consumer vs. professional formats, and 24p again.

[David Kennett]

Licensing 24p! Can anyone "own" a frame rate? I'l just make mine 23.99999999999p and avoid all that. That's like licensing 60Hz AC power!

Most topics have been well covered, but I question the advantage of ever using uncompressed anything. I can get a very nice 7 megapixel picture compressed to less than 3 MB. That's about what a ONE megapixel UNcompressed image takes. Which way would YOU want your 3MB used? Want 720p60 uncompressed? I'll compress my 2000p60 to the same data rate and get a BETTER picture.

The careful use of limited compression can always help - even in production. Don't kid yourself, there will always be pressures for the most efficient use of transmission and storage capabilities.

[Wayne Morellini]

Originally Posted by Lawrence Bansbach

...they have confirmed it, either...

I agree with you whole heartedly. In one of the linked interviews it was expressly said that it had DVCPROHD quality at 50mb/s, and double at double that rate (100Mb/s). No other rate is mentioned, but I imagine that the really expensive line of cameras eventually may have 200-600Mb/s.

There is a bottom line in quality, lossless. Lossless tends to peak out on most codecs at around 2:1 on average, the better codecs can go to 3:1 on average (though there are reports on higher rates then this on some codecs). H264 lossless (they have developed this, I posted a link to a table of this in the other thread) would likely be 2:1 to 3:1 as with most codecs. So I can calculate approx lossless and visually lossless from that. H264 is aimed at quality at high compression, so I don't assume it is the best for lossless. Taking DVCPROHD as an indication of minimal broadcast quality, and double that for 100MB/s H264, pretty much puts you in a sweet spot in broadcast acquisition standards, but I do not image it is visually lossless. This gives you an indication of relative quality at the bottom and top ends, from which you can estimate. Wait to see. (I think the normal cineform sample I have seen looks sufficiently soft myself, the cineform bayer looks sharper (though I have to visually confirm) probably because of that way it has to work to ensure bayer accuracy).

[Wayne Morellini]

David,

Try 25p, run slower, and adjust the pitch through a very good sound process (with a big processing resolution to avoid introducing sound errors).

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Ash Greyson

Everyone has this dream/fantasy/nightmare of killing film but the ONLY way you will ever get CLOSE is uncompressed.

Given that almost nothing is delivered to viewers without being processed digitally these days, it shouldn't be too hard to make a digital video camera which delivers "film-like" results. And considering most consumers are happy with SD DVDs at 720x480 resolution with 4:2:0 color, how much better than that do we need to record to make film irrelevant? I'd guess the coming round of moderately-compressed HD cameras will bring us very close to looking like film at prices mere mortals can afford, so this debate should be about over. Does anyone here shoot film for anything now?

Less than ten years ago many professional photographers told me they'd never take digital photography seriously; today even National Geographic is going digital. Film is on its way out for both photos and video except for the most esoteric purposes. Good riddance, too: film is environmentally unfriendly and difficult to preserve.

[Peter Ferling]

Digital all the way Kevin. No more banks of slides, 8x10 polaroids, scans, etc. etc (of course, I miss those dark room chemicals, mmmmm). Just shoot, qualify during capture, edit, and deliver on disk -same day, too.

[Ash Greyson]

Originally Posted by David Kennett

Licensing 24p! Can anyone "own" a frame rate? I'l just make mine 23.99999999999p and avoid all that. That's like licensing 60Hz AC power!

Most topics have been well covered, but I question the advantage of ever using uncompressed anything. I can get a very nice 7 megapixel picture compressed to less than 3 MB. That's about what a ONE megapixel UNcompressed image takes. Which way would YOU want your 3MB used? Want 720p60 uncompressed? I'll compress my 2000p60 to the same data rate and get a BETTER picture.

The careful use of limited compression can always help - even in production. Don't kid yourself, there will always be pressures for the most efficient use of transmission and storage capabilities.

Do you do any CC or compositing? Sorry but even codecs like DVCproHD start to fall off pretty fast. I bet I could show most people uncompressed SD and it would look better than highly compressed HD. Define "better" picture? Do you mean more resolution because people mistakenly think that means better picture when in many cases, it does not.



ash =o)

[Ash Greyson]

Originally Posted by Kevin Shaw

Less than ten years ago many professional photographers told me they'd never take digital photography seriously; today even National Geographic is going digital. Film is on its way out for both photos and video except for the most esoteric purposes. Good riddance, too: film is environmentally unfriendly and difficult to preserve.

YOu proved my point... all thes "I will never go digital" guys are shooting RAW, not compressed... with more and more movies going thru extensive CC and post compositing, LESS compression will be the goal for ACQUISITION.



ash =o)

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Ash Greyson

YOu proved my point... all thes "I will never go digital" guys are shooting RAW, not compressed... with more and more movies going thru extensive CC and post compositing, LESS compression will be the goal for ACQUISITION.



ash =o)

There is really no way to compare the two. It makes sense for a still image to be raw because people tend to stare at it for a given length of time. More attention is put on the contents and image quality of that one image. The delivery medium is also different in this case. Many times the photo may go through many changes and end up printed very large in a magazine or a large photograph. Artifacts would show up very fast in this situation. The other major reason to shoot raw still images is because they can. It is something that is no problem at all in terms of current technology. It make take more cards but shooting raw is no problem at all.

