Hey, I just saw a 70 meg file of the FX1 converted to 24fps...and it looks bad. The strobbing/drag is horrible and not useable in a real film. I think the only place it would work is a film where everyone stayed perfectly still!

Maybe someone will do an experimental film like that, but not me.

Murph

What site was the file hosted at?

Thanks

Troy

I'll email it to you because the site is so bad I don't want to taint this great site here with posting such a horrid name! It's kind of like Scott Farkis...you know. The kid with the rotten name? The site is like that.

All depends on how it was converted. Is the sample from the camera's 24i mode (which doesn't sound very good to me) or from someone converting the file themselve?

search for other CF24 topics...yes it sucks. Shoot 60i.

Thank you Murph for not trashing other sites by name as of course we do not do that here (we're above that sort of behavior). I'd actually prefer it if you guys would just consider this place your home, there's no place like home, there shall be no venturing into other neighborhoods. Stay on your turf! It's much safer here. Wipe out those other bookmarks, ya don't need 'em anymore.

Hi,

a friend of mine just got back from a seminar/presentation thingy by Sony here in Brisbane - they were demo'ing the Z1. One of the improvements on the cam is that the shutter is controllable in all the CF modes down to 1/25th. That means you can shoot CF24 with a 1/50th (or perhaps even 1/48th) shutter.

I'm thinking this is going to improve the look of CF24 footage over what we're seeing now - as the shutter is locked at 1/60th in CF24 on the FX-1. Producing the freaky stuttering effects that we've seen to this point. It could also be the origin of Charlie White's comments in his review of the Z1 having a 'improved' CF24 mode. The execution of the CF modes on both cameras is the same (according to the Sony Rep) but the variable shutter on the Z1 produces a much better film-like cadence in CF24.

I gotta say I've played with CF25@1/50th on the FX1E and it looks veh-nahce...

DW.

People keep suggesting that 1/60th is the reason for CF24's odd look, but I just can't fathom how... I've shot plenty of footage on the DVX, on my K-3 and Konvas, on old Auricons and on the early CP16's, all at 1/60th, and it looks just fine -- just like film. (The DVX doesn't default 1/60th, but we had TV's in the shot so we changed to 1/60th to get rid of the banding... works fine, looks like film...)

1/60th isn't the problem. Trying to turn 60 fields into 24 frames, using the method they're using, is the problem. Using a slower shutter speed will make it a little blurrier, but it won't fix the underlying problem.

As for that other rumored footage on some other site, apparently the person who created it used CineFrame 25 footage from an FX1-E and converted it to 24P. Seems reasonable enough of a thing to do. I tried to play it but I didn't have the right codec, I guess.

I might try the same, since DSE has some CF25 footage up on his site; just import it into Vegas and set the playback rate to 96% (I think that'd do it)...

Chris, I didn't name any names!!

The Z1 will definately have to have a significant improvement...not just a tweak to the 24fps setting. If it's even close I'd say all those extra settings are useless for attempting anything watchable beyond a short film. I'm not trying to sound negative, but practical. If it looks like shit...it's shit and people will be annoyed.

I know this is nuts, but I'd rather watch a feature length film shot on VHS tape than watch a feature shot with strobbing. It's worse than those recent movies that are handheld the entire time! (Black Sunday, Veronica Guertin etc.)

If someone could invent the ultimate 60i or 50i to 24p converter - they'd be a rich person because everyone would buy the FX1 or Z1 and shoot.

What about our buddy Nattress? Those guys at DV Rack recently did a deal with Panny, so I think they're HDV interest was low because of that biz deal. They said their software takes Direct X (not available on OSX), so apparently the DV Rack won't do HDV. But, if there is a will there is way....the ultimate package would be a Z1 shooting and being converted in real time through a DV Rack onto a harddrive ready to edit....the final footage? 24p... Then I woke up!

