Colour grading is an important step in creating skilled and cinematic FPV drone movies. Whereas LUTs could be handy, they don’t all the time produce the specified outcomes. On this tutorial, we’ll cowl the fundamentals it’s worthwhile to know for creating spectacular cinematic FPV movies, together with GoPro digicam settings, coloration correction and coloration grading methods.
To get essentially the most out of coloration grading, begin by investing in a high-quality motion digicam. GoPro, Insta360, and DJI are all wonderful manufacturers to contemplate: https://oscarliang.com/action-camera/
Selecting a Video Editor
On this coloration grading information, we’ll be utilizing DaVinci Resolve as our video editor of selection. It’s free, highly effective, and has all of the options FPV pilots want for modifying their footage. I extremely advocate it if you’re new to video modifying.
For a tutorial on getting began with fundamental modifying in DaVinci Resolve, take a look at this text: https://oscarliang.com/how-to-use-davinci-resolve/
Optimizing GoPro Settings
To seize professional-quality footage, allow ProTune in your GoPro. This function permits handbook changes for settings like shutter pace, white steadiness, flat coloration profile, ISO, stabilization, and sharpness. Utilizing a flat coloration profile helps retain particulars in shadows and highlights, providing extra flexibility for balancing coloration and distinction throughout post-production.
For extra info on the perfect GoPro settings for cinematic FPV, learn this text: https://oscarliang.com/gopro-settings-fpv/
Optimizing DJI O3 Settings
If you happen to use the DJI O3 digicam as an alternative of the GoPro for filming, listed here are my advisable settings for finest video high quality: https://oscarliang.com/dji-o3-air-unit-fpv-goggles-2/#O3-Air-Unit-Digital camera-Settings
Making use of Stabilization
Earlier than coloration grading, make sure that your footage has been stabilized first, it can make it far more nice to have a look at. For GoPro, my selection of stablization instrument is Reelsteady, however you can too use Gyroflow, the result’s comparable so don’t stress your self with the selection. For DJI O3, and lots of different motion cameras with built-in gyro, you possibly can simply use Gyroflow.
Colour Correction
Colour correction goals to attain clear and pure coloration illustration in your footage. It includes fixing publicity, white steadiness, and saturation. Video editors like DaVinci Resolve supply instruments akin to Waveform, RGB Scope, and Vectorscope that will help you appropriate these components.
Right here’s uncooked footage.
Modify Publicity
The Waveform instrument (backside proper of the display) measures mild depth on a scale from 0 (pure black) to 1023 (pure white).
To regulate publicity, find a body in your video the place you’ll take into account a very powerful second (what we name the hero shot), use this as your reference.
Discover the Three Colour Wheels in your video editor, which encompass Carry (adjusts shadows), Gamma (adjusts mid-tones), and Achieve (adjusts highlights).
Rotate the scroll wheel underneath “Carry” and “Achieve” (these are the darkish and shiny components of your video), and align the black tones with 0 and the white tones with 1023 for optimum publicity. It’s okay to transcend the boundaries (or inside) so long as you’re proud of the way it appears.
Preserve monitoring the Waveform diagram as you play the video to keep away from overexposing or underexposing components of the footage.
Distinction
After setting the highlights and shadows, you possibly can fine-tune the distinction by rising the Distinction worth (Cont).
Optionally you can too barely reducing the midtones utilizing the Gamma scroll wheel – the quantity of adjustment depends upon your expertise and private style.
White Steadiness
To regulate white steadiness, there are 3 strategies (all situated on the high left): Auto Steadiness, Colour Picker and manually setting it.
You can provide Auto Steadiness a strive first as a result of it’s the simplest, nevertheless it’s additionally the least dependable and I usually don’t use it.
To make use of the colour picker instrument, it’s worthwhile to choose one thing white within the video as a reference. Once more, it’s a simple technique nevertheless it’s not all the time potential to seek out one thing white.
Alternatively, you possibly can manually set the white steadiness by coming into “Temp” and “Tint” values. A trick I generally use is by wanting on the RGB Scope (Parade) and align the purple, inexperienced, and blue depth ranges. If you happen to scale back Temp, the entire scene will go blue, when you improve Temp the entire scene will go purple. Tint will make the picture look both extra inexperienced or pink.
Nonetheless, in our instance, I used to be filming throughout golden hours, so I intentionally made the footage look extra orange and heat by bumping up the temperature and tint. Auto Steadiness on this case would simply make the picture look a bit extra impartial by decreasing temp, which wouldn’t work in opposition to what I need to obtain right here.
