Hi folks,
Just to let you know I've uploaded to the dvinfo.net site a clip from Emotion studios here in San Francisco that was shot on a Sony FW-900 HD camera in 1080 format. It was then compressed using the Heuris encoder to MPEG2 TS format at about the same bit rate as the JVC records at. Part of this clip is a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, that I tried to match in one of the clips I uploaded earlier from my JVC cam. You should be able to get a rough approximation of the difference in quality between this 100k++ camera and the 3K JVC by looking at both of these clips. Bear in mind that they were shot on different days, under different lighting conditions. The clip is named emotion.ts. I got emotion studios verbal agreement to upload this, but you don't have permission to edit or do anything else with it, so please respect that. I hope you find this of interest, I'd be very interested in people's opinions.

All the best

Well, the CineAlta looks pretty good. I wouldn't be surprised if the lens has a lot to do with it, as well as the camera. Those images looked like they were captured using very high quality optics, and that can make a world of difference all by itself. There's also no visible compression noise, which makes a difference.

Still, I can't get over the quality of the clips from the JVC that you've uloaded.

I use a pair of ViewSonic 21" monitors (old P810 models) to edit my projects (using Premiere). Normally I shoot Super-8mm film and have it telecined to Mini-DV for my school projects, but I did a project last fall with a GL2.

Now, I frequently preview what I'm working on full-screen and Mini-DV always looks terrible to me full-screen on my monitors. The pixels are too visible and blocky. You don't see it on TV, but it drives me crazy when I'm editing. I get depressed because it seems like wasted effort when the output is just so low-res.

Tonight I've been looking at both footage I shot on film and had transferred to Mini-DV and footage I shot on the GL-2. Full-screen on this monitor there's no comparison to me between your footage and my footage. The difference in resolution makes the difference between junk and beauty in this case. The noise and the optics being mediocre and the other quirks people have pointed out are nothing to me compared to the clarity and detail in your images.

-Rob

<<<-- ... the other quirks people have pointed out are nothing to me compared to the clarity and detail in your images. -->>>

Once you blow a pix to 6 to 8 feet, rez trumps most everything else. As long as DV and HD are compared on small monitors -- the higher rez doezn't seem so important.

That's why FOX claimed 480p was good enough. On most folk's TVs it looked like "OK" DVD. But on a big screen there is no comparison between DVD/FOX "widecreen" and HDTV.

<<<-- Originally posted by Robert Jackson : Well, the CineAlta looks pretty good. I wouldn't be surprised if the lens has a lot to do with it, as well as the camera. Those images looked like they were captured using very high quality optics, and that can make a world of difference all by itself. There's also no visible compression noise, which makes a difference.

Now, I frequently preview what I'm working on full-screen and Mini-DV always looks terrible to me full-screen on my monitors. The pixels are too visible and blocky. You don't see it on TV, but it drives me crazy when I'm editing. I get depressed because it seems like wasted effort when the output is just so low-res.

-Rob -->>>

I don't think anyone would be surprised if the CineAlta's better lens and optics "might" had a lot to do with it producing a superior image. And why are you worried about what DV looks like when played back from your desktop? It's well known that the Apple DV codec has problems displaying DV footage on the desktop. Just because it looks pixelated on your VGA monitor doesn't mean it's pixelated in NTSC. It's final output that you should really be comparing.

I'm sorry, maybe I'm just thick but where is the link to the 2 clips?

***ok, no need for an answer, I found them!***

A regular NTSC television is about the worst possible way to look at footage. All it will tell you is how people with televisions are going to interpret what you've done. Mini-DV looks pixelated on both Apple and PC screens because it's a very low-resolution medium. The JVC footage doesn't look like that, though, and that's the point, IMO.

