My blacks are covered in little squares

[David Roth weiss]

Was this material color corrected/color graded? If so, I’d be willing to venture that these artifacts were a product of overzealous cranking on one or more of the various parameters or settings in the color app used in the process.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Mark Matson]

Yes, they are graded, but the squares appear in the original files. Depending on the size you look at it.
It was shot too dark, so a little over zealous cranking was needed to get them to work. I think it is scaling artifacts. I found some similar issues over on the Blackmagic forums. The footage was shot on an Ursa, and there were other users with sort of similar issues. They said pan and tilt .5 in resolve, but another suggestion noise reduction. I’m trying everything.

[Tero Ahlfors]

Was the footage recorded internally or to an external recorder?

[Jeff Pulera]

I zoomed in on the image and doesn’t look like macro blocking/compression artifacts at all! The lower half of screen has a waffle pattern on it. Almost like a sensor issue of some sort. See t-shirt for instance.

I don’t know the cause or the fix, but if this same thing is on the original footage, it would not seem to be a compression issue in my experience.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Mark Matson]

Was recorded internally. Cf cards. Copied onto lacie 6tb big disc.

[Mark Matson]

Yeah, really weird. Now I find out over on the Blackmagic forums, others have seen this. It’s some kind of scaling thing. It went away when I unplugged my 1080 monitor and only used my MacBook Pro. I then exported at 4K, and converted that file down. Looks great. I noticed clips that I pushed in on in the timeline had more artifacts than others. I have a whole other video shot on that camera on black as well. But like 200 clips. In the finder it’s all waffle pattern, when the external monitor is plugged in. It not when it’s gone. Weird.

[Nathan Walters]

I’ve had the same issue with my BMPC. Still not sure of the definite answer. But basically it seems to be caused when pushing the camera too far with ISO, shutter, etc. I am no expert and may be incredibly wrong, but I think it has something to do with the sensor and the debayering process used in the cameras. I was able to clean it up in Resolve using some misc noise removal techniques. Basically it softened it out and made it disappear. So maybe try that in Premiere as well.

Nathan Walters
Halo Union Productions
https://www.HaloUnion.com

[Mark Matson]

Thanks. Nathan, David, Tero, and Jeff. I appreciate your time in trying to help me out. It’s been quite a challenge, but I think I’m out of the woods, now!