16:9 Real World Result with PD's and VX's

[Simon Denny]

Thanks Michael for that.
What do you make of the ACR/Is he talking about your NLE? and doing a conversion in that?
Also what is a Graticule? he talks about this in the green section. Is this another name for a 16.9 mask overlay on the cam's screen

PD 100, PD150,
VX 2000,
DSR 250
in 4:3 with 16:9/14:9
graticule. Sharpness
down

Cheers
Simon

[Chris Barcellos]

I lusted after one of these at $ 900.00 per about 4 years back.

They are now selling them at $ 99.00. This may be the answer to those of you that want to stay in VX and PD country.

See this thread for particulars:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=109406

[Michael Jouravlev]

Originally Posted by R Geoff Baker

For some odd reason you've completely mis reported the BBC recommendation -- I have copied and pasted below:
"Do not use the camera 16:9 setting in the VX 1000, VX 9000, or DSR 200. The cameras you can use are the: VX 2000, PD 150, DSR 250 and PD 100"

Frankly, I don't remember that the VX1000 offered a 16:9 mode -- but if it does, don't use it, apparently. But as concerns the 2000/150/250/100 ... the advice is the reverse of what you claim.

GB

* I was studying the table, and one of the yellow sections ("Only if you must!") reads: "PD 100, PD150, VX 2000, DSR 250 switched to 16:9 -- Picture Quality: Just acceptable." Maybe they refer to DSR 250 only when they say "switched to 16:9", but in the "Post prod. extra processing" section they say "none", which is why I deduce that all cameras are in 16:9 mode.

On the other hand, just below in the green section ("Go ahead!") they have these cameras in 4:3 mode: "PD 100, PD150, VX 2000, DSR 250 in 4:3 with 16:9/14:9 graticule. Sharpness down -- Picture Quality: Very good with high quality ARC with enhancement set." Again, one might think that 4:3 corresponds to DSR 250 only, but all cameras are combined into one group that requires ARC, so it seems to me that they all shoot in 4:3 mode.

"Go ahead!" is better than "Only if you must!", don't you think? Hence my interpretation of this table in my posting above.

"The cameras you can use [16:9 setting ] are the: VX 2000, PD 150, DSR 250 and PD 100", but "only if you must!". This does not seem like a recommendation on using 16:9 mode on these cameras, but your interpretation of BBC assessment may differ from mine. This is exactly why I have posted the link to the original article, so everyone could read the source without relying on faulty interpretations.

* My understanding that Graticule is English for 16:9 Guide Lines. Those Brits love fancy words ;-)

* Yep, NLEs can do ARC, so it all comes down to what is high quality by BBC standards.

[David Aguilar]

Originally Posted by Chris Barcellos

I lusted after one of these at $ 900.00 per about 4 years back.

They are now selling them at $ 99.00. This may be the answer to those of you that want to stay in VX and PD country.

See this thread for particulars:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=109406

what lens are you talking about?
and where is it available for $99 ?

[Chris van der Zaan]

Schneider Optics had a sell out ($99) of these 16:9 lenses back in december. However, they were all sold rather quickly.

http://www.schneideroptics.com/Ecomm....aspx?CID=1460

[Brian Cadoret]

Hi
I read somewhere that using the VX2100 in slim effect mode while shooting 4:3 video its possible to then edit/render the clip as 16:9 widescreen, I guess by stretching out the clip which gives a widescreen effect, some post said that's what the PD150 effectively does??
I've tried the anamorphic lens which I just couldn't get on with and sold.
After a test render doing the slim to widescreen it appears OK ish...is it just stretching out the pixels to give that 16:9 look.
Just wondering if any thoughts on this and other suggestions.

All the best
The Cadd

[Tom Hardwick]

VX2100 in 'slim effect mode'? What's that? You can switch the VX (and the PD range) from shooting 4:3 to 16:9, but in the latter case you're simply masking down the chip area, jettisoning 25% of your vertical resolution.

This isn't quite as bad as it appears as the horizontal resolution remains unaffected and you can up the sharpness a notch in the menu to compensate, though of course the pixels are being stretched sideways to fill a 16:9 screen. A modern up-scaling DVD player will make the footage look pretty good into a big LCD or plasma.

But whichevere way you look at it, the VX / PD cameras were designed in the 4:3 days, and can't hack it on a big widescreen.

tom.

[Brian Cadoret]

Hi Tom
The 'slim' is a picture effect on the VX2100 which also includes sepia, b&w solarize etc.
Shooting in 4:3 effectively squashes the clip on the horizontal in the view finder, bit like the anamorphic used to, but of course keeps the full vertical frame so I thought maybe render out at 16:9 would 'unsquash' the frame.
Any more appreciated.

Regards
Brian

[R Geoff Baker]

The question is confusing ...

The PD150/VX2000 family shoot widescreen by recording a 16:9 window within the 4:3 imaging chips and flagging as such, so the resulting 720x480 file will only look correct if viewed at 16:9. A similar thing is done on DVDs for widescreen -- the file is still 720x480 (NTSC) but flagged to display across a 16:9 display.

The complaint is that the camcorder only uses 360 pixels to generate a 480 pixel recording -- this is a legitimate complaint, but not as world-ending as some would suggest. Many, many camcorders have imaging chips that fall short of the final recording format dimensions. Sony's 16:9 flag of 720x480 files gives the same result as shooting in 4:3 and then cropping and exporting to 16:9 in post ... but it does it conveniently, reliably and without the render time required to do it in post. If you are shooting widescreen with a 4:3 camcorder, this is a perfectly good way to do it.