The #1 rule of business is to "fill a need", so who's going to fill this need? If I had to put my $ on a company for Macs (my computer) it's Apple. They have to be watching this crap and working towards a solution. If Final Cut Pro is truly "HD" for the people and Hollywood-types than they've got to fully support this format....with real time converting while capturing! I'm praying to the video God's.....

Murph

I gotta say, when I first hear about CF24 problems, I tried to go through all the reasons--shutter speed, watching raw footage w/o a pulldown applied, blah, blah, blah...but the fact remains that nearly everyone who looked at CF24 (and some people say it's true with the other CF modes) says that it completely doesn't do what it is supposed to be doing. And while it is nice that the Z1 has variable shutter speeds, it still sounds like something I won't be using. The only possible good thing is that if they're still tinkering with the firmware...maybe they'll somehow change the CF modes before the camera goes live...

Holding his breath and trying to roll a snowball in hell...

How does CF24 look on a HD 1080i display?

<<<-- Originally posted by Kevin Dooley : . . . The only possible good thing is that if they're still tinkering with the firmware...maybe they'll somehow change the CF modes before the camera goes live... -->>>

Altering the firmware has been suggested elsewhere. Because the Z1 supports both 60i and 50i, it would appear that the camera supports reclocking, and therefore it seems reasonable that it could in theory be reclocked to 48i to yield 24 fps in CF24. Will Sony do this? Who knows? It's been rumored that Sony will show something at the Sundance festival in January, but then again "credible" sources claimed that the Z1 would support 24p!

Sony bungled the marketing and public relations efforts surrounding the Z1. The sad thing is, Sony should have supplied accurate information, particularly to its sales and marketing reps (so that they could talk more intelligently about the cameras, or at least disseminate the material to interested parties). Instead they put out misleading and inaccurate information (e.g., the marketing PDF indicating that there were two CF24 modes). Even now the Sony pro HDV site still says that 24p is being considered for inclusion in the Z1! Sony should do more to provide useful, accurate, in-depth information so that users can make informed decisions.

Then Sony raised the Z1's MSRP from $4,900 to $5,946, claiming that the former figure was actually the street price.

My point is that, considering how they've handled the Z1 heretofore, I don't expect Sony to upgrade the firmware to enable 48i. But, as I said, who knows?

<<<-- Originally posted by Davi Dortas : How does CF24 look on a HD 1080i display? -->>>

Awful.

the ultimate package would be a Z1 shooting and being converted in real time through a DV Rack onto a harddrive ready to edit....the final footage? 24p... Then I woke up!
The ultimate? You'd still be talking about a frame-blended lower-resolution simulation of progressive footage, chained to a laptop or something, which (while I love DV Rack) limits your flexibility.

I'd rather think the ultimate would be a camera that actually shot true progressive, at a legitimate 24Hz rate, using a non-GOP type of compression, with adequate bandwidth, and recorded directly to hard disk or memory card directly. (and I don't think it's impossible... Panasonic has already teased such a camera with a DVCPRO-HD logo on it).

If Final Cut Pro is truly "HD" for the people and Hollywood-types than they've got to fully support this format....with real time converting while capturing! I'm praying to the video God's.....
It's not going to happen anytime soon, because the sheer processing power required eliminates the idea of real-time... Graeme and Marcus have already produced 60i->24P conversion software, but it doesn't run anywhere near real time.

But back to the "ultimate"... assuming Panasonic does decide to produce the ultimate camera, keep in mind that the "HD" in Final Cut Pro HD is (you guessed it) DVCPRO-HD. Oh, and Panasonic just lined up Avid to support DVCPRO-HD as well. HDV may or may not be the "format of the future" -- it just happens to be the format that Sony's betting on, and (like MicroMV and SACD and Digital8 and Betamax and blu-ray and on and on) that's no guarantee it'll be the format that actually gets adopted by the public.

