Sanyo HD1 footage!

Emmanuel Bertin · February 25th, 2006, 06:58 PM

I wonder if anyone else has noticed this:
In all the 720p samples from the HD1 that have been posted on the web so far (from various people), one can see some pretty disturbing jaggies on all sharp transitions oriented along the lower left - upper right direction. This does not happen along the upper left - lower right direction. This is especially obvious on the branches in the "OC3.MP4" clip posted by Joseph in this thread.
May it is a bug with the MP4 codecs I have on Windows, although I have the same problem when watched with VLC, which comes with its own codecs.
Or could it be some bug in the handling of the DCT coefficients inside the HD1?

Luc-Henri Barthelemy · February 26th, 2006, 04:15 AM

Emmanuel, for me (Mac user) branches comming from lower right going to upper left are saw-toothed, branches lower left to upper right are OK !
It is obvious at the begining of the ezsm07.mov clip, looking at the perpendicular & oblique white wood stuff.
Mac-PC antagonism ? ;-)
I shall try tomorow with a new Intel Mac (may be its an endianess pb of mp4 encoder).
Luc-Henri

Wayne Morellini · February 26th, 2006, 05:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Graham Jones Senior

I'll hear about software that will forge a good PAL output, I'm sure.

Anybody have any ideas, please speak up.

With these cameras, I often am interested if there is an frame synchronisation input, or frame advance/snapshot feature that can be used to lower frame rate into 25p territory. Does anybody know anything?

Thanks

Wayne.

Marc Louis · February 26th, 2006, 05:36 AM

hi this is my first message here :)

i'm very interested in buying the sanyo HD1 but here is my main concern :

my actual camcorder (a sony) records mp4 files just like the HD1, and i use MP4CAM2AVI to convert (very easily) those mp4 files into AVI in order to be able to do some editing via Windows movie maker (yeah i know it's cheap but unlike most of you guys i do Video editing mainly as a hobby so i don't wanna buy a specific application like Vegas).

here is the main problem : the many MP4 files from the HD1 that i downloaded from this thread (thank u Joseph :)) seem to be kinda difficult to convert to AVI : i manage to convert them through MP4CAM2AVI , but then when i wanna play the .avi files through Windows Media player it won't even play and then would crash the Windows player (one funny thing is that as soon as i put the mouse click on the name of the .avi file -without even opening the file- it crashes all Windows explorer windows) !!!

I tried to read them directly through Windows movie maker but then what i see is an un-watchable video footage with a kinda green filter all along...

thinking that this was due to windows media player i tried to read those same .avi files through another player (Divx Concverter) but the same thing happens : it crash the player...

i don't know where the problem come from : is it due to MP4CAM2AVI which is not designed to well convert HD MP4 files or is it due to some codec that i would need in my system ?

I even downloaded a codec i think called H264 ATI but it won't help anything (this codec just made it possible to read the MP4 files directly with Quicktime instead of VLC player but it has no effect regarding the converted .avi files) !!!

please help me cause i have no use to buy this sexy camcorder if i can't do any editing with it !!!

thanx

kony

Luc-Henri Barthelemy · February 26th, 2006, 06:03 AM

Bundle Software user guide page 25 : (Photo Explorer)

"Convert the format of video clip data
Video clips (QuickTime format) that were shot with your digital camera can be
converted to other formats, such as AVI and MPEG.

For questions about Photo Explorer
Further information about Photo Explorer can be found at
http://www.ulead.com "

Luc-Henri

Marc Louis · February 26th, 2006, 06:13 AM

actually with MP4CAM2AVI (which is a free and great app) i can already and without any loss of quality convert all MP4 files to .avi files...my concern is about the fact that for mp4 files created by the sanyo HD1, the newly created .avi files crash all the players i tried to read them with...

and i guess there is a codec problem or something (i have WMP10)

Luc-Henri Barthelemy · February 26th, 2006, 07:27 AM

IMO, you have to try with the software provided with the HD1 (Unlead Photo Explorer). It is supposed to work ;-) as described in the user guide.
I think you can get a free trial for it on the unlead www server or ask to Joseph.
May be its a kind of mp4 encoding not yet supported by MP4CAM2AVI.

Luc-Henri

Marc Louis · February 26th, 2006, 07:38 AM

ok merci l'ami !

but i tried to download the free trials of Ulead photo explorer and Ulead Video Studio but for some reason, despite multiples tries it won't let me download (it says busy network since 1 hour !!

i did register to the Ulead site as you need to do that to download...sent an email to the site.

