New Sample Footage

[Ken Ross]

Originally Posted by Brett Sherman

As far as the watercolor effect. Below is a cropped photo from the workshop scene in both interlaced and progressive that to me shows a watercolor effect. It was shot with sharpness at 7, Sony's nominal setting. Now you may call it "softer" and I call it "watercolor" or "paint." But there is definitely color banding going on in the progressive that is not happening in the interlaced. I make no judgement for other people whether or not this is acceptible for them. I just point it out. When I have time I will recreate the situation that convinced me I wasn't imagining things.

Brett, if you look VERY closely at both your I and P frame grabs, you can see the same effect in the I mode...it's just harder to see, but it is there. It almost looks to me to be an actual staining of the paint that might actually have been there!! If it is, then the blurring in the P mode may just have made that shading more obvious even though the fine detail is not there. It may actually be the fine detail in the I mode that is somewhat masking the discoloration. I could be wrong, but I defintely can see the same shading in both the I and P mode.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Brett Sherman

Now I have to ask you, Steve, do you have any financial relationship to Sony? Including receiving free, reduced price or loaner cameras or equipment? If so, you should disclose that.

The fact I have a Prototype camcorder -- which I've been VERY open about -- says Sony chose me as it chose others -- to sample the product and provide feedback. Since HDVatWork will run my V1U review next month, I expect to receive a production V1 soon. Because I review equipment as a profession -- I get loaner units from EVERYBODY. I just returned a JVC HDV camcorder.

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"I did make clear in a later post that I had the Sharpness on 9. I'm not sure how you decided anything but 5 is "bad". Where does Sony say you should set Sharpness on 5? The default is 7. To me 5 is simply too soft, but I've never complained about the EE or noise at higher settings."

Brett, you've never said why you shot at 30p. Certainly not, I hope, for the Internet because you do NOT want EE for the web. So I'll assume you wanted EZ to edit film look. That means Sony's CINE profile would have been a good choice. On my V1 that has a Sharpness of 5.

Perhaps you noticed the P-mode softness and turned-up EE until it looked "better." (What are you using for an HDTV?) The problem with doing so is that it will not work because you do not really increase detail very much -- you only increase EE and noise. Which why is there is excessive EE.

Bottom-line, those using your clips are seeing noise that would not be there if you had used a Sharpness setting that did not add excessive EE. They naturally assume it is the V1. It's not.

Worse, it is reasonable to assume that the increased noise COULD force the camera to increase noise reduction which COULD remove detail in some areas.

That's why I said "correctly" shot video must be used as test video. I'm sorry if you feel insulted, but the EE is painfully excessive and I'm surprised you don't see it on your HDTV. The video shot by Jung Kyu is totally free of EE.

By the way -- you used very tiny images. Please, full sized images.

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Thomas -- if you have any possibility of buying a V1, why not go to your Sony PRO dealer and shoot some video?

But, the plain fact is that you were posting totally theoretical agruments that claimed the P-mode would be bad, long before the production units even shipped. The problem is that your predicted problems would show-up as ICE and/or CUE. There's no evidence that we are seeing either. (Although crawling ants can come from CUE and ICE. But as you know this is a function of the DECODER. And, so far folks have been very reluctant to consider any problem could be at their end.)


"SONY came up with an interesting way to sharpen the images from it's 960x1080 chips without making it look too much like EE."

YOU NAILED IT!

This I think is the key to everything. Canon uses very high rez CCDs and I have long argued that the sensor chips should be the same rez as the recording format. But, the industry is not going that way. Here's why.

When you read the FEB issue of HDVatWork you will find my preview of JVC's "Full HD" (1920x1080) camcorder. Full HD -- using AVCHD -- is the "next" step in the industry. There is no way we are going to get "useable" 3CCD 1920x1080 camcorders so everyone is designing processors that upscale to 1920x1080. Notice that 3ClearVid does this now. (The new JVC uses MPEG-2.)

The next step is 1080p50 for Europe. Note that 3ClearVid already can do this now. (By the way the AVCHD spec already offers 1920x1080/24p.)

This is why I have repeatedly said that "given the way the V1U works -- I-mode will inherently be more detailed than P-mode."

You'll note that I've never claimed, nor do I think Sony claims, that P-mode is equal to I-mode or that P-mode is "sharper than any other camcorder."

What many have reported is that 60i V1 video looks as sharp, or sharper than the Z1. My stories on 3ClearVid technology claim that at 60i -- the V1U may match the Canon at 60i.

But the important comparision is not P-mode and I-mode -- for those that want progressive video it's how P-mode compares to other camcorders at about the same price that offer progressive video.

[David Schmerin]

Our V1U came in last night... Took it out of the box and set up this morning with some coffee.