<<<-- Originally posted by Yang Wen :

I don't think anyone would be surprised if the CineAlta's better lens and optics "might" had a lot to do with it producing a superior image. And why are you worried about what DV looks like when played back from your desktop? It's well known that the Apple DV codec has problems displaying DV footage on the desktop. Just because it looks pixelated on your VGA monitor doesn't mean it's pixelated in NTSC. It's final output that you should really be comparing. -->>>

<<<-- Originally posted by Robert Jackson : A regular NTSC television is about the worst possible way to look at footage. All it will tell you is how people with televisions are going to interpret what you've done. Mini-DV looks pixelated on both Apple and PC screens because it's a very low-resolution medium. --->>

You're gonna disregard the output of a calibrated broadcast monitor in favor of your Viewsonics that're uncalibrated and where desktop video overlay is software dependent. Mini-DV is normal NTSC or PAL res, same res as formats used the pro world... Unless you're saying the JVC cam is superior too the status quo as of right now. These screen shots are from my desktop, showing what a DV file looks like on the "desktop" when displayed properly. Again, you gotta be crazy if you're gonna keep saying that is pixelated.

http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~ywenz/Mammoth/screen1.jpg

http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~ywenz/Mammoth/screen2.jpg

Sorry, wish I can agree with you.

<<<-- Originally posted by Yang Wen :

Serisously I have no idea what you'er talking about. Mini-DV is the normal NTSC or PAL res, same res as formats used the pro world... Unless you're saying the JVC cam is superior too the status quo as of right now. These screen shots are from my desktop, showing what a DV file looks like on the "desktop" when displayed properly. Again, you gotta be crazy if you're gonna keep saying that is pixelated.

http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~ywenz/Mammoth/screen1.jpg

http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~ywenz/Mammoth/screen2.jpg

Sorry, wise I can agree with you. -->>>

BINGO! You got it! The JVC is superior to the staus quo right now!

NTSC television displays are, by and large, really low-quality. In broadcasting we had top-of-the-line air monitors and even those only handled around 500-odd lines of resolution. By comparison I run my computer monitors at 1600x1200. You keep increasing the size of a Mini-DV image, whether it's by showing it full-screen on a decent monitor or by projecting it and it starts to fall apart really fast. It pixelates like crazy because the resolution is just so low. You wouldn't buy a digital still camera that shot at Mini-DV's resolution, would you? I have still shots of a band I was on tour with in '98 that were shot with an old Olympus digital camera at 640x480 and they look terrible by today's standards. You print them out and compare them to a current image shot at 3072x2048 and you aren't even dealing with the same kind of image. The jump in resolution makes a big difference in still photography and it makes a big difference here. I appreciate that you may have trouble telling the difference on a common NTSC monitor, but that's more a problem with SD NTSC's ability to display a high definition image than a problem with the image coming out of the JVC.

-Rob

Again, your observation is at fault. Scaling the NTSC footage from your video player is a horrible way to do it. Most likely, the scaling is done on your Grafix card's hardware level, in order to keep up with the 30fps, which is why you see pixelation. In real-life the SD footage will always be scaled up using some sort of averaging technique, therefore no pixelation. I've projected letterboxed (720x373) NTSC footage to fill a 30' wide-format movie screens and it looked fine for that type of application, no pixelation whatsoever when viewing from the theater seats(only 373 vertically!!). Ideally, you really should scale NTSC footage in something like After Effects, to get its full potential.

I've resized my "letterboxed" dvx100 frame to fill a 1280x720 HD720P frame using photoshop. Keep in mind the original frame was letterboxed where the actual data is only 720x373. I think what I have here looks almost as sharp as the JVC and much richer colors.

http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~ywenz/Mammoth/SDtoHD.jpg

<<<-- Originally posted by Yang Wen : Again, your observation is at fault. Scaling the NTSC footage from your video player is a horrible way to do it. Most likely, the scaling is done on your Grafix card's hardware, in order to keep up with the 30fps. You really should scale NTSC footage in something like After Effects, to get its full potential. -->>>

I edit using Premiere and After Effects and that's how I check out my work when I'm editing. You seem to have a really hard time believing that Mini-DV footage can look pixelated, but look at how low-res it is.

