Assessment of the HF10 vs the SR12

[Ken Ross]

Originally Posted by Tony Parenti

Those HF10 shots and HV20 shots should've been both at 60i. You shouldn't compare a 30p still with a 60i still.

Absolutely Tony, but as I've said, this is why I don't bother with that guy's site, I've seen enough of his flawed 'testing'.

[Ken Ross]

Originally Posted by Dave Rosky

Maybe it is the AWB. A few weeks ago someone let me check out their Canon HG10 while I was on a job filming a play. Just for fun I filmed part of the play with the HG10 one day when I wasn't filming with my regular (SD) camera. When I looked at the footage later, I noticed that the auto white balance seemed to drift around a bit as the camera moved, even when the stage lighting was not changing, whereas my regular camera doesn't do that. After seeing that, I would have tried a preset incandescent WB, but I had given the camera back by then.

If you have the time to try a preset outdoor WB or manual WB, it would be interesting to see if that helps.

I checked out the AWB vs the presets on the HF10 today. No A/Bs on this one, I'm done with that. I found that the effect of the presets was variable and therefore a bit troubling and unpredictable. In one shot it reduced the saturation from the AWB setting, in another clip it increased it and in still another it was exactly the same. These clips were all shot within one hour of each other and all outdoors. I'm more comfortable with a cam where the AWB and presets are the same the vast majority of the time. To me it indicates the AWB is doing its job. Obviously, depending upon the time of day and weather, there will be differences between the two.

But the bottom line was that none of this removed the 'blue' signature from the HF10 clips. Whether it was more or less saturated, it still had a bluish cast.

I also checked out 30p and was a bit surprised to see that there was still a fair amount of motion stutter. Better than 24p, but still there and not my thing.

[Dave Rosky]

Originally Posted by Ken Ross

But the bottom line was that none of this removed the 'blue' signature from the HF10 clips. Whether it was more or less saturated, it still had a bluish cast.

Ken, Thanks a bunch for all this info. This is particularly useful since I may not easily find a local retailer who will let me take the cameras outside, and I don't think it's fair to retailers with liberal return policies to buy a camera without being at least somewhat sure it's the one you want. I guess the only option left is manual white balance, but don't worry about that if you don't have time, I can always try that in the store - it's probably a tougher test anyway due to the mixed indoor lighting in most of the stores.

I do agree that reliable AWB is nice - it certainly reduces work and setup time. My current SD camera has rather good AWB, so I would miss that if these newer cameras aren't as good.

I also checked out 30p and was a bit surprised to see that there was still a fair amount of motion stutter. Better than 24p, but still there and not my thing.

That seems a little surprising, since don't most TV's deinterlace 60i to 60P, which is basically 30P displayed 2:2?

[Ken Ross]

Originally Posted by Dave Rosky

Ken, Thanks a bunch for all this info. This is particularly useful since I may not easily find a local retailer who will let me take the cameras outside, and I don't think it's fair to retailers with liberal return policies to buy a camera without being at least somewhat sure it's the one you want. I guess the only option left is manual white balance, but don't worry about that if you don't have time, I can always try that in the store - it's probably a tougher test anyway due to the mixed indoor lighting in most of the stores.

I do agree that reliable AWB is nice - it certainly reduces work and setup time. My current SD camera has rather good AWB, so I would miss that if these newer cameras aren't as good.



That seems a little surprising, since don't most TV's deinterlace 60i to 60P, which is basically 30P displayed 2:2?

No problem Dave. I don't know if I mentioned, but the SR12 has a very reliable AWB, probably as good as my old VX2000. It's only failing is that in lower lit incadescent lighting, it will tend to oversaturate a bit. But in all outdoor conditions and flourescent conditions I've encountered, it was spot on.

As for the 30p, I may be wrong, but I think the issue is trying to interpolate motion that's simply not there in every other 'missing' frame in 30p. A display can double the number of frames, but there still is no information on rapidly moving objects.

[Dave Rosky]

Originally Posted by Ken Ross

As for the 30p, I may be wrong, but I think the issue is trying to interpolate motion that's simply not there in every other 'missing' frame in 30p. A display can double the number of frames, but there still is no information on rapidly moving objects.

