DV Magazine Review of the nanoFlash
 

Dear Friends,

DV Magazine, in their December 2009 issue has reviewed the nanoFlash.

The review was by Ned Soltz, and it is on Page 8.

Here is a link to the electronic copy of this issue of DV.

Digital Video - December 2009

We appreciate Mr. Soltz's kind words about the nanoFlash and our company.

Mark The Happy Tester & Shooter Is Vindicated !
 

Hi Dan & Mike:
Upon reading Mr. Stoltz review of the Nano Flash unit in this months DV Magazine, I feel completely vindicated as to my points in discussions on this forum regarding the issues of 8 vs 10 bit recording and Long GOP 100 vs I-Frame (Intra) recording.
In another article I read on the Internet last week, Sony made an announcement which I think presents a great future for the XDR as a portable studio VTR now that Sony has released HDCAM SR Lite 220Mbps I-Frame.

With all my respect to Mr Soltz, to quote "Only 8b" as "Con" I think is a shame and I do not agree with his comments about the 8-10b difference. He mix-up what is 10b acquisition with what is 10b processing.
Shoot in 8b and process in 10b Uncompress. You can drop effects, graphics or whatever.
Will be differences? Sure if you look for differences you will end up find them, but probably nobody else will see them.
Cheers,
rafael

Hi Rafael:

You wrote: "With all my respect to Mr Soltz, to quote "Only 8b" as "Con" I think is a shame and I do not agree with his comments about the 8-10b difference. He mix-up what is 10b acquisition with what is 10b processing. Shoot in 8b and process in 10b Uncompress."

.....I understood his comments as pertaining mostly to post. BTW, Mr. Soltz's opinions are held by the grand majority of folks in broadcast today. Just try and sell an experienced Tv producer on 8 bit shooting when he can easily pull out a broadcast camera and get 10 bit. Many are not so easily sold in my market. I think Discovery Channel has truly lead the way in acceptance of 8 bit image acquisition in broadcast with its shows like Deadly Catch and Storm Chasers which are basically HDV fests wired back to 10 bit recording Digital HD VTRS sitting the back of the car. (Storm Chasers)

....Cash Cab is all 8 bit XDR's. I think the functionality card must be played with some producers to get them to go for a Nano or an XDR simply because there is no other way to shoot inside such limited close spaces as a taxi cab or a storm chase vehicle, but with small prosumer cameras (Which are all 8 bit) and a recorder which has the same color space, raster, and interface as their pro VTRS (HD-SDI). So it's mainly production logistics to be the reason behind some shows shooting 8 bit due to locations with very hostile environments where you need very portable acquisition, and you can go 10 bit in post anyway.

10-Bit ro 8-Bit Dither Coming
 

Just an FYI, we are planning to add a 10-Bit to 8-Bit dither to the nano/XDR firmware early next year. We think this should largely eliminate any potential banding issues associated with 8-bit processing. Naturally this requires an HD-SDI source with true 10-bit resolution.

Best-

Thanks Again Mike
 

Hi Mike:
This sounds like an interesting implementation. This should be good for in Tv Station XDR VTR style dubs of HDCAM SR Lite 220-I Frame material.

Mark, experienced Tv producer when you have a DVCPro50 camera, makes you record at 25Mbps to spend less money on tapes.

Mark wrote:
"I think Discovery Channel has truly lead the way in acceptance of 8 bit image acquisition in broadcast with its shows like Deadly Catch and Storm Chasers.."

Mark very, very little people in this world is recording or have ever been recording in 10b Unc, because you have already see the gear needed to do it.
Discovery Channel may have recorded some special stuff in 10b but I believe a very little in the volume of his production.

Mark for me to say that "being only 8b is a con" while we are talking about an MPEG-2 recorder, is like to criticize a car because it have no wings to fly.

You say Mark: "Mr. Soltz's opinions are held by the grand majority of folks in broadcast today". And my self appreciate and respect the opinion of Mr Soltz, but I do not agree with some of them.

Mark, I started in this business in 1.983, and, except the Ampex Quad, I've been working with most of the recording formats and supports. I think I have elements to talk about the difference between 8 and 10b codecs, and, sorry I have to admit that I get SICK when people dismiss 8b recording, just because there is something better.

Filmmaker would have paid tens of thousands of dollars for the NANO just three years ago. What was good three year ago may be no "good enough' today, but what it is or it is not "good enough" is a very personal appreciation.

I've read few days ago in a little clip about the "climate Change":
What I Want - Less What I need = Waste.

I know what I want but I also know what I need and I believe that if would be recording 10b Unc I would be generating tons of "bits-waste".

Cheers,
rafael

PS: And sorry I've been calling Netz "Mr Soltz" just because I couldn't remember his given name while I was writing.