Robert, I think you've made a very important point here. I was stunned a week ago when I looked at some footage from my Ikegami HL-DV7W on an Apple HD 23" cinema display set to 1920*1080 resolution, and saw how terribly pixelated and blocky it looked, whereas the footage from the JVC looked very smooth and non-pixelated. The Ikegami has an excellent picture quality when viewed on an NTSC monitor, one of the best available of any DV camera. I wondered about this and resolved it in my mind by saying that I wasn't looking at the Ikegami footage on an NTSC monitor and that's why it didn't look right.
But thinking about it now, what I was actually seeing was pretty much what the DV footage would look like if blown up to a big screen, and how the JVC would hold up on the same screen. Ignoring the color differences between the two display devices and just judging from a detail and pixelation standpoint, the JVC wins hands down on a large screen, even though the Ikegami is an $18,000 camera, whereas on an NTSC monitor the Ikegami would probably win hands down. The difference is that DV is a low resolution format designed to be shown on a low resolution display device such as an NTSC monitor, whereas HD is designed (or excels at) being shown on a large screen device such as a HI-res monitor (HD) or a large projection screen.

I think what I'm saying is pretty much correct.

i've been blowing up letterboxed NTSC onto 20ft-30ft movie screens the past 3 years at various venues. The video survives rather well. It looks excellent viewing it in one of the 1700 seats. I think you'll be surprised how much it can scale up. Granted, the added res from the JVC would look even sharper. If only there's a way to render HD projects from After Effects onto this JVC cam, then I can see some use out of that.

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Mogg : Robert, I think you've made a very important point here. I was stunned a week ago when I looked at some footage from my Ikegami HL-DV7W on an Apple HD 23" cinema display set to 1920*1080 resolution, and saw how terribly pixelated and blocky it looked, whereas the footage from the JVC looked very smooth and non-pixelated. -->>>

Just a note on plasma displays, though, and I don't know if this is still a factor or not, but I used to have a lot of trouble with scaling video on plasma displays. Things would get really blocky unless they were at a multiple of the original size that worked well for the display. I'm not saying that's what was happening to you, but it's a possibility. It's one of the reasons I used these big 100 lb. CRTs. Multiscan monitors really seem to be the way if you're going to view video at non-native resolutions. Someone more technically versed may have an additional observation about this, but I wanted to bring it up in all fairness.

That said, all that extra resolution really rocks. I'm really surprised that more people aren't excited about how great that footage looks.

I wonder about converting the files to an uncompressed format for editing, though. Have you thought very much about how you're going to handle editing?

-Rob

Yes I've thoght quite a lot about editing. I'm using a Mac and a PC. I posted a complete pathway for this here a while back but basically it's as follows (from my previous post)

Transfer the MPEG2TS file directly from the camera to a PC,
Demux it on the PC using a shareware utility called "mpgtx"
Move the file to a Mac, uncompress it in Quicktime Pro,
Make a DV clone from Quicktime Pro.
Edit in DV,
Conform to HD on your regular DV hard drives,
Move the file back to the PC
Encode to MPEG2 (HD res) using TMPEGEnc utility ($50)
Convert to MPEG2TS using the Womble MPEG2 editor ($120)
View the HD movie on your PC or Mac using the Elecard player (PC) or VLAN
shareware player on the Mac
or transfer it to a D_VHS deck or back to the camera and view it on an HD
TV.

None of this requires any expensive HD I/O gear, the downsides of course
being the inability to view the material in HD res AS you are editing
(though you CAN load up the uncompressed file into FCP and view Still frames
if that helps), and you need masses of hard drive space. I only just found
out about the TMPEG and Womble utilities so I can't vouch for them
personally yet

Since I wrote that, Apple came out with the MPEG2 TS capture utility for the Mac and the MPEG2 playback plugin for Quicktime, which makes things easier. I may actuall just capture rough short clips directly to the PC or Mac first.

