Interview with Bob Ott, Sony VP of Optical & Network Systems

[Stu Holmes]

Talks about the V1U, 24p etc. etc:

http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/a...jsp?id=67635-0

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Bob Ott

The big difference between CineFrame 24 and this 24p is we're giving much more adjustability to the shutter and a number of parameters. In the Sony Z1U HDV camcorder, CineFrame 24 is not limited, but the shutter can only go to a 60th of a second, whereas, in this particular product, the shutter is at 1/48th or 1/24th of a second. You're at the 24p imaging capability at that point. With CineFrame 24 you can achieve the 24-frame look, but you have the restriction that it can't do 48th and 24th. When you boil it down to the basics, that's the biggest difference between the two.

Heh. The big difference is Cineframe is a bad approximation of a look, and 24p is the real thing.

As a marketing executive, I'm surprised he didn't see fit to point that out (even if in terms that were kinder to the older cameras).

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Actually, the problem with CineFrame 24 overall isn't the "look" as much as it is the implementation of the technology, which I believe Sony failed to make work. using CineForm's Connect HD or Sony Vegas (both of which excel at pulldown) the CineFrame 24 is very useful, and like others, we've used it on occasion to great satisfaction. But...if you try using it in any standard workflow, it's a juddery mess. Which is where 98% of users found themselves using it.

[Thomas Smet]

How about that new deck with HD-SDI? Is that just output or can it be input as well with the optional board? It sure would be nice if we could edit on a system such as FCP with live HD output and just record it through HD-SDI to this deck instead of having to wait many hours for FCP to render to HDV stream to output to tape. It would save a heck of a lot of time for recording master tapes and we could save the system for encoding the blu-ray disks and not have to waste time doing both.

From what I can tell from the tiny bit of info I could find it seems like the optional SDI board is for SD-SDI input only. Now that blows.

[Thomas Smet]

There is an optional board for component input for the 1500 deck as well but it is limited to SD component.

[Bob Zimmerman]

he is right. Most films are not going to see film. They go straight to DVD. Now you can just download the movie or TV show etc to your iPod.

[Eric Gorski]

"...because of the nature of CMOS, we can actually take each individual pixel and process it in the EIP as compared to CCD. So in that process, a good example would be if I shoot toward us sitting here from over there across the street, because of the low light here and the high light outside, this detail on a typical camera is wiped out. Because of the ability to individually adjust pixels and their output, the electronic image processor, depending on the settings in the camera, if you want to bring this detail up, the way you would bring it up on a normal camera is you'd hit the backlight compensation, and details of the building outside more or less get washed out, and this detail inside comes up. With this camera, when you go through these functions, the outside and the inside, this is still darker but now you can see the detail without sacrificing the image outside."

THIS IS EXCITING.

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Bob Zimmerman

he is right. Most films are not going to see film. They go straight to DVD. Now you can just download the movie or TV show etc to your iPod.

The only problem with this method of easy editing is that if you make a DVD from just doing a 60i edit it will be an interlaced DVD and not look as good on a digital progressive display. By editing as a true 24p and encoding as a true 24p DVD you will be able to view 24p projects as progressive scan on a progressive display which means higher quality. For SD TV's this may not be a big issue but more and more people will have HDTV's and the DVD's will look much better if they are made as proper 24p. That is why I am a little shocked at the dude's statement about how most people will edit 24p in a normal 60i project. If they do this they pretty much threw out any advantage to using 24p in the first place and are treating it more like an effect that looks cool.

[Ray Bell]

Does anyone know if you can put 24P down on a Blue Ray disc???

If you can, its going to make that Playstation 3 that much nicer to own for
playing your own 24P content... and the disc's have 50gb...

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by Ray Bell

Does anyone know if you can put 24P down on a Blue Ray disc???

If you can, its going to make that Playstation 3 that much nicer to own for
playing your own 24P content... and the disc's have 50gb...

