Exessive image softeness

[Bill Ravens]

JoPhoto...

You just saved me a ton of money by convincing me to stay with my 19" STV. Why would I want to go to 27" HDTV and see how bad my rez gets? <just kidding>

When I refer to RGB, I am referring to the RGB composite signal you send out that wire with an RCA jack. True three component RGB is pretty good, but, I don't know any PCI cards that output true RGB. My experience is that there aren't any analog signal feeds that can beat DV. It's just the nature of the beast. Analog feeds are all subject to distortions from RF, line loss, etc., etc....just like that unbalanced microphone line.

[Ozzie Alfonso]

I think we're leaning toward purchasing the AVID Xpress DV software and installing it on our dual 1mHz CPU DELL system. It's either that or installing the Xpress DV on the same system that's already running the Avid Xpress (non DV). There are two alternate options - to online with FCP3 or just send the whole thing out of house for onlining. The latter is the least appealing since it'll cost more but it will assure we meed our deadline.

By the way the two MiniDV machines we have are the Sony DSR-60 and the DSR-1500. IEEE1394 cards exist for bot machines but we bought them long before we ever thought of going MiniDV in a big way.

Today we ran a few tests feeding the camera original footage via FireWire to FCP3 and comparing that to what we already had digitized on the Avid. The difference is quite dramatic. I can't say one image is dramatically sharper than the other but the smoothness of the video and color resolution is quite an improvement.

I only wish we could crank up the sharpness on our XL-1s but we can't as long as we're intercutting with the old XL-1. So far the images are not bad at all. Not Beta SP, but acceptable.

[Bill Ravens]

Ozzie...

I usually add some "sharpness" in post, depending on the "look" I want on the clip. The software sharpness with an "unsharp mask" is indestinguishable from the sharpness I get straight out of my XL1s. The only downside to doing it in post is that it requires re-rendering...a wee bit longer.

[Ozzie Alfonso]

We add sharpness also but VERY carefully. Sharpness introduces noise and it becomes a balancing act. When the volume of work is low and we can afford to spend the time tweaking shot by shot, we do so. But with a two hour production with several thousand cuts, the tweaking needs to be done "wholesale" and hope for the best. Re-rendeing is not a problem for us since we need to online - re-digitize at low compression - and we need to re-render anyway.

[Bill Ravens]

yep, ya gotta be careful.

[Barry Goyette]

I know this is a slightly old thread, but I just had some resolution to a similar problem that I thought I'd share.

I came to purchase an xl1s after several years of experience with a gl1, and I immediately noticed that my xl1s footage seemed significantly softer that what I was used to. Additionally this softness significant enough, that any amount of "sharpening" adjustment I added did little other than provide some huge blocky artifacts (I'm a still photographer, and my photoshop experience tells me that you can't sharpen an unsharp image)

I did an extensive amount of testing with both cameras that led to the conclusion that in normal MOVIE mode, the sharpness of both cameras was comparable (although the gl1 appears to be electronically "sharpened" more at default settings). In FRAME mode the xl1s appeared significantly soft at all fstops, and zoom levels although in varying degrees--typically it seemed softest at about the middle of the zoom range. Additionally the when in frame mode the autofocus would continually hunt, even in bright light.

This perplexed me as I didn't see how this would be solved by some adjustment of the camera. I was beginning to believe that the frame mode on the xl1s just sucked.....and that I had made a $3600 mistake.

Finally I sent the camera in for repair, and although I have no idea what Canon did to solve the problem (there was no documentation other than they restored it to factory specification), my initial test run seems to support that they did indeed do something that fixed this problem.

Anyway, I've noted over the last six months a small number of posts here and at 2-pop discussing this issue, so it seems to be a problem that is affecting a few users. I would suggest to anyone seeing more than a slight amount of softening in frame mode, to get their camera into canon rather that artificially "fixing" the problem with the sharpness settings.

ciao

Barry Goyette

[Ken Tanaka]

Barry,
Thanks very much for taking time to share your observation and experience. Your experience, as well as problems that others have encountered, are beginning to suggest that Canon has questionnable quality control processes during manufacturing. So often problems such as back focus of the 16x lens, sharpness, tape transport misalignments, etc. seem to be remedied by their service organization rather than detected during manufacturing. The trend is not encouraging.

[Rob Lohman]

I agree with you here Ken. I'm also wondering how the service
here in Europe will be. Guess there is only one way to find out.