Let me know if you find you can improve on this.

Cheers

Paul

Holy Christmas. I think I almost blacked out there for a second...any idea how much disc space this uncompressed HD stream will eat up and how fast access needs to be?

<<<-- Originally posted by Paul Mogg :

Transfer the MPEG2TS file directly from the camera to a PC,
Demux it on the PC using a shareware utility called "mpgtx"
Move the file to a Mac, uncompress it in Quicktime Pro,
Make a DV clone from Quicktime Pro.
Edit in DV,
Conform to HD on your regular DV hard drives,
Move the file back to the PC
Encode to MPEG2 (HD res) using TMPEGEnc utility ($50)
Convert to MPEG2TS using the Womble MPEG2 editor ($120)
View the HD movie on your PC or Mac using the Elecard player (PC) or VLAN
shareware player on the Mac
or transfer it to a D_VHS deck or back to the camera and view it on an HD
TV.-->>>

<<<--
Transfer the MPEG2TS file directly from the camera to a PC,
Demux it on the PC using a shareware utility called "mpgtx"
Move the file to a Mac, uncompress it in Quicktime Pro,
Make a DV clone from Quicktime Pro.
Edit in DV,
Conform to HD on your regular DV hard drives,
Move the file back to the PC
Encode to MPEG2 (HD res) using TMPEGEnc utility ($50)
Convert to MPEG2TS using the Womble MPEG2 editor ($120)
View the HD movie on your PC or Mac using the Elecard player (PC) or VLAN
shareware player on the Mac
or transfer it to a D_VHS deck or back to the camera and view it on an HD
TV.-->>>

whew... I almost fainted after reading that, this just goes to show the cam is inadequate for any serious long length work.So you have to render/encode 4 times during the entire process?

Just a reminder guys, though Robert is right in saying that miniDV looks like crap on a monitor it applies to mac DV codec wich was design as an accelerated desktop viewed codec. Most PCs will not have that problem and radiusDV on the mac is much better. It is ONLY a display thing and cannot be used as a reference (if you export the frame you will notice a very visible gain either on picture or on another codec like animation...)

Eric

I don't think this editing chain has much to do with the camera. This seems to be a workaround that avoids having to build a system that can deal with realtime HD editing. It's actually a pretty clever workaround, IMO, if slightly daunting in its complexity.

Ideally, though, it seems like (and if anyone else has a take on this I'd love to hear it) the way to deal with this format would be to remember that the MPEG2TS file is compressed the way it is so that it will fit on Mini-DV. Once you get the data out of the camera it should be converted to an uncompressed format and your master should remain uncompressed from there on out. Editing uncompressed HD, though, requires a lot of processor power and really fast hard drive access. I tend to imagine that this format will prompt a lot of people to move up to G5 systems with X-Serve RAID storage.

<<<-- Originally posted by Yang Wen :
whew... I almost fainted after reading that, this just goes to show the cam is inadequate for any serious long length work.So you have to render/encode 4 times during the entire process? Please say you're joking. This is crap. -->>>

Doesn't JVC's proprietary editor that ships with the cam edit in the MPEG2TS format?

<<<-- Originally posted by Yang Wen : Doesn't JVC's proprietary editor that ships with the cam edit in the MPEG2TS format? -->>>

It's supposed to, but how eager are you to edit MPEG2TS? I mean, it's the easiest way, I suppose, but I don't see it as being a very useful format for anything but acquisition.

<<<-- Originally posted by Robert Jackson : <<<-- Originally posted by Yang Wen : Doesn't JVC's proprietary editor that ships with the cam edit in the MPEG2TS format? -->>>

It's supposed to, but how eager are you to edit MPEG2TS? I mean, it's the easiest way, I suppose, but I don't see it as being a very useful format for anything but acquisition. -->>>

I couldn't even load it up on my roommates 2 ghz Windows XP Wintel...Paul had the same problems, but figured it out, so I'll try the same, too.

heath

Vegas in its current version will read native MPEG HD transport streams straight from the camera (at least the clips that have been posted here) and edit them normally. From that you can convert to normal MPEG2, uncompressed frames, or anything else you might want.

