Intensity HV20 Footage

[Derek Green]

So I had a chance to shoot some greenscreen tests tonight with the Intensity and will be posting the video and pics asap.

My initial observations of the different shooting options I tried:

1. Uncompressed

No brainer, it looks the best, but not over NEOHD by as much as you'd think. Unfortunately it's just not an economic reality to shoot uncompressed. You'd probably be much better off saving all the money you'd spend on storage and buying a mini Red Camera when they come out. I don't have a raid setup so I was only able to get about 8 seconds of video before the recording stopped.

2. NEOHD

Looks really, really good. Gives the uncompressed footage a real run for it's money. Seriously, you have to blow it up to 200% to see any real difference and even then it's just a fraction of a bit more smudgy then the uncompressed but to even see that little difference you have to squint at a spot and flip the images back and forth.

3. NEOHDV

Really nice, and actually pretty close to the NEOHD, not quite as sharp but very close to it's big brother in quality. If you read this post initially I said it wasn't worth the money but I was wrong as that was based off a bad screenshot. If you don't care about working in 10bit with NEOHD this would be a great choice.

4. MJPEG

Obvious signs of JPEG compression. It's free with the card so you can't complain much.

5. HDV

Good ol' HDV. All the options above blow this codec away as you'll see by looking at the images. Seriously, the HDV looks like it is out of focus when compared to the others it is so much softer. I'd really LOVE to see this codec replaced by NEOHD on all cameras...

CONCLUSION

NEOHD is a winner. If you're going to be buying the Intensity card for capturing video I really think it's the best solution. Of course, these are just my opinions I know everyone has different tastes. Soon you'll be able to download the pics and footage and see if you agree with me or not.

[Robert Ducon]

Thanks for your input - NeoHD sounds great for a compressed codec.

Over HDV, sure, I'd choose NeoHDV. But only 1440 res? Not so hot if from an original 1920x1080 source (uncompressed). MJPEG does have those artifacts and isn't an option for CC work IMO.

Now if only NeoHD actually worked on my Mac...

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Thanks for this. Could you post some stills from your tests to give a better idea of what to expect from these options? any idea how the realtime encoding system requirements for Blackmagic MJPEG differ from neohd? does blackmagic have no extra settings for increasing bitrate or decreasing cpu requirements?

[David Newman]

I would like to see images are well. The CineForm codec is designed for grading, so if you intend a lot of that it is a good reason to avoid MJPEG compression artifacts. The question is whether the HV20 can resolve more then 1440 horizontal lines. Bayer sensors can only approach their native resolution with advanced debayer algorithms, which the HV20 is unlikely to have. There may not be any addition information in the 1920 vs 1440 images, just the noise of JPEG ringing may make it look sharper (http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut.../sharpness.htm -- check the bottom image for what I mean.) That said NEO HD is going to be the best overal performer.

[Derek Green]

Originally Posted by Noah Yuan-Vogel

Thanks for this. Could you post some stills from your tests to give a better idea of what to expect from these options? any idea how the realtime encoding system requirements for Blackmagic MJPEG differ from neohd? does blackmagic have no extra settings for increasing bitrate or decreasing cpu requirements?

Blackmagic has no extra settings. You have 2 choices uncompressed or MJPEG, that's it.
I'm not sure of the different system requirements between the two, but it's safe to say if you can do one, you can do the other.


Footage is here:
http://www.hv20.dreamhosters.com/

User: canon
PW: hv20

You'll need to UNRAR some of the files.
There's a Photoshop file that contains all the screenshots. I recommend downloading this file, but if you don't have Photoshop there's a TIFF file containing the screenshots in TIFF format.

There is a file called Video which contains all the videos. I recommend downloading this as it is smaller than downloading the videos individually but if you only want to see a specific video they are there by themselves too.

One quirk I noticed is the MJPEG footage is fine until you bring it into Aftereffects. Aftereffects flips it upside down for some reason so you will have to reflip it if you're using AE.

Warning though, these are large files and may take awhile to download. A couple of the larger files haven't finished uploading. They should be done in about 60 minutes.