Saturation
For saturation adjustment, you should use the Vectorscope, which measures coloration info. As you improve saturation (Sat), the Vectorscope traces will broaden. Keep away from exceeding the restrict, and intention for a pure look. In my expertise, a saturation degree of round 60 to 65 typically works properly for many of my GoPro and O3 footage recorded with a flat coloration profile.
I typically have “Colour Increase” set to 10 to make the colours pop a bit extra.
Sharpness
If you happen to recorded your GoPro movies with low sharpness, you would possibly want to extend it throughout post-production. Values round 0.47 or 0.48 often yield passable outcomes, with decrease values leading to sharper footage.
After Colour correction, the footage appears like this now.
Colour Grading
Colour grading is a inventive course of that enhances the ambiance and emotion of your video. By utilizing the Three Colour Wheels and Curves, you possibly can create distinctive tones for shadows, mid-tones, and highlights and modify saturation, depth, and coloration in particular areas.
To start coloration grading, add one other node by right-clicking on the present node, choosing Add Node, and selecting Add Serial.
Three Colour Wheels
One straightforward technique for coloration grading is utilizing the Three Colour Wheels. As talked about earlier, every wheel corresponds to a particular tone: shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. For every tone, you possibly can modify the depth and coloration. Combining reverse colours in shadows and mid-tones can create a extra attention-grabbing look.
Curves
My favorite option to coloration grade is through the use of the curves. Curves supply a robust option to create distinctive appears by focusing on single coloration ranges and adjusting saturation, depth, and coloration.
These are the three essential Curves I typically use:
- Hue vs Sat: Change the saturation of particular coloration areas (e.g., improve the sky’s saturation by choosing cyan/blue, or modify the saturation of bushes by choosing yellow/inexperienced). To change saturation, drag the curve up or down.
- Hue vs Hue: Alter particular colours, to make that coloration look extra inexperienced or purple.
- Hue vs Lum: Modify the brightness of particular coloration areas to additional improve your footage.
As an example, you should use Curves to make inexperienced leaves look extra vivid, or to take away coloration tones that you just don’t like such because the purple in brick partitions. Be inventive and experiment with totally different settings – there’s no proper or improper strategy, because it in the end comes down to private style. Benefit from the technique of discovering what works finest to your FPV drone movies, and create your personal distinctive model!
After coloration grading, the footage appears like this:
LUTs
LUTs, or Look-Up Tables, can be utilized along with coloration grading. Your footage could already look nice after coloration grading, however utilizing further LUTs may also help spice issues up much more. It’s as much as you whether or not you need to additional improve your footage with LUTs to create a particular look.
First, guarantee correct coloration correction earlier than making use of LUTs as an overlay layer (or further serial node in Davinci Resolve), and modify the opacity to mix with the footage by going to to “Key” part, and reducing the “Achieve” worth. It’s merely a matter of selecting your favourite LUT and clicking to use, so we gained’t go into element right here.
For DJI O3 digicam, I discover the built-in LUT in Davinci Resolve referred to as “DJI Phantom4 DLOG2Rec709” a reasonably good selection. The truth is I feel most individuals could be completely satisfied to only apply this LUT with out further coloration grading.
Including Grain
We need to keep away from digital noisy grain by reducing ISO, however some grain is definitely pleasing to have a look at. We will add such grain in our video by going to “Settings”, “Movie Grain”, “35mm 400T”, and modify grain measurement to your liking. The distinction may be refined however it could actually make your video look extra like an expert movie.
Upscaling For Youtube
Lastly, in case your precedence is picture high quality, it’s best to positively render your video in 4K, even when it was recorded in a decrease decision. That’s as a result of Youtube retains larger bitrate with larger decision/body charge movies. Typically I render my footage in 4K (3840×2160), 65Mbps bitrate.
See this text for extra details about upscaling: https://oscarliang.com/upload-dji-fpv-footage-youtube/
Conclusion
Colour grading is a vital side of making gorgeous {and professional} cinematic FPV movies. By correctly correcting colours and using coloration grading methods, you possibly can considerably improve the visuals of your FPV footage. No matter your flying ability ranges, understanding and making use of these ideas will elevate the standard of your movies and aid you stand out on the planet of FPV filmmaking. So, go forward and experiment with varied coloration grading methods and LUTs to find your distinctive model and create breathtaking FPV drone movies.
Edit Historical past
- Might 2023 – Tutorial created.
- Apr 2024 – Up to date.