Hdmi 4:4:4

[Lee Wilson]

Originally Posted by Rich Dykmans

I'm not knocking the HV10 or it's IQ (especially given what it costs) and I cetainly love mine but capturing and editing uncompressed or anything close to it is pretty much the Holy Grail of computer based editing so I'm just having a hard time visualizing anyone doing it with totally consumer based units like these given that it's still a fairly expensive proposition (visualize expensive RAID units and SDI HDCam decks).

I would think a 7200rpm firewire 800 would do the trick, I play Photojpeg (at Q 85) off mine (LaCie) with no problems.

[Lee Wilson]

Originally Posted by Robert Ducon

We can *hope* Canon was nice and let the image be, but I could see the marketing department disabling it. Just because the HV10 played nice, doesn't mean the HV20 will.

Let's try to keep from assuming!

[Robert Ducon]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

Who told you the SONY V1U does this?

Thomas, it's listed somewhere on this Forum, DVInfo. I asked the poster for verification.. I *assume* they were correct. Anyone wish to prove me wrong?

But honestly, HD-SDI is a very expensive solution, and if HDMI can really get close to it, isn't that a problem? Why would anyone buy the XH-G1 with HD-SDI, if the XH-A1 with HDMI could offer the same benefits for the price of a $250 card?

My point is, who's to say that the HV20 will offer FULL RESOLUTION HDMI? Frankly, it makes more marketing sense not to.

Anyhow, prove me wrong. Show me proof that Canon does 4:2:2 and that Sony doesn't (or does) 4:2:0. I've looked.. haven't found it yet.

[Wes Vasher]

I'm pretty sure the HC3 does 4:2:2 over HDMI (I've seen an Intensity capture from this cam) so it'd be pretty dissapointing if the V1 only sends 4:2:0 over HDMI.

[Robert Ducon]

Originally Posted by Wes Vasher

I'm pretty sure the HC3 does 4:2:2 over HDMI (I've seen an Intensity capture from this cam) so it'd be pretty dissapointing if the V1 only sends 4:2:0 over HDMI.

Wes, can you demonstrate this? This conflicts with what I've heard, but it seems neither of us have a product white sheet, or image proof. You can see 4:2:0 if there is a bright red in the image, the image is quite degraded. Posting a 1920x1080 image would be stellar - first person that captures HDMI from the HV20, please do.

No one seems to have proof.. the name of this thread is HDMI 4:4:4, and no one is echoing that as fact! Proof will work. 4:2:0 sounds logical to me, but no one can say till the device arrives, or a white sheet is available or someone has footage from a preproduction unit.

[Thomas Smet]

First of all the Intensity card is very new as is the concept of using HDMI for capturing.

I do not yet know anybody that has an Intensity card. There are also only a handfull of cameras that have HDMI ports. This is a fairly new beast to deal with here.

As for HDMI it is capable of sending uncompressed 4:2:2. That is the whole point of it or else HDTVs would have just used firewire which also offers video and audio on the same cable.

HDMI and SDI are two different beasts as well. SDI is a professional standard that is used on professional equipment. This means the cameras with SDI can feed directly into a workflow with other broadcasting cameras. The cables are also very robust and designed to be tough.

HDMI on the other hand is a consumer invention and is made to sit nice and still behind your TV and never moved around. It can offer the same level of quality in theory but isn't designed for a pro environment. It's kind of how RCA cables and BNC cables are pretty much exactly the same but pro equipment will many times have BNC connections because it is more robust and locks so it cannot be pulled out by accident.

If the SONY V1U outputs 4:2:0 then they are dumbing down the signal on purpose. I am almost positive the HC3 sends 4:2:2 because that is the camera Blackmagic uses as an example of what camera to use to capture uncompressed 4:2:2 with the Intensity card.

Every HDV camera to date has sent 4:2:2 out the component which is not that bad compared to SDI. 99% of people would never ever be able to tell the difference between uncompressed via SDI or uncompressed via component.

I do not plan on getting an Intensity card until the HV20 comes out in April. As soon as that happens I will do some tests in my bluescreen studio. Hopefully somebody can show some examples before that so I can decide if I should move up to the Decklink Studio card that adds component input as well.

[Wayne Morellini]

There is 4:4:4 hdmi, but I think it is unlikely to see many cameras that would offer it. Intensity works on 4:2:2, one reason is, because cameras work at that rate.

[Rich Dykmans]

Originally Posted by Lee Wilson

I would think a 7200rpm firewire 800 would do the trick, I play Photojpeg (at Q 85) off mine (LaCie) with no problems.