[Derek Green]

Originally Posted by David Newman

I would like to see images are well. The CineForm codec is designed for grading, so if you intend a lot of that it is a good reason to avoid MJPEG compression artifacts. The question is whether the HV20 can resolve more then 1440 horizontal lines. Bayer sensors can only approach their native resolution with advanced debayer algorithms, which the HV20 is unlikely to have. There may not be any addition information in the 1920 vs 1440 images, just the noise of JPEG ringing may make it look sharper (http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut.../sharpness.htm -- check the bottom image for what I mean.) That said NEO HD is going to be the best overal performer.

It's hard to say but from my eyes it is capturing the full 1920. Even if it's just upscaling from 1440, it does such a good job and makes the image so much sharper that it's worth it.

[David Newman]

While I prepared to disagree with that last statement, I will need to see the images first. Unfortunately the log-in doesn't work.

[Mike Thomann]

I would be a little disappointed if there was no possible way to get 1920. Most people would have to admit that cute 1920 x 1080 HD CMOS sticker left them all but excited to think they could somehow get 1920 x 1080 HD video. When viewing the frames side by side zoomed at the pixel level in Photoshop, one should be able to detect a 25% loss of horizontal pixels that have been upscaled to 1920 next to a supposedly original full 1920. I'd like to check it out but I can't log in either...

[Rob Robinson]

Log in not working...

[Thomas Smet]

The resolution of the chip does not reflect the resolving detail of any camera. A camera can have a true 1920x1080 sensor but there are many other issues that mean the actual image doesn't have that level of detail. Like David said a single chip camera will never ever resolve the exact amount of detail as one would expect without some really advanced processing. That is just the nature of a single chip design because the color pixels have to alternate so the in between pixels are interpolated in some way.

Others factors include lens quality and the phyiscal size of the chip itself.

Any type of interlaced video is also filtered to reduce aliased edges and flicker. So even if you had a perfect camera with a perfect chip with a perfect lens you still end up getting a image that is slightly filtered. If it was not filtered it would actually look pretty bad.

With that said that HV20 does have a true 1920x1080 pixel chip and 1920x1080 pixels are processed in the DSP. The detail level of the HV20 is amazing but no HD camera even the XDCAMHD or Cinealta cameras resolve a perfect 1920x1080 pixels.

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

The login worked fine for me. Certainly interesting seeing this comparison. Thanks for going to all the trouble to provide us with those samples. I've only looked at the tiffs since I havent had time to download the videos. For some reason, MJPEG seems to have some interlaced artifacting, but none of the other samples seem to... What was your workflow for arriving at these. Why would there by interlaced artifacting on only the MJPEG? I imagine that wouldnt help the compression artifacting since it introduces some extra fine detail. perhaps the blackmaging MJPEG is interlaced-only? compressing in fields even on progressive video? was the original uncompressed footage inverse telecined to 24fps before all compression?

[Giovanny Canales]

This way worked for me:

User: canon
PW: hv20

[David Newman]

It seems you may have messed up the scaling on the NEO HDV .TIF as it is soft vertically, and we don't scale in that direction. If you compare http://www.miscdata.com/downloads/NEOHDV1920.png with your uncompressed and MJPEG, you will find it superior to MJPEG and nearly as good as NEO HD. I generated this file form the CineForm 1440x1080 MOV. Not that I don't want everyone to consider NEO HD, yet this comsumer camera only really needed NEO HDV to capture all the detail it can resolve. NEO HD should be for those who need 1920x1080 10-bit in their workflow.

[Derek Green]

Originally Posted by David Newman

It seems you may have messed up the scaling on the NEO HDV .TIF as it is soft vertically, and we don't scale in that direction. If you compare http://www.miscdata.com/NEOHDV1920.png with your uncompressed and MJPEG, you will find it superior to MJPEG and nearly as good as NEO HD. I generated this file form the CineForm 1440x1080 MOV. Not that I don't want everyone to consider NEO HD, yet this comsumer camera only really needed NEO HDV to capture all the detail it can resolve. NEO HD should be for those who need 1920x1080 10-bit in their workflow.

David, sorry I can't get your link to work. How do you recommend converting 1440 to 1920 for highest quality? I was putting the footage on a 1920 square pixel comp in aftereffects and then exporting the image. I'd like to redo my screengrabs if there's a better way.

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

I was surprised by the poor quality of the NEO HDV sample, so it wouldnt be impossible there was a workflow problem, although the same goes for MJPEG. And david, your link doesnt seem to work.