PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Anyone happen to have matrix or multimatrix adjustments for the X320? I will be using one for the next few weeks and having some settings to start off with will save me some DCS/Vectorscope hours. :-)

Paul

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Hi Paul ~

Try the following for a Rec 709 Hi-Sat sort of look, All positive values.:

R-G 19
R-B 5
G-R 12
G-B 32
B-R 12
B-G 3

More often than not I used to use the figures below for a less saturated look. You will notice these values are just on about 30% down on the first set.

R-G 12
R-B 3
G-R 8
G-B 21
B-R 8
B-G 2

With the G-R setting, this is the setting that has a large impact on skin tones. If you go downwards from these numbers of G-R 12 and G-R 8 your skin tones will head towards a more tanned look whereas the higher this value is the more magenta will be introduced into the skin tones. Rare do I find this has to go much below -5 or over +12. Dial with care to suit yourself.

These were derived a while back on the scopes and Chroma Du Monde charts. We found them to be pretty accurate for most shoots. Hope they are of some help :)

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Thanks Chris...my stations new $10,000 2x vectorscope broke, and is out for repairs, and I am stuck using an older 1x vectorscope, so it's a PITA to get the darn thing dialed in. My biggest issue is is the preset green/yellow push. I've got my R B and G gamma settings adjusted to push these to center on the scope...is there another way you are aware of to adjust spot on white on the presets?

Paul

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Paul

These settings should put you right on the money for white as these values were done on true reference white lighting of 5600 for the preset 5600 setting.

I forgot to mention that the settings I gave you are dependent on the following parameters

Matrix is ON,
Gamma select ON,
Preset matrix ON,
Gamma select is set to STD, 5 R709
Matrix Preset Select is #2 (ITU-709 equivalent),
User Matrix ON,
White clip ON at 108 (105 for PAL)

Then the above matrix settings I supplied should be entered into the USER MATRIX settings.

Most Sony cameras I've worked worked with tend to have this tendency to bias towards the green/yellow side. I find this can be best dragged back by turning the Multi Matrix ON and then going in to the yellow channel where you have -YL / YL / +YL. Don't touch the - or + YL just go for the YL setting and drop the saturation. I often find this needs to be down by about -20 to -25 or thereabouts. I find this tends to tame the more florescent yellows you can get in foliage, grass etc especially in strong sunlight and especially when you are shooting into the or across strong sunlight. This is a subjective one so judge this for yourself.

I must add we live in a 50Hz PAL land but I think these settings should give you a pretty mean starting point to go from in a 60Hz world :))

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Chris, just to confirm, these are PXW-X320 and not PMW-320 settings? I found an interesting matrix adjustment set in the PXW-X320 operations manual, to make a PMW-320 match the PXW-X320. Apparently Sony knows what a vectorscope is...sad they would not include matrix adjustments to match a CDM chart. :-)

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Used these in the PXW-X320 to good effect. Try them and see what you think of them. You might luv 'em or hate 'em. :))

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Popping them in shortly....my 1x scope adjustments are oversaturated on the R MG and B, but playing with the gamma R G B I was at least able to get the camera to center on white on preset. Going to mess with the lens shading R G and B adjustments to see if I can clear the yellow/green on both preset and A/B, since the gamma offsets mess up A and B, only good for preset.

Thanks again Chris. :-)

Paul

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Chris, your alignment settings work amazing...I do not even need to add any white offsets for it to look accurate! I shot SW 3200K preset instead of pushing to white, since my on camera light is halogen and pure. The red and blue police car LED lights poke precisely into the R and B vectorscope boxes, which is perfect. Here are a few stills I shot, the first one looks a bit green, but barely noticeable. I am using detail settings from Allister's PMW350 page.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH CHRIS! :)

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Glad I could be of some help Paul :))

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Picking your brain again Chris...is this oversaturation effect, the blue blob, caused by knee saturation? I turned it down to -99 (lowest), which provides more color in blown out areas than just setting to off, which causes complete clipping of blown colors.

I also found Allisters PMW350 detail settings to look really soft and blurry during the day. I turned them all back to stock default...the PMW320 "to match" settings above say to turn the detail to -10 to match the X320, so perhaps the X320 has less burned in detail out of the box.

