HVX200 CCD specs?

[Steve Mullen]

Does anyone know the native aspect-ratio of the HVX200 CCDs?

The pixel aspect-ratio?

The number of H and V CCD elements without playing the Green-shift game?

[Chris Hurd]

Panasonic chooses not to release that information at this time, just like Canon chooses not to reveal the bit depth of the DSP on the XL H1. I don't think the U.S. marketing departments have any say on this policy. I believe these decisions, like the cameras, are made in Japan.

[Shannon Rawls]

I thought Canon freely said at the DVEXPO that the DSP is 8bit.

No?

- ShannonRawls.com

[Chris Hurd]

I thought that was the SDI ouptut, not the processor.

?

[Martin Doppelbauer]

My guess is Panasonic is keeping the specs a secret for a very good reason.
HVCPRO HD only records 1280 columns in 60i so probably the chip is doing just 1280x720. But we'll know for sure as soon as the first resolution chart shots are uploaded.
Martin

[Robert Graf]

The light sensitivity has already been announced.

The pixel count doesn't matter much because the *real* question is how well the camera resolves detail. While CCD resolution does have an impact on this ability, there are other factors that will degrade the camera's ability to resolve detail (and potentially in a big way). My advice is for people to shoot a resolution chart (properly), and see how the camera manages under actual stress tests.

Cheers,
Bob

[Steven Thomas]

Martin,
do a bit of searching here, DVXUSER and cow. This topic has been discussed heavily, not to say it's not important.

Myself, I could care less how they are acheiving it, just as long as it looks good. Jan from Panasonic has mentioned the in-house resolution chart numbers; although, this might of been a preproduction model.

I can't remember the numbers, although I believe it was stated as good as the Sony Z1, or better.

Steve

[Barlow Elton]

Originally Posted by Martin Doppelbauer

My guess is Panasonic is keeping the specs a secret for a very good reason.
HVCPRO HD only records 1280 columns in 60i so probably the chip is doing just 1280x720. But we'll know for sure as soon as the first resolution chart shots are uploaded.
Martin

After puzzling over footage and uprezzing 720p to 1080p, and looking at native 1080p, I think this is spot on. This camera is a Varicam lite, which is AWESOME, but it's pretty obvious to a lot of folks that the 1080p looks an awful lot like uprezzed 720p.

All that said, I am deeply in love with 60p. It's so crisp and lucid.

The low light noise does worry me a bit. I cranked the gain on the H1 and it was amazingly clean, and that camera is DEFINITELY better in low light, but at what cost? Is the HDV tradeoff worth it? One thing I hope to test in the H1 is it's noise suppression feature. It will be interesting to record this camera's SDI into a Decklink, trying lots of codecs.

The jury's still out...

[Petr Marusek]

Pixel shift generally increases resolution about 1.5x. DVCPRO HD 1080-60i records 1280x1080 pixels. That means that 853x720 pixel CCDs could be used with vertical and horizontal shift. Panasonic's 10x as expensive, when we add cost of lens, etc., model 400 is using 1280x720 chips for 1080-25p.

Progressive scan CCDs need 2x as much light. Assuming the same pixel light efficiency is achievable by Sony and Panasonic, the 853x720 progressive CCDs would produce nearly as good low light performance as Sony's Z1 960x1080 interlaced chips. Both cameras are rated 3 lux.

My guess is that Panasonic did the most to keep the low light performance high and used something like 853x720 pixel chips, which is fine. Until someone looks at the chips under a microscope, we may never know for sure.

Although most of us are courious, the only thing that really matters is performance. If Panasonic achieved it with native 1080p chips or with lower pixel count chips with pixel shift is not that important.

[Martin Doppelbauer]

The well respected German magazine "Videoaktiv Digital" has recently compared the Canon XL H1 (1440x1080 CCDs) and Sony Z1 (960x1080 CCDs). In their december/january 2006 issue they also published enlarged crops of some of the test charts they shot.

They found both vertical and horizontal resolution of the H1 around 800 lines per picture height (lph).

It is interesting to see that the horizontal resolution is already beyond the theoretical limit of the DVCPRO HD system used in Panasonic's HVX200 (which would be 1280/16x9 = 720 lph - not regarding the influence of the lens and picture postprocessing).

