I thought the VLC player was for Linux systems only, but worked great and was able to view the stuff.

Couldn't figure out how to do a capture so just made a screenshot and saved as bmp.

http://www.vegsource.com/fx1/

It's about 5 megs. If there's a better way for me to extract a grab, just lemme know.

You can take screen grabs from Media Player Classic:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84358

It is quite slow at playing the transport streams, so I suggest using it for screencaps alone.

Thanks for the grab, Jeff. Does the footage look a little soft to anyone else?

Why do my Kaku clips look like 30P video as apposed to my live 60 field look. I have HD NTSC 60i clips that play back with the live video look. Kaku's material looks like frame mode/30P like my Iwerks films and DVX100 30p mode material.

Hey guys, I've got a workflow to convert the posted clips to other formats in case anyone wants to see them....from every type of Quicktime format to various AVI's, DiVx, TS. MPEG4 and and many different resolutions and deinterlaced etc........if anyone wants to see a specific clip converted, let me know and I'll send to Chris.

<<<-- Originally posted by Michael Pappas : Why do my Kaku clips look like 30P video as apposed to my live 60 field look. I have HD NTSC 60i clips that play back with the live video look. Kaku's material looks like frame mode/30P like my Iwerks films and DVX100 30p mode material. -->>>

Hi Michael, this is perhaps due to the fact that the full 1920x1080 frame size is too large for your monitor, so a video player will have to scale it down to fit to your resolution. The scaling process usualyl ends up blurring the fields together.

I should get out to shoot daylight stuff for you very quick (thank my employees for their understanding).

I will capture these clips and upload them tonight.

I hope this will be feasible level of production to you all.

YOU ARE GREAT!

very very Kind!

Best Regards


Gabreiele

Just been watching some of Kaku's clips on a Sharp Aquos 83cm LCD HDTV (1330x800 res.) and they are AWESOME!!!

The 0db 60i daylight clip is superb across the board - detail is exceedingly good - motion artifacts on the two running kids are non-existent - colour saturation and 'naturalness' is spot-on. Even examination from a few inches from the screen failed to give up any 'nasties', let alone from prime viewing position, where the image appeared as smooth as silk.

I was beginning to think that maybe the image quality of the HD10 wouldn't be exceeded, but comparing clips from both directly on the Aquos, shows the FX1 does yield a superior image right across the board (if only marginally in the detail stakes....).

The quality is possibly even cleaner than some of the broadcast 1080i FTA material. Anyone who's seen CSI on a true HDTV will have some idea of the quality that is the best that FTA HD is offering at the moment.....and from what I've just seen, that's at least what this cam gives!!!

There'll probably be some downsides for early adoptors of the FX1, but video quality sure won't be one of them......

I almost forgot!! Today was my wife Nancy's birthday!!
I was too much into FX1 stuff and realized it at 20:40pm.
I'd better slow down for this process for tonight.

Kaku, thank you VERY much for posting all these clips and also thanks VERY much to Chris Hurd for hosting.

I've had to chance to look at all the clips. My opinion is that it's unbelieveable for a $3700 video camera. However, there is room for improvement...

Why the heck does the night footage look so sexy to me? The daytime footage is....well, a very solid good. It's good. It's definately good. But, the night footage is better than I expected. I'm viewing on a 23" Cinema, G5 system and it looks really great. Even better when I "deinterlace" with VLC player. I'm super-excited to see some footage that's actually lit with a professional lighting designer...and a tripod. This camera could in my opinion shoot an AMAZING drama that has little to no action. That's making my hair stand up straight because that's exactly what I write and shoot.

I don't see the harsh chroma we've been dealing with in HDV, so that's refreshing. It's also got a richer overall tone - I keep coming back to the word "solid" image. It's workable, it's definately something worth the money!

Who's dying to find out about the "Pro" version? I'm buying it sight unseen now that I've checked out the FX1 footage. There improvements in the "Pro" version make it truly a breakthrough camera. (so is the FX1 for that matter)

Murph

Kaku,

Thanks for all the contributions you're making! It's helping us out immensely, all of us!

I, however, will have to wait a week or so before I can check it out. I'm in between DSL providers, and my 56k can't handle much...

heath

I wonder if the pro version will have even better noise to signal ratio? There has to be some kind of performance improvements to call it "pro"

I truly hope so, but I'd settle for Apple's support and XLR connectors with adjustable channels. I'm trying to figure out the price difference, and I just can't do it. There must be a feature worth the price increase...and I know we all hope for 24p. (the real deal)

Murph

This one came out really beautiful.