I remembered playing around with some fairly uncompressed formats on my system with limited success in the past but thought I would give it another try.

So I took 40 seconds of HV10 footage and transcoded it to uncompressed 8 bit 4:2:2. Saved the file (4.7 gigs) to my Graid 500 (2 - 250 gig 7200 rpm drives with hardware raid connected via FW800 to my MacBookPro 2.33 core2 - 2 GB RAM) and played back via QT player. I'd get about 5 seconds of playback before the picture froze. I don't know if the bottleneck is the FW800 bus or the MBP itself but the only uncompressed I'm going to get is out of my MXO (which doesn't do me any good without a deck or other device to capture it anyhow)

Anyway the Intensity card in a fast PC or MacPro may overcome whatever limitations my system has unless the weak link is FW800.

If it's the FW800 bus I suppose an expresscard SATA adaptor with a SATA based RAID might give me more throughput.

Does that intensity card come with it's own codecs? Reasonably low compression Blackmagic codecs optimized for that card might be a great solution if uncompressed isn't attainable.

Also I'm curious Lee, how are you currently delivering those short spots you mentioned earlier?

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Wayne Morellini

There is 4:4:4 hdmi, but I think it is unlikely to see many cameras that would offer it. Intensity works on 4:2:2, one reason is, because cameras work at that rate.

Also the Itensity card is a PCI Express X1 card and it wouldn't have enough bandwidth for 4:4:4. I think using PCI Express X1 makes it easier for a lot of people to use these because not everybody has a X4 slot or larger on their motherboards.

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Rich Dykmans

I remembered playing around with some fairly uncompressed formats on my system with limited success in the past but thought I would give it another try.

So I took 40 seconds of HV10 footage and transcoded it to uncompressed 8 bit 4:2:2. Saved the file (4.7 gigs) to my Graid 500 (2 - 250 gig 7200 rpm drives with hardware raid connected via FW800 to my MacBookPro 2.33 core2 - 2 GB RAM) and played back via QT player. I'd get about 5 seconds of playback before the picture froze. I don't know if the bottleneck is the FW800 bus or the MBP itself but the only uncompressed I'm going to get is out of my MXO (which doesn't do me any good without a deck or other device to capture it anyhow)

Anyway the Intensity card in a fast PC or MacPro may overcome whatever limitations my system has unless the weak link is FW800.

If it's the FW800 bus I suppose an expresscard SATA adaptor with a SATA based RAID might give me more throughput.

Does that intensity card come with it's own codecs? Reasonably low compression Blackmagic codecs optimized for that card might be a great solution if uncompressed isn't attainable.

Also I'm curious Lee, how are you currently delivering those short spots you mentioned earlier?

Check out the www.decklink.com website to read about what options you have for codecs.

Uncompressed HD needs a bandwidth of about 120 MB/S. A 2 drive raid just will not do it. You may get a few seconds (usually up to 5) on an empty raid but it just isn't fast enough. You need at least a 4 SATA raid in order to work with uncompressed HD and even then you may only be able to get to 50% full before you start dropping frames. FW800 only has a bandwidth of about 60MB/S so it will never be able to handle uncompressed HD. Lightly compressed jpeg HD on the other hand will work perfectly and should even give you multiple streams of it during editing.

The whole point of Intensity is not so much capturing uncompressed but being able to choice how to compress the video. It gives us options so we are not limited to just to HDV. The card itself is uncompressed because that is the best starting point to compress video from. From there you can either keep it uncompressed or choose some other format. I'm sure most people will find the jpeg codec to be almost perfect and find little reason to ever use uncompressed unless you realy had a good reason to. I myself am not sure if I would use uncompressed. I have tested out the jpeg codec and it has an insane amount of quality for such a small file size. Just think of it like jpeg compression for still images because it is pretty much exacty that. With jpeg compression most of the time we can get a 10:1 compression ratio and we cannot really see the difference on those still images. The jpeg video codec in variable so it is hard to pinpoint the datarate but it is around 12 MB/S or a 10:1 compression ratio.

[Robert Ducon]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

I do not plan on getting an Intensity card until the HV20 comes out in April. As soon as that happens I will do some tests in my bluescreen studio. Hopefully somebody can show some examples before that so I can decide if I should move up to the Decklink Studio card that adds component input as well.

