Goodwood Revival NanoFlash Footage
 

I have uploaded a short sequence of footage shot using an EX3 with NanoFlash. All the ground based footage was shoot at 100Mb/s with my EX3 and NanoFlash at the Goodwood Revival historic racing and flying event.

SORRY BUT I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO REMOVE THE CLIP FOR THE TIME BEING. I WILL RE POST WHEN IT'S BACK UP.

Dear Alister,

Wow!

That was very interesting, and very enjoyable to watch!

Good stuff Alister. Very nice work indeed.

Just wish you could see the full glory of the raw NanoFlash footage. The amount of rich colour I am able to pull out footage is wonderful. H264 web clips just don't do it justice.

OK, here's some full resolution frame grabs. Got to love the rich colours.

Good Work !
 

Hi Alister:
This is excellent work ! Your footage and editing looks great ! Well done !

P.S. I thoroughly enjoyed the tornado near death experience you shot a couple of years back as well ;-)

Dear Alister,

What mode where you using, Interlaced or Progressive?

If progressive, what was the frame rate?

I have a customer, who wants to mount the nanoFlash on a plane, using a POV camera.

He wants great video footage and excellent still images (to be extracted in post).

I feel that progressive is the way to go, but I wonder what POV camera to recommend.

Dan, everything in that clip sequence was shot interlace and then de-interlaced in post. I normally shoot progressive where possible, but for this shoot the client wanted interlace. The minicams I am currently using are the Sony HXR-MC1's and these produce beautiful pictures and are some of the best minicams I have used to date. They are however interlace only. I'm still waiting for someone to bring out a good, compact, progressive capable minicam with the kind of image quality the MC1 offers at a similar price. The good news is that the MC1 has HDMI output (full size) and is easy to use with the Nano as the control boxes are of a very similar size. I hope to shoot some rather special minicam footage on the Nano next weekend :)

Excellent work.

Sorry all but I have been asked to remove the clip for the moment. As soon as I can I will re-post it.

We've still got the stills!

Beautiful stills. It's not clear if they're from the EX1 or the Sony HXR-MC1's .

Alistair, thank you for posting the frame grabs. I'm considering the Nanoflash. I'm a little confused by your general enthusiasm for the Nanoflash. Yet, in your two part review, you made a note that there was a slight difference between the Nanoflash and your EX1. Is your enthusiasm from your use of the HXR-MC1's ?

We would all really enjoy seeing some frame grabs from your EX1 recorded in parallel with the Nanoflash.

The stills are from the EX1 with the NanoFlash.

At first glance there is not a massive difference between first generation NanoFlash @100Mb/s and the EX files at 35Mb/s. However if you do any grading or post production work then the difference gets much bigger very quickly. There is a lot less mosquito noise in the NanoFlash footage. When you grade or colour correct clips mosquito noise causes banding in uniform parts of the image such as the sky, clouds or walls. By dramatically reducing the mosquito noise through the use of the NanoFlash you can push the clips much harder in the grade without seeing any artifacts. it also means that the footage will look better after dubbing to different formats or after multiple generations.

In my opinion the NanoFlash has been an excellent investment. Even if I upgrade or change my camera I can still use it. It even makes my PDW-700 footage look better. I can use it as a recorder for many applications including the mini-cams and as a player to show clients stunning HD footage. At trade shows and demo events I can set it up to loop footage. I can't recommend it enough.

I'll second that Allister. Especially the part about color grading. If you're using a codec like HDV, which throws away so much of the sensor data from your camera, you'll have a hard time grading the footage.

I've tried. HDV footage, pushed even a little bit in grading just falls apart. Not so with the XDR (or nanoFlash I suppose).

Having that extra data really helps keep your footage together through a difficult grade.

I also always mention the keying advantages of the 4:2:2.

Thank you for your comments, Aaron and Alister. While I'm convinced that HDV would be improved, Alister's multiple comments in comparing EX1 at 35 MBps and Nanoflash at 100 MBs. Perhaps this explains why there is so little material comparing the two. Convergent should have more comparisons on their site. All I've been able to find are some relatively unimpressive Quicktime files with no alternate recording as a reference.

Mark Job has volunteered some Canon XL H1 HDV files and parallel Nanoflash recordings. I'll host those files for download on my server for a while and post the announcement to this group.

I'd happily post footage for comparison but that's impossible for me to do. I have two cameras. One does not have a recorder, the other has component out and I can't connect it to my XDR.

Aaron, I'm just looking for some frame grabs of parallel recordings. Unforunately, your equipment list doesn't seem to be able to accomodate that specialized request.