Finally the sun was out and with the help of my wife and assistant, Chacha who has been making and performing music, went to Yoyogi park and shot the footage.

cocoonspace.m2t is the intro part of a song call "Akaihana" by her group "cocoon". Gash I don't remember I had the ND filter on or not (most likely I had it on ND1), but the iris is F4, no gain added and shutter speed 60. The sun was partially hitting directly on her face and the wood. No reflector or what so ever. We took an iPod and connected by mini stereo cable directly to the mic input of the FX1 and FX1 seems to adjust the line level. The file format is "lossless" on the iPod which is ripped from her CD. The album is recorded and mastered at 24bit/96KHz with MOTU Digital Performer and HD896 then mastered to the CD format. So, you can call it this file is totally inhouse production.

Another note is that I used the "picture profile 5" which is suitable for making Japanese skin preferable. The color parameter is added by "+1", Sharpness "11", skin tone detail "type 3", AGC limit to be "12db" (but the gain was set manually to 0db anyway), and auto iris "F4" (so is iris set to F4 manually).

And NDoffF11.m2t is shot with the picture profile 1 which is recommended for HDV shooting with sharpness set to "11" because it goes to "11" when you need more than "10"....you know it's one louder innit?....sorry, bad joke. But seriously, the sharpness is set to 11 for you to compare the skin tone detail thing.

If you wanna know more about chacha's group cocoon, the web site is www.cocoonspace.com

Chris and I talked about the files and I will probably erase the ones some people said terrible.

<<<-- Originally posted by Heath McKnight : Kaku,

Thanks for all the contributions you're making! It's helping us out immensely, all of us!

I, however, will have to wait a week or so before I can check it out. I'm in between DSL providers, and my 56k can't handle much...

heath -->>>

Heath,
Thank YOU for all of your effort to put this forum together. I'm getting used to the cam so, by the time you get your DSL, we will have good selection by then.

Kaku,

Thank you for all your efforts.

Is all of the daytime footage still available? It seems like some of the clips have 'disappeared'.

Troy

<<<-- Originally posted by Troy Lamont : Kaku,

Thank you for all your efforts.

Is all of the daytime footage still available? It seems like some of the clips have 'disappeared'.

Troy -->>>

As I mentioned in second to the last post, some files that were shot with gain boosted incorrectly, I erased them and posted a couple of good ones tonight. I will do lots of car shooting as soon as I get chance to.

Thank you very much sir! You're a true hero.

Troy

As we all have said before Kaku, thank you for everything your doing. The clips are looking great. Kaku is there a chance you can get to the country side and do some fancy shots of the beauty of japans greener areas. I would love to see closeup shots of kids and people talking and interacting with one another. This makes for good material to study. Thanks Kaku


michael pappas

Most of the FX1 day shots I've seen are in a sort of overcast light, which is nice light! But wondering what it does in a more harsh direct sunlight. Maybe we need to wait for a weather change in Japan? Anyone know of any footage in bright sun?

I will go to places like Fujimi Panorama mountainbike resort in Nagano and shoot what I usually shoot. Here are some of my clips at Fujimi http://homepage.mac.com/kakuito/FujimiPanorama.htm. I put these footage together with totally amature people with various cams since no TV stations nor magazines provide what is happenning in the downhill racing. The quality of the shots are so so, but I think it is so valuable that we are providing longer and more clips of the sport.

And interaction between people, I will try to find opportunity somewhere and sometime, but just picking on anything wouldn't seems to be anything worth because my time is limited (I run Japanese MOTU distributor, Apple VAR, write articles for magazines, provide moutainbike clips to magazines, heavily into constructing a new concept of education on making music, ride mountainbikes and provide information to this forum<grin>. I gave up on updating my Japanese blog for providing information about media production because Japanese people don't respond, they just hate someone sticking out. I really dig here because people talk about all of the worthy stuff, so I want to contribute the stuff I come across for expressing my appreciation to this forum. And it is kind of like descipline to me writing opinions and getting some feedback from real serious people here in English.

Anyway, I will think about a good occasion to fill your request about conversation. I don't think I can just go out and shoot people I don't know and I look wiered <lol>.

Jeff,

The new clips shows direct sun on chacha's face. I manage to control the direct sun hitting her face an the wood in the back partially don't you think?
I could upload some bad examples while I was adjusting the iris but I don't wanna look like I provide poorly production footage neither <lol>.

I will try to choose some parts from yesterday's footage tomorrow.

Yeah, that's a nice shot but the sunlight is somewhat diffused, looks like some trees or something to break it up. I'm talking about seeing some footage where there's basically harsh direct sunlight, the kind of thing video usually hates. The mountain bike stuff you have which I looked at was shot on a very sunny day. Wondering what the performance looks like in that environment, if the weather's right and you get a chance.

Thanks for your time in putting these clips up. You've got some really remarkable stuff up there.

My computer won't play the file after downloading it. Anyone know what program do I have to attach it to to play the footage?