I expect FCP will eventually handle TS. Until then you simply demux it to MP2 and M2V.

There's nothing strange about TS. Inside its just MPEG-2 and MP2 streams.

And it can be edited with frame accuracy.

umm as far as I know, you can't get frame accuracy with any MPEG scheme, the whole idea behind it revolves around using keyframes at regular intervals that helsp to interpolate between each frame. Individual frames are not saved into the file.

Well, you could always use the software to convert to uncompressed if you really need perfect frame accuracy. I mean, I guess it won't be "perfect" but it'll be close enough.

Frame accuracy is quite possible, they just calculate the inter frames on the fly, it's CPU intensive but that's all. I believe the Womble MPEG2 editor is frame accurate.

"That's all"? that's a pretty bizarre defense for this problem. The fact is, with the MPEG2TS used on the cam, you can only cut to accurate down to 6 frames. Which is BADD

MPEG2 compression does not implie that frames are not accurate, you se all the frames on TV don't you? It just means that not all the frames are individually compressed but each frame do exist whatever the compression method. Once uncompressed or even using a MPEG2 utility, you can always have frame accuracy. The only thing is that each frame is not necessarily complete by itself in a MPEG2 stream and is dependant on others (keyframes). As long as you keep those keyframe, editing will be frame accurate. Looking at MPEG2 footage (on a DVD for instance), you can choose to advance frame by frame at any time and not just for each GOP (group of picture) of the stream. Each frame is there, even considering it's dependencies.

Eric

I suggest you read up on the MPEG2TS format used by this cam. It is "not" frame accurate.

Yang, Sony would not have chosen MPEG2 as a compression method for its proffessional cameras if it were not possible to frame accurately edit it. I have already frame accurately edited footage from this camera. I think that's about al that needs to be said on this subject.

Yang,
I don't know what your definition of frame accurate, but the very definition of MPEG2 is that there is INTER-FRAME compression, meaning there are some keyframes and the remaining frames are generated using information from the keyframes. So each frame is not stored in its own compresed universe independent of the others. But that does not mean that each frame cannot be generated for editing purposes. Lots of NLEs can handle MPEG-2 editing, and yes there's a pause when you jump to a frame so it can create that frame for you from the surrounding keyframes, but that doesn't mean it's not accurate. You can also convert to another format that uses no inter-frame compression and edit more easily.

Paul I watched all your footage last night on our Sony 50" HDTV XBR Wega. I have played my XL1,VX2000,GL2 and DVX100 material on this same monitor and the JVC just has so much more raw pixel information. You did really good work. Your shots were composed and you took the time to shoot them right. Good work Paul! I pumped the material from the DVI output on my PC to the DVI input of the monitor. I hope you have more footage to put up. Paul, could upload the bay bridge shot as well the one of the GGB looking straight down the center unrendered. I want to analyze that footage and get it to the animation codec somehow.

Paul, If your interested, Download this test chart ( link below ) and print it to test the HD10, this is a link to a EIA1956 resolution chart at 3458x2608 pixels. There are many test charts, even ones the USAF used long ago. Then upload the footage to the web site. By the way the latitude on this camera is kinda similar to the first HD ccd cameras back in the early 90's. It's also like working with older slide film. One just has to set up the shots according to the sensitivity of the medium.


Test chart link: http://www.bealecorner.com/trv900/respat/

PS: Paul do you have footage that is medium to close ups of adults as well as kids. Adults have more texture in their skin which is a good test for detail whereas kids have smoother skin that displays tonal range of the camera.

