New Sample Footage
 

Here are some links to footage I shot in Nicaragua. I think the V1 makes some great pictures. All were shot with Cine Gamma Level 1. Manually white balanced. And shot at 30P. I'd have put more up, but man my upload speed is S-L-O-W.

http://geekstudios.com/demos/village.m2t
http://geekstudios.com/demos/church.m2t
http://geekstudios.com/demos/shoeshine.m2t

Thanks Brett ! Great footage, great colors ! It would be great to see more !

Cheers,

Kristin

Very nice! Impressive color and detail. Thanks for posting!

Brett, where do you have your sharpness set? The reason I'm asking is that I see no sign of edge enhancement. I'm not sure if this is a function of your sharpness setting or the progessive mode. When I shoot at default settings with my FX7 (7 sharpness), I can see EE in areas like wires against a sky.

Very nice! Thank you for letting folks look at your shots.

Thanks for posting these 30P clips.

These look so much better than 25P. Some faith has been restored that we'll get a usable 25P some time.

Are these clips recompressed?

TT

Hi Brett , I would like to view these clips very much, others on this site have been no problem, but these just come up as confused text on the web page. Can you advise or post me another link? I'm using Mac OS 1.46 Safar.
Thankyou Graham

My settings were:

Color Level: +1
Color Phase: 0
Sharpness: 9
Skintone DTL: Off
WB Shift: +2
Blk Compnstn: Stretch
Cinematone Gamma: Type 1
Cinematone Color: On

I created an html page. Just go to www.geekstudios.com/demos. Then you can try "Save Target" or "Save Link" to download the clips. If that doesn't work, you can always find a friend with a PC.

First, thanks for posting the videos Brett. My favourite by far is the village clip - detail EVERYWHERE! In the highlights, in the shadows, and, most notably, there was a very detailed blue sky filling up 50% of the shot! Looked like a hot day.

Watching this video brings up a couple questions for me. I have a Mac Pro, and am a well-versed mac-user. I edit HD in FCP, and have been able to export and playback HDV.mov files whenever I want in QT Pro.

However, I can't open any m2t files in QT. Is this normal? I use VLC Player, but it's crashes 70% of the time I play any downloaded m2t file from this site's users.

To recap:

a) on a mac, what should I be using to open and play m2t files? VLC is the *only* app that works for me.

b) and since VLC provides very little information about the video I'm playing, is the resolution of the videos you posted Brett, 1920 (or 1440) by 1080? They always play at what seems to be a resolution of approx 1280x720 for me, but I can't make it go larger in VLC Player. I can't tell if you've recompressed them to a lower res or if VLC Player is messing with me.

Hi Robert,

I have experienced the same issue. Moreover once downloaded, the .m2t files appeared with a .txt extension. If I tried to open them with VLC, I experienced crashes, however it played - not smoothly and reporting errors in the meantime.

Here is what I did:
Apple i - to get file info. In there I removed the .txt - it was interestingly not possible just by renaming the file, or if it appeared so, the .txt extension remained there in the info panel even if on the desktop it disappeared. Also the text file kind of icon remained.

So in the file info panel I managed to remove .txt, then set VLC as the app to open all similar files.
Now if I play the files in VLC, they play nicely. I also set loop playback so I dont have to restart VLC always once the clip finishes.
I suggest also to set the the movie size to half (unless you have a large screen). On my PB this way VLC produces quite acceptable playback.

Zsolt, thanks for your detailed reply. I've always renamed the files before playing. VLC still is buggy for me, on my Mac Pro there is no speed deficiency. I'd be totally open to transcoding an m2t file into a QT file, if QT would open it ;)

So there is no other player for Mac OS X? And were the videos a full HDV resolution? (1440x1080)

Brett, I'm shocked you used a sharpness of "9" but yet there's no apparent EE. Perhaps it's the progressive mode or the small computer monitor I'm viewing it on. If I saw the same clips on my 50" plasma, perhaps they'd look different.

Nonetheless, they look great and thanks for sharing!

I'm now recommending "9" for both progressive and interlace. (Or, if you like soft progressive, "7".)

The reason is I'm now burning HD DVD discs for playback on my Toshiba HD DVD player. That means exporting VBR MPEG-2 at 25Mbps. My "7" interlace video looks a bit too soft.

Remember, while detail is unimportant going to DVDs -- it is very important for outputting HD.

Moreover, some tiny amount of EE is useful to increase apparent sharpness.

For anyone that's seen the footage: was it 1920x1080 (same as 1440x1080 for the sake of my question)? Or was it rescaled to lower dimensions? Thanks.

