@thepalalias, thank you for sharing your test. Why is Quantum X V4C Dark Matter V1 &V2 brighter than the others? The last is clip, V3B Rocket, is also bright, however, it appears some other light source is present. So much information to distill in this thread.

Not sure if this makes a difference (most of the ISO noise bug discussions were before ISO limit got unlocked) but in all the comparisons above, ISO 10,000 was approached by moving to the right from ISO 5,000.

It was not approached by moving from ISO 12,800 to 10,000.

@driftwood orion v4b is better than dark matter v1 ,2,3 ,.... i personally feel that your previous v4b's official intra matrix is far better than these,... the low light results are more or less near,in some shots they look same in high iso and noise levels..only the highlight contrast and slight brightness is been adjusted by default,.....but superb work sir,..for film makers they have choice now,... they can try shooting a thriller out of the dark matter patches,...they look great when it comes to highlighted super toned scenes

@driftwood Best wishes and health to your daughter

@thepalalias, thank you for the explaination. I was thinking, perhaps the aforementioned Dark Matter patches were giving a super ISO boost, or the like. :D To be honest, I am confused as to which is the best to use. I shoot a lot of RC Drift, indoors at night. I struggle with sufficient light. I try to stay at ISO 1600, as ISO above introduces considerable noise, from my experience with v1.0 firmware and I apply @driftwood's patches. Footage still looks great, imo, thank you VK and ND. Things are moving so fast...

@thepalalias thanks for the test. It seems a bit difficult though to really comment on performance when the light is different between shots. I thought at first the dark matter patches give much better low light performance, but apparently there's actually more light in the scene?

@leejb4 Which version of Orion V4d did you use? Looks nice!

@Driftwood. Wish the best for your daughter's recovery and peace of mind for the family.

Is the Orion 4vb or 4c patch better than Quantum v9b? (all on firmware 1.1). I don't hear anyone complaining about noise with v9b but lots of noise related issues with 4vb or 4c.

test footage using orion v4b cinema profile 0,0,-2,-2 35mm1.4,85mm1.4

@driftwood, sorry to hear that. I hope everything is alright.

Loading 4d for HBR/25p. Will see how it goes. (incidentally I loaded the dark matter v3 matrix, seti)

Passes handheld death chart at about 78mbps according to file report, 86.7mbps in Stream Parser, passes outdoor scene (which is always a tougher test for me than a death chart) at about 89mbps according to file report, 85mbps in Stream Parser, appears stable, time to examine footage.

Death chart file crashes MPC, a few seconds through, appears interlaced in playback (Though may be playing back at 50i causing combing), some kind of flash on the frame it crashes on. Outdoor footage plays fine and looks good.

Okay according to stream-parser you are getting a "V"-frame (grey bar) on the death chart footage, the outdoor footage which has always been a tougher test and crashed in some cases where death chart passes are all I-frames, outdoor including rapid movement all hit about 440k I-frame size with almost no variation.

On the death chart footage the elementary stream decoder is only able to decode the first frame, as frame 2 is a V-frame.

When I play the death chart footage in stream parser, it looks like there is white flames coming from the bottom of the right corner of the picture..

The grey bars are reported as V-frames.

As for the outdoor footage which is all I-frames.. the QP is reported as 8, min 6, and max from 24 (lowest) to 35 (highest) for the first 100 frames, the biggest range being 30. The number of skipped blocks is 53 (the lowest) to 147 (highest).

On NTSC death chart, trick mode is activated, max stream speed is 307mbps, bitrate is 83.8mbps, everything bar the first frame is a V-frame, they are all about 355k with almost no variation. Skipped blocks at the bottom on playback and same flames (I'd say an artefact of the white on black death chart and skipping).

Shooting the same scene with HBR 25p and Cinema 24p settings with Orion 4d ( has it got that far) and dark matter 3. It's a lot of trees blowing and a pretty standard test shot for me to see how much detail the camera picks up. So HBR 25p reports 88555 kbps in Movists info panel whilst Cinema 24p reports 147296 kbps. Picture from HBR is noticeably more crunchy where there's a lot of leaf movement compared to the 24p version. Obviously it's to do with the lower bitrate of HBR but can someone tell me why this is the case. Also is Dark Matter intentionally for interiors with low light? Getting a little bit confused by all the flavours, delicious as they are.

Okay, controlled comparison of the Orion V4B and V4C Dark Matter patches. No natural light, just a harsh camping battery powered one.

SH mode played back at 25P. Smooth -2 for everything except sharp +2.

First all patches play dry. Then with a "trashy" grade designed to show more of the noise and what's in the shadows (as well as oversaturate a lot to see how the patch holds up).

Password: driftwood

@pop24 Shot this comparison at ISO 3200 so you can see it on the 4 Orion matrices.

@mozes @rockroadpix @Mr_Moore @proaudio4 This time it's a Vimeo embed with no password.

EDIT: Made it password protected at WhiteRabbit's suggestion to allow downloads. Password is driftwood.

@WhiteRabbit @johnnym This one should be a lot easier to judge and compare.

@rajamalik What do you think of the difference in the shadow noise when pushed?