Exactly, which is why I wouldn't have expected to see much difference between 30P and deinterlaced 60i. Maybe the TVs interpolate and don't just duplicate each deinterlaced frame to get 60P, I don't know since I don't yet have an HDTV (I'm sort of in the midst of modernizing our whole video setup along with the camcorder). I've been viewing camcorder footage on a 1920x1200 computer monitor, and on the monitor 30P and deinterlaced 60i look pretty much identical. Things may look different on a real TV, depending on how the extra frames are generated to get 60P from 60i.

[Tony Parenti]

I think anytime you edit and render out you're 60i footage it's going to be converted to 30 frames per second because you're deinterlacing to NTSC 29.937 frames per second and it will not look as smooth as watching it directly from the camera.... I think. I could be wrong. I noticed this on my Honeymoon footage. Watching the edited rendered Vegas file looks completely different then watching the HDV tape directly from the camera.

[Ken Ross]

Tony, I just looked at the 30p footage directly on the LCD screen of the HF10 after reading your post. It still lacks the smoothness of 60i, but doesn't look quite as bad as on my HDTV. But to be honest, part of that may be because the HF10's LCD is so small, it's not nearly as easy picking up issues as on a 60" HDTV.

My original comments about lacking smoothness was playing the 30p clip directly from the camera via HDMI to the Pioneer plasma...no editing.

[Ron Evans]

Yes the combination of DVD player and HD tv can make things look bad at times. Playing DVD's through my PS3 to my Panasonic 1920x1080 Plasma is often worse than looking at the same DVD from my old DVD player on my old iArt CRT!!! The combination of the PS3 changing resolution to 1080p over HDMI causes a lot of problems. Stuttering and other artifacts. This with the same DVD. SR11 output over HDMI to the same Panasonic TV is great, makes most network HD look really bad!!!! I had originally got the PS3 as a cheap and multipurpose way of playing BluRay disc but I am now thinking that it is not such a great player. IT is not consistent though and I have yet to figure out what the issues really are with playback. Some DVD's are great others are awful. Tried playing with the 24p settings on both PS3 and Panasonic to no avail. Hate 24p anyway so now have both turned off.
Ron Evans

[Dave Blackhurst]

I think this is the one area that there are some HUGE challenges - AVCHD is just new enough that there are some strange possibilities depending on processing, output device, display device, etc.

I've solved the inability to drag and drop to the Vegas timeline for instance. Installed PMB 3, seems like it works fine with the CX7, so no back compatibility issues... still couldn't drag clips without V8 freezing... forgot I hadn't installed V8 "b", put that on, everything worked smoothly... so it was something in V8 that needed an update!

Another interesting observation... I've heard all about "motion trails", and if I try displaying at the highest preview qualities, it's a huge ugly mess of 'em, BUT if I drop the preview window down to "prieview(half)", trails are GONE, picture is a bit softer, but perfectly acceptable on a 24" monitor, easy to edit and compare footage. I'm suspecting that there are some issues with the display of AVCHD that need to be ironed out - I don't see trails on the LCD, still want to try it on a widescreen but I'm guessing the problem won't be there, so when it comes up in post or playback from other devices - it's going to be up to us to figure out the proper settings and whatnot...

[Dave Rosky]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

Another interesting observation... I've heard all about "motion trails", and if I try displaying at the highest preview qualities, it's a huge ugly mess of 'em, BUT if I drop the preview window down to "prieview(half)", trails are GONE, picture is a bit softer, but perfectly acceptable on a 24" monitor, easy to edit and compare footage. I'm suspecting that there are some issues with the display of AVCHD that need to be ironed out - I don't see trails on the LCD, still want to try it on a widescreen but I'm guessing the problem won't be there, so when it comes up in post or playback from other devices - it's going to be up to us to figure out the proper settings and whatnot...

Hmm, this could explain why the reports of trails are so varied. What codec does Vegas use to decode AVCHD? (I don't have Vegas.) Do you see trails in rendered footage played through a media player, or just in the Vegas preview window?

[Dave Blackhurst]

Originally Posted by Dave Rosky

Hmm, this could explain why the reports of trails are so varied. What codec does Vegas use to decode AVCHD? (I don't have Vegas.) Do you see trails in rendered footage played through a media player, or just in the Vegas preview window?

I havent' rendered anything with the SR12 yet, I did some stuff mixed HDV and AVCHD (CX7) and didn't see any problem with trails, but it wasn't a high motion event... thought the CX7 looked better than the HDV footage though.

