Images of 30P, 24p, and 60i
 

Here are three images. Is one of significantly lower quality? Which one?

If you can't see a difference, then 30P has no problem in my prototype V1U.

I like pic # 1 the best!

Pic #3 seems a bit soft.

Steve,

From left to right, #2 looks the sharpest, followed by #1 then #3, with #3 being the softest.

#1 looks clean while I can notice some of the oil paint look in images #2 and #3. In the wood grain image 1 looks more natural while 2 and 3 take on kind of a cartoon look. Actually when I look very close I think all 3 images have this it is just it is at different levels.

On 2 and 3 do any of us think wood grain looks like that? 1 looks a lot more natural to me but there is still something "funny" about it. Look at the far left of all three images at the area around the grey squares. That does not look natural. I have worked with 35mm footage and all types of HDV footage for compositing and I can tell you that these images look funky. How would keying work on something like this when the edges get enhanced? We would have dancing edges.

One last thing I will point out is the chroma sampling in all 3 images. Notice the alternating lines of chroma due to the fact that even progressive is encoded as an interlaced stream. This will also make keying a little bit harder if you are going to a progressive source such as BD, HD-DVD or film. Your NLE will have to know how to compensate for the alternating lines of chroma. Clearly whatever program Steve used to take these stills couldn't yet tell the difference so it thinks they are all interlaced and the chroma looks like that. You really notice it in the reds. If you plan on creating a 1080p HD disk of some type the chroma will need to be sorted in the correct order.

Steve I think you are using FCP. Is there an option to treat the footage as non interlaced or interlaced like there is with Liquid?

The wood grain in the third image seems quite blurry/smudgy...
The second image looks to be perhaps overly sharpened.

But nice clean blacks. Colors seem very nice.

I've forgotton the details of your worry about field encoded MPEG, but all 1080i ATSC has this issue -- and yet I've yet to see any huge protest about this as being a big quality issue. There are many other interlace problems, and this one is just one more. It seems to me that you are simply pointing-out one of the many advantages of progressive.

In the case of Sony 24p, 25p, and 30p -- I don't see that these modes will look any worse than 50i or 60i. And, that really is the only important point to someone buying a V1.

It seems irrelevant to point-out that 720p offers better chroma. It also offers 60p. But, if folks want 720p they obviously aren't going to buy any Sony camcorder. So I'm not sure why you keep pointing this issue on the V1 thread.

FROM: Zsolt Gordos

Hi Steve, certainly these shots look much better than any of the V1E shots and none of them show the "oil painting" effect. The 3rd photo is visibly softer than the others -- I wonder which setting has been used.

I've posted a new Image 3.

The new 3rd shot looks better and now similar to 1 and 2

could you please reveal settings per photo?

In 24 hours -- waiting for next day in the UK.

Steve

Ok...

Starbucks began to lose share price as Coffee Bean is getting popular among videographers :P

Coffee Bean's my spot in Las Vegas. Here are pix from K.L. Malaysia.

Going by the similarities between 202 & 203, I'd say the progressive pics do suffer a little bit of the smudging in the V1U. Not as bad as the 25P pics shown by others. The wood grain does look funky as Thomas points out. Were these pics sharpened at all?

I had a Black Forest iced coffee (with cream!) in that very Coffee bean 3 months ago. Small world...

TT

It doesn't have to be just 720p. the F modes from the Canon HDV cameras use a true progressive encoding so the blocks of chroma are cleaner.

This isn't usually an issue with interlaced video becuase it is meant to be shown as interlaced or split out as 60p. In this case the chroma will look normal on an interlaced display or as 60p. Where it is noticed is when we try to put progressive into interlaced which for the most part is only done on DVD's and now the SONY V1.

Where an issue can come up is when you want to process those frames as progressive such as keying in a NLE as a progressive timeline or if you plan on going to film which is progressive. Even if you plan on going back to a medium that will be shown on a HDTV or interlaced display the keying will be better with 720p or Canon F modes.

If live capturing from component or HDMI will be used then this will not be an issue at all.

I did not invent this issue. Adam Wilt has written about it a few times in some of his articles. If you do not trust me on this subject then ask Adam Wilt about it.

Sorry, I keep forgetting Canon -- not because they aren't good, but the H1's price, ergonomics, and styling turn me off. (And, the A1's viewfinder is too small for me.) But, you are 100% correct -- there is an alternative 1080/24p system that doesn't have this issue.

Now I understand where you are coming from -- sorry I totally didn't catch it at all. Me very bad. Now I'm all ears. Can you explain the 4:2:0 MPEG-2 interlace problem again, please.

I'm not yet especially interested in the keying issue, but in these two topics:

1) without yet giving away which pix is which -- one of these images does, in fact, have more detail. I'm wondering how/if the chroma issue could cause a difference in DETAIL -- in a still image grabbed from FCP (you were correct) and/or viewed as video.

2) how this issue does not affect 1080i when is is viewed on one's HDTV.

PS: How do I use Liquid to grab better images. I'll post them as soon as I grab them.