Thinking of shooting HD video uncompressed is rather insane. Anybody who thinks this will happen is living in a dream world. Even uncompressed SD is expensive. Since every single frame isn't studied for long periods of time the level of compression isn't as important as it is with still images. The final medium for viewing isn't as high of a standard as with photography. Most consumers will never ever see what uncompressed HD or even SD looks like. Where with photography consumers get to see a perfect version all the time.

[Ash Greyson]

Sorry that is a poor argument, are you aware that many post houses are already editing in uncompressed SD? Motion makes artifacting WORSE, it does not mask it. While it may be some time before there is true uncompressed acquisition, I do not think for one second the move will be towards MORE compression and that is what we are talking about with these cameras. I am not sure how you guys work but have you seen A/B footage from a compressed format that has been CCed, had graphics added, etc. etc.? Then squeeze that thru some compression for broadcast and YUCK. There is a reason MOST networks wont take compressed acquisition for anything but b-roll or SOME reality TV. Again, look at the music world. How many albums are being tracked by recording in MP3 format? NONE... the more compressed the delivery of music has become, the LESS compressed the acquisition has become. It only makes sense because compression equals degradation.

To further prove my point, check out the Andromeda project on the DVX. Same camera head, just a different delivery and recording method and VASTLY improved results. How did they get it? By bypassing the compression.

http://www.reel-stream.com/andromeda.php


ash =o)

[John McManimie]

I took a look at this post to see the discussion on the HDR-UX1 and HDR-SR1 AVCHD camcorders but what I see here seems to be... er... um... well, I can't really tell. :-\

[Chris Hurd]

You're right, John, it has gone way off topic and for that I apologize. I'll try to figure out where the split should be and move all this stuff to a separate discussion. Sorry about that,

[Wayne Morellini]

Thank goodness, I was almost going to post on that myself last night, I haven't seen anything quiet like this either (except in that flash drive thread, but that kept relatively on topic). Important, heated, discussion for another thread.

But to contribute to the other thread, DVD looks a lot less desirable when viewed on a DVD resolution large screen from a closer seating distance. I did some calculations once, and concluded what people thought they were seeing, was equivalent to around 19Mb/s or so (or was that 15mb/s) Mpeg2 SD. Coincidentally the same data rate as the JVC PD1 (SD equivalent of the HD1/10) . These cameras are known for their SD image quality.

[Chris Hurd]

I think I'll just change the thread title to reflect the real topic here.

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Ash Greyson

Sorry that is a poor argument, are you aware that many post houses are already editing in uncompressed SD? Motion makes artifacting WORSE, it does not mask it. While it may be some time before there is true uncompressed acquisition, I do not think for one second the move will be towards MORE compression and that is what we are talking about with these cameras. I am not sure how you guys work but have you seen A/B footage from a compressed format that has been CCed, had graphics added, etc. etc.? Then squeeze that thru some compression for broadcast and YUCK. There is a reason MOST networks wont take compressed acquisition for anything but b-roll or SOME reality TV. Again, look at the music world. How many albums are being tracked by recording in MP3 format? NONE... the more compressed the delivery of music has become, the LESS compressed the acquisition has become. It only makes sense because compression equals degradation.

To further prove my point, check out the Andromeda project on the DVX. Same camera head, just a different delivery and recording method and VASTLY improved results. How did they get it? By bypassing the compression.

http://www.reel-stream.com/andromeda.php


ash =o)

First of all HDCAM and DVCPROHD are both still compressed. DVCPRHD is well known to have issues with color correction and multiple effects. My whole point is that the equipment needs for still photography and audio are much much less than what they are for video. We do raw photos because we can with no problem at all. We can do high quality 24 bit audio because we can and it doesn't really hurt anything in terms of equipment. Even HDCAM SR is slightly compressed and that is about as close as we may ever get to uncompressed HD shooting. The Andromeda is a bad example because this needs to be tied to a computer. This may work for a locked down set for a high budget production but it is not very practical for other types of shooting.

You get me wrong. I would love to have less compression. Having studied visual effects in college I would love for everything to be 12 bit RGB but the fact is that I just do not see it coming yet. Shooting uncompressed or even close to uncompressed video on the go is almost impossible right now. Recording uncompressed audio or still images is not hard at all.

While many places are editing uncompressed SD chances are it didn't start out as that. Most high end SD video is either DVCPRO50 or digibeta. This means it is a compressed 50 mbit video and not uncompressed. Even with SD it is very hard to shoot uncompressed video because it has too much bandwidth.

Even though AVCHD has a lower bandwidth meaning higher compression in theory it should look much better than HDV which means hopefully much higher quality.

Again I do agree with you that I wish we could have less compression for a decent price. The only thing I was trying to point out is why it is easier with photos and audio to go uncompressed as a standard.

[Heath McKnight]

For the record, as of NAB 2006, 24p is part of the HDV spec. 24p on the HD100, 110, etc.; 24f in the Canon XL H1, and 24p in the XDCAM HD, which is similar to HDV.

heath