You Managed to Get My Post Dead Wrong
 

Hi Rafael:
Please read back on my earlier posts in this thread Sir. Where did I *ever* write *Uncompressed ?* I was talking about HDV 25 Mb per second and Flash XDR use. You even quoted what I wrote correctly where *I do not state uncompressed* No one in Tv production shoots uncompressed. Just about everyone in Digital Cinema does indeed shoot uncompressed. However, I did not join this thread to initiate an uncompressed vs compressed discussion. I want to be as clear as crystal on this point. I will state again for the record that 10 bit 4:2:2 recording is a standard in North American Tv production. It just is. You don't have to like it, but isn't this point even obvious ? Why is it even up for debate ?

Hi mark,
Sorry. Yes, you haven't say Uncompress.
You said: "I will state again for the record that 10 bit 4:2:2 recording is a standard in North American Tv production".
So in America everybody shot with PANASONIC AVC-Intra?
Apart of this i don't know any other manufacturer producing a 10b format.
rafael

Huh ?
 

Hey Rafael:
You wrote: 'So in America everybody shot with PANASONIC AVC-Intra?
Apart of this i don't know any other manufacturer producing a 10b format."

.....Huh ?

Utter rubbish. As someone that has assisted the crews on Storm Chasers on many occasions I can assure you that the primary cameras are plain vanilla Sony Z1's recording on HDV tapes. Do you really think that someone running around in the middle of severe storms could work while tethered to a vehicle mounted VTR? The same goes for deadliest catch, are we really expected to believe the cameraman out on the deck of a rolling crab boat has a cable running from his camera to a 10bit VTR.

What Rafael is saying is that in HD broadcast cameras it's only the Panny AVC Intras that are 10 bit. All the Sonys (HDCam, XDCAM and EX) are 8 bit. Surely someone in the US must be using a Sony?!
Digibeta was 10 bit though.
Steve

To be honest, in my experience, the majority of TV producers have no real understanding of differences in codecs, sensors or formats. They normally use what they are familiar with or what they have been told to use by the accountants. In many cases this may be a choice influenced by special rental deals, cheapest to buy or on high profile productions, deals offered by manufacturers. Very rarely is the choice of camera down to using the best camera for the job.
The majority of people on this forum do at least take the time to do their homework and research the different shooting choices, so they can make an educated choice, but I fear that we are just a small segment of the wider broadcasting and video production world. There are still many TV executives that don't even understand the differences between 4:3 and 16:9, let alone SD and HD or 10 bit or 8 bit.

Nose out of Joint Once Again
 

...Alister:
I did not write, and I *did not suggest* anywhere in *any* post that Storm Chasers or any Discovery crew filming fisherman in the Baltic Sea were or are actually running around tethered back to any *any 10 bit VTR !* What is utter rubbish, is your misreading of my earlier posts.
Please check out this link here Storm Chasers: Behind The Chase : Videos : Discovery Channel

If you take the time to actually watch the interviews with the behind the scenes camera operators, you will learn, Alister, that in addition to "plain vanilla HDV cameras," which I already wrote they were shooting in HDV thank you (So is Deadly Catch), they use a series of in car mounted POV cameras wired back to VTRs in the back of the chase vehicles. It is Not* "Utter Rubbish Sir !* It is fact ! Cash Cab also uses POV cams but they are wired back to Flash XDRs ;) Do you really think I or anyone else actually thinks what you are asserting is accurate ?

... Hi Steve:
Yes of course, but I already wrote that it has largely been due to The Discovery Channel's lead that 8 bit HDV camcorder shooting has been interjected into everyday Tv production.

What Discovery Channel have done is to demonstrate that with low prices cameras and a very good CC and postproduction, they can save lot of money and the audience doesn't goes down.

I guess they use the best cameras on the world when needed (they can afford it), but, for much of what they show, made of shots where the eye have no time to repair in details, these cameras works perfect.

The video technology is founded in the limitations of the human eye. Why to give him more than he can takes?
rafael

Sorry Mark, I did misunderstand you. You did say HDV fests wired back to VTR's, which I took to mean HDV cams wired to VTR's.

I know about their use of POV cams, which are not HDV cameras at all and only make up a small part of the programs content. I've spent many days working with Reed, Josh and Tim and supplied lots of footage for the previous 2 series. Yes they use HDV but to be honest the show is hardly a quality benchmark. When I have suppied clips to them I have had to take my XDCAM HD422 material and dub it to HDV, shame!

What I would consider quality benchmarks are the BBC Natural History Unit programs, shows such as Planet Earth or Life. Even today these are predominantly shot with the old Panasonic HDC27 Varicams, using DVCPRO HD... which is 8 bit... and look pretty good to me.

It's All Good Alister :-)
 

Hi Alister:

You wrote: "Sorry Mark, I did misunderstand you. You did say HDV fests wired back to VTR's, which I took to mean HDV cams wired to VTR's."

