Sony PXW-X70 announced: Pro XDCAM version of AX100

[Tim Akin]

I bought this camera to use for weddings. I have tested it somewhat and used it at one wedding only. I haven't noticed any mushiness or halos.

My only complaint using it for wedding work is the noise/grain when gain is added and unless your outside or in a room with a lot of light from windows, gain has to be used, a lot of it.

XA20 is much better in low light. I just got through editing the ceremony and had to apply NV to all the closeup shots to the X70 footage.

[Josh Bass]

Oh yeah, cause f4 lens right?

[Tim Akin]

I would think, yes. Starts at 2.8 ramps quickly to 4

[David Dixon]

Christopher:

"I put the X70 on full auto running my modified PP4. The footage he shot was 1920 50i AVCHD as it had to go straight to the network after the shoot."

Have you shared yet what those modified PP4 settings were?

[Christopher Young]

No David I haven’t, I didn’t think too do so. In an earlier posting I said,

"Bearing in mind that what I was aiming for was a ready rolled 'look' that requires very little or no grading. A quick shoot, edit and deliver set up in other words. To try and get that look I ended up modifying PP4 for my uses. The changes made were to keep the video in the 16-235 delivery range and to try and achieve a natural looking roll off to the highlights and minimise white clipping whilst at the same time being careful to not crush the black levels too much."

I also posted a link to a video that has all the modified settings on its slate.

www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/t9yiwl

Basically the modified setup gives me a close to broadcast legal signal that looks half decent. It also gives me the greatest dynamic range I can extract from the camera in 709 mode. I think the range is not too bad all things considered. If you looked at the last clip I uploaded the indoor exposures haven’t totally blown out the bright sunlit detail seen through the big picture windows. Believe me the contrast range was quite severe. What surprised me is that the auto-white balance did a pretty good job of the mixed lighting conditions. If you didn’t get to see any of the clips then here are the settings.

PP4

Black level +4
Gamma ITU709
Black Gamma / Range / High / +7
Knee / Mode / Manual / Manual Set / Point = 87.5 / slope = -2
Color Mode / ITU709 Matrix
Saturation +2
Color Phase -3

These settings came about after a couple of hours on the greyscale and Macbeth charts while carefully monitoring all on a WFM and V’scope. As I said my aim being to extract the best dynamic range I could get out of the camera and yet at the same time create a fairly natural looking picture.

BTW when using the camera in full auto mode I find its best to run the ‘AE SHIFT’ at -0.7EV with the above settings. Even going down to -1.0EV when extreme harsh sunlight conditions dictate.

Hope these settings give you a starting point.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Andrew Smith]

Chris,

The woman speaking at 45 seconds in the demo footage. Is it the lighting, or is she a .... Greens MP. :-P

(local political joke)

Andrew

[David Dixon]

Chris, thanks for those settings. I did remember seeing them somewhere before but could not remember which video I saw them in. Here on the board they will be a good future reference.

I was very impressed with how well the highlights were controlled and with how the camera managed the challenging light sources in that latest footage.

How high have you found that you can boost the Gain on the camera before noise becomes objectionable?

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by Andrew Smith

Chris,

Is it the lighting, or is she a .... Greens MP. :-P

(local political joke)

Andrew

LOL! A bit of both probably. More the mixed lighting I guess than anything else but there again who knows? It reality it was a tough call for any camera auto white balance.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by David Dixon

I was very impressed with how well the highlights were controlled and with how the camera managed the challenging light sources in that latest footage.

How high have you found that you can boost the Gain on the camera before noise becomes objectionable?

That 87.5 manual knee setting with a -2 slope gives me the best natural looking highlight roll off. Negative slope values make for a gentler knee whereas +5 is in effect no knee, knee off. The problem I find with the higher steep knee settings is that you have to pull your exposure down to such a degree to avoid blowing the highlights that you end up underexposing the mid and lower levels. Better the keep them as close to correct as possible and let the highlights run into the knee earlier and give it a gentler slope up to 100-104 IRE. A more natural looking roll off. It's all a compromise really but it sort of works.