On my MBP 2 -- I see strong white outlines on the tree and wires.

So I retract my recommendation. At most I would use "8."

I need to check this further.

Yup, that's what I see too. I don't see it in all scenes, but with things like wires against a sky, it can be seen.

Look like Sony may have defined NORMAL correctly.

Doesn't anybody notice the oil paint effect on the shot of the church? I also notice a lot of dancing artifacts kind of like noise. I have tried decoding the video with 3 different mpeg2 decoders and I see it with every decoder. I cannot imagine that I would be watching this stuff in the wrong way.

On the village shot I also noticed ringing artifacts on the tree branches. This ringing artifact could make compositing very difficult.

Other then that the shots do look very nice. They look very nice when down converted to SD. The V1 seems to be a darn good camera if the intent is to down convert to DVD.

Yes Thomas. I've just DLed the Church footage and that dancing noise is consistent with what I saw in 25P. BUT the other scenes look far superior to 25P.

The ringing around the trees is something that disappointed me about the Sony encoder even in 50i. Canon's encoder doesn't seem to do this as much.

Swings and roundabouts...

TT

There is no oil paint effect on the church. Look at this jpeg. And open it into Photoshop, don't just view it with your web browser. Inferior scaling both on the computer and with an HD display will add a watercolor effect that doesn't exist in the raw footage.

www.geekstudios.com/demos/church.jpg

As far as the ringing is concerned, it is HDV compressed with highly detailed trees branches moving rapidly in the wind. So it doesn't get much more difficult than that. Whether or not the A1 would handle it better or not is hard to say.

When I view the footage on my Sony LMD-232 it looks quite clean. Sure there are compression artifacts, but nothing that distracts from the image. The edge enhancements aren't bad either. I mean if you're going to watch a 42" display from 16" away, you're going to see something, but at normal viewing distance it isn't noticeable. I actually like a little bit of EE to increase apparent sharpness. To me there is a richness to these images that I don't see with some of the A1 footage I've seen. But to each their own. Both the V1U and A1 can produce outstanding HD images for their price.

You can't see it in that jpeg image? Now I know it isn't my decoder since you decoded it for me. I have looked at the image in Photoshop, After Effects, Combustion, and Shake and it all shows the same thing. The paint effect isn't as bad but there is clearly something odd there. Yes it may look good on a TV but my whole point here is from a compositing perspective. Image artifacts such as those are a huge no no for compositing and I think it is important for those who plan on doing any level of compositing to know about this.

Clearly something is going on because no other image from any other camera will vary on how it looks based on what tool you use to view it.

As for the ringing, I have never seen this on any other HDV camera. That tree does not have too much detail and the camera is for the most part static. This scene should be very easy to encode.

Just to mention it my wife has a Kodak Easy share camera and it sort of does the same thing. There is an odd filter looking effect on the high resolution images. At a 1:1 ratio the image looks very bad. When printed at a normal 4x6 size it looks perfect. Same sort of thing happening here. The filter acts as some kind of noise filter that can keep details while many noise filters would soften the image. It works for sharpness but not for an acurate natural looking image.

I do agree that both cameras look good but there is clearly something going on here that could cause some issues for compositors. While the A1 may or may not have the same sharpness depending on how and who used the camera it has a very natural clean image with very little to no artifacts in it's F modes. I have never seen any of these artifacts from any other SONY HDV camera and I own a few of them.

To me the image looks natural. The only potential watercolor effect would be the highlight on the left tower. The sides of the tower look completely natural to me.

That being said. I don't think I'd attempt to composite with HDV in general. It's way too compressed for that. If I was compositing, I'd probably shoot with XDCAM HD or DVCPro HD. The HVX-200 recording to P2 would be a better solution for compositing. However, it's a terrible solution for run and gun or documentary style shooting, which is mostly what I do.

I guess we have two different criteria for judging the picture.

Thomas

I see it too and I know what I'm looking at.

The compression artefacts are very different in progressive to interlaced. There is a lot more ringing around lines of contrast. It is a product of the Sony progressive encoder. In interlaced mode the quality of compression is quite different and better. There is something going on but it is very subtle compared to the V1E issues. Canon's encoder just seems to do a better job with the same bandwidth but the image just doesn't have the punch of the Sony. Swings and roundabouts!!!

Your observations tally with my own. And it doesn't have anything to do with poor scaling of my display.

TT

Thanks Tony. At least I know I'm not crazy now. At first I thought maybe I needed new glasses but then I realized that I don't see this on anything else.

Anyways I feel that I did my part and point it out and thats all I care about. If people are ok with this look then great.