Not sure what codec Vegas uses, but I'd think SOny would sort of have an "in house" advantage? The interesting part comes with what choice one makes in the preview window - they give 4 levels of quality, from draft (unusable IMO), preview, good and best... each of those four levels has auto, full, half, and quarter options. I found trails on anything above preview/half, but that quality played back smooth and plenty clean. I could switch to higher qualities and see the individual frames sharpen up, but any movement became obvious too. The SR11 still looked very very sharp and detailed at the preview/half resolution, the CX7 was OK, but not quite as crisp.

THUS, my suspicion that there's some bumps in the AVCHD road yet to be smoothed out - maybe my computer/video card just isn't up to AVCHD (although it's not bad, and way above minimum specs, renders pretty fast, and editing is smooth). I'm going to have to do some test renders at higher resolutions and see what happens. But I think based upon what I'm seeing with the preview window differences, "motion trails" are a problem of the post processing, NOT the AVCHD recording/camera per se...

[Dave Rosky]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

THUS, my suspicion that there's some bumps in the AVCHD road yet to be smoothed out - maybe my computer/video card just isn't up to AVCHD (although it's not bad, and way above minimum specs, renders pretty fast, and editing is smooth). I'm going to have to do some test renders at higher resolutions and see what happens. But I think based upon what I'm seeing with the preview window differences, "motion trails" are a problem of the post processing, NOT the AVCHD recording/camera per se...

I suspect your hunch is correct. Some/many of the codecs may still have bugs that manifest themselves in unexpected ways. I would tend to suspect the codecs more than your computer or video card, especially if you never have similar issues using other formats. In my own case, I use Linux primarily, and on Linux the only choice for using AVCHD is to first transcode it to something else, and the only reliable AVCHD decoder is the one that is part of the reference software made available by the Fraunhofer Institute.

Using this, I first transcode the AVCHD to huffyuv (or some other intermediate format), and I have not seen any trails at all other than very minor ghosting in low light from some cameras. OTOH, I have seen reports on the net of trails that were described as looking like special effects from a rock music video. Perhaps if you just drag a clip into Vegas with certain settings and didn't look further, it might be easy to jump to conclusions.

I'm actually pretty amazed at the quality of AVCHD video for the bandwidth it takes. It's beginning to rival HDV at 2/3 the bitrate, and the processors and codecs are only going to get better.

[Ken Ross]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

THUS, my suspicion that there's some bumps in the AVCHD road yet to be smoothed out - maybe my computer/video card just isn't up to AVCHD (although it's not bad, and way above minimum specs, renders pretty fast, and editing is smooth). I'm going to have to do some test renders at higher resolutions and see what happens. But I think based upon what I'm seeing with the preview window differences, "motion trails" are a problem of the post processing, NOT the AVCHD recording/camera per se...

I haven't been following too closely this aspect of the AVCHD 'drama', but unless I'm misunderstanding the issue, it wouldn't particularly bother me if there were anomolies in the preview window as long as the final output was clean. If artifacts were being introduced into final product, that's a different story.

[Mike Burgess]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

I havent' rendered anything with the SR12 yet, I did some stuff mixed HDV and AVCHD (CX7) and didn't see any problem with trails, but it wasn't a high motion event... thought the CX7 looked better than the HDV footage though.......

Hey Dave. I am interested in how you mixed HDV and AVCHD footage. My friend has an FX7 and I have the SR11, and I want to be able to combine the footage from each cam into a final product to burn onto a DVD (both for regular DVDs and BR DVDs). Is this easily possible? (I have a quad core, 2 Gig Ram system)

Thanks.

Respectfully,
Mike

[Ron Evans]

I mix my FX1 HDV and SR11 AVCHD clips by just placing them on the timeline in Vegas 8, editing in the normal way and rendering out to whatever. Takes a little while to render on my AMD 4200X2 for HDV, DV and MPEG2 output. Just to clarify the preview window in Vegas bears no connection to the rendered output, it is just that, a preview window at reduced resolution and frame rate that is selectable to reduce the CPU load when editing. Edius is different as it tries to display the actual output and with my PC it is unable to do this with HDV amd AVCHD on the timeline, but with conversion to Canopus HQ is of course just fine.

Ron Evans