HIGHLY GRAINY/PIXELATED FOOTAGE

Hi,

I am going to preface this post by saying that I have what I have, and cannot purchase new equipment (no budget). Hoping to learn some tricks to make the most of what I have, given the context:

- I am filming dance productions. One person, two cameras. One camera (at the back of the house) has to be set up and left to run. Many of the productions are low light but some get really bright, so I've tended to shoot on the darker side assuming that underexposing is better than overexposing.
- both cameras are Black Magic Pocket Cinema 4k's
-both are using an Olympus M. Zuiko Digital 14-42mm lens (no option to purchase another)
-Shooting BRAW 12:1, constant bitrate, film

The issue: The footage I am exporting is horrendous. Wildly pixelated, soft grainy edges, a lot of blur. This happened most particularly in low lighten where there is a lot of movement/dance. It is salvageable if I edit and export in 4k (or if I keep the footage very dark and do not try to lighten it at all) but if I edit in a 1080 timeline the footage completely disintegrates. I'd love to have the option to edit in 1080 because it gives me more flexibility to push in with the edit (my lenses cannot do it fluidly), plus cuts down on the 80+hr export times I'm looking at for some of these longer 4k videos/performances.

I am editing in Premiere using lumetri and curious if this problem will be resolved by using Da Vinci? Though I may only have access to the free version.

I've worked on Sony and Cannon DSLR's before and never had the footage fall apart this badly. Wondering if there's anything I can do.

I’d try the demo version of NeatVideo and see how far you get.
And then, don’t use H.264 or H.265 at low data rates for output, it’ll get you the pixelation.
Generally it’s a bad idea to starve a cine camera of light. Your DSLRs will have used internal noise reduction at the cost of detail.
The free version of DR doesn’t offer advanced NR, but it works with NeatVideo.
Long rendering times are to be expected on anything but a really strong computer.

tend to shoot on the darker side assuming that underexposing is better than overexposing.

If you're shooting BRAW, I would go the other way. You can always step down the ISO in post. But those cameras aren't pretty without sufficient light.

Why is the footage usable in 4k but “disintegrates” at 1080? Seems like this is primarily a scaling issue. The downconversion should mitigate the noise to some extent, not enhance it.

Good Luck

Try another scaling algorithm, there are quite a few offered in DR.