New star rises over digital cinema – noX HD/2K

[Greg Hartzell]

Ah yes, it's not about counting pixels, it's about making pixels count. All this talk about RED's advantages has been in the numbers: Price, Resolution, Bit depth, etc. NOX is claiming that the numbers don't matter, it's the pictures that do.

I can't claim to notice a very noticeable difference between d-9 10 bit 4.2.2. and dvc pro 8 bit 4.1.1.

This is not to say that the d-9 wouldn't be more suitable for intense effects or compositing, but bit rate aside, either format, when exposed properly is going to produce a beautiful image.

On a similar note, I have an SACD player and honestly, I have some extremely well recorded cd's that do sound better than some reprints I have on SACD.

Sometimes the numbers do not tell the whole story.

Maybe the numbers don't matter, maybe 8-bit 2k raw does offer a significant workflow advantage over 10bit 4k compressed. I don't know, but I haven't seen any post by a NOX rep that would indicate what they mean by saying: "...it's about making pixels count." And neither have they explained anything about their workflow, other than the fact that they have one. This won't be the be all end all camera, we all can agree with that, but whose to say that there aren't a few skilled DPs out their that wouldn't like to give this thing a run.

[Glenn Chan]

If you look at sample images from both cameras, Red to me looks better in particular aspects.

The debayering in Red is significantly better. It doesn't have the weird zippering artifacts that the NoX images show. And the bad thing about the zippering is that any keying or secondary color correction will pick that up.

Noise-wise, the Red footage looks cleaner.

Red of course has more resolution. Nox does looks sharper, while the Red looks blurry at 4K. When you downsample I think this difference goes away.

Otherwise, the images look similar to me (aesthetically).

2- But to get back on topic... I think people would like to know what differentiates Nox from its competitors? (You don't have to mention particular competitors.) This question wasn't quite answered, other perhaps than to say that the footage is easy to grade (but it looks like one of the competitor's products is even easier, so...).

Q: Not to be an ogre but how is this any different then Red or the Silicon Imaging camera?

A: We don’t arrogate to judge cameras from other manufacturers. This should be done by the people working with these cameras. Every camera has its pros and cons, so the user finally decides which one is the best for his requirements. Let’s wait until several filmmakers worked with both cameras and how they assess them.

[Graeme Nattress]

Good points Glenn. The demosaicing is indeed less than perfect, and coupled with lack of the necessary optical low pass filter produces a range of artifacts that just don't look good. I'd be very keen to see some NOX images with an OLPF, or as raw so that I can demosaic them myself.

Graeme