Interlace PsF
 

Ok, I know interlace is dead etc, however on the X70 Sony decided in it's wisdom that the 'Date Record' feature would only be available in interlace mode. Why, when my 5 year old Panasonic AG-AC160 can have date record in progressive mode, is beyond me. Not only that, but the histogram disappears when 'Date Rec' is selected?! Again, 5 year old Pany can have a waveform and vectorscope with date record selected. Some of us still need time-date stamp for legal stuff.

Please Sony, fix this. Allow date rec in progressive mode and give us the histogram.

Anyway, I figured this won't be a big deal since it's a CMOS chip it should be a native progressive scan, so I'm thinking a 60i project could be dropped onto a 30p timeline and I can output a progressive file. Done, seems ok. Until I pause motion and see crazy interlace artifacts!! This is present in any player, VLC, WMP etc at any scaling and on my 46" LED TV. It's subtle and you have to look for it, but quite obvious sometimes, and certainly when pausing motion.

I swore that other cameras I used with what I thought was PsF 60i, when placing in a 30p project, without having to de-interlace came out as nice progressive image. I can remove it with deinterlace but with a major hit to image sharpness. I'm using Vegas, maybe I should try another NLE? Is this a Vegas thing, or am I just not understanding how a Psf frame gets 'reassembled' so to speak.

Hopefully below images show up showing artifacts.

Re: Interlace PsF
 

That's just because you cannot just drop a 60i clip into a 30p project and hope for the best. You have to deinterlace first, and that will reduce your resolution by about half.

Otherwise, that workflow only works for a 60i clip that has 2:2 pulldown (and you still have to tell the NLE that such is the case), such as how AVCHD records 30p in a 60i container. That's a special scenario that doesn't just happen for clips actually recorded in 60i.

Re: Interlace PsF
 

Thanks Gary, I didn't realize it was like a special scenario or 2:2 pulldown etc.
I guess since you can only really notice it by pausing, I'll just stick with the current workflow as the resolution hit is much worse in my opinion. Not like it's mission critical image type work anyway.

Interestingly when dropping shutter to a 30th, the interlace motion artifacts gets lost in the slower shutter effect or whatever and resolution looks pretty much the same. Talking heads have such little motion, may just go that route. Still frustrating that a 2015 camera can't match a 5 year old camera in functions. Price wasn't that much different really. Can't figure why Sony doesn't just make this stuff work with progressive, hopefully a firmware update can solve.

Re: Interlace PsF
 

Hi Mike,

This is intriguing. Bummer. (Could Sony have limited this to interlaced to prevent "accidental" recording of timestamp info as most people are using progressive nowadays? If that's the case, why not just flash a warning on the display? Kind of like the "face smearing" "feature" with face detection on this cam. Weird.)

I agree with you on the 1080P stamping ability, though, this is a no brainer. Meanwhile...

I don't know anything about the requirements of legal video production, so don't know if this suggestion would help you or not, as it would involve post processing.

First, from the PXW-X70 manual, p. 14:
"Data code during recording: The recording date, time and condition are recorded automatically on the recording media...."

Second, I've searched a bit and found the following software tools (apparently Windows only, so don't know if they will work for you, but there may be something similar for Mac if you use a Mac - or maybe they would work in VMWare or similar):

1. DVMP: "time stamp avchd, hdv & dv, plus metadata tools"
DVMP Pro 5 - time stamp AVCHD, HDV, and DV video files
"The burn-in tool lets you time stamp AVCHD, HDV and DV video. This stamps the recording date and time (also known as datacode or datecode) into the visible area of each frame...."

2. "Visual AVCHD Time Stamp (vATS)"
AVCHD/DV/Photo Time Stamp Home
"By using vATS, the time codes are extracted from the AVCHD files and superimposed onto the videos. This way the date/time will be visible when you view the stamped file, consequently other files made out of the stamped files will have date/time displayed."

Don't know if such post processing would be considered "fabricating" or not, as (a) someone could always have the camera's date set incorrectly, and (b) you would be superimposing the actual date code from the original recording, so it's not like you would be generating any new data, just making existing data visible.

Curious to know if something like this would work for you, and then we can hope this gets fixed in firmware with a bunch of other stuff. :)

Re: Interlace PsF
 

The fact that this simple feature apparently doesn't work in anything other than 60i is totally baffling to me as to why Sony engineers would do that.

Re: Interlace PsF
 

Yeah Tom it is a bummer, no idea what possible reason considering 5 year old cams in similar price point have no issues?

I have checked out some of the plug-ins that convert the data code to a burned image, I used to use one years ago in Vegas and there are trade-offs. First thing is that software updates kept breaking them. I'll check out the ones you linked, but honestly I think I'd rather have some barely noticeable interlace artifacts than the extra headache of setting up, not to mention the possible legal issues.

Fingers crossed on a firmware update. Trying to find someone at Sony to discuss with is proving a challenge.

Re: Interlace PsF
 

Mike,

I definitely agree with you.

One more thought for a workaround would be to display data code through the SDI/HDMI out into a capture card, but then that would still be an extra step.

Sony, please fix.