The Panasonic TM900 Users Thread

[Andy Wilkinson]

Thanks Dave. I read on another web forum that a number of TM 900 users have indicated that it does NOT suffer from the "bondi blue" effect that the TM700 had - but have not had the time (or weather!) to be able to confirm that personally.

Also, a question that TM700 (etc.) owners might be able to answer easily - since the lens and much else is the same on the TM900 (etc.). If I buy filters (ND, polarizer etc.) will these cameras vignette on full wide?

[Claire Watson]

Originally Posted by Phil Lee

I have no problems editing in Sony MovieStudio although there isn't an easy way to get the 50p footage back out except for Sony uncompressed and using something else to encode to more manageable file sizes.

Always shooting in 50p here as well, the progressive frames (much easier for the encoder to compress) and higher bit-rates produce superb pictures. Even going down to 50i for Blu-ray produces better results than having recorded in 50i originally. Plus recording 50p gives the options of exporting out as 720/50p, 1080/25p, and SD at 576/25p as required.

To export out at 25p you need to set Sony Vegas to undersample the clips at 0.5, otherwise Sony Vegas merges 2 frames to make 1 which loses the resolution, by setting undersample to 0.5 it skips everyother frame and 25p looks stunning, accepting the limitations of the slower frame rate.

Regards

Phil

Hi Phil,

Just a thought, have you explored the mpeg2 output options available to you in Sony Vegas? In the trial version of Edius 6 I am currently testing (and thinking about upgrading to from Edius 5), it's exporter options allow me to make MPEG2 settings to cope with the TM900's 50P format. I set frame rate to 50fps progressive, video profile to MP@HL, Video Bitrate 50.0 Mbps and Audio Bitrate 385.0 bps (2 channel).

Okay, I cannot put this on Blue-ray since it's not in the specs but hopefully it will be included some day soon but until then I can enjoy them streaming to my plasma tv in the lounge via my PS3 which handles the 50P nicely and the files are not too large to store until that time. Perhaps other devices can play 50P HD MPEG files, not sure but I know lots of folk have a PS3.

I would check out what Vegas allows you to do in it's MPEG2 settings as this would avoid the need for you to export uncompressed, they must be huge files I think.

[Dave Jervis]

Originally Posted by Andy Wilkinson

.................Also, a question that TM700 (etc.) owners might be able to answer easily - since the lens and much else is the same on the TM900 (etc.). If I buy filters (ND, polarizer etc.) will these cameras vignette on full wide?

I have not noticed any vignetting from the use of a single filter at max. wide, but I haven't been using the "lens hood" ring at the same time on the assumption that it might well cause problems. ( I have not used or done tests on this at extremes of focus and in macro modes.) Highly respected people on other forums question the value of ever using an ND on these cameras......

dave

[Dan Carter]

Originally Posted by Andy Wilkinson

Thanks Dave. I read on another web forum that a number of TM 900 users have indicated that it does NOT suffer from the "bondi blue" effect that the TM700 had - but have not had the time (or weather!) to be able to confirm that personally.

Also, a question that TM700 (etc.) owners might be able to answer easily - since the lens and much else is the same on the TM900 (etc.). If I buy filters (ND, polarizer etc.) will these cameras vignette on full wide?

Andy,

I've used polarizers and ND filters full wide with no vignetting on the TM700. However, if you stack the lens hood on the filter it will.

Lately, I've been using no filters in the Arizona sun with no ill effects.

[Andy Wilkinson]

Thanks all. Interesting - I'll stall on buying any filters for a while, especially until I get used to the cam, and then decide what to do.

Last night I read some interesting discussions (also involving Claire I think) on dvdoctor forum about the fact that the TM900 (and indeed most if not all small modern cams) actually have a small "crude" ND filter which is automatically placed in the light path as needed, i.e. in order to prevent the diffraction softening that would otherwise occur as the iris narrows. You learn something new every day!

One other thing. The battery (the supplied small one) seems to be lasting for absolutely ages from when I first fully charged it - which I always do before turning any new kit on with battery power. Not been using the cam continuously so don't know exactly how long it's lasted - but worth a mention I thought.

I'm off to Scotland soon and will also take the TM900. Hope to have some fun with it/spend time to get to know it better as and when time allows around what I'm working on up there.

Keep the great info coming in the meantime!