At this point, the Panny DVCPRO-HD is looking better and better.....anyone else think that?

dvcpro-hd ROCKS..been shooting it..great stuff indeed ;)

<<<-- Originally posted by David Warrilow : Hi,

I'm thinking this is going to improve the look of CF24 footage over what we're seeing now - as the shutter is locked at 1/60th in CF24 on the FX-1. Producing the freaky stuttering effects that we've seen to this point.

DW. -->>>

The stutering will not go away. The problem is that the time base that those cameras use to do the 2:3 pulldown on is not real 24p.

I took footage of FX1 and took out the clean 24p footage. Outside of the 1/60 shutter the frame times between frames don't look equally the same. They are off.

The biker that passes in front of the camera is a constant move. But the motion difference per frame is not equal. That makes me believe it's not really shot with a rea 24 fr/sec time base.

Here is the clip:
http://home.comcast.net/~chalbers/fx1_24ptest.mov

Frank

I don't think Frank's posted 24p test is valid. I believe the shutter was on auto and much faster than 1/60th because the motion blur is almost nonexistant. If the shutter was open 1/2 of the frame length you would see motion blur that would fill half of the distance the wheel travels. In this example the motion blur is much less. Look at the spokes - they're sharp!
Frank, could you cue up the tape to this part and turn on the data display? If this is what you get at 1/60th of a second then the camera is broken.
Cheers,
Sam

<<<-- Originally posted by Sam Edwards : I don't think Frank's posted 24p test is valid. I believe the shutter was on auto and much faster than 1/60th because the motion blur is almost nonexistant. If the shutter was open 1/2 of the frame length you would see motion blur that would fill half of the distance the wheel travels. In this example the motion blur is much less. Look at the spokes - they're sharp!
Frank, could you cue up the tape to this part and turn on the data display? If this is what you get at 1/60th of a second then the camera is broken.
Cheers,
Sam -->>>

You are maybe correct that the shutter was maybe faster, but it definately shows acurately that the frames are not constant motion. You don't need moblur to see that !

Frank

Hi Frank,
I don't think you can accurately judge 'strobiness' or 'studder' from footage that was shot with a fast shutter...
Fast shutters give that effect. I'm trying to find a clock with a sweep second hand that I can shoot some tests with to give an idea. I don't feel I've seen a decent test of a 24p extraction from this camera.
Thanks for taking the time to post something. I think it has a kind of cool look.
cheers,
Sam

The easiest way to see a true 24P extraction would be to shoot in DV mode in CineFrame 24, and then use Vegas' "remove 2-3 pulldown" feature from the DV file. It won't be full-res HDV, but it will show you the raw 24P frames.

I think I have some CineFrame 24 DV footage here, but I don't know if it has panning or something that will easily show the motion between frames... I wonder if I can get AfterEffects to remove the pulldown... I have some side-by-side shots on the XL2/24P and FX1/CF24 at a skating rink that would make an excellent comparison to see what CF24 is actually doing with motion and how it compares to 24Hz progressive-scan...

<<<-- Originally posted by Sam Edwards : Hi Frank,
I don't think you can accurately judge 'strobiness' or 'studder' from footage that was shot with a fast shutter...
Fast shutters give that effect. I'm trying to find a clock with a sweep second hand that I can shoot some tests with to give an idea. I don't feel I've seen a decent test of a 24p extraction from this camera.
Thanks for taking the time to post something. I think it has a kind of cool look.
cheers,
Sam -->>>

I am NOT basing myself on the stutter ... I'm basic myself on flipping through the frames one by one and looking at the distance the subject travels PER FRAME. It's not constant between the frames while it schould be ... THAT is what I mean.

And to check that you don't need moblur.

Frank

<<<-- Originally posted by Barry Green : The easiest way to see a true 24P extraction would be to shoot in DV mode in CineFrame 24, and then use Vegas' "remove 2-3 pulldown" feature from the DV file. It won't be full-res HDV, but it will show you the raw 24P frames. -->>>

That is EXACTLY what that footage shows. I did not use blending or anything. It's pure extraction of the 2:3 pulldown to get the raw 24p footage.

