DVX100AP Noise Problem and a Warning!
 

I purchased a DVX100AP camera a few weeks ago and have seen a lot of grain and image noise particularly in shadows and areas with red in them. Panasonic tech support has been a nightmare in their unresponsiveness thus far. The dealer I bought it from said today that Panasonic has stopped shipping the DVX100AP because they are in 'Quality Control'. I don't know if it is because of the noise problem I am having or not, but I would suggest caution before buying one at present!

Kevin:

Sorry to hear of your troubles - what dealer did you hear this from? Do you have any screen grabs or footage of the problems?

if you hear back from pana about the QC post what they say.

Oh oh... getting nervous.... Please let this be a hoax...

I heard about the freeze on DVX100A shipments from Winston at Biz-Max.net. I will try to post an image and/or footage, though I'm not sure how to do it..

Kevin,
We don't have a facility here for user uploads. If you could put a still of two up on your site, that would be good. If not, you can email them to me and I can put them on my .Mac site.

Kevin's Samples
 

Kevin sent me two sample frames in .PNG format. You can download them from my .Mac file sharing page in the "KPeer-DVX100A" folder.

Thank you for your help with the image files, Ken!

I have the same problem and posted it previously in

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...154#post136154

Is the noise level high in my clip? I do notice the red is very bad... it bleeds.

Anyway, I have set the coring to +7, PED to -5, details to -4 for 60i scene. That seems to improve the noise problem. However, red is still a headache!

strange that you guys said this. I've only had mine for 2 weeks or so now and the first thing I was thinking to myself was, wow the black areas seem to have some noise or grain to them. I thought maybe my black balance was set incorrectly or something. I'm going to fire off some emails to panny today asking about the quality issues...

Here's a screen shot from a dimly lit room with an orange shade over the light. There seemed to be some noise in this shot. Does this look like my unit might be one of those? This was with zero gain.

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~berobert/dvx100ap.png

Anybody have both the 100 and the 100A so we can see a comparison? Image quality analyses can be so subjective when you have nothing to gauge it against...

Unfortunately, I think I'm another victim.
I got a DVX100A from B&H about a week ago and I definitely see more grainy noise than I expected. Turning down the various detail settings helps some, but after reading this thread, I'm convinced Panasonic has a first-run quality control issue.
Reminds me of the focus problems with the early Canon XL1's :(

I have both cameras and will run some sample shots with a G-M color chart as soon as I get a chance.

I owned a DVX100 for several months and did not have this problem then.

Like Byron, I also had the impression when I first looked through the DVX100A that there was a lot of noise in shadow areas, but thought it was the fine detail setting on the LCD viewfinder or something.

I may have mentioned that I am having alot of problems importing footage into FCP4 with this camera as well. Don't know if its the camera, the footage, or my editing configuration. For these tests I was using my Powerbook 1GZ G4 with 512mb RAM and the internal hard drive.

I've got calls in to the West coast Pan tech support guy and hope to hear from him today. Panasonic has been less than enthusiastically helpful about this, I have to say. I know 'everyone's busy' but they have certainly not had any urgency about this issue.

I'll report back when I know more.

With quality control issues such as this, is it likely that there will be a "fix" for current 100a owners like a way to send back ours to be repaired or maybe a trade policy to exchange for a new one? They surely wouldn't just leave us hanging after spending a serious chunk of change would they?

I'm certainly hoping they take good care of us good customers, Byran!

Bryan,
Before starting a lynch Panasonic campaign let's wait to get more information on the problem. If it turns out to be a major defect I'm sure Panasonic will offer some recourse or remediation.

Ken - I didn't mean to sound so aggressive. Im not one to immediately fire up a petition or anything: I was merely unsure of how camera vendors like Panasonic or Canon have handled "issues" such as we may have here in the past. Just didn't want to be left out in the cold ;) .

I spoke with Ted Castillo, Pana west coast tech rep and he said yep there was a hold on shipments of DVX100A cameras due to a quality control check but he had not heard what the problem was. I described the noise problem I was having and he said send it back to the dealer for a replacement as an 'Initial Failure' situation.

Another large bit of news is that I just spoke with Winston at Biz-Max (where I purchased the camera) and he said his Panasonic sales rep had just called and is having him send all unsold DVX100A cameras back to Panasonic for a check over. He said there has also been mention of some kind of sound problem with the camera, if I understood him correctly.

I will be returning my camera for an exchange but there is no specific time frame for getting a 'clean' replacement camera yet..

Good luck and thanks to everyone who posted on this subject!

Thank you very much for the update, Kevin.

I spent some time shooting a Gretag MacBeth chart with both the 100 and the 100A today. The results are inconclusive and I want to re-shoot the tests.

I can say that, at least so far, I'm not seeing excessive chroma or luma noise with the 100A. I can also say that the cameras do definitely have subtly different "looks" when identical settings are applied.

More forthcoming.

hmmmm..... I wonder how Beach Camera will handle this. This would be the last thing I wanted to be doing with my 1.5 week old dvx.