Try the VLC editor. I got one to work on my computer and the footage is amazing.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

WOW, i just feed the video from my laptop to TV, ok its PAL not exactly HD BUT the colour, imgage sharpness was excellent!, it is only when you play these clips on CRT that the colours look really good, and you can forget about the interlace let the TV deal with that, oh man i need to get HD (thats gonna be hard in the UK)...

Anyway this cams got potential.

How can I convert these to go into Premiere or DV Storm? Any suggestions? Don't have any fancy converting software here, but would be nice to somehow get them in and view on a monitor. Thanks for any suggestions.

I've taken jpg screencaps from two of Kaku's daytime shots for anyone who is interested. I've uploaded them in both 1080 and 720 resolutions:

http://www.flicker-free.com/A_1080.jpg
http://www.flicker-free.com/A_720.jpg

http://www.flicker-free.com/B_1080.jpg
http://www.flicker-free.com/B_720.jpg

wow, the downconversion of this in vegas to NTSC DV avi looks incredible. I can't believe you can get an image like this for under $10,000.00...

Bill Ravens, re: your comments in the other thread re: Sony Vegas comparison with XL2 - I took a survey here at our t.v. station where I work... everyone here has worked with all the latest gear, including our XL2...

And they all agree that they've never seen an image like this (the FX1 HDV downconversion to avi via Vegas) for this price point. This latest "cocoon" close-up clip was especially impressive - obviously, Kaku is clearly starting to ace using this camera with the various manual settings...

We were waiting to get our hands on the cam firsthand before deciding which way to go - but now with our boss seeing the cam for himself and all the Kaku footage, we are sold... and thus so will our "old" XL2's!!! Our boss has decided to go HDV!!! All the way!!!

Before anyone here gets excited and wants to buy, I'll mention that we have an arrangement with a local film school to sell to them our "old gear" at a good rate - it's our way of "giving back." Well, at least the kids will get 24p!!!

Kaku, impressive footage, these new "daylight" clips. Great work!

Thank you!

Great stuff, all!

Kaku, the HDV forums were Chris Hurd and the others' here at DV Info's brain child. I had some input, but I'm just here to make sure things are cool and questions are answered as best as possible.

heath

I put the footage into DVD Architect and burned it to a DVD. Of cource, DVD Architect re-encoded it down to 720, but WOW! This stuff looks awesome. Incredible sharpness and detail, a real bang for the buck. It's a pretty video-y picture, but I imagine some gritty filtration or a net could help there.

Anyhow I'm sold. Will wait to see what the pro model actually has and whether it's worth the extra freight.

Heath, I know but I thought you are the wrangler here in this topic.
Chris and Jeff are really being generous about my clips. Soon I will be setting up separate space at my company's server, so I don't have to burden so much.

<<<-- Originally posted by Jeff Nelson : I put the footage into DVD Architect and burned it to a DVD. Of cource, DVD Architect re-encoded it down to 720, but WOW! This stuff looks awesome. Incredible sharpness and detail, a real bang for the buck. It's a pretty video-y picture, but I imagine some gritty filtration or a net could help there.

Anyhow I'm sold. Will wait to see what the pro model actually has and whether it's worth the extra freight. -->>>

That was one of the reasons why I wanted to get into higher resolution cams. I provide mountainbiking footage to magazines and I wasn't satisfied with the quality I was providing, comparing to the ones shot via film produced by like Fox Racing. I never had time to check the work flow, so reading your feedback, I'm happy to hear the result was positive.

<<<-- Originally posted by Jeff Nelson : How can I convert these to go into Premiere or DV Storm? Any suggestions? Don't have any fancy converting software here, but would be nice to somehow get them in and view on a monitor. Thanks for any suggestions. -->>>

Just change the .m2t file extension to .mpg and play in WMP. With the mpg extension instead of m2t you can also load the stream into Premiere Pro.....

Hi Kako

Thanks for the samples. I've been playing with removing the 3:2 pulldown from your "dwaterfront24p.m2t" to convert the footage to true 24P. My initial tests show promise, however I'm having some difficulty.

The main object of the test is to ascertain the quality of motion when converted to true 24P. The difficulty I'm having is that the sample footage you provided appears to be shot at a high shutter speed. This makes motion evaluation very difficult as the images tend to 'strobe'.

What I wanted to ask, is if you could shoot another short test, but with you shutter manually set to 1/30th or 1/60th (either or both would be great). If you can do this and post it, I will perform the pulldown tests to 24P and post the results.

Ideally the test should have some sections with a lot of movement and some with little movement.

Thanks so much, Josh

Easy solution, changing extensions fo mpg!

Kako -- do you have any filters to test out? Like maybe a black diffusion FX #2? Would be interested to see something on the lens. Is the lens detachable? If so, you could do the old snot glue stretching some stocking across the back of the lens trick, see if we can start getting more of a Sopranos look, take down some of the brassiness. Just curious what different filters will do here...