Joseph did u try to convert you MP4 files into .avi yet ?

do they work with Windows media player ?

Steven Mingam · February 26th, 2006, 10:33 AM

@Marc : you should try some well know and robust (and open source) MP4 tools like mp4box or mp4UI, or perhaps the latest alpha AVIMuxGui, which should give you more flexibilty and information about the mp4 files you're trying to convert.

i'm seeing that mp4cam2avi is hosted on sourceforge so i suppose it use the gpack library like the softwares cited above, but since september 2005, there might have been some updates.

@Jospeh (or anybody with a HD1 ;)) : Could you take some shoot while running or something with the HD1 ? i want to use it for some sport shooting so i would like to see how the compression engine behave with high moving scenes and so far we only have seen still or slow scenes. Thanks for spending your precious time for us !

Graham Jones · February 26th, 2006, 10:39 AM

With earlier Xacti models MP4CAM2AVI was considered preferable to the bunlded ULEAD software for converting - because MP4CAM2AVI did not re-encode, just repackaged.

The bundled ULEAD did re-encode and caused image degradation...

It's covered in a thread I read earlier today at Xacti.co.uk

http://xacti.proboards3.com/index.cg...ead=1080897747

It's unfortunate, therefore, to hear that MP4CAM2AVI is thrown once the MP4 is HD.

I guess that British site will be a good place to watch for finding out how to burn Pal DVDs from the 30p footage.. once it's users get their hands on the HD1.

Emmanuel Bertin · February 26th, 2006, 10:55 AM

Luc-Henry:
yes, lots of jaggies on branches in the "\" direction. Also with rooftops, or the cap of the child eating the icecream. I doubt that endianity is responsible for such an issue. It could be a trick to save bandwidth, as if resolution was halved in the "/" direction. But to me it rather looks like if 2 DCT components had been mistakably swapped in the HD1 encoder. I think I will wait for this issue to be solved before ordering this little gem! Is there a way to contact Sanyo support about this?

Luc-Henri Barthelemy · February 26th, 2006, 02:00 PM

Emmanuel, I understand that I have the same artifact than you. So no reasons to incriminate the PCs hardware.
I don't know if it is possible to fix a bug of the mp4 chip embedded with the HD1. Is there some kind of firmware update for it ? Or, if the guilty code is hardware coded, is there a software tier-level to provide a turnaround ?
I doubt than Sanyo engineers could have been ignoring this mistake. I am far to be a compression expert, but, cannot this to be an artifact related to motion compensation fonction (I try to remember where I read it can give some aliasing artifacts ) ?

Luc-Henri

Marc Louis · February 26th, 2006, 02:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Mingam

@Marc : you should try some well know and robust (and open source) MP4 tools like mp4box or mp4UI, or perhaps the latest alpha AVIMuxGui, which should give you more flexibilty and information about the mp4 files you're trying to convert.

i'm seeing that mp4cam2avi is hosted on sourceforge so i suppose it use the gpack library like the softwares cited above, but since september 2005, there might have been some updates.

@Jospeh (or anybody with a HD1 ;)) : Could you take some shoot while running or something with the HD1 ? i want to use it for some sport shooting so i would like to see how the compression engine behave with high moving scenes and so far we only have seen still or slow scenes. Thanks for spending your precious time for us !

Hi and thanx, i looked on the sourceforge site and the version of MP4CAM2AVI i have is the latest (2.27)...

Thanx Graham for the comments, i will ask the question on this british site also...yeah it's very unfortunate that the mp4 from HD1 don't work with MP4CAM2AVI , the BIG advantage of MP4CAM2AVI is really the fact that there were no loss in image quality...and it is so fast to convert, really unbeatable on that field !

by the way , i tried to convert an mp4 from the Xacti C6 with MP4CAM2AVI and it worked so i guess it has to do with the HD1 files...i guess if i can't solve this problem i will have to buy the xacti C6 instead, but the optical zoom is only 5 X on the C6 (10 X on the HD1)

to come back on the Steven comment, yeah Joseph, as for now you have showed us numerous clips shot in very ideal (stabilized) conditions, but would you try to make some shootage in more normal (motion) conditions please, if you have any time.

Thanx

Emmanuel Bertin · February 26th, 2006, 05:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Luc-Henri Barthelemy

I doubt than Sanyo engineers could have been ignoring this mistake. I am far to be a compression expert, but, cannot this to be an artifact related to motion compensation fonction (I try to remember where I read it can give some aliasing artifacts ) ?
Luc-Henri

Well, it happens on perfectly static images (see the rooftops on OC2.MP4). And besides, I have never seen such a kind of strongly anisotropic artifacts on any MPEG-like codec so far. Have you? Moreover, it does not look like the ringing usually associated with heavy quantization of DCT coefficients.

