EX1 Frame Grabs in 1080 and 720

[David Parks]

Originally Posted by Matt Daviss

I'm seeing the MPEG2 artifacts in the Drummer, has this been deinterlaced? The drummer's left hand stick is blurred and I don't see interlacing, but there's tell-tale lumpiness in the black taxi's rear window. And now I see Z1-style edge sharpening again.

Organist shows, maybe, the beginning of CR in the watch highlights, but I like this image. Amazed that it looks so different between Preview and Photoshop.

I would wager that left hand stick is blurred bacause it is moving faster than the shutter. It is all natural motion blur from what I can tell.

Also remember some of these images are labeled as 60i. They've been interlaced from progressive scan. In fact, these images look great when that is considered.

But IMO, looking at still frames is always out of context as to what the actual full moton video looks like. And still frames always force some people to look too closely at small artifacts that would disappear once playing in a MPEG 2 stream.

Don't forget to wipe the nose smudges off your screens when your done.

Just Kidding. Peace.

Cheers.

[Thomas Smet]

All I know is that I am very impressed with the 720p 24p shots. The guy wakeboarding looks like it confirms what I said about 720p 24p being almost impossible to break in my "ultimate 720p camera" thread. I have looked very close and I do not see any macroblocks at all considering there is water splashing around and this must have been some pretty fast motion to capture.

The thing to think about 1080i still images is that 1080i really meant to be viewed this way. 1080i was meant to be watched while moving and in motion and not as a still. The progressive stuff so far I am very impressed with. The look of the 720p is exactly what I was hoping for. You can tell right from these images that this camera in 720p has more raw detail then JVC HDV does. Even the 1080p stuff looks pretty darn good although I will need to see more of that. I am really more interested in shooting 720p with this camera and I am pretty much sold if this is really how it will look.

[Jason Livingston]

Oh man... I live about 10 minutes away from where the "Japan Street 1080i60" shot was taken... just outside Hon-atsugi station in Atsugi city, Kanagawa pref. There is a big Sony engineering building nearby but I was under the impression they mostly work on celphones there. I'll have to hang out more often and try to catch some of the camera guys. :)

Since I frequent the area I know that the building on the right side, shown under repair in the pic, finished about 2 months ago, so this shot was taken at least that long ago.

[Tom Vaughan]

I agree that there are some very visible artifacts in some of these frames, but that isn't too surprising. You have to remember that you can't judge video compression by looking at still frames. Artifacts may appear in a single frame and be gone in the next frame. You have to watch the video to judge the quality of the encoding.

Flickering lights like strobes or flames are an encoding nightmare. Extremely fast motion is also tough (like a drummer's sticks).

As Thomas Smet points out, interlaced video will never look great in a still frame. To get the still frame you have to deinterlace the video, combining two fields that were captured 1/60 of a second apart.

I look forward to seeing actual footage at the full 35 Mbps bitrate.

[Michael Mann]

Originally Posted by Tom Vaughan

You have to remember that you can't judge video compression by looking at still frames. Artifacts may appear in a single frame and be gone in the next frame.

I disagree, Tom. After analyzing hundrets of HDV clips on a frame by frame basis I have never noticed such severe artifacts in a single frame and then disappearing in the next.
That's why I expect/hope that the artifacts on the demo frames shown in this thread are not on the native .xif frames.