The ultimate preset.

[Giovanni Speranza]

The ultimate XHA1 preset.

EXPLANATION

The Trend:
When we use high end digital cameras, sporting more than 10bit, high res, no compression 4:4:4 color space, we tend to shoot with few contrast, in order to correct it during the post production process.

The Exception:
With highly compressed HDV cameras featuring only 8 bit the trick above can't be done without affecting the quality drastically, because only use few o fthe 8 bits are used to describe the image, obtaining banding and having a heavily deteriored footage after cc.

The Solution
Creating a preset that uses the most bits possible, with REAL BLACKS AT 0 IRE, and that can be used without any CC

Here is it:
VISION02 PRESET TEST on Vimeo

VISION02

This preset sports high contrast, 0 IRE blacks, less banding and better SN ratio.


VISION02 SETTING PARAMETERS

GAMMA CINE1
KNEE LOW
BLACK PRESS
PED 0
SETUP -9
SHARPNESS 1
HDF LOW
DHV 0
COR 0
NR1 OFF
NR2 HIGH
CMX CINE1
CGN 0

all other parameters at 0 (default)

[Kurt Zhuang]

this is great thanks

[Randy Panado]

I'm not too keen on what affects what on the settings, all I know is what "looks good". Would any wedding people recommend this setting? Looks pretty good from the footage.

I'm shooting with vividrgb atm.

Thanks

[Anthony Sellitti]

Giovanni, your videos are extremely impressive! I'm super-impressed with the low-light footage, great stuff man. It makes me happy that I know I have the option of creating such nice lookin' footage with my A1.

This preset looks beautiful, I can't wait to try it out... And if you can specify, please, what's the lighting setup you've got there? Are those kinos?

And the lenses are wonderful - if you can specify what you're shooting with I'd appreciate it. I'm shopping around for a lens kit for myself.

Thanks!

[Tripp Woelfel]

I am definitely going to try that one out. The footage looks great.

Not sure I'd call it the "ultimate" preset because it's such a subjective assessment. That said, it's a preset that can be used in a lot of situations. Great for dramatic pieces which I do, well, none of.

[Jordan Berry]

Alright I did a test of this present compared to Truecolor (/w -4 Sharpness to reduce the appearance of grain). It doesn't stand up in terms of low light performance. Your video shows almost ZERO grain at such low light, but mine shows a lot. What gain setting were you at?

[Brandon Freeman]

Does pressing the blacks crunch blacks? I have a modified TrueColor preset near identical to this in terms of pedestal and setup (no noise reduction, though, as I'd rather have the noise than deal with noise reduction issues), but with blacks stretched for fear of crunching them. Thoughts?

[Peter Szilveszter]

I shot some stuff with it on the weekend and also shot some stuff with a 35mm adapter in low light and looks pretty good to me, I will need to do some comparison but I think its pretty good.

[Oleg Kalyan]

Giovanni,

thank you for your time doing the research.

imo, to crash the blacks, get higher contrast, it's not a hard thing to do , the codec hold it pretty well, hardest thing is to keep a widest dynamic range, for that purpose I try to keep the pedestal and setup at 0.
Also black pressed is not a good idea, look at the lips of your character, there is an edge on the shade side of the lip looking like a black line, looks kind of strange...

your preset seem to be a "special application" one, IMHO..

if anything you want to stretch black and press, crush it later via color corrector.

[Giovanni Speranza]

When you set the SETUP to -9 there is no compression, no crushing, no waste, it's just resetting the BLACKS to RGB 0,0,0 instead of RGB 19,19,19.
So i RECOMMEND to all XH A1 users to try all their settings with the SETUP moved to -9.

And finally i think that VISION02 isn't any better than the others, the only great thing in it is that the SETUP is -9 (and obviously PEDESTAL must remain to 0)

All this is said watching to a parade oscilloscope that showed clearly that SETUP=0 means IRE7.5.

[Mark Fry]

Why set NR2 HIGH? What's the advantage? Surely you will get a softer image with risk of ghosts from moving subjects? It may help in low light with the gain turned up, but not in normal conditions, surely?

[Giovanni Speranza]

I think that it's NR1 which generates ghosting.
NR2 soften the image a bit.

[Josh Chesarek]

Here is something from what was the second camera in a shoot using the preset. Shot with the XL-H1A. I think this frame has a bit of a soft focus and or the softness from the preset of NR2-High, but that said, the Gain was @ 6 and this was @ 20x so I think it held up nicely. Sadly I am not allowed to post any videos.

[Billy Griffin]

what frame rate?

[Giovanni Speranza]

25 fps (PAL camera)