Thomas, I hear your points and I understand the differences between Pro HD-SDI and HDMI. I agree, I'll wait till there is some proof either way, or make sure a store I purchase from would have a return Policy and then test myself. It looks like a great cam regardless - home movies always have their place. I already have a Decklink HD card with component and a 4drive RAID in my Mac Pro, so I could test that as well. If every cam does 4:2:2 component out, that's great - then I have high hopes for this one as well. Exciting!

[Rich Dykmans]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

Check out the www.decklink.com

The whole point of Intensity is not so much capturing uncompressed but being able to choice how to compress the video.

Thanks for your detailed explanation above. Though I haven't stayed up with the all latest bandwidth requirements I was pretty sure uncompressed was still out of the realm of most normal systems/storage. I'm also aware of the various codecs to some extent and their advantages/disadvantages in relation to HDV as I work a lot with the HVX200 and DVCPro HD codecs as well. Much of the talk earlier centered around whether the HV20 outputs 4:4:4 uncompressed or 4:2:2 uncompressed which is reality isn't as critical in my mind as the codec ingested to/edited with. I think it's safe to say that working with uncompressed in either format will be a challenge.

[Lee Wilson]

Originally Posted by Rich Dykmans

Also I'm curious Lee, how are you currently delivering those short spots you mentioned earlier?

I deliver all my work as Animation codec set at full quality (uncompressed) with 48khz 16 bit stereo sound, I have done it this way for years.

This is then usually dumped to digi-beta (not by me).

To 'proof' (and view) a project I am working on, I render to PhotoJpeg with the quality set to 99 (100 pushes the file into 4:4:4 and it size leaps up) - a 1920*1080p @ 25fps play back perfectly off my 7200/FW800 La Cie.

[Lee Wilson]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

Uncompressed HD needs a bandwidth of about 120 MB/S. A 2 drive raid just will not do it. You may get a few seconds (usually up to 5) on an empty raid but it just isn't fast enough. You need at least a 4 SATA raid in order to work with uncompressed HD and even then you may only be able to get to 50% full before you start dropping frames. FW800 only has a bandwidth of about 60MB/S so it will never be able to handle uncompressed HD. Lightly compressed jpeg HD on the other hand will work perfectly and should even give you multiple streams of it during editing.

The whole point of Intensity is not so much capturing uncompressed but being able to choice how to compress the video. It gives us options so we are not limited to just to HDV. The card itself is uncompressed because that is the best starting point to compress video from. From there you can either keep it uncompressed or choose some other format. I'm sure most people will find the jpeg codec to be almost perfect and find little reason to ever use uncompressed unless you realy had a good reason to. I myself am not sure if I would use uncompressed. I have tested out the jpeg codec and it has an insane amount of quality for such a small file size. Just think of it like jpeg compression for still images because it is pretty much exacty that. With jpeg compression most of the time we can get a 10:1 compression ratio and we cannot really see the difference on those still images. The jpeg video codec in variable so it is hard to pinpoint the datarate but it is around 12 MB/S or a 10:1 compression ratio.

I agree with pretty much all that is said here, although we might want to make a distinction between live action footage/Editing and FX/Motion graphic work, in the case of the latter uncompressed might often be desirable.

In FX/Motion graphics files are often much shorter and worked on uncompressed and then rendered off only to view - if all looks good I then render a uncompressed version for the client - which will be put onto digi-beta.

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Lee Wilson

I agree with pretty much all that is said here, although we might want to make a distinction between live action footage/Editing and FX/Motion graphic work, in the case of the latter uncompressed might often be desirable.

In FX/Motion graphics files are often much shorter and worked on uncompressed and then rendered off only to view - if all looks good I then render a uncompressed version for the client - which will be put onto digi-beta.

I totally agree with you there. I am a visual effects artist and I usually work with uncompressed SD. If you need uncompressed the beauty of HDMI and Intensity is that we can get uncompressed. With that said however I know a lot of sweet keying projects that were done with DV footage and the jpeg codec blows DV way out of the water. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see an indy pull off an amazing project with just using the jpeg codec.

I have done some tests of the jpeg codec over the weekend and it really is amazing. I rendered some stuff from 3D Studio Max to create an uncompressed 1920x1080 segment and converted it to jpeg and compared the two by switching the top layer off and on in After Effects and they were very close. There was only a tiny bit of noise in sharp edges which was pretty hard to see when viewed at a 1:1 ratio. When zoomed in 400% percent you could see it a little bit more but for the file being 1:16th the filesize of the uncompressed version this was amazing. Of course I will have to test this out on some real world footage to see how it holds up.