Cheers,
GB

[R Geoff Baker]

If I had to speculate ... 'slim mode' is just what a 16:9 anamorphic file would look like if displayed with the 4:3 flag set instead of the 16:9 one. The camcorder only has so many pixels to work with, and can only record to one dimension (720x480), so slim mode must be a 720x480 array without the 16:9 flag set, recorded from a 720x360 'window' in the imaging chip. As the imaging chip has no 'wider' pixels to use, it can't be from a horizontal resolution beyond the native 720. Displayed 'properly' on a 16:9 set, the image fills the screen, the aspect ratio looks correct, all the recorded pixels are used. Display the same file on a 4:3 set and it fills the screen but everyone is tall and skinny, or if the display allows you to force letterbox you could restore the proper aspect ratio though no longer fill the display.

You can play with the 16:9 flag in post -- it isn't a render thing, as the file is 720x480 no matter what (in NTSC -- your PAL mileage may vary), it is a simple setting of the PAR flag. There are file manipulators that open up the headers and allow the flags to be reset without otherwise changing the file.

Speculation, but likely close to the mark ...

Cheers

[Chris Barcellos]

Other than the wide anomorphic lens attachement, there was one other method we used with this camera to shoot wide screen, which many preferred. It seemed to work better. As I recall, I had matte files on the on board chip photo chip that were used to add letterboxing to the 4:3 frame. I did some testing way back, posted this forum somewhere, that showed that method actually gave a better image than the electronic 16 x 9 switch on the camera. Most shooters seemed to come to same conclusion.

I buy an anomorphic adapter too, which creates an on screen squeezed image, that I have to change to a 16:9 flag in Vegas on the clips.

[Robert Martens]

I'm not even sure how much distortion there is in either 'slim' or 'stretch' modes on this camera; has anyone ever come across measurements describing what exactly happens when they're turned on? Quantifying the amount of stretch?

Originally Posted by R Geoff Baker

Sony's 16:9 flag of 720x480 files gives the same result as shooting in 4:3 and then cropping and exporting to 16:9 in post ...

Not if you do it well. You're certainly correct about the extra render time of a post processing solution, but it's worth it considering the results. The built-in widescreen switch is just awful on NTSC models, the ringing is atrocious, and the Memory Stick mattes, while certainly useful for many projects, will permanently eliminate portions of the image which prove useful for scaling (both up and down), since certain techniques make use of the scanline immediately above and below the top and bottom of the cropped area, respectively, to produce the first and last line of the output frame.

I honestly can't remember if I've already been over my approach in this thread, but if you want 16:9 from a VX2000, and you've got the time--and you will need time, significant amounts of it--doing this in post is hands down the way to go for highest quality. Shoot your footage 4:3, with the Custom Preset sharpness all the way down, then deinterlace, crop and scale after the fact.

The best method I've found has been a trip through Avisynth, involving specifically the TempGaussMC deinterlacing script and one of the AS resizers, either Lanczos or the relatively recent Blackman. TGMC is a bob deinterlacer, yes, but even if you only want same-rate output I recommend using it, just follow it up with a SelectEven(); I've seen nothing that handles shallow diagonal lines as well as TempGauss.

The result of an upconversion to 720p can be seen in this Youtube video (I can make available the XviD file I uploaded, if anyone would like), and if one only wants to go up to 853x480 it's even easier to get great footage. Your best quality would be scaling to 640x360, naturally, since on the one dimension there's no scaling, and on the other you're going down. 360's not a multiple of 16, but the quality hit there is negligible, if noticeable at all.

The tradeoff is, of course, speed. A few tweaks to the technique I discussed in http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/non-line...ale-sd-hd.html, and I've been able to bump rendering speed of the 720 upscale to something like four or five frames per second, and if we're only going up to 853x480 it runs at roughly five or six fps (this all running multithreaded on a Q6600 with 2GB of DDRII RAM). There are other deinterlacers, if you want higher speed renders, and they'll almost certainly produce better results than whatever's in this camera, but I must insist that nothing quite reaches the quality level of TempGaussMC, and slow as it is it's absolutely worth it. If you have a camera with real widescreen chips, that's definitely your best choice, but if all you have is an interlaced 4:3 DV camera, you're willing to employ Avisynth, and you have a bit of extra rendering time, there simply is no better way to get 16:9 footage from them.

I've actually been meaning to update my instructions. That thread is a bit old now, and some software has been updated; no massive quality increases, but some of it's a bit more stable now, and the process has been simplified somewhat. I've been collecting my thoughts and doing some more tests, with any luck I should be able to get a "little" tutorial up on my website in a few days, if anyone's interested.

[Brian Cadoret]

Hi
Thanks all for the replies a lot to learn from the pro's.
A laymans tutorial to get the best 16:9 possible would be very welcome.
I do have the Sony HD1000E which is a fine camcorder, I intend doing a multi cam widescreen shoot with the HD and VX so getting the VX2100 best possible render to 16:9 is my aim.
All the best
Brian

[Robert Martens]

"Layman's" might be pushing it a little, but I think I can simplify the procedure enough for someone with little post processing experience to make use of it. Assuming you're on a PC. My apologies for neglecting to mention that, but I have no advice for Mac users. Avisynth is currently, and will be for the forseeable future, Windows only.

I had a burst of inspiration after my last post and I've been up all night working on this thing. It may take another day or two to finish up, polish, and proofread, but I'm well on my way.

You will, I'm sorry to report, need to be the patient type when it comes to all this; between my novella-length instructions and the positively glacial speed of the final rendering, it'll be an accomplishment to get through. If you're interested in the kind of results I demonstrate in that Youtube clip I linked, then it'll be worth it. If you're not impressed, you'll most likely not benefit from what I have to offer.

The tutorial's going up regardless, though, so I'll let you know when it's done.

[Marco Wagner]

Shoot in 4:3 and just crop it in post.