Yes, of course you can put 24p, 12p, 50i, 50p, 30p, 60i 60p, and virtually anything else on BD. VC1, H.264, MPEG2 are all standards acceptable to BD.

[Bob Zimmerman]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

The only problem with this method of easy editing is that if you make a DVD from just doing a 60i edit it will be an interlaced DVD and not look as good on a digital progressive display. By editing as a true 24p and encoding as a true 24p DVD you will be able to view 24p projects as progressive scan on a progressive display which means higher quality. For SD TV's this may not be a big issue but more and more people will have HDTV's and the DVD's will look much better if they are made as proper 24p. That is why I am a little shocked at the dude's statement about how most people will edit 24p in a normal 60i project. If they do this they pretty much threw out any advantage to using 24p in the first place and are treating it more like an effect that looks cool.

Maybe you won't be able to tell the difference. I think that is the idea. But we shall see.

[Marvin Emms]

"VC1, H.264, MPEG2 are all standards acceptable to BD."

I think you may have that backwards Douglas.

A BD disk will conform to at least one of those specs, but something that conforms to those specs may not conform to BD.

This info is prefinalise, but the spec as of a year ago supports,

1920x1080x59.94-i, 50-i (16:9)
1920x1080x24-p, 23.976-p (16:9)
1440x1080x59.94-i, 50-i (16:9) MPEG-4 AVC / SMPTE VC-1 only
1440x1080x24-p, 23.976-p (16:9) MPEG-4 AVC / SMPTE VC-1 only
1280x720x59.94-p, 50-p (16:9)
1280x720x24-p, 23.976-p (16:9)
720x480x59.94-i (4:3/16:9)
720x576x50-i (4:3/16:9)

Unless the spec has been changed, there is a 24p, which is essential, but no p30 or p25. More worryingly there is no p50 or p60 outside of 720p. Most worryingly from our point of view HDV format video is not supported.

Years from now, civilisation will move beyond the earth, past the moon and cover the furthest reaches of the solar system. We will send ships out into the milky way and truly search for our place among the stars. Astronomers will build planet sized microwave telescopes to learn more about the universe, they will point them at the blackness of space between the galaxies and with equipment not yet dreamt of in modern physics detect the faintest echos of Sony shooting themselves in their other foot.

[Drew Long]

Is that right? The DR60 drive has to be sustaining 3g before the head is lifted?

What the 3G drop protection does is it retracts the head and powers the drive down, so that if you did drop it past a force of 3G, you don't wipe out the drive

If you drop something it travels at 1g. So this drive is so tough only 3g can damage it? I don't get that.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

BluPrint, which is a BD authoring tool, allows for the import and compliance of 24, 25, and 30p, and I haven't looked at it to see if it supports 60p, but I'm fairly sure it does. As far as playback devices, I'm quite certain they support all four progressive framerates.
I've not looked at the spec in a while, but VC1 allows for all of those framerates, so does MPEG2, as does MPEG4/h.264/AVC. And one of those formats may be used in BD authoring.

As far as the DR60, it lifts the head at 3G with the buffer reading/storing data. As soon as the shock subsides, the head moves itself back. I'll be subjecting the DR60 to a couple of hard tests on Monday of next week, and we'll see how it does. I did drop one from waist height and it managed the problem without any incident.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

That is why I am a little shocked at the dude's statement about how most people will edit 24p in a normal 60i project. If they do this they pretty much threw out any advantage to using 24p in the first place and are treating it more like an effect that looks cool.

When folks make HD DVDs they will certainly want to make 24p. Bt that's 2007.

But for PAL or NTSC DVDs played on a $79 Chinese player -- even when sent to a new HDTV -- I think you are making a big deal out this issue. And, yes, most folks will be using 24p for a "cool look".

Panasonic intended 2-3 exactly to create a cool look that could work with a full 60i infrastructure. There's no sin in using 2-3 to create a look.