Nasty footage
 

I tried to get some SSE on the camera tonight. Here is a brief clip (in AIC) of Tim D's lowlight scene file with 18db of gain in the dark. It's ugly. But SSE isn't all that bad. It's about 20 megs - very short but i didn't want to compress so everybody could see the nasties that come out to play at 18db gain and a boosted gamma.

I have a question about others experience with SSE: Does it pretty much stay constant with specific lighting level/gain, or does it fluctuate? In other words, could you have one shot with no SSE at 18 db gain and lo light and another shot at 18db and lo light with SSE?

http://protozoic.com/hd100/sse.mov

I take you need a Mac to view this file?

It fluctuates. The calibration process looks at both sides of the frame and makes decisions dynamically.

What I'm not quite sure of is with all the horrible noise and artifacts visible in your clip, why SSE would be of any worry? :-)

True,

Here's my plan on when to use +18dB gain:

NEVER


Maybe 3 to 6dB, but never more for me.

DING! You win the prize. I could care less if SSE shows up if the pictures looks this bad at 18db.

Sure if it shows up at 0db I'd take issue, but if you have to push the camera this hard to get it to show up, I do think SSE is not really a concern anymore.

Actually, it could be. Today I was shooting a 'talking head' indoors and behind the person was this creamy colour wall. There were some pictures and a plant in the corner yet there was still enough wall left to generate SSE. Fairly faint it was but I could see it on the camera LCD. I shot in SD at 0dB, manual WB and with a properly exposed image. The person was in the foreground and the wall was probably a stop and a half under. I think it's actually certain colours that are bad with SSE. I find that creamy beigey peachy browny combo is the worst.

Now, don't shoot the messenger, I am just sharing my latest first-hand experience...

JVC's position has always been that SSE is just one of many artifacts that occur under certain lighting conditions. The example, they use -- and I agree -- is that for those who like to shoot at night, vertical smearing is the worst possible artifact. Yet, you see it all the time. So often we are all "used to it." For me it is the clearest indication of video -- not film.

So for film lovers -- all the cameras should be compared on this spec. My guess is Sony has done the best job with their HyperHAD CCDs. And, CMOS which JVC wants to use, has no vertical smear.

That may be their position, but under those conditions, if you are seeing SSE at 0dB, send it in to be calibrated.

There have been users that have had their cameras improved by sending them in to JVC.

You are really using this gain - +18db for a real project? I don't think so. It's like we don't have a subject and we must discuss something. If you have SSE at 0 dB I understand, but I don't know any persson who is using a camera (HD100 or not) with the gain at the value of 18 dB. In this industry nobody should use 18 dB - only my opinion.

I think this function can be used only when you are shooting some news for a television and you forgot to take the light - lamp with you.

I absolutely agree

God no. It is hideous looking. I was torture testing the camera last night to see if and when SSE showed up. It kind of came at 18db with the lights off, so I'm not overly worried. I thought I'd share because there isn't a lot of footage out there and this was a "worst case" scenario for when SSE might pop up for others to see. In fact, its such a "worst case" scenario that the footage under these conditions is rendered completely unusable by noise, etc., far before SSE pops up.

For those scared of SSE - don't be. If you get a camera that exhibits it at low gain, get it adjusted - it can clearly be tuned to the point where it is just not an issue.

A lot of folks are trying to make decisions about which 6k camera to get. They all seem to be great. Don't be scared by the FUD of SSE, low res on the HVX, etc.

SSE isn't FUD, it's real and you can't make an informed decision or help people making one by wishing it away or saying that it only happpens at 18 db. Clearly is doesn't. Myself and another poster today have document it at 0 db...one in full daylight outdoors and one lit well indoors.

If it's an issue of older cameras then people need to know that and to make sure their camera comes from the newest stock.

If it's from firmware upgrades or can be tweaked otherwise from JVC people need to be aware that they may have to send their camera's in for that.

If JVC has in fact dealt with it universally with new "implementation" then that needs to be made clear.

I'm in the middle of just such a choice of scenarios and should have a pretty clear answer to which is which by the end of this week.

But, when a company states that SSE is a part of the camera's implemetation of true 24p, it's not helping anyone to say that it's been fixed and doesn't exist any longer or only occurs under ridiculous situations. As a producer, I've never shot above 0 db for anything but a "got to get it under this light or not at all" situation, and then maybe push it to +3....+6 is extreme to me.

If they have, in fact, completely eliminated SSE then I would expect that announced loud and clear from JVC.

So far they seem to be very responsive to the issue in our case and as I said in another thread, I'm very pleased with them as a company

Jim,
I agree it's not FUD, but.........

If anyone is seeing SSE at 0dB, they need to SEND their camera into JVC (as you mentioned).

No offense, but I found it almost impossible to believe that you are seeing SSE on the LCD. All documented cases of SSE that have been posted on this board are hard enough to see using STILL frames on an computer monitor, the fact that you are seeing something that looks like SSE in normal lighting situations at 0db and you can see it through the LCD (when the image is moving) indicates there is a major problem with your HD100. It might not even be SSE but something far worse.

Just get the unit replaced, that is NOT normal for the HD100.

It is FUD to suggest that SSE is a typical problem with the HD100, it is a RARE problem that occurs primarily with older HD100's. If our HD100 would have arrived from B&H with the SSE you describe we would have simply exchanged it for another one.

Did you buy from an authorized dealer so you can exchange it easily?

The FUD I am referring to is that all HD100's are ruined by SSE in all shots. I don't think that is the case with many cameras. Certainly not mine. If you have a problem at 0db, it clearly needs servicing.

When we were making decisions about which camera to buy, there was a lot of misinformation going around about how bad SSE was, how dropouts will ruin every shot, how the chromatic aberration of the lens would make footage a green/magenta mess, how HDV compression was unable to capture any detail in movement, etc. Not to say that this stuff can't happen.

I posted the footage to make the point that in this random HD100, the image was rendered unusable by other factors when SSE popped up. Most of us don't have to worry about it. If it is causing a major problem with your camera, it should get fixed. One of the reasons we got our camera a month before we needed it so we could run it through it's paces and get any issues resolved before we it became mission critical.

I think this thread has probably outlived its usefulness (if it ever had any).