Marc Louis · February 26th, 2006, 06:07 PM

i downloaded the trial version of Ulead video studio....awful application !

in regards of video editing, this thing is even slower than windows movie maker and seem a bit difficult to navigate...

regarding the ability to reckonize MP4 files, it's NO ! then i tried to input Sanyo HD1 avi files converted from MP4CAM2AVI into it but it crashed...

i didn't manage to see the way to convert mp4 to avi but it may be only available from the other application from Ulead (Photo Explorer which i didn't download)

anyway, stay away from Ulead Studio video, it will take more than 1 gigabyte from your hard drive and don't justify at any point this sacrifice !

i already removed it from my system !

Joseph how are u gonna edit all your HD1 files ??

February 25th, 2006, 06:58 PM	#316
Emmanuel Bertin New Boot Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Paris, France Posts: 14	HD1 artifacts I wonder if anyone else has noticed this: In all the 720p samples from the HD1 that have been posted on the web so far (from various people), one can see some pretty disturbing jaggies on all sharp transitions oriented along the lower left - upper right direction. This does not happen along the upper left - lower right direction. This is especially obvious on the branches in the "OC3.MP4" clip posted by Joseph in this thread. May it is a bug with the MP4 codecs I have on Windows, although I have the same problem when watched with VLC, which comes with its own codecs. Or could it be some bug in the handling of the DCT coefficients inside the HD1? Last edited by Emmanuel Bertin; February 25th, 2006 at 08:31 PM.

February 26th, 2006, 04:15 AM	#317
Luc-Henri Barthelemy Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Paris France Posts: 29	Bug ? Emmanuel, for me (Mac user) branches comming from lower right going to upper left are saw-toothed, branches lower left to upper right are OK ! It is obvious at the begining of the ezsm07.mov clip, looking at the perpendicular & oblique white wood stuff. Mac-PC antagonism ? ;-) I shall try tomorow with a new Intel Mac (may be its an endianess pb of mp4 encoder). Luc-Henri Last edited by Luc-Henri Barthelemy; February 26th, 2006 at 04:59 AM.

February 26th, 2006, 06:03 AM	#320
Luc-Henri Barthelemy Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Paris France Posts: 29	Avi Bundle Software user guide page 25 : (Photo Explorer) "Convert the format of video clip data Video clips (QuickTime format) that were shot with your digital camera can be converted to other formats, such as AVI and MPEG. For questions about Photo Explorer Further information about Photo Explorer can be found at http://www.ulead.com " Luc-Henri

February 26th, 2006, 06:13 AM	#321
Marc Louis Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: san francisco, ca Posts: 68	actually with MP4CAM2AVI (which is a free and great app) i can already and without any loss of quality convert all MP4 files to .avi files...my concern is about the fact that for mp4 files created by the sanyo HD1, the newly created .avi files crash all the players i tried to read them with... and i guess there is a codec problem or something (i have WMP10) Last edited by Marc Louis; February 26th, 2006 at 06:15 AM. Reason: mistake

February 26th, 2006, 07:27 AM	#322
Luc-Henri Barthelemy Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Paris France Posts: 29	Avi IMO, you have to try with the software provided with the HD1 (Unlead Photo Explorer). It is supposed to work ;-) as described in the user guide. I think you can get a free trial for it on the unlead www server or ask to Joseph. May be its a kind of mp4 encoding not yet supported by MP4CAM2AVI. Luc-Henri

February 26th, 2006, 05:36 AM	#319
Marc Louis Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: san francisco, ca Posts: 68	hi this is my first message here :) i'm very interested in buying the sanyo HD1 but here is my main concern : my actual camcorder (a sony) records mp4 files just like the HD1, and i use MP4CAM2AVI to convert (very easily) those mp4 files into AVI in order to be able to do some editing via Windows movie maker (yeah i know it's cheap but unlike most of you guys i do Video editing mainly as a hobby so i don't wanna buy a specific application like Vegas). here is the main problem : the many MP4 files from the HD1 that i downloaded from this thread (thank u Joseph :)) seem to be kinda difficult to convert to AVI : i manage to convert them through MP4CAM2AVI , but then when i wanna play the .avi files through Windows Media player it won't even play and then would crash the Windows player (one funny thing is that as soon as i put the mouse click on the name of the .avi file -without even opening the file- it crashes all Windows explorer windows) !!! I tried to read them directly through Windows movie maker but then what i see is an un-watchable video footage with a kinda green filter all along... thinking that this was due to windows media player i tried to read those same .avi files through another player (Divx Concverter) but the same thing happens : it crash the player... i don't know where the problem come from : is it due to MP4CAM2AVI which is not designed to well convert HD MP4 files or is it due to some codec that i would need in my system ? I even downloaded a codec i think called H264 ATI but it won't help anything (this codec just made it possible to read the MP4 files directly with Quicktime instead of VLC player but it has no effect regarding the converted .avi files) !!! please help me cause i have no use to buy this sexy camcorder if i can't do any editing with it !!! thanx kony

