of correction modes, like dynamic lighting optiimiser, vignetting / distortion correction which might be being aplied to stills but nopt to video.

6. Af speed is slower in video mode, your camera may not release the shutter under the image is sharp in stills mode, wheras in contiguous video, the camera will record even if the sloooooow tracking af hasn't quite snapped into focus yet. Its amazing the difference that sharpness can make to everything other than sharpness.

7. F-drop. With a consumer lens such as the 18-55 the aperture is variable as the lens zooms, even a slight difference in focal length will effect the aperture, f9 might not always be exactly f9, even 19mm as opposed to 18mm could make a difference.

I don't think there is a fault. There are many other settings that coukd be at work. On my monitor I don't see a huge difference, but then as I edit more video than stills my monitor is on a video gamma set up and srgb gamut.

 

[Julia_LL]

Hi Tinky,

Thank you very much for your detailed and helpful answer

2. Are there any settings or players (I am using VLC on Windows) who I can calibrate it to get a better result?

4. No, it was shot in the automatic video mode and DPP shows me this (I also was surprised about this).

Do you know a good editing software for Windows which is not too expensive and can good work and is compatible with the .mov-files, so that I can get a better result than now?
Which editing-codec should I choose (Motion JPEG and .avi like from the Canon ZoomBrowser EX where I can export the .mov files to this)?

A question regarding moiré. Do you know if there is a trick or filter or something I can do in post that the metallic brown (bronze) "moiré-color" can be removed (on water or stairs)?

Screenshot:
http://img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/moirecolor5urxqej90n.jpg

Thanks again!
Julia

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Hi,

I have an EOS M and I like it very much for photos but as I tried the video mode I was a bit disappointed.

It looks less sharp und less detailed. If I capture a still image ("Photo in Movie") in the 2 MP mode (In the menu the option "Image quality" and then "S2" and "Aspect Ratio" 16:9) I will get a much better quality. Here are two samples, one with the 2 MP Still-Photo-Mode und the other a Screenshot from the video-file:

2 MP Still-Photo-Mode: img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/image3dn50klcmp.jpg
Video-Screenshot: img4.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/videontj6xoak7m.jpg

As you can see, the "normal" Photo is much better, better colors, better sharpness, details, etc.
Both were shot at the same time ("Photo in Movie") with the EF-M 18-55mm IS STM, 18 mm, ISO 125, Av 9.0, Tv 1/40.

What I also noticed is, that shadows in the videos are more darker.

So is this normal or does the camera have a defect?

Thank you very much in advance and I look forward to your reply.

Best regards
Julia

You are misunderstanding what you are seeing.

In your example of the "Photo in movie" image, the camera stopped taking a video momentarily, and took a full resolution photo and then reduced it to the "S2" size. You did not take a 2MP photo, you took a 18mp photo and reduced it. Reducing a 18mp photo to a small size will result in a much better photo than a 2K video grab.

Video does not work the same way. About 1/9 of the photosites are used to capture the image, so you get a much poorer quality when you look at one frame. Video works by showing the frames at a high speed, and your eye / brain averages what you are seeing to make it look much sharper than a single frame.

So, your camera is working fine, you are comparing two very different things. If you had set the image quality to "High", you would have a much better still image, but the video would not change. That's because the image quality settings only apply to still photos. As we move to 4K videos, the individual frames will be about 8mb and a single frame will look much better.

Does this help?

 

[Marsu42]

I have an EOS M and I like it very much for photos but as I tried the video mode I was a bit disappointed.

If you want better iq and like experimenting a bit, use Magic Lantern and raw video which grabs the full sensor quality (14bit, full dynamic range) unlike Canon's 8bit legacy video codec.

About 1/9 of the photosites are used to capture the image, so you get a much poorer quality when you look at one frame.

Afaik all photosites are used for image capture, but then the resolution is immediately reduced in the image pipeline? This would be the reason why a camera that uses "pixel binning" like the 5d3 has much better video quality than for example the 6d that has to apply an awkward downscaling algorithm.