[Phil Lee]

Hi

Originally Posted by Claire Watson

Hi Phil,

Just a thought, have you explored the mpeg2 output options available to you in Sony Vegas? In the trial version of Edius 6 I am currently testing (and thinking about upgrading to from Edius 5), it's exporter options allow me to make MPEG2 settings to cope with the TM900's 50P format. I set frame rate to 50fps progressive, video profile to MP@HL, Video Bitrate 50.0 Mbps and Audio Bitrate 385.0 bps (2 channel).

Okay, I cannot put this on Blue-ray since it's not in the specs but hopefully it will be included some day soon but until then I can enjoy them streaming to my plasma tv in the lounge via my PS3 which handles the 50P nicely and the files are not too large to store until that time. Perhaps other devices can play 50P HD MPEG files, not sure but I know lots of folk have a PS3.

I would check out what Vegas allows you to do in it's MPEG2 settings as this would avoid the need for you to export uncompressed, they must be huge files I think.

On Sony MovieStudio any attempt to output at 50 pusing the Mainconcept MPEG-2 settings fails with an undetermined error.

The only way I've found of outputting 50p at 1920x1080 is to use the Sony YUV uncompressed codec then use something else to encode it. Yes they are big files but I have a 1TB drive, and it's only a temporary intermediate.

I'm not sure if this is a limitation of Sony MoveStudio that is lifted with Sony Vegas.

Regards

Phil

[Andrew Clark]

Just a few questions....

- Image Stabilization - This can this be turned "off" correct?

- Batteries - Are you able to find additional batteries readily and easily? (Not the Chinese knock-offs; the Panny ones)

- Lens / Camera Jiggle - There was talk about this in another forum that when some users lock down their cams on a tripod and pointed straight down or up, that the image would "jiggle". Note, that this was with the TM700 series, not the TM900. Any of you TM900 owners notice this?

- What are you using to edit the 1080/60p footage?

- Finished Project - When you are finished editing, are you able to save and output the 1080/60p footage to a HDD or Flash Drive and then connect those to a either a HDTV, BR player or Media Player to view on a HDTV?

[Claire Watson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

Just a few questions....

- Image Stabilization - This can this be turned "off" correct?

Yes

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

- Batteries - Are you able to find additional batteries readily and easily? (Not the Chinese knock-offs; the Panny ones)

Not looked yet

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

- Lens / Camera Jiggle - There was talk about this in another forum that when some users lock down their cams on a tripod and pointed straight down or up, that the image would "jiggle". Note, that this was with the TM700 series, not the TM900. Any of you TM900 owners notice this?

Not seen on TM900

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

- What are you using to edit the 1080/60p footage?

Edius 6

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

- Finished Project - When you are finished editing, are you able to save and output the 1080/60p footage to a HDD or Flash Drive and then connect those to a either a HDTV, BR player or Media Player to view on a HDTV?

Yes

[Andrew Clark]

Thanks for your replies Claire.

How is Edius 6 in editing the 1080/60p footage? Do you have to transcode first?

I was thinking about getting either Edius 6, CS5 PPro or Vegas Pro 10. Have you worked with any of the other NLE's?

[Claire Watson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

How is Edius 6 in editing the 1080/60p footage? Do you have to transcode first?

I was thinking about getting either Edius 6, CS5 PPro or Vegas Pro 10. Have you worked with any of the other NLE's?

Hi Andrew,

I find Edius 6 can edit 50P footage from my TM900 just fine on my i7 920 2.67GHz computer, no need to convert first. I do have a fair bit of experience in using other NLE's but not recently, so cannot comment on them other than from what I hear Edius currently has the edge working with 1080/50P AVCHD.

The reason I say this is because with Edius you get to edit and preview in full screen with full quality, not a reduced quality in a smaller window which is what some NLE's have to do if you want to play through highly compressed media without frame drop, also with Edius you don't need a CUDA graphics card to get this high level of performance.

Having said that, I do find the TM900's 50P footage does make Edius work harder than usual but it can still be edited fluidly, none of that "dragging a spoon through treacle" while scrubbing the timeline and it plays in real time without frame drop or rendering. This seems to hold until I add more than two layers of TM900 footage with titles, eg picture in picture, then Edius falters and needs that section to be rendered taking 3 or 4 seconds before moving on, everything else works in real time.

I think this is pretty good considering it's a full HD AVCHD 1080/50P project setting, not easy peasy 50i or 25P.