....No problem Alister. Do you know if Sean Casey, the man who built the TIV, has completed his IMAX film on tornadoes yet ? Last I heard, he was having great difficulty with some of the chasing community, as they have come to now be called. Planet Earth was shown twice here in Canada on CBC. The footage from that series looked fantastic.

No he has not finished it as he has yet to get that elusive shot from inside a daytime tornado. Sean gets a lot of flack from many chasers as he does some pretty crazy things that give storm chasing a bad rap, things like going the wrong way down interstates or totally blocking roads. I'll never forget when he used to follow us in a pickup truck with his IMAX camera on a tyler mount in the truck bed. Watching him standing in the bed, swapping 75mm film mags with strips of film flapping everywhere while driving down I40 at 80mph was a sight to behold!

What and when
 

Pardon my ignorance on 10-Bit to 8-Bit dither. does it mean it allow recording in 10 bit 4.2.2 and when is likely to come out this year.

No, that's not what dithering is. It is a method of error diffusion, but it will still be recorded in 8 bits.

At any rate, I hope it will be optional, i.e., we will be able to turn it off. Personally, I hate dithering of digital images.

The One Way to Get a 10 Bit Signal Into A Flash XDR
 

Hi Adam & Olekunie:
The only way to get a true 10 bit signal into a Flash XDR is to enable an uncompressed recording option. Such a measure would allow the signal to pass directly from an HD-SDI 10 bit input source, then by-passing the built in hardware Sony XDCAM HD 4:2;2 encoder, thus no encoding or dithering would be required. In this manner the signal is directly written back out to the CF card media. Such an option is mainly advantageous for digital cinema origination where video must be output to 35 MM film for standard cinema distribution. You would have to be able to stripe 4 x 32 GB or 64 GB CF cards as a RAID 0 volume to insure adequate data transfer rates. You could have two output options in such a scenario with the Flash XDR.

1. You play out of the Flash XDR in realtime via the HD-SDI outputs.
2. You enable the IEEE 1394 interface on the XDR and transfer your data to computer NLE. The transfer would be long with 4 x 64 GB cards, but quite manageable with 4 x 32 GB cards.

To my knowledge, the Nano Flash does not have the internal hardware capability to have this option, but the Flash XDR does.

Thanks for the explanation but from all indication it appears that the flash XDR has been discontinued

Discontinued but still supported
 

....Hi Olakunie: Yes. This is correct. THe Flash XDR is no longer being manufactured but is still being supported by Convergent Technologies.

Dithering, in general, is a method of creating areas of pixels with multiple values in a pattern to visually mimic some value otherwise unachievable resulting from the combination of colors "mixing" in our vision...

Taking a digital photograph and using Photoshop to create a lower bit depth image that would be as faithful to the original as possible would likely employ dithering.

In the past, dithering has been evidence that our computers don't have the juice to show us precise enough color depth to carry honest image detail...about as welcome as DCT macroblocking in CinePak video clips. (Now, I'm dating myself).

However, in the present day and working with HD and larger images, it is common practice in VFX and color correction workflows to combat banding issues inherent with 'pushing' 8 bit images aggressively (or even not so aggressively), to add some subtle element of noise to the image. It's an illusion of course, but many respected Post/VFX types claim to be able to gain what they consider the visual perception equivalent of an extra bit of precision (8 bit appears that it could be 9 bit, etc).


As far as the review that started all this... I don't think that Ned was implying that 8 bit was a deal-breaker, but if there are 10 bit alternatives available (the KiPro is always the one brought up) that do 10 bit...I'm not sure how you can say 8 bit is -better- than 10 bit... it's just one of the parameters. If you're a reader of the review and this isn't a big deal...there is no problem. He could have said that it's a disadvantage that the device doesn't mount directly to a specific apparatus on an Alexa. I guess an Alexa operator who wanted a NanoFlash on board for dailies might have to consider how to mount it (and would likely have anything they needed to deal with it.). For me...a non-issue.

This 8 bit vs 10 bit discussion is largely academic for the majority (other than high-end entertainment work) of present-day, non-VFX image acquisition, I think. Television shows used to be the technological gold-standard we all aspired to... Now I think that television shows run the gamut from extravagant, uncompromising quality to experimental ("House" on DSLR) to just plain expedient (Deadliest Catch, etc). No one in their right mind would shoot "Deadliest Catch" with a half-dozen F35s. That would be stupidity. Shooting "Desperate Housewives" on a Z1 would be equally so...