As we move to 4K videos, the individual frames will be about 8mb and a single frame will look much better.

Amen to that!

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Afaik all photosites are used for image capture, but then the resolution is immediately reduced in the image pipeline? This would be the reason why a camera that uses "pixel binning" like the 5d3 has much better video quality than for example the 6d that has to apply an awkward downscaling algorithm.

Marsu, you are the expert on this.

Does the M use full sensor readout? I know the 5D MK III does. I thought the "M" used line skipping.

 

[Marsu42]

Marsu, you are the expert on this. Does the M use full sensor readout? I know the 5D MK III does. I thought the "M" used line skipping.

No, actually I have very little idea about video - the question mark above about where the downscaling occurs was for real. When in doubt the actual video wizards are to be found over in the ML forum.

I just follow the video thing simply Magic Lantern does it and *if* I'd go into video it'd certainly not be 8bit on a camera that doesn't even do proper downsampling (i.e. everything except 5d3 or 7d2, the latter doesn't run ML).

Of course ML's raw video doesn't do any downsampling at all but simply crops a part of the 1:1 sensor res - that's the big usability hassle apart from a lot of time-consuming postprocessing with the mlv stream.

 

[Tinky]

2. Are there any settings or players (I am using VLC on Windows) who I can calibrate it to get a better result?


Do you know a good editing software for Windows which is not too expensive and can good work and is compatible with the .mov-files, so that I can get a better result than now?
Which editing-codec should I choose (Motion JPEG and .avi like from the Canon ZoomBrowser EX where I can export the .mov files to this)?

A question regarding moiré. Do you know if there is a trick or filter or something I can do in post that the metallic brown (bronze) "moiré-color" can be removed (on water or stairs)?

Hi Julia

I'm on a mac. H264 (the cameras recording format) plays nice with Quicktime, handily, Quicktime is also the backbone suite of codecs for any editing app. I can only recommend installing Quicktime 7 and paying the extra $20 for the pro license to get better export options, such as still image from video.

There may well be a better way of doing it on a PC, I just wouldn't know it having not looked at a PC since XP...

Similarly, there are few cross platform editing suites. I last used Pinnacle version 10, which was a gift for DVD authoring, I found it creatively limiting for editing.

I do use Premiere, and have an old version of Elements on my Mac (v9) which came bundled with Photoshop Elements. It's an ok interface, you have the choice between automation and manual control. It will also use Quicktime Player if the right bits are installed in the background. The current version may well be 64bit (I would recommend this for the reduction in rendering speed -32 bit can only use 2.5gb of RAM- assuming your OS and PC are also running 64bit)

A lot of 'moire' is actually caused at the editing end, make sure everything is set the same as your camera, that is frame rate and progressive scan. Some apps open footage on an interlaced timeline unless you specify otherwise. This causes combing which can look like moire.

There are a couple of tricks to use too, if the moire is mildly distracting then I find .5-.75 pixel gaussian blur filter over the offending shots can bat away many moire issues. If it persists you may need to garbage matte a stronger filter over the offending area.

There are companies that make insert filters that go into the 'throat' of the camera. I don't think there would be enough space in an M. You could always resort to the early days of DV trick of streching some denier tights over an old filter, used to work great on the very early vx1000s when jaggies and moire were truely horrific.

Shooting technique can help, usuing ND filters to force a wider aperture so throwing offending areas out of focus, avoiding tight brick and tiles where possible.

In the camera menu there is a sharpness adjustment (within picture styles) this will affect your JPEGs and your video, but not your RAWs. Turn the sharpening down a notch if you are having particular issues (although I find the M pretty good in this regard - any camera has the potential, you just need a subject with the right pitch)

 

[Julia_LL]

Hi,

Thank you very, very much for your detailed and competent answers, Mt Spokane Photography, Marsu42 and Tinky

It really helped me and now I can understand it better. Will also try Magic Lantern, it sounds interesting.

Thanks for your hints, Tinky. I just tried QuickTime and my videos looks there better than on VLC.
Thank you also for your editing software tipp and the moiré-tricks. It helped me a lot.

Julia