February 26th, 2006, 07:38 AM	#323
Marc Louis Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: san francisco, ca Posts: 68	ok merci l'ami ! but i tried to download the free trials of Ulead photo explorer and Ulead Video Studio but for some reason, despite multiples tries it won't let me download (it says busy network since 1 hour !! i did register to the Ulead site as you need to do that to download...sent an email to the site. Joseph did u try to convert you MP4 files into .avi yet ? do they work with Windows media player ?

February 26th, 2006, 10:33 AM	#324
Steven Mingam Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2004 Posts: 91	@Marc : you should try some well know and robust (and open source) MP4 tools like mp4box or mp4UI, or perhaps the latest alpha AVIMuxGui, which should give you more flexibilty and information about the mp4 files you're trying to convert. i'm seeing that mp4cam2avi is hosted on sourceforge so i suppose it use the gpack library like the softwares cited above, but since september 2005, there might have been some updates. @Jospeh (or anybody with a HD1 ;)) : Could you take some shoot while running or something with the HD1 ? i want to use it for some sport shooting so i would like to see how the compression engine behave with high moving scenes and so far we only have seen still or slow scenes. Thanks for spending your precious time for us !

February 26th, 2006, 10:39 AM	#325
Graham Jones Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Europe Posts: 489	With earlier Xacti models MP4CAM2AVI was considered preferable to the bunlded ULEAD software for converting - because MP4CAM2AVI did not re-encode, just repackaged. The bundled ULEAD did re-encode and caused image degradation... It's covered in a thread I read earlier today at Xacti.co.uk http://xacti.proboards3.com/index.cg...ead=1080897747 It's unfortunate, therefore, to hear that MP4CAM2AVI is thrown once the MP4 is HD. I guess that British site will be a good place to watch for finding out how to burn Pal DVDs from the 30p footage.. once it's users get their hands on the HD1. __________________ www.irishfilmmaker.com Last edited by Graham Jones; February 26th, 2006 at 11:16 AM.

February 26th, 2006, 10:55 AM	#326
Emmanuel Bertin New Boot Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Paris, France Posts: 14	HD1 bug Luc-Henry: yes, lots of jaggies on branches in the "\" direction. Also with rooftops, or the cap of the child eating the icecream. I doubt that endianity is responsible for such an issue. It could be a trick to save bandwidth, as if resolution was halved in the "/" direction. But to me it rather looks like if 2 DCT components had been mistakably swapped in the HD1 encoder. I think I will wait for this issue to be solved before ordering this little gem! Is there a way to contact Sanyo support about this?

February 26th, 2006, 02:00 PM	#327
Luc-Henri Barthelemy Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Paris France Posts: 29	Encoder bugs Emmanuel, I understand that I have the same artifact than you. So no reasons to incriminate the PCs hardware. I don't know if it is possible to fix a bug of the mp4 chip embedded with the HD1. Is there some kind of firmware update for it ? Or, if the guilty code is hardware coded, is there a software tier-level to provide a turnaround ? I doubt than Sanyo engineers could have been ignoring this mistake. I am far to be a compression expert, but, cannot this to be an artifact related to motion compensation fonction (I try to remember where I read it can give some aliasing artifacts ) ? Luc-Henri

February 26th, 2006, 06:07 PM	#330
Marc Louis Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: san francisco, ca Posts: 68	i downloaded the trial version of Ulead video studio....awful application ! in regards of video editing, this thing is even slower than windows movie maker and seem a bit difficult to navigate... regarding the ability to reckonize MP4 files, it's NO ! then i tried to input Sanyo HD1 avi files converted from MP4CAM2AVI into it but it crashed... i didn't manage to see the way to convert mp4 to avi but it may be only available from the other application from Ulead (Photo Explorer which i didn't download) anyway, stay away from Ulead Studio video, it will take more than 1 gigabyte from your hard drive and don't justify at any point this sacrifice ! i already removed it from my system ! Joseph how are u gonna edit all your HD1 files ??