As for compositing with HDV it can turn out very well if the right camera is used. I have seen lots of 24F footage from Canon cameras that had very little to no artifacts. I can easily pull a great key from JVC and Canon footage and the edges are clean for rotoscoping as well. HDV can be very good if it is done the correct way. The only time I have seen an issue with keying HDV material is so far with SONY cameras. I love the SONY HDV cameras I have right now but they do not come anywhere close to the results I can get when I rented a Canon HDV camera last year. This is not an attack on SONY at all but just a pointer for those thinking of compositing. Perhaps on my next shoot I will rent a V1 if I can fit it into the budget and use it next to some other HDV cameras and see what results I get in my Bluescreen studio.

I've looked at the component output from the camera (V1P) prior to the encoder and what you're seeing as artifacts around the wires in my test looked very much like noise. I'd suspect the encoder would have problems with the noise and it ends up looking somewhat different on the tape.
Looking at the side of the tower in shadow there does indeed seem to be something odd there as well, there's a loss of detail where the color becomes blotchy.

I watched these clips when Brett first posted them before any of the comments about "oil paint effects" were posted and my initial reaction was the first clip was nice, the third clip was really nice but the second clip looked too "video-ish". There was something odd about that clip that I couldn't pin point. The oddness stood out to me just as much as how the third clip stood out as being very good and film-like. That third clip reminds me of what I saw at DV Expo. Also, I do see the lost of detail that the other posters are saying about the church frame grab.

There is only one way to really check -- use a high-quality HD monitor. The attempt to judge quality on some computer's decoder doesn't make sense to me.

I simply don't see any noise on my own video sent via HDMI using "7."

I'd certainly agree with that if we were talking about moving footage but these are jpegs. And so far on this monitor with the same copy of PS I've not seen anything like what's in those still images.

The tests I did on our V1P were straight from the camera 'head', prior to the encoder, component into a Dell 2407. Just to make certain we weren't viewing monitor artifacts or cable impedance mismatches we replaced the V1P with a Z1. The Z1 was clean as a whistle.

I changed my mind. The V1U is definitely exhibiting the "watercolor" effect in progressive mode. I hooked it up to my studio monitor and switched between Progressive and interlaced. The "watercolor" effect definitely appears in progressive.

Now when I watch the footage I shot in Nicaragua it doesn't seem to be real noticeable. But if I A/B it with a static shot it is definitely there. I'll post some pics later.

Now I wonder if Sony will offer refunds to U.S. customers too. I have to decide what I'm going to do about it.

You are using an HD monitor connected via HDMI? Which monitor?


What's interesting is that Sony did try to do "something" with V1E. So obviously they feel something can be adjusted. Which raises the question -- are there unit to unit variations. This was definitely the case with the JVC HD100 -- until they worked out a new QC procedure.

And, beyond the aliasing settings, there are the chroma filter settings.

And, while there are not 2 Encoders, the output stream should receive different flags. A P stream should be compressed as a FRAME and receive a FRAME-FLAG. This eliminates the concern that P is encoded as fields. It need not be. This is part of the MPEG-2 spec. Did Sony do this?

In the real-world of watching HD video -- I've got 3 hours of 24p from India and I haven't noticed anything different than my 4 hours of 60i I shot in the USA. But then I'm not freezing frames and magnifying to look for problems. And, I've posted several sets of I vs P captures and so far no one has noticed anything other than the P is softer -- which makes sense because P was shot at 5 and I was at 7.

I've been shooting DV and HDV for day 1 and there are always spots where things -- if you look for things wrong -- you'll find them. This is particularly true of HDV.

I'm guessing a bit here, but eventhough mpeg2 has lots of options for encoding, hdv is pretty locked down. That's why Sony doesn't use frame compression in progressive mode, but canon does. It's not exactly in the hdv-specs and so there might be compatibility issues.

Scaling can do many things, but no scaling will make the picture look like those the were in the 25p thread.

And yes, that church show has a small amount of "smart smoothing" applied giving it a small watercolor like quality. This noise reduction technique is the source of the problems, but I have no idea why it can't be fixed or why the ntsc version doesn't suffer as much as the pal.

I've uploaded an AB comparison between interlaced and progressive. Go to www.geekstudios.com/demos to download the m2t file. I also uploaded JPEGs that illustrate the differences too. Both were shot with the same profile - sharpness at 7.