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Paul ~

Ah the blue light problem. Unfortunately there is no real solution to the problem. Blue LEDs are very narrow spectrum and high intensity. They are also bad for our eyes. You can now get blue light filter coating for eye glasses. Been thinking about talking to them to see how strong they can make this coating and if it could be applied to camera filters.

https://www.zeiss.com.au/vision-care...ueprotect.html

The problem is the blue LED intensity is very high and it clips the blue channel in the camera. I f you are doing a specific shoot that is going to be color corrected in post you can shoot at 6500K or higher which will obviously give you a real bad color balance in many cases but then correct for the correct white balance in post. Not practical for the shooting you are doing. Here are examples of this technique.



Re the detail settings for the x320. Detail is a very subjective thing. some people like highly detailed but not overly sharp pictures. Some like super sharp pictures. I like to do any sharpening in post using a Convolution Kernal FX. I find it better than most 'sharpen' filters. Again not very useful in your type of shooting.

For the 320 which is a 1/2" sensor camera I would suggest these starting points. Again as I previously stated all very subjective. I found theses setting to be a fair blend of detail and sharpness.

Detail = ON

Level = +5

Frequency = +30
(This is a very fine adjustment affecting different detail frequencies within the scene. You can bang it all the way up to +99 and the results vary depending on the levels of frequency details in your pictures.)

Crispening = -45

Knee aperture somewhere from +0 to +50. (The higher this is the more likely it will compound the blue LED issue. One of those things you may have to suck it see to find out.

Having a manual Knee settings helps in many cases. I always run manual knee settings as quite a few cameras 'pump' on auto knee especially with things like strobe lights, flashing light on water etc. Police car flashing lights is a good example. Auto knees sometimes have a hard job of chasing these fast changing light intensity levels.

Suggest setting the Knee for general work at 85 with a Slope of -30. For news I know many outfits set the Knee as high as 95. Again try these settings out. They may or may not work for you?

Good luck!

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Well, now I don't feel so bad...saw this last night on an episode of Lucifer on ABC. The police car LED's were the correct shades of red and blue, not magenta and cyan, so apparently the more accurate you set your colors the more intense these weird effects can be. Maybe one of the reasons manufactures align their cameras out of correct color spec, for noise I assume as well.

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Chris, looking back to your settings for a PMW320 I just put into service...on the CRISPENING,
did you mean +45 or -45? My understanding is positive values enable the function, and negative decrease it. The PMW320 I am dealing with is extremely noisy...dealing with muddy shadows with over aggressive detail applied to highlights...like embedding chrome within clay.

I should add that I am shooting in 1280x720p60, so detail settings people give for 1080p would not work as well for my lesser resolution format.

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Paul

Yes I did mean -45 for crispening. Now I've never tried it with 720 so that may be an issue. Also fomat, codec and bit rate can effect the results as Sony have pointed out. In very basic terms negative settings will sharpen an image and positive will do the opposite although it's a fair bit more involved than that. Again I have found lenses can affect this setting. I find too high a positive setting makes the fine detail that sits around 4.5MHz, like hair, grass, distant leaves on trees etc become waxy looking.

As I said originally it's all very subjective. I see certain results on high end Trimaster monitors look quite different to the best of the A grade BVM CRT monitors. Which is right? I don't know looking at monitors. Basically the best thing is to set up a resolution chart and and then magnify the results on a WFM and then adjust so that the detail edges and hi contrast overshoots on the B to W transitions show the minimum of overshoot and ringing. That's the sort of effect you are describing by the sounds of it. If you are seeing aggressive detail in the highlights that sounds more like your knee aperture needs to come down somewhat.

Have a look at the following. They are some years old now but still apply pretty well to the 320 models overall as as to what the settings do.

#3 Crispening

http://www.sony-asia.com/microsite/p.../CSTGB03-0.pdf

#6 Knee aperture

http://www.sony-asia.com/microsite/p.../CSTGB06-0.pdf

All the settings PDFs can be found here

Sony XDCAM

Paul there are not many 'Tweakers' left out there, your are one of them. Keep tweaking and you learn and in the long run you will find the combo of settings that works for you. Trouble is a setting setup that works for one model camera in one format setting can be quite different in another format.

Good luck

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

Re: PXW-X320 calibration/alignment settings
 

Funny you should post those Sony links, I literally just found those 10 minutes before you posted them, ha!

I've got so many things wrong with my settings, it's hard to know where to start, but I will get closer to better as I go...doesn't help my lens is a spherical CA mess. At least your matrix settings make the colors look accurate...I had to do some serious R and B + values on the preset white offset to rid the image of the ugly Sony green cast.