Any news on the Sony PMW 500

[Simon Denny]

Yeah, I asked this question in another forum about Slow & Quick motion. 1080p is great if this is true.
Also strange that the 500 has no histogram, I can get by without it but it's a bit odd.

Ned, what's the peaking colour used on the 500?

Cheers

[Paul Cronin]

Steve never used the 1080 60fps on my F800 since I did not upgrade FCP to view it.

Simon it is weird why Sony pulled the histogram, i never really used it.

[Simon Denny]

I found this from the Sony brochure.
I remember reading this but must have thought 720p only for S&Q

Slow & Quick Motion Function
The PMW-500 offers a powerful Slow & Quick Motion
function that enables users to create elegant fastand
slow-motion footage. The PMW-500 can
capture images at frame rates selectable from 1 fps
(frame per second) to 60 fps in 720p mode and from
1 fps to 30 fps in 1080p mode, in increments of 1
fps*1.
*1: With the PAL setting in UDF (MXF) mode, frame rates are
selectable up to 50 fps in 720p mode and up to 25 fps in 1080p
mode.


More the same on this:

Slow & Quick Motion
function
720p: Selectable from 1 fps to 60 fps as recording frame rate*
(from 1 fps to 50 fps in the case of Pal Area Setting in the UDF Mode)
1080p: Selectable from 1 fps to 30 fps as recording frame rate
(from 1 fps to 25 fps in the case of Pal Area Setting in the UDF Mode)

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by Steve Phillipps

I wonder how the missing lines of the 800 will react when put through grading and the transmission chain. Steve

I can answer that. 1080 slow-mo looks absolutely fantastic on the F800 and you'd have a real hard time telling that the footage wasn't full resolution. If you want to compare 720 slow-mo on an EX camera vs. 1080 slow-mo on an F800, you'd see a difference.

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by Paul Cronin

Simon it is weird why Sony pulled the histogram, i never really used it.

They didn't. See post #25.

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by Simon Ash

Ned, what's the peaking colour used on the 500?

See post #24.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Doug Jensen

None of Sony's high-end cameras have a histogram function because zebras, when properly used, are so much more accurate and useful for setting exposure.

Yes, I fully agree. A histogram may be fine for setting exposure on a fixed scene, but pretty useless when there's a lot of movement - they totally obscure too much of the image!

Learning how to use zebras properly is a much steeper learning curve than for histogram, but once learnt they are far superior for the reason above.

[Alister Chapman]

You can put a 350 finder, with colour peaking on a 500. But you can't buy a 500 with the 350 style VF, or buy a 350 style VF on it's own at this time.

The PMW-500 has more in common with the 350 in terms of image processing, monitoring functions etc than the 700/F800.

[Doug Jensen]

I almost forgot that I have a PMW-500 owners manual.
Yes, it has colored peaking -- if you want it.

Peaking Type Normal/Color/Both:
Selects the peaking type.

Normal: Normal peaking
Color: Color peaking
Both: Both

Peaking Color White/Red/Yellow/Blue When the Peaking Type setting is Color,
selects the peaking color from among
White, Red, Yellow, and Blue.

[Doug Jensen]

The PMW-500 does have a histogram function. From the manual:

Histogram Display On/Off Turns the histogram display of video
signal levels on or off (in HD mode only).


Any other questions that might be answered in the manual??
I can't share a copy, but I'll be happy to look things up.

[Simon Denny]

Thanks Doug,
Good info on that.

Cheers,
Simon

[Steve Phillipps]

Originally Posted by Doug Jensen

I can answer that. 1080 slow-mo looks absolutely fantastic on the F800 and you'd have a real hard time telling that the footage wasn't full resolution. If you want to compare 720 slow-mo on an EX camera vs. 1080 slow-mo on an F800, you'd see a difference.

Yes, but I was wondering about after grading and particularly through transmission. How does your stuff look in slomo on broadcast?
I know that the half horizontal rez slomo looks pretty good as I had an F355 a while back and it is really impressive. Certainly not true to say as some have that you can't tell the difference between normal speed and slomo, you can, no question about that, but the difference is no way near as huge as you might expect.
I suppose if the interpolatiob algorythm in the 355 800 is absolutely superb that could be the reason why it looks better than the specs would suggest - I presume there is software interpolation going on in camera?
It's still a little surpising that it'd look better than native 720 though - after all if that was the case why not just shoot you slomo in 1080i and de-interlace slomo in post?
Steve

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Steve Phillipps

Yes, but I was wondering about after grading and particularly through transmission. How does your stuff look in slomo on broadcast?

I'd assume no different to normal speed, if the recording data rate rises with overcrank rate. So for half speed footage, double the recorded frame rate and data rate to 50fps and 100Mbs respectively, and playback is then still from a standard XDCAM422 50Mbs recording.

Originally Posted by Steve Phillipps

It's still a little surpising that it'd look better than native 720 though - after all if that was the case why not just shoot you slomo in 1080i and de-interlace slomo in post?

That may apply vertically - but horizontally you're talking about the difference between 1920 and 1280 luminance samples, respectively for 720 and 1080 working. (And 960 and 640 chrominance.)

[Alister Chapman]

Hmmm... I'm not sure you get the same data rate increase with XDCAM HD as you do with XDCAM EX when overcranking. We know that with an EX the data rate of 35Mb/s is actually the playback rate, so if you shoot at 720P25, overcranked to 50fps the playback data rate ends up at 35Mb/s which implies that the recording is 70Mb/s. This is one of the reasons why you have issues with SD cards etc when overcranking.

But with the optical discs on a 700/F800 this would mean recording at 100Mb/s when overcranking and this is beyond (AFAIK) the capabilities of the single laser deck used in the cameras, which maxes out at about 90 Mb/s and can only go upto about 70Mb/s for sustained recordings. Given that the 500 recording formats are 100% optical disc compatible (in UDF mode) this would suggest the same recording bit rate limitations. So I speculate that the recorded bit rate is not doubled as with the EX, which is why the resolution is halved vertically.

The implication is that an EX shooting 2x overcrank is less compressed than a F800 at the same speed.

[Doug Jensen]

Putting speculation about data rates aside, in the real world, there is absolutely no question that 1080 slow-mo from my F800 looks superior to 720 slow-mo from my EX1 on a 1080P timeline. If I had the choice between both modes on a 500, there's no question which one I'd choose to use.