At the same time by lifting the Black Gammas. We used to call it 'black stretch.' We can keep the mid to lower black levels from crushing too much. Hence the Black Gamma High +7 setting. Way back Ikegami cameras used have a 'black stretch' and 'black press' switches on them to lift or compress the lower value black levels. I haven't used an 'Ike' in years so don't know if that's still the case. Most likely done in software these days like everything else.

The gain thing. Now this is interesting. A couple of us were playing with this and watching the results on a waveform monitor and switching visually between a grade 2 broadcast CRT and a new high end HDMI 47" Panasonic flat panel TV. Without a shade of a doubt the HD-SDI output to the grade 2 CRT was the quietest at any gain setting by some noticeable margin. Now whether this is a result of the HDMI processing on the camera ouput or the flat panel input processing who knows. We have always made subjective value judgements on the broadcast CRTs.

Using the modified PP4 I would feel totally comfortable using 18dB on a news job and even 21bB at a push. Putting the X70 up against an EX1R with both at 18dB with three of us viewing the consensus was that the X70 was quieter and also had a smoother more subtle look to its noise signature. Put the camera in Color Mode selection to black & white and even 33dB looked pretty darn good on the scope and on the monitor under blue screen selection. This indicates that most of the noise is coming from the chroma channels, probably the blue channel. This can be seen by selecting the more chroma intensive PP2. In the PPs, select Cinematone 2 under the gamma selection and you will have selected the noisiest gamma by some margin.

As there is a relationship between black levels, various gamma curves and the black gamma settings you will find various combinations of these will produce more or less noise at any given gain setting. In general terms the lower your black levels and black gammas are the image appears to be less noisy. That's the viewing perception at any rate. The more the blacks are crushed the quieter the camera looks. You are just pushing the noise floor down to where it is less visible to the eye.

What I we will do when I have the time is investigate why there is a noticeable difference in noise levels when viewing different out puts. What's to investigate? Well, is there a difference between the recorded image on internal card compared to an external SDI recording to say ProRes? Will different HDMI monitors give us different results? How are the monitors set up and is that what is influencing the viewed image? So many variables. I will,given the time check these issues out.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by Josh Bass

some folks on "another forum" are complaining about the picture being "mushy" in many cases (i.e codec gets overwhelmed by complex things in the image like leaves on a tree etc. and pixellates). can anyone comment on that?
thanks

In earlier camera XAVC 50-mbit 422 50p clips I uploaded, see earlier posts for the download link, I have plenty of trees, foliage grass etc. The PP5 clip in that download shows about nine different types of foliage on trees blowing in the wind. No mushiness compared to the fine detail smearing you can get with the EX 35-mbit MPEG-2 codec on fine moving foliage and water fountains etc. I have seen pixelization on AVHD 50p images. At 28-mbit those files are only 4-mbit larger than the 50/60i files at 24-mbit. 28-mbit for 50p is asking a bit much I think. So far I have not seen any issues to concern me in these XAVC 10-bit 422 50-mbit files as compared to some of the issues I have seen in AVCHD 8-bit 420 28-mbit files.

The major difference between the AVCHD and XAVC is in the profile implementation. AVCHD is Main 4:2:0 @ L4.0 whereas XAVC is Main 4:2:2 @ L4.2. That is a major advance in robustness for encoding quality.

See attached JPEG for the major data handling differences between the two levels, 4.0 and 4.2.

Early days yet with XAVC-L but so far so good. Time will tell I guess.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Hugh Raggett]

Anyone know if this camera has or even may be given ok by either BBC or other UK stations for reportage docs?!

[David Dixon]

Chris, thanks for the detailed info. That's exactly the approach I take with my Canon XF100 - softer sloped Knee and lifted blacks. I don't do things on intense deadlines, so I really enjoy the creativity of shooting VERY flat, then using scopes in post to put highs, mids, and shadows, saturation, etc., where I want them. I never shoot anything at all with a finished look in-camera - even casual family videos :-)

One of my many reasons for interest in the X70 is that it will allow me to take a similar approach.