I took it frame the HDV footage though. I used Shake to do this.

1. I exported each individual HDV res frame of the footage to single frames.
2. Looking through the frames it clearly had 2:3 pulldown.
3. In HDV the field priority is reversed though. upper field first. So I moved the whole frame one scanline up to make the lower field first.
4. I seperated both fields per frame. and resized them to 720*240 each.
5. Then I took the resized results and interlaced them back together in the same order to get back full frames with interlaced fields.
6. Now had a DV sized interlaced footage of the original HDV footage keeping the 2:3 pulldown correctly.
7. I then imported the frames to Vegas as a 29.96 fps lower field first DV footage.
8. There I selected in the file properties to remove 2:3 pulldown by selecting the correct frame for the removal sequence.
9. This resulted me to clean raw 24p DV footage from the Cineframe 24 HDV footage.

So ... It's not just downressed and resampled.

That's why I'm stating that it's not a true 24p time base.

Of course that pipeline is not possible to constantly use it. It was just to test out the so called 24p 2:3 pulldown they talked about in DVExpo. It's a FLUKE !


Frank

Turns out I do have an FX1 CF24 DV clip, and after removing the pulldown automatically in Vegas, I can step through it frame-by-frame. This looks to be the same basic technique you used, but it's much simpler to get at, and I think there are fewer potential variables involved. It's footage straight from the camera, vs. having to do any post-processing on it.

The footage features some cars driving by on the street. On the DVX footage you can step through frame-by-frame, and the cars advance by equal distances each frame.

On the FX1 footage, there's a very different motion pattern. It's like on even frames the car advances a little, then on odd frames it leaps forward much further, then on the even frames it goes a little, but it seems to be consistent on an even/odd basis.

Okay, so now we're getting to the bottom of the CF24 mystery. I exported 8 frames of the DVX footage, and found that yes, the car moves almost exactly 30 pixels each frame. For a consistent-speed object, the object spacing is exactly the same, showing that the CCD was sampling at the same rate as the footage created.

Then I exported the same frames from the CF24 footage (they were shot at identical times and sync'd up to exactly the same frame). In the CF24 footage, the car moves 27 pixels on one frame, then 39 pixels on the next. 27, 39, 27, 39, 27, 39... no wonder it's herky-jerky and stuttery!

Well, so, there you have it, the mystery of CF24 seems to be closer to being solved. However it's creating its 24P simulation, it's not doing it on anything approaching a consistent 24Hz time basis.

And this should forever put to rest the notion that "if you just remove the pulldown it'll be fine", because it isn't. Frank, your observations are exactly right.

There are by now variyng reports on the web about Cineframe 24. Most say it is terrible. Some say it is great. Granted some people may not "see" how bad it is but... could it be that the Cineframe firmware on some cams is better? Perhaps it would be a good idea for people testing Cineframe 24 to inform their cam's serial numbers. Just an idea.

We "experimented" with shooting the Cinealta in 24 frame mode with the shutter off, and by experimented I mean we left the shutter off by accident. Switching it on and off, I could clearly see the difference with fast motion through the frame.

<<<-- Originally posted by Barry Green : Frank, your observations are exactly right. -->>>

Woohoo ! ...

... actually ... too bad really ... :-(

Frank

Hi Guys,
I would say, based on my, Frank and Barry's tests that cineframe 24 is just the 2nd then 3rd field extracted and interpolated to create pseudo 24fps footage. To me the only advantage to shooting in cineframe mode is that in the GOP compression there's going to be less difference between frames because they're reapeated, so less stress on the compressor. This might give you sharper 24 fps footage than if you would have if you shot 1080i and converted in post. It would be a hard thing to prove. For cinema work a PAL fx1 in cineframe mode is probably the best choice if you need to do your project on the fx1.
Oh well. I still love the way the 1080i looks.
Thanks again guys!
Sam