Sharpness
 

I've tried all the presets from the library and one thing I've seen is what looks like something that is about ready to moire (kind of a shimmering of the area) when there' s a lot of detail in an image or someone wearing herringbone or tight stripes. So looking at a 42" plasma I played with the sharpness settings and found if I cranked it down to -9 this seemed to help quite a bit. Anyone else seeing this? I had heard one opinion from a Hollywood DP that if you're shooting HD, you don't need the extra sharpening a detail circuit adds (I'm guessing this is what Canon calls "sharpen") and he turns it to zero.

I have seen this shimmering/pulsing moire effect when filming bird plumage that had very fine detail black lines surrounded by an amber color. This is the only time I have seen this effect, and it was very brief. I would not think that you would need to turn your sharpness down to -9 to avoid it. I think you would certainly eliminate this artifact, but creating soft images in the process. "0" sharpness should be fine in my opinion unless you are looking for a special soft look. Anything beyond that would seem like overkill.

i've seen it on everything i have shot with a pattern..more so on white horizontal lines.

it seems to be worse in SD and at frame rates other than
60i.

Anyone else?

Try using HDF on high. This seems to minimize any shimmer.

Bill

Hi Bill, it seems "every positive action has an equal and opposite reaction". What would be the downside of setting the HDF to high?

HDF on high took the shimmer away on slightly noisy areas with no other real notice in picture quality.

-9 took it away on the most noisy areas with only a slight softness to the pic.

I just added them both to presets. Thank you.

I think overall encoding on your finished work could also lessen this artifact.
To me, it looks like interlace flicker. Which is curious, as it appears the worst on SD at 24f.

I see it quite often on PBS shows shot on HDV.

Yea, HDF on high is subtle, but can be effective without altering much else.

Did anybody see Raines last week? Horrible shimmer on a lot of exterior shots with detail. I was amazed.

Bill