Like some other NLE's Edius 6 can also use the second computer monitor for full screen preview but with Edius 6 this preview remains full quality which is nice, but for proper YUV output to go to an HDTV where one can see exactly how the final video will look for the end user, one of Grass Valley's hardware cards is a great option. I have the older 'NX' card (now end of line), replaced by the newer 'Spark'card but sadly, after getting the TM900 I found out none of the affordable GV cards can output1080/50P, only the 'STORM 3G Elite' card will do this at a cost here in the UK of over £2000! ...so in 1080/50P projects mode I just use the computer screen for preview.

As I posted earlier, Edius 6 can output the 1080/50P project in MPEG2 (you just select 50P in the settings) which is great as lots of players accept MPEG and it's small enough to be easily archived however you will need to check the player does accept and play 50P MPEG2, for instance the PS3 does without frame drop provided all PS3 video enhancements are turned off.

One last thing to bear in mind is that having got this far, not all HDTV's accept 1080/50P. For instance my 2 year old Panasonic 42" plasma does while my 4 year old Panasonic LCD HDTV does not so look in the instruction book, hopefully it will list the input signals that can be displayed. It doesn't necessarily mean 1080/50P won't play at all but the TV will de-interlace it, loosing half the vertical resolution.. also if the HDTV only has a 720 panel and not Full HD then you might see artifacts and line twitter on such as brickwork since the TM900 produces very finely detailed video in 50P..

In my experience you need to maintain a 1080/P workflow from start to finish to see the final edited result properly and for me this costs more than the camera, all this is not cheap! I'm hoping the new format becomes common place soon, gets added to the Blue-ray spec and becomes more easy peasy.

[Andrew Clark]

Now if Panny would make the HMC150 do 1080/60p....that would be a sweet companion to this TM900.

[Phil Lee]

Hi

There are some bondi-blue accusations being made towards to the 900 series now which I found on YouTube, mainly around a clip posted by Simply DV here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap7EQ2KEpyM, watch the clip at around 24 seconds, the sky has a green/blue look.

If you screen grab and sample the colours to remove monitors and eyes from the equation, it's easy to see the problem relates to over-exposure of the sky. Both the Blue and the Green channels are clipped at 255, but with there being little red in the sky, that hasn't been clipped, so you are getting recorded values of Green and Blue at 255, and Red at around 180 to 200. Mix those together and what do you get, a light "bondi-blue". What the camcorder is seeing is more like Blue at 500, Green at 300, and Red at 200, but of course can't record those values, so has to clip Blue and Green at 255.

This is probably testament to the 3 chips, as I would strongly expect a single 1 chip with its greater colour interpolation would have blown red out as well, giving white sky, which no one would complain about.

Answers to this clip would have been to over-expose a bit more, to blow red out and making the sky white, or to use a graduated ND filter to darken the sky to stop blue and green becoming clipped at 255 and so give an accurate colour. Further in there is a clip with more sky where the exposure system hasn't clipped the sky and that shows a good sky colour.

So while I agree the sky in places in that clip is a bit green/blue, I can see why it is, and can't see how the camera could do any better given those circumstances. Perhaps intelligent contrast (we don't know if that was enabled or not) might have helped. This also might explain a post I saw where it was reported sky became blue on the TM700 when using the extended colour space (x.v. colour) direct from the camera to a compatible HDMI TV, but looked bondi blue when viewed on a computer in 0-255 colour space.

There certainly is an issue with the older series where blues tend to shift after a white balance, but I'm beginning to wonder if a lot of bondi-blue issues which almost always relate to bright sky, isn't simply the sky being over-exposed too much (or not enough to give white). Factor in people pointing the camera at an all blue sky which when auto white balance is in use and would cause a shift of hue due to the frame being all one colour, it's almost a case of the bondi-blue issue being made more of an issue simply because people are causing it by looking for it.

I would have thought this issue is apparent on other cameras (especially 3 chips) as well?

Regards

Phil

[Andy Wilkinson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Clark

Now if Panny would make the HMC150 do 1080/60p....that would be a sweet companion to this TM900.

Who knows, maybe NAB will see further adoption of 1080p50/60 across the Panasonic line-up, hopefully!

Just got back from Scotland. Used the TM900 a lot. Still loving it!

[Andrew Clark]

Yes 1080/60p is definitely the way to go and hopefully will be the "de-facto" standard for future film making. 24p is so .... 1900's!!

Also, I don't think the current line up of video enabled DSLR's will be able to handle this frame rate; they'd probably melt in about a minute of filming.

[Andy Wilkinson]

Here is the Slashcam assessment on the TM900 (German camcorder review site). I have mixed feelings about some of their tests (as I've mentioned before elsewhere on here) but judge for yourselves their technical review, resolution charts, low light tests etc.

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