Hi Gints-
See this post: "The Real CODEC Torture Test: 35Mbps vs 100Mbps" for some comparion images.

Best-

Thanks for the two images, Mike. They are excellent examples of what I'm looking for. Though, do you have any that are not specifically from torture tests? I don't see myself rotating my camera much if at all, and I rarely have noticed that sort of edge artifacting in my Sony EX1 footage. Now, my Sony Z1U HDV was an artifact machine.

Once I get a component to SDI, I'll gladly show you the difference between 35Mbs HDV and 100Mbs on the XDR.

Clips back online!
 

Hi all. I have now got full clearance to publish the clips from Goodwood. You can watch via the links below.
YouTube - Goodwood Revival 2009. Flying Displays
Goodwood Revival By Alister Chapman On ExposureRoom

Dear Alister,

This is great news. I just loved your short.

Beautiful work !

Could you tell us some details about the post work such as the project settings (uncompressed; ProRes; native Nano format?) and level of color correction performed.

Also, for a fair evaluation, the compression format that had to be used for posting this piece on the web which of course would degrade what your real finished product looks like which would be wonderful to see.

And what camera/lense was it shot on as well as the NanoFlash format used for acquisition - LongGOP 100mbps?

Thanks for taking the time to get permission to post this short. Wonderful.

Would be fun to see a film-out or digitally projected on a large monitor or screen.
My guess is would look marvelous!

These boxes in the hands of talented folks are a wonder.

Brilliant.
Rafael

It was shot using an EX3 with stock lens and Petroff Matte Box or with a Sony HXR-MC1P minicam. The NanoFlash was set to 100 Mb/s long GoP, it was all shot at 1920x1080 50i. I would have preferred to shoot 25P but the end client needed 50i

Post was done with FCP, editing in a XDCAM native timeline by dropping a NanoFlash clip into the timeline to set it up. There is some grading, but this was pretty simple using only the standard FCP color corrector. A slight vignette has been added to the clip.

The EX3 was setup with a picture profile using Cinegamma 1, cinema matrix at +35, preset white at 6300k, detail -10, frequency +30, crispening +20.

Thank you Alister. Looks like the in-camera settings are what gave the footage that film feel look.

What did it look like on a nice large monitor?

Oh it looks very nice on a big monitor too! The 100 Mb/s NanoFlash footage holds up so well in post. A lot of the "look" comes from the light on the day. Most of it was shot during late afternoon and early evening during the Golden Hours. The footage was then color corrected to make sure all the footage had a slight orange/golden tint to it. I also had the matrix set to boost reds/oranges a little. I don't have those exact settings to hand now.

Alister... good stuff, man! Thanks for sharing!

Hi Alister-
Really superb. I thought you made an excellent choice for the soundtrack. Of course the video looked fantastic, also.

Best-

I got my HDV camera back from repair and I did a parallel recording. I thought I would post some comparison footage but honestly I've been staring at them and I can't tell the difference.

I recording a fairly static shot of some colored glass bottles on my counter top (I still don't have a very portable rig for doing parallel recordings with the XDR on my HDV cam). I don't think this was much torture for the HDV codec.

I'll need to push it harder to get it to breakdown.

I would suggest setting up to shoot a highly detailed scene such as leafy trees or bushes blowing in the wind. Lot's of detailed data moving.

Or moving water like a babbling stream or waves lapping on a beach.

Anything that provides detailed multiple moving subjects.

Thank you for taking the time to perform these tests.

Dear Friends,

Many, but not all, can see an immediate difference when presented with two images, one 4:2:0 35 Mbps and one 4:2:2 100 Mbps, side by side on two identical monitors, or in a side by side comparison.

One of the keys to seeing the difference is to use a good monitor, as not all computer monitors are good enough.

If one wants to immediately see a difference, a codec torture test can be used.

One of the most difficult things to handle is rotating the camera ("roll"), on its lens axis.

Every pixel, depending on how far it is from the center of the image is rotated a different amount. A Bit-Starved codec can easily fall apart.

Another test is just a bunch of moving leaves, or trees with leaves blowing in the wind.

Please let it be known that the Sony EX1/EX3 can take great images. All we are saying is that:

1. 4:2:2 can be dramatically better. This can be immediately apparent at times, not so at other times.

2. Our 100 Mbps 4:2:2 Long-GOP can hold up better in post.

3. Our 100 Mbps 4:2:2 can handle the unusually situations where the codec is stressed.

4. Our 100 Mbps 4:2:2 can be easier to work with in post as there can be less noise, less mosquito noise.

5. Our 100 Mbps 4:2:2 can be dramatically better for greenscreen work.