Michael Pappas

Thanks Michael, I'm glad to hear that it holds up on a large HDTV monitor as I have yet to recieve mine so I haven't seen any of this footage on a large screen yet.
Chris Hurd unfortunately had to delete 3/4 of the 20 clips I uploaded as the demand was so high yesterday it shut down the site for a while. If you can email me your adress or give me a private FTP site adress I'd be happy to upload the other things you mention to you for your personal use and tests. Thanks also for the link to the test charts, I will shoot this for you and upload it to the dvinfo site if that's ok with Chris. I really want to do some controlled tests in our studio here, and side by side ones with my Ikegami, but work is not allowing me time at the moment unfortunately.
I think the color noise on the flat areas of color is this cameras biggest problem as far as picture quality goes, if you think of any ways around that please let me know. Seems to particularly be evident in skies. Though funnily enough I actually think it makes it look closer to film.

I received my 15 inch LCD, but the quality is horrible on it. I wonder if I'm not setting it right for 720p.

heath

I didn't know chris had removed them. That really sucks. Now all the people I sent over are going to think I was nuts when I said there are 12+ clips. One of my favorites is gone, the bay bridge shot along with the GGB shots. I will ask Chris if he will set up a private FTP for me so I can continue to conduct my tests on your footage. The color noise on regular SDDV is bad too. And when you bump up that material to HD it only gets worse. By the way when is your monivison do to arrive? I know it will look awesome on there, beacuse CRT's still have the best image.

Paul I can't wait to see the res chart tests. Let me know all the specs of how you set it up to be shot. I will do the same with the DVX100 and we can compare them.

Michael Pappas

<<<-- Originally posted by Michael Pappas : I know it will look awesome on there, beacuse CRT's still have the best image.


Michael,

Should I take back the LCD and get a CRT instead? The HD10 isn't looking good on it, either is my cable signal (the regular TV looks better).

heath

Yes! Heath, CRT's in HD still are better. Take for instance the MoniVision. For around $800 you get one hell of an image. If you want to go for a brand name there are Zenith and Samsung for under 800 as well. Those all will out perfrom the LCD that you have got.

When are we going to see footage from you. I am looking forward to seeing it. Please keep the material un rendered so the analys of the material is in it's "VIRGIN" state.

Michael

<<<-- Originally posted by Heath McKnight : <<<-- Originally posted by Michael Pappas : I know it will look awesome on there, beacuse CRT's still have the best image.


Michael,

Should I take back the LCD and get a CRT instead? The HD10 isn't looking good on it, either is my cable signal (the regular TV looks better).

heath -->>>

<<<-- Originally posted by Michael Pappas : Yes! Heath, CRT's in HD still are better. Take for instance the MoniVision. For around $800 you get one hell of an image. If you want to go for a brand name there are Zenith and Samsung for under 800 as well. Those all will out perfrom the LCD that you have got.

When are we going to see footage from you. I am looking forward to seeing it. Please keep the material un rendered so the analys of the material is in it's "VIRGIN" state.

Michael
-->>>

Haven't had time this week--laptop went down and had to fix it. I'm going to take back that LCD--it's light and small (perfect for carrying around), but the image SUCKS! RETURNED!

Either Monivision, or something cheaper. Can you name some models, by chance?

heath

Micheal, I just got word that my Monivision has shipped today, so I should have it early next week sometime I hope. If you have any particular instructions about how that res chart should be shot, please let me know and I'll shoot it under the same conditions with both my JVC and the Ikegami for comparison. I also got a JVC 30k DVHS deck to archive on, I'm assuming you can archive to that in 720p without any conversions.

Since the chart is 2d it only matters to get it pretty evenly lit.

Camera testing parameters.

Setup camera on tripod.
Set camera 7ft away from chart
Film chart corner to corner. Leading edge of paper.
Use single light source pretty much lined up with camera. 200w or what is needed.

This should be enough.

Later on we will have to get a Macbeth chart too! But for now this will work.