Man everybody had me freaked out over here, so I turned on my 100a in my lowly lit room and all of a sudden I saw lots of grain. I have this blue keychain so I looked at it and there was blue fuzz all over the place. How could I not have noticed this before, this is auful. Then all of a sudden as I reached for to set the white balance, I noticed something odd. My gain was set to H. I set it back and all was well. Man, I have never been so relieved in all my life. I'm not saying that these other people need to check the gain, but after setting it back to off, there was no noise that I could see, neither in super saturated red shadows or the blue keychain. Maybe a little noise in the blue keychain but nothing to get worked up about, remember this is super low light, only a 60watt lightbulb in my computer room. Maybe I lucked out, I've had my camera for about a month and a half. Later on tonight I will post an uncompressed clip for all to see my dimly lit room. I'll let you guys be the judge.

My gain is set to 0. Check my frame grab on the first page of this post. Does it look grainy to you guys?

Regardless, I'm calling Beach to see what they've heard on Sunday.

No.

Well, because I'm a nice guy I am posting a link to a 47meg uncompressed .mov file of some very low light clips I shot in my computer room. I only had the light from my monitor and an overhead 60watt light bulb. I shot in the shadows and tried to focus on saturated colors such as blue and red to see if any noise was present. You can see for yourself, http://www.stefweb.net/lowlighttest.mov
I really don't see excessive noise in the video even in the super saturated blue light of my external hard drive and flash mx book. Again judge for yourselves, however I find it hard to believe there is a video quality problem with my 100a, or maybe I just got lucky. Again it is a 47meg file so have patience and it works best if you right click and save it to your desktop.
sorry for the shakey footage, my tripod is out in my freezing cold car right now, and its soooo warm inside!

http://www.stefweb.net/lowlighttest.mov linked for the lazy

Hi guys,

It's quite difficult to judge the graininess if we all have different monitors and/or TVs (if this is the way that we judge the quality).

Different levels or Contrast and Brightness settings on our montor/tv do make some video look noisier.

Bryan,
I find the frame grab quite clean.

The PAL version of the 100A has just arrived in the UK, I hope this "quality control" issue does not apply to this version as well?

Hey thanks travis, how do you do the links again?

If you are watching this on a computer screen, the best way to see if there is "grain" is by turning your brightness all the way up. The best way would be to record this footage to your camera in with your nle and watch in your tv. Of coarse if we are looking for grain like this and having such a hard time, that also has to tell you something.

to link yo go like this [*url*]http://www.whatever.com[/url*]

just remove the asterisks.

Thanks for putting the sample up, Tavis. My camera is MUCH noiser especially in the reds. I'm glad you have a better functioning camera! Since these cameras are mass produced I could have simply gotten a unit with a more lemony quality to it.

I got an email back from a tech person at Panasonic today who says the 'quality control' issue is not related to image noise, but so far noone at Pana has been forthcoming on just what the issue is. Obviously something major is up, if all unsold units are being sent back to the mother ship. I'll post more info if and when I receive it.

Don't thank me, i just linked it, it's Stefan's clip

Thanks, Stefan! That's a good test, though it would be just a bit easier to judge the noise if you used a tripod :)
Anyway, my camera definitely has more noise than that shown in the clip.
This is confusing though, since the 2-pop forum deleted similar messages claiming that it was all a rumor and Panasonic denied there were problems.
http://www.uemforums.com/2pop/ubbthr...=5&o=7&fpart=1

So maybe it's with a sound issue. I just captured a sound clip that I think is distorted, can you guys hear anything weird in it?...... only kidding ;) . Strange about the 2-pop forums, maybe it's all a hoax and because we're prosumers trying to nitpick our $3k cameras, we tricked ourselves into believing the "problem", or maybe there is actually one.

Thanks for the info so far guys, I'm interested to see what the issue is to cause a hault and recall of 100a's if that's true....

On another note, if you want to have a link "clickeable" you can also post it as an image file with UBB code. Ex:

[*img*]http://fakeimagesite.com/image.mov[*/img*]

Ofcourse omitting the asterisks and don't forget the http:// !

I sent Noah a message to get information about what he heard from Panasonic.

Noah spoke to directly to Jan Crittenden who confirmed there is no halt in DVX100A shipments to dealers and that the rumor is completely untrue. A similar rumor was once perpetrated on 2-pop when the original DVX100 came out.

So until further notice, that's the official word. Unless you get update official Pansonic information, consider it without basis in fact.

Knowing Jan, as I do, I would completely trust her guidance. The DVX100A is outside of the line she works with but she is deeply in-the-know about the entire Panasonic Broadcast line.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ken Tanaka : Knowing Jan, as I do, I would completely trust her guidance. The DVX100A is outside of the line she works with but she is deeply in-the-know about the entire Panasonic Broadcast line. -->>>

Afraid she wears that hat too now. Got an email reply from her on a different matter a couple of days ago and her words were "I am now the product manager for the DVX100A".

So, guess she might have just an inkling anyway ;>)

-Rodger

Well good for her! I guess Stuart English, the former line manager for the 100's, has moved into other areas.