The progressive is softer and slightly more noisy (especially at the bottom left picture). I think I overreacted in my last post. I don't think the progressive performance is a deal killer for me. And it is definitely not as bad as the V1Es. I looked at the footage I shot in Nicaragua and am pleased with the results. There are instances where parts of the shots look like too much noise filtering is going on, but to me it doesn't ruin the picture. I'm very pleased with the dynamic range of the camera, it beats my old DVX-100 hands down. I don't know how it compares to the Canon A1 in this respect. There are scenes with bright light and dark areas together and it doesn't blow out the high areas and you still see detail in the dark areas.

I think the paint effect seems to be scene specific. Some exhibit it more than others. I think it's some sort of noise filtering going on. I wish Sony had done a better job with it. Hopefully, there will be some firmware update to improve it. The question for me is, should I shoot in Progressive or Interlaced? Interlaced is slightly cleaner, but Progressive has that film-look.

As far as monitoring is concerned. I use a Sony LMD-232 hooked up with HD component. While HDMI might be better, I'd rather be viewing on a professional monitor like the LMD-232. I'm unaware of any professional monitor with HDMI capabilities. You'd need an HDMI to HD-SDI converter which I don't think exist yet.

You'll note I said Sony "should have" used FRAME encoding. This is my opinion and we have no information on what Sony does -- although I've asked. Since Sony is a co-developer of HDV I assume it could do anything it wants as long as JVC agreed. But, even if it could -- I'm not claiming it does.

But, let's assume Sony does use FRAME encoding. Software encoders would have to check for a FRAME flag. Hardware encoders likely do so because they typically are more strictly imlemented. I've asked DSE if Vegas supports FRAME decoding, but never received an answer. DSE?

We are now way off in the land of speculation. But what the heck.

An oil or water color effect sounds to me like the loss of vertical chroma resolution. A vertical blur. Blur is the classic side-effect of chroma digital noise reduction (DNR).

DNR is done by taking 2 or 3 lines and averaging them. So which lines get averaged? And, is the chroma DNE done prior to recording or upon playback?

If done prior to recording, all lines would come from the same frame. Thus each interlaced field will have it's own chroma DNR. And, each progressive frame will have its own chroma DNR. I don't see how I and P could be different.


On playback, with interlaced video the lines SHOULD come the from the current field and the previous/next fields. This is 3D DNR. But, 3D DNR is not often implemented. Thus, all lines come from the current field. These lines are actually not spatially close -- so the image is blurred vertically.

With progressive video -- all the lines are within the current frame, so all lines are spatially close. Thus the image should NOT be blurred vertically. Whoops! Exactly the reverse of what folks claim to see.

But, we are dealing with 4:2:0 and (perhaps) FIELD encoded or FIELD decoded progressive video. 4:2:0 sampling spreads-out the chroma lines very differently than 4:2:2 and 4:1:1. So intutively I can see why chroma DNR could cause a problem. But, it should be equal for I and P.

But, if progressive video's odd and even lines are encoded OR decoded separately, then when a frame is assembled--although all lines are spatially close, the odd lines and even lines may be "different." So averaging them could make a bit of a chroma mess. Thus, I can see how chroma DNR could create vertical blur on P.

But here's where it gets interesting. If Sony doesn't use FRAME encoding, then the decoder makes no difference. But, if Sony does use FRAME encoding -- it is critical that the decoder check for a FRAME flag.

It's very likely the software decoders folks are using do NOT check the FRAME flag -- hence all these frame grabs that look bad. But, if the V1 has a proper hardware decoder -- those of us who are watching video will not see a problem.

Note -- I'm not talking about the V1E.

Thanks for that interesting theory Steve.

Would it still be possible to have "frame" encoding across progressive segmented frames, or are the two mutually exclusive?

Looking closely at the (non hardware decoded) images, it almost looks like excessive coring within macroblocks which don't show enough variation in tonal range.

Alex, could you please explain the term 'coring' to me? THX!

As I understand, it's a noise reduction technique where a pixel of one colour surrounded by pixels of a similar (but different) colour is "cored" out and replaced by the second colour. It reduces grain noise and can be used to smooth skin or sky detail. If it's used too heavily then it loses fine detail. Usually there is a threshold set so it won't smooth colours that are too dissimilar.

Looking at the image of the church and the other comparative images that Brett posed, it would appear that the paint effect happens in areas where there are similar tonal ranges. In the workshop image on Brett's web page, you can see it (comparatively) on the foreground handrail - in the interlaced image there is fine detail on the moss; in the progressive image the detail is gone where colours are similar, but retained across colours which are dissimilar.

It also looks like this effect extends to the edges of the compression macroblocks, as there are evident (16 x 16?) blocks of colour, where once there was fine detail.

Further there seems to be added detail noise (crawling edges) on top of the smoothing.