The Z1 was tested 610 lph horizontal and 750 lph vertical.
To me this shows that pixel shifting can hardly compensate for lack of native CCD resolution although the results must have been even lower without it (960/16x9 = 540 lph at most).

But then the Z1 is just half the price of an H1 (and street prices of the FX1 are just one third) so overall that seems pretty fair.

The first resolution figures published of the HVX200 are 700 lph horizontal and 750 lph vertical (see http://zinner.org/) which I personally find a little disappointing considering the HVX200 in working condition (i.e. including a set of 2 times 8 minutes P2 cards) carries about the same price tag as the XL H1. But there's no reference where the figures came from (official Panasonic ?).

[Michael Pappas]

Where are these res tests at? I looked at Zinner, but no luck in finding them...

[Tom Roper]

Martin, there's reason to be skeptical.

1.) Resolution gives a different result at any combination of zoom and aperture.

2.) But moreover, 800 lines horizontal implies a somewhat remarkable 98.8% efficiency since only 810 lines are possible for a 1440 sensor.

3.) Yet in the vertical, 800 lines only represents 74% efficiency for the same lens.

Unless you accept that the glass somehow suffers astigmatism in the vertical, it's a better idea to put your trust in the picture.

[Shannon Rawls]

Don't be disappointed Martin. I have a feeling the HVX-200 will do much better then Zinner claims it will.

- ShannonRawls.com

[Martin Doppelbauer]

Originally Posted by Tom Roper

Martin, there's reason to be skeptical.

1.) Resolution gives a different result at any combination of zoom and aperture.

2.) But moreover, 800 lines horizontal implies a somewhat remarkable 98.8% efficiency since only 810 lines are possible for a 1440 sensor.

3.) Yet in the vertical, 800 lines only represents 74% efficiency for the same lens.

Unless you accept that the glass somehow suffers astigmatism in the vertical, it's a better idea to put your trust in the picture.

1.) Yep - absolutely true. In another test with different apertures (http://www.repaire.net/site/tournage...YHD100_JVC.php ) the Z1 performed constant between full open and two third closed. Only apertures below f8 were somewhat reduced. You will find that the author of this test rates the Z1 much higher than the German magazine. But I have no similar tests of the XL H1 and the mag says nothing about the focal length and aperture they used in the tests.

2. and 3.) The drop in vertical resolution can be explained by the fact that the Canon records interlaced. Usually vertical filtering is needed on interlaced material to reduce flickering effects. 700 to 800 lph seems the typical vertical resolution for 1080i.

Here is where the magic of the HVX200 was ment to come into play. Panasonic says it's the first true progressive 1080p Handycam on the market. If that is true, vertical resolution should be in the area of 1000 lph.
But if it's only around 700 to 800 lph (or just uprezzed 720p) then the same resolution and the 25p frame rate could be achived from the Z1/FX1/XLH1 by simply deinterlacing 1080i material in postproduction.

So we are still waiting impatiently for the first published resolution chart shots ;-)

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Petr Marusek

Pixel shift generally increases resolution about 1.5x.


My guess is that Panasonic did the most to keep the low light performance high and used something like 853x720 pixel chips, which is fine.

Green pixel shift can give UP TO 1.5X only on static images that are of certain colors. That, of course, is a rez. chart and not real motion video. For this reason, Green-shift is a good way to slightly increase detail when the the CCDs are of the SAME resolution as the recording format.

It is not a good way to try to obtain the resolution for a format that has a much high rez. than the CCDs.


I believe the CCDs are 960x720 which matches the 720P DVCPRO HD codec. However, both the CCDs and the codec are under-sampling in terms of the ATSC 720p format which is 1280x720 and 720p HDV.

When it comes to the 1080i ATSC spec. of 1920x1080 -- it's obvious that both HDV and DVCPRO HD under-sample horizontally as does HDCAM. However, DVCPRO with a 1280 rather than 1440 spec. under-samples more. And, if the CCDs are only 960x720 then they are under-sampling even for an under sampled codec.

This WILL NOT be apparent on rez. charts because if both H and V green-shift are used, the 920 will increase enough for 1280 and the 720 will increase enough for 1080.

Thus rez charts will look fine, but the real test is either a non B&W rez chart or real video.