Is 10 bit acquisition helpful? Tough to say no... Is 10 bit necessary? Obviously that isn't true in every case... AVC Intra has this capability, but I would think the difference from 8 bit would be far more meaningful on Panasonic's higher end cameras than it would be on the lower price point camcorders. ProRes is just simply tailor-made for FCP and it streamlines the post process, and I think in many cases those who would choose a KiPro do so for that convenience and consider the 10 bit precision to be an added bonus or validation. I suspect that if the Nano acquired a 10 bit file that FCP had to log and rewrap, and the KiPro captured ProRes only at 8 bit (for argument here), i still think that many who are looking at their FCP workflow might still choose a KiPro.

I use them both. I don't see either one as being able to replace the other actually. I suppose that Convergent could come out with something that looked a bit more like a VTR with similar controls and lots of CF slots for a massive record load, but I think what they're focusing on now is what they're doing well. I don't want a studio VTR replacement 'FlashJumbo'.


If reviewers are to help us understand how products in the marketplace relate to each other, you have to be able to point out what each device has and doesn't have, does and doesn't do, and where it seems to fit in the overall landscape, otherwise they do us no service.

I didn't say any such thing. Nor did I imply it.

Originally Posted by Tim Kolb View Post
"I'm not sure how you can say 8 bit is -better- than 10 bit..."

I wasn't implying that you said this...I was thinking out loud in my response to those who were critical of the reviewer for listing 8 bit as a drawback...think of me scratching my chin and questioning how else the guy could have addressed it in the article as opposed to challenging anyone...

Hey...we're from Wisconsin. We're always nice.

:-)

Yes, we're always nice. :)

8 Bit vs 10 Bit
 

Hi Friends:
Actually 8 bit can be very good. My Canon XL H1 is an 8 bit camera (At least it is when you go through its internal HDV 4:2:0 encoder and out to its built in VTR). What gets confusing with the XL H1 is it also has a full raster HD-SDI *Uncompressed* output. Now, my understanding of this is uncompressed Full Raster HD is inherently 10 bit (?) !! So what is the H1 camera doing exactly to give the full raster in an uncompressed form from what is normally 1440 x 1080 in 8 bits ?????????? I'm sure the H1 uses Anamorphic pixelation to do some kind of....What ?....Exactly.....Is it doing ??????

1. Is it stretching the raster ?

2. Is it scaling the raster ?

3. Is it dithering its native 8 bit signal up to 10 bits ???

*This kind of confuses the heck out of me ! I wish we could have a genuine Canon Technician who designed the internal camera signal architecture come on this thread and explain how it works and also the merits of 8 bits vs 10.

I do know I can see one heck of a difference with primary and secondary color correction when I do a video mixdown of 8 bit HDV to 10 bit Sony XDCAM HD or the Avid DNxHD 220 Mbps 10 bit codec and do all my CC in 10 bit ! Otherwise I'm posting Ep2 of my online web series in DNxHD 145 8 bit and it looks great ! There is no banding I can see.. The Flash XDR and the Nano Flash are 8 bit recorders. The video out of them looks fantastic !

I think the answer is Mark that CD throw away the extra 2 bits.

The advantage with dithering would be that some kind of algorithm would attempt to round those extra 2 bits into the first 8 bit number giving a smoother transition. If you think about it in decimal terms (which is a clumsy analogy) if you had a number like 1.000000094 and you wanted to "dither" that number by two decimal places you would end up with 1.0000001. Currently the Nano wold just throw away those last two numbers and end up with a slightly different result...1.0000000.

I'm not sure what the impact on the final image would be - maybe slightly smoother gradients?

Dropping bits versus dithering them
 

...Hi John: The question is which procedure works better ? Can one see the difference ? Is it better to just do away with the extra 2 bits of precision, or dither the 10 into 8 ? Which looks better ? I would think it is probably more efficient to just drop the extra 2 bits, so that the internal Nano/XDR processor doesn't have to work as hard. I'm guessing that dithering 10 bits into 8 uses allot of processor power. (??) Is this accurate Tommy ?

My guess is as well that dithering 10bit to 8bit will be a waste. MPEG-2 is an 8-bit codec. As I said in the article, 8-bit color is more than adequate for a number of shooting scenarios. If you need 10bit (or greater) color sampling, then you simply need a different codec (read here, different device). Each tool has its place. nanoFlash works perfectly for me.

Ned Soltz

Exactly. No software application or piece of hardware is optimized for every possible scenario.

The XDR Works well for me
 

....The XDR works perfectly for me as well.....But it could work even more perfectly if I had the *U* option for digital cinema origination. (Doing my best not to thread camp on that one Chris)

Perhaps, but dithering is a pretty accepted way to enhance an information resolutiong change, and it's considered superior to truncating, simple rounding or adding zeros.

I do think it has more value when up-rezing than when down-rezing, so you may be right.

Cash Cab XDR
 

Nice video of their set-up.
YouTube - On Set with the HD Flash XDR - Camera Department