Shot at 24pA. Manual settings for everything else. Brought the video into FCP using the AIC. Reversed Telecined with CinemaTools and then rendered out using the H264 Codec so people not running FCP could check this video out.

The footage is just some traffic that was passing by when we set the unit up.

ftp://demo:demo@ftp.gotfootage.com

User: demo
Pass: demo

I will leave this up for a week or so if anyone wants to check it out.

David Schmerin
PDM
www.GotFootageHD.com

[Stephen van Vuuren]

thanks but that login does not work for me.

[David Schmerin]

The correct login is:
ftp://demo:file@ftp.gotfootage.com
user: demo
pass: file

Sorry for the mistake

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Okay - I can login now but I don't see any files - just empty dir.

[Ken Ross]

Yeah, nothing for me either. No place to put your password in either.

[David Schmerin]

Sorry. Don't know how the files went missing but I have put them back again.

ftp://demo:file@ftp.gotfootage.com

user: demo
pass: file

David Schmerin
PDM
www.GotFootageHD.com

[Zsolt Gordos]

OK now, finally downloading.

[Mikko Lopponen]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

A more desirable deinterlacing technique is the per-pixel motion adaptive which weaves the static parts and bobs (interpolates) the moving parts.

But why? I mean, if the television is capable of 60 frames per second then why would they use motion adaptive techniques on anything else but movies? Interlaced video should just be bobbed.

If the framerate is 25/24 then yeah, I get it, but I can't see why motion adaptive would work on 60i material.

[Steve Mullen]

Tom is correct -- for both film (after 2-3 pulldown has been sensed) and interlace video -- deinterlace should use "weave" on a static pixels. On moving pixels, "bob" is the simplest/cheapest, but worst to use. A 2D FIR is much better than line-doubling, but can only be done in hardware, which is why you don't find it in software players.

The entire subject is summarized at:

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/hd...work_01082007/

[Tom Roper]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

A 2D FIR is much better than line doubling, but can only be done in hardware, which is why you don't find it in software players.

Is 2D FIR the Direction Vector method? Is this hardware found in some HDTV's or just high end Video Processors, i.e. DVDO VP50, Crystalio II, Silicon Optics Realta HQV etc.?

The article you linked is excellent. When you say Full 1080 HD prosumer camcorders are likely for next year, does this mean 1080p60 and full resolution native sensors? What media will these record to?

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

Is 2D FIR the Direction Vector method? Is this hardware found in some HDTV's or just high end Video Processors, i.e. DVDO VP50, Crystalio II, Silicon Optics Realta HQV etc.?

What media will these record to?

I'm never sure what the marketing terms mean -- and HDTV markers never quite say what's in each product. Worse, my 2006 Sony passes the test, but the newer model does not! I suspect that there are many clever techniques that can be implemented in hadware. And, if you don't need realtime, in software.

Next Monday HDVatWORK will cover the new Full HD JVC. Not 1080p.

[John Bosco Jr.]

[edit]

Alledgedly,[/edit] the encoder in the V1 (that covers all models) isn't robust enough to handle the extra bandwidth required for progressive. The encoder, therefore, runs inefficiently causing a good number of macro blocks. The NR tries to smooth out these macro blocks, but in the process fine detail is compromised, producing this so-called oil paint/watercolor effect. Obviously, certain scenes are more noticeable than others. NTSC seems to handle it better than Pal, and, although not perfect, is adequate for the V1U. [edit] [/edit]

My honest opinion...properly used and considering the price and what you get... The V1 is still the best under $5k camera to date. For me... since it is so close to NAB, I'm waiting to see what rolls out. Of course, I absolutely hate the HDV compression method.

Peace all

[Thomas Smet]

Steve very nice articles on deinterlacing HDTV's.

Not that this is related at all but the weave method you talk about is a prime example why the 24F mode on the Canon series of cameras can work so well. Not that thats what Canon is using but just the fact that a 1080p display can turn 1080i video into something that comes very close to 1080p. Many people question how an interlaced chip can create a progressive image and whatever Canon does seems to get results similar to what a good quality 1080p HDTV can do with 1080i video. I think the reason why the F modes seem to have about 10% less resolution is because of something similar to the filtering you talked about with one of the methods of deinterlacing that would give 750 lines. This is only slightly smaller then the limit of 810 lines with interlace filtering on 1080i material.

Anyway back to the 1080p displays. I wonder how many people can even tell the difference. I mean in order to find the sets that fail you have to feed an image that alternates black and white lines. 99% of video and even graphics will never do this sort of thing because most designers know not to create graphics like this from their old SD interlaced days. Considering a lot of people still think a 480p DVD is HD perhaps this concern is a little over the top (even for me). Of course all the HDTV's I have are 720p anyways and it all looks the same to me. Perhaps the bobbing up and down can be a distraction on the 1080p displays. Very interesting articles though.