Hi Kako

Thanks for the samples. I've been playing with removing the 3:2 pulldown from your "dwaterfront24p.m2t" to convert the footage to true 24P. My initial tests show promise, however I'm having some difficulty.

The main object of the test is to ascertain the quality of motion when converted to true 24P. The difficulty I'm having is that the sample footage you provided appears to be shot at a high shutter speed. This makes motion evaluation very difficult as the images tend to 'strobe'.

What I wanted to ask, is if you could shoot another short test, but with you shutter manually set to 1/30th or 1/60th (either or both would be great). If you can do this and post it, I will perform the pulldown tests to 24P and post the results.

Ideally the test should have some sections with a lot of movement and some with little movement.

Thanks so much, Josh

Kaku,

Have you shot anything red (in the light), black and really dark stuff or heavy shadows? That's something I'd like to see (when I get my new DSL, that is).

heath

<<<-- Originally posted by Joshua Litle : Hi Kako

Thanks for the samples. I've been playing with removing the 3:2 pulldown from your "dwaterfront24p.m2t" to convert the footage to true 24P. My initial tests show promise, however I'm having some difficulty.

The main object of the test is to ascertain the quality of motion when converted to true 24P. The difficulty I'm having is that the sample footage you provided appears to be shot at a high shutter speed. This makes motion evaluation very difficult as the images tend to 'strobe'.

What I wanted to ask, is if you could shoot another short test, but with you shutter manually set to 1/30th or 1/60th (either or both would be great). If you can do this and post it, I will perform the pulldown tests to 24P and post the results.

Ideally the test should have some sections with a lot of movement and some with little movement.

Thanks so much, Josh -->>>

Josh,

I never shot anything other than 1/60th. When you set it to do 24p or 30p, you can't set the shutter speed slower than 1/60th and I wouldn't speed up the shutter speed neither. I think this is the limit they put on FX1 and hopefully Sony wouldn't on Z1 for cinema people.

KakU

<<<-- Originally posted by Joshua Litle : Hi Kako

(Regarding CineFrame 24) What I wanted to ask, is if you could shoot another short test, but with you shutter manually set to 1/30th or 1/60th (either or both would be great)...

...Thanks so much, Josh -->>>

CineFrame 24 can only be shot at 1/60 and faster. It has to do with the way that the fields are rearranged before laying them down to tape.

-Lorin

I just looked at the shots of the girl singing. I believe she might be slightly out of focus. Because her fine hair detail and the detail of her sweater are kind of shot.

What I mean is, if you took the same screen area from a SD cam, you would have more resolution. However, the textue of the tree behind her is very sharp. Does anyone else notice this?

I noticed the same thing. The tree was rock solid and she was slightly soft, but only very slightly. Is it hard to achieve critical focus on the camera? If there's a b&w eyepiece, it's probably better to focus through there than the monitor on the handle?

I down converted to NTSC avi and have through firewire out to t.v. - the sweater detail, her face in both shots is "sharp."

What are you guys looking at? On the computer through VLC?

I have to say, those shots going down the street where the camera is looking sideways at the stores going past are pretty scary. Our HD-1s never warbled images like that, did they? I hate to say it because the images are otherwise so beautiful but that warble might be a deal breaker if you're trying to make a movie.

t's a very minor thing. It's like complaining that her lipsynching isn't up to Britney Spears standards. :-)

That was just an observation that the focus was sharper on the tree behind her than on her face (this is in the one called cocoon), but still w/in the acceptable range on her face. I viewed on vlc and noticed, but downconverted to avi and on a 25" tv, looks very good.

Agree with Betsy that the shots on the scooter panning the sidewalk at night aren't impressive, lots of artifacts. Granted it was a night shot, but still, would like to see more shots like that to get a better idea of compression issues. Obviously for work on a steady arm, tripod or dolly, this camera will rock. For some run and gun, shoot and snap, want to see more.

If I've learned anything from HD, esp. after watching tons of HDNet and Discovery HD, is that it has a very deep depth of field. EVERYTHING is focused and sharp, generally speaking.

As for that shot, could be a case of being slightly closer to the subject, which put her slightly soft (more apparent in HDV) and the background sharp. My old XL-1 had a backfocus problem that was only apparent to eagle-eyed shooters.

heath

Hi Kaku,

Thanks for your response:

"When you set it to do 24p or 30p, you can't set the shutter speed slower than 1/60th and I wouldn't speed up the shutter speed neither."

Did you shoot everything with full manual control? Because if your Exposure (or shutter) was in auto mode, especially for a day exterior, the camera would automatically adjust the shutter to a faster speed.

The footage really looks as if it were shot at 1/125th or 1/250th shutter speed. If you look at a still frame of the bicyclist he is nearly frozen. 1/60th typically would show much more motion blur on something moving so quickly in front of the camera.

We call 1/250th the "Saving Private Ryan" shutter.

heath