Bachelor Thesis...
 

Hey,

I hope this is the right forum to post this.
I´m studying "Digital Film and Animation" in Zurich, Switzerland. It´s my last year and I have to do a "scientific" research project in order to receive my Bachelor of Arts.
The problem is that I can´t think of a specific topic I wan´t to do.
I´m very interested in HD and have my own Canon XH A1 so I wanted to look in that direction... but I just don´t find anything specific.
Maybe an inquiry on 720p vs. 1080i (vs. 1080p/f) here at dvinfo...
Well you see I´m really not sure what to do, so I wanted to ask you guys for any ideas what I could do.
The project can have a practical part of max. 50% (some kind of experiment or so...)
It can also be totally theoretical, but it has to be scientific.
Most people actually do inquiries, but I would also be open for something else.
THX for every idea!

@Chris Hurd: Would it be OK if I did this inquiry here in the community?

(sorry for all the mistakes in my text)

Scientific...does it have to be about the film and digital video industry?

Yeah, it has to be about film/dv/camera/still fotography/movies...

Not sure if this would qualify but you could maybe do the advantages of digital over film, and the cons also.

Also talk about what new technology is going to change in the world of audio and video. I'm sure you could find engineers and IT people to talk to.

Doing a quick history of advances is a good way to start a paper....at least for the papers I have done.

How about a follow up to some of the stuff Tim Dashwood and Paolo Ciccone and others have posted about how they develop scene files for the JVC cameras? Lot's of fairly rigorous scientific study of how to bias the cameras to obtain optimal color and sharpness etc under a variety of lighting emvironments. They've done quite a few well controlled studies and I think something like this would satisfy your requirement for serious scientific content.

There have been a lot of posts and it isn't just these two guys, but they seem to jump in on any such discussion and as a result searching on their posts will lead you to a lot of interesting discussions on the topic.

There is still fairly high interest for video shot in the HDV format and downconverted to standard def DVD. So many people tried and few succeeded... how about shooting test charts, high color and high movement scenes with your camera, and then scientifically comparing the resulting images of the different work flows?

The 720/1080 comparison is not bad either, but you will be also comparing the cameras (since there is no camera that shoots both - correct me if i'm wrong).

Wow, loads of answers...

@Eric: I think the hard thing is writing about the future, because it´s hard to stay scientific... Really good and interesting idea though. Our Course Coordinator told us to be very carefull with such topics, so I will stay away from that :( (But it´s really interesting)
Problem with Film vs. Video is that there are already many books about that on the market.
But maybe with the new RED... but then again it´s pretty hard to obtain information (or even a RED One here in Europe)... or to do a scientific comparison, except RED would support me :) Hello Jim :)

@Terry: This could be a topic for me (damn, I got no connections to the pron industry), but I would have to stay on the producers side (example: TV show producer who "goes High Def.")... The Problem I see in this, is that in a thesis you have to investigate/research something new. So in that case I would have to do my research on how the change to HighDef changed productions... and then find something new to make productions easier (example).

@Jim: Very interesting if I could project their work for the JVCs on my Canon... and develop the best custom presets for different lighting environments (Is it that what you are talking about?). Is there a need for that, or has somebody already done that (successfully)? If not, it could be a possibility.

@Ervin: HD to DVD, hm sounds nice, but wouldn´t that just be a comparison of softwares? I´m not that into programming, to write my own software to do the perfect downconversion. Or did you think of something else?
The 720/1080 comparison would be focused on the formats themselves... can I do that? Pros, Cons, compare maximum quality under perfect conditions (theoretical). And then do a inquiry here at dvinfo, what real producers say. Whith that information I could make an "overview" of the (dvinfo-) industry and could say what could be improved in future formats...

How about the evolution of consumer camcorders? Clunky VHS/VHS-C -> Video 8 -> Hi 8 -> miniDV -> HDV etc. The improvements in electronics, integration of digital processing in parallel with improvements in other consumer electronics (cell phones) etc. The mathematical developments of video compression etc...

Wait a minute...Bachelor Thesis? Thank goodness I didn't have to write one, I might still be in college. That also might explain the B.S. degree that I have...

Might be a stupid idea but can't you do some interviews about the new technology, for example hdd and write some pages of text to back the technical info?

Rolf,

I was thinking about perhaps generalizing their work, or amplfying some aspect of it in some way (not necessarily camera specific) or maybe formalizing it - in other words, approach it from the academic perspective instead of the perspective of a working pro who in the end just wants the video to "look its best" (whatever that means - maybe some objective tests with different viewers to define it)

In other words, if you take the great work these guys have done as "engineering", then there might be some academic value in generalizing the engineering into "science" by focusing on some subset of what they've done, or looking at some specific techniques for measurement, or documenting the snsitivity of the process to small changes in parameters, etc.

Good luck.

Here's a good one: quantitatively evaluate HD camcorders. Just because they record 1080P, it does not mean they all look the same. You could determine the real resolution and quantum efficiency.

I think that would just be a gathering of Information, not investigating something new :-/ (still interesting)
The mathematical developments of video compression, arrrggghhh I really don´t like math very much.

@Jurgen: Could be very interesting, but I think it´s hard to wrap that information in a scientific packing.

@Jim: I think I don´t quite get what propose, maybe because of my lack of english... sorry, could you maybe explain in other words? THX

@Emra: Isn´t that what all the DV Magazines do?

thx to everybody who helps me!
Looking forward to hear some other ideas :)

Rolf,

Sorry - sometimes I don't even understand what I say!

What I'm thinking about is as follws.

Several people who post here have done some really good work to develop sets of camera settings that they believe improve on the default settings and improve the color response or low light performance, or other aspects of the video recording.

Of course, anyone can make such a change o a default setting, but most of us would just make a change and decide that we like it or not.
In other words, just "try and see", nothing scientific.

Some people on the other hand have been more scientific in their approach and have used standard reference charts and vectorscopes and documented their results.

The reason that I called their work "engineering" is because I believe they did it in order to get better results for projects they were working on, that is, the experiments were done with a specific objective in mind.

In my old fashioned way of thinking, academic science is done without a specific result in mind and is more abstract in nature. As an example, and again this might just be my thinking, engineering would be about getting a truer color balance, whereas science would be about understanding and quantifying and perhaps developing a model of the effect of variations in sets of camera parameters.

Or to put it another way, the engineer would ask how he could reduce the error in color whereas the scientist would ask what happens when you change the setting. In one case the objective is to reach a result, in the other, the objective is to understand and quantify the effects.

The engineer makes a journey to reach a destination, the scientist makes a journey to see where it leads him.

Of course, both approaches use scientific methodology.

Anyhow, looking at all the work that has been done, you might work on examining questions like:

- Whether other cameras have similar sensitivity to such adjustments

- Indeed, how sensitive is each camera to adjustments etc

If your DV magazines measure the quantum efficiency they are better than mine!