I can't be arsed to read this thread. I have an EX here in front of me. Tell me what to do to solve whatever problem and I'll do it. :)

Thanks a million Simon!

Actually, there's been some talk that the SDI out frames appears softer (or slightly blurred) compared to the internal XDCAM capture. We realize that this does not make sense, but if you would not mind providing a comparison between an SDI vs XDCAM captured frame?

Also, there's been some discussion regarding possible vignetting oddly happening between 10mm-25mm range. It's also been thought that the OIS under rapid camera movement may be aggrivating the condtion.

We know for sure one user has vignetting in this range. In his case, it's very obvious and he has returned his camera for exchange.

Any help would be appreciated.

I'll give it a look in the morning.

Can't understand it though. If it's vignetting at 10, it should be vignetting even more at 5.8. I can understand if the OIS is contributing though. But what are the results on the problem camera at 5.8?

Well...
We didn't say it makes sense :), but Paul Joy sure proved it happens!
He provided a video of a white wall as he started wide and slowly ramped to full zoom. Oddly enough, at full wide it was not there!
Based on his video, it sure looks like he's right. he said the range was 10-25mm.
Very strange indeed.

Here's paul's small video clip showing his issue:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/attachment.php?attachmentid=5192&d=1195761898

One thing that logic tells us is that the camera is not the only fail point in the chain from Camera to SDI Capture to Critical evaluation.

But in order for us to say "this camera is doing this" we would have to, by process of elimination, verify:

the HDSDI connector, the first BNC cable, the barrel joining the two BNC cables to each other, the Second BNC cable, the capture card, the HDSDI connector on the capture card, the Sheer video codec that he was recoding in, the raid that he was capturing with, and the monitor that he was viewing the clips with.

He showed me what he saw on the clips. What he saw as softness I saw as motion blur due to the 24p 48 speed shutter. Either way more testing would have to take place before anything could be said one way or the other.

But I will say for my part I am completely happy with this camera.

I hear you Chris.
That's why actual SDI vs internal frame grabs would solve this issue.

Your are right about all the other possibilities. Hopefully Simon will be able to "shed some light".

Clips were taken down. Apparently they're not working right for others.

Thanks Barlow.
I'm going to do some testing with detail on and off this Thursday.

It's possible it's doing something with NR with the detail parameter off.

Hey, This dang PC vs MAC is killing me.
I can't get your files to work in QT.
I downloaded the free SheerVideo reader codec for QT for Windows.

Hmm, wonder what the problem is? It should work but I've never tried Sheer on a Windows system. ProRes should work for FCP6 users.

I've added a 10bit uncompressed QT frame. That should be available on Windows.

Thanks Barlow, that frame also comes up black. I'm not sure what's up.

The problem is with most displays being 8bit and most video cards designed to adjust for that,even if the source is 10bit, only some industry standard testing equipment could really tell. Or some official word from Sony.

Last time I checked to see sheer at >8bit on windows, you needed AE.