I was also glad to hear that you find Gain acceptable up to +18 - on the XF100 it's already almost unusable at +9.

[Terence Morris]

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

That 87.5 manual knee setting with a -2 slope gives me the best natural looking highlight roll off. Negative slope values make for a gentler knee whereas +5 is in effect no knee, knee off. The problem I find with the higher steep knee settings is that you have to pull your exposure down to such a degree to avoid blowing the highlights that you end up underexposing the mid and lower levels. Better the keep them as close to correct as possible and let the highlights run into the knee earlier and give it a gentler slope up to 100-104 IRE. A more natural looking roll off. It's all a compromise really but it sort of works.

At the same time by lifting the Black Gammas. We used to call it 'black stretch.' We can keep the mid to lower black levels from crushing too much. Hence the Black Gamma High +7 setting. Way back Ikegami cameras used have a 'black stretch' and 'black press' switches on them to lift or compress the lower value black levels. I haven't used an 'Ike' in years so don't know if that's still the case. Most likely done in software these days like everything else.

The gain thing. Now this is interesting. A couple of us were playing with this and watching the results on a waveform monitor and switching visually between a grade 2 broadcast CRT and a new high end HDMI 47" Panasonic flat panel TV. Without a shade of a doubt the HD-SDI output to the grade 2 CRT was the quietest at any gain setting by some noticeable margin. Now whether this is a result of the HDMI processing on the camera ouput or the flat panel input processing who knows. We have always made subjective value judgements on the broadcast CRTs.

Using the modified PP4 I would feel totally comfortable using 18dB on a news job and even 21bB at a push. Putting the X70 up against an EX1R with both at 18dB with three of us viewing the consensus was that the X70 was quieter and also had a smoother more subtle look to its noise signature. Put the camera in Color Mode selection to black & white and even 33dB looked pretty darn good on the scope and on the monitor under blue screen selection. This indicates that most of the noise is coming from the chroma channels, probably the blue channel. This can be seen by selecting the more chroma intensive PP2. In the PPs, select Cinematone 2 under the gamma selection and you will have selected the noisiest gamma by some margin.

As there is a relationship between black levels, various gamma curves and the black gamma settings you will find various combinations of these will produce more or less noise at any given gain setting. In general terms the lower your black levels and black gammas are the image appears to be less noisy. That's the viewing perception at any rate. The more the blacks are crushed the quieter the camera looks. You are just pushing the noise floor down to where it is less visible to the eye.

What I we will do when I have the time is investigate why there is a noticeable difference in noise levels when viewing different out puts. What's to investigate? Well, is there a difference between the recorded image on internal card compared to an external SDI recording to say ProRes? Will different HDMI monitors give us different results? How are the monitors set up and is that what is influencing the viewed image? So many variables. I will,given the time check these issues out.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

This is an excellent education for a relative newcomer to higher-end equipment. Still awaiting the arrival my X70, but my mindset is being well prepped in these very practical examples. Thanks

[Jase Tanner]

Terence, I'm wondering where you bought yours. As you can see, I'm also in Vancouver and while I know B&H has them I prefer to buy cameras locally or at least Canadian for the warranty. There is a local shop that has offered to bring one in for me but if you bought Canadian I'd like to know. My searches on the usual suspects have come up empty.

Thanks

[Terence Morris]

Hi Jase,

I prevaricated quite a bit over this myself. As far as I know, the only place in Canada I could find the x70 was at Vistek in Ontario. They have quite a competitive price that is equivalent to the current US exchange rate:

Sony PXW-X70 XDCAM XAVC HD422 Camcorder Pro Camcorders - Vistek Canada Product Detail

However, you will have to forgive my lack of loyalty in this case, as I went with B&H. This was simply because I wanted a number of sundry items (a particular tripod and slider being the main ones) that simply weren't available anywhere in Canada. It just made economic sense to pay one shipping fee. B&H, as you may know, have a very good arrangement with Purolator that minimizes cross-border